Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

It was Homura Soroku of the private detective bureau, awakened when he would have preferred to sleep a little longer due to fatigue from his investigations the previous night.

"What manner of guest has come to call?"

"A lady."
His assistant Sunaga answered in a tone that seemed to forcibly conceal cheerfulness.
"Moreover, she appears to be around twenty years of age."

"What do you mean, 'moreover'?" Homura thought as he undid his pajama buttons one by one. Even these hands could see clearly through...

"Tell her to wait ten minutes."

"At once, sir."

Sunaga exited Homura's bedroom with mechanical precision, squaring his shoulders like a tin soldier.

He threw open the bathroom door, peeled off every clinging garment, and plunged into the ice-cold tub. Three minutes spent thrashing through the water—kicking up spray as he dove beneath the surface, stretching his limbs like some ungainly otter. Four more shivering minutes saw his coarse beard scraped raw. One minute sufficed to scrub face and mouth; two to towel dry and wrestle into marginally presentable Western clothes. At last he rapped on the parlor door.

Within the parlor's enclosure, sure enough, a young woman was seated.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” After offering her a chair, he continued, “Let’s get straight to your matter.”

“I’m most obliged,”
the woman showed faint bewilderment at Homura’s abrupt approach but resolutely turned her large, dark-lashed eyes toward him.
Within their depths lingered an unspeakable melancholy.
“Then I shall explain—the truth is my father has suddenly disappeared—.”
“As reported in yesterday’s evening edition, my father is Kōchi Takedayū, director of the municipal zoo.”

“Ah, so you are Miss Toshiko, Director Kōchi’s daughter?”
Homura recalled having seen a photograph in the evening paper of the director’s family steeped in worry—specifically of Miss Toshiko (20)—listed among them. The article had been a three-column spread on the society page with a headline along the lines of “Director Kōchi’s Bizarre Disappearance: Hat and Jacket Left Behind at Zoo.”

“I am Toshiko,” she fluttered her beautiful eyes. “As you may know, our house lies in the woods right beside the zoo. On the morning of October 30th when he disappeared, Father left as usual at 8:30 AM.”
“In the morning, there were many at the zoo who claimed to have seen Father, but from the afternoon onward, almost no one reported seeing him.”
“I brought the lunchbox for his midday meal, but in the end, it never passed Father’s lips.”
“Though everyone found it strange that Father had not returned to his office by noon, he was quite an eccentric man. When his mood shifted, he would often wander out of the zoo alone to the main boulevard, ducking into sushi shops or oden stalls, only to suddenly return around half past one or two o’clock. Therefore, on that day too, everyone assumed it must be his usual peculiarity.”
“However, even when closing time arrived at five o’clock in the afternoon, Father still had not returned.”
“Though he occasionally goes out to town and doesn’t return until late at night, that day both his hat and jacket remained in the office, so we sensed something unusual. Mr. Saigō—a young Bachelor of Science serving as Vice-Director—stopped by our house on his way home and cautioned us: ‘It seems the Director’s usual ailment has begun again.’”
“However, that night, Father ultimately did not return.”
“Even if Father returns late at night—even if it becomes one o’clock or two o’clock—he always comes home.”
“Since that hasn’t happened—since he hasn’t returned—Mother and I are terribly worried about what could have occurred.”
“They searched the zoo grounds as well, but found nothing.”
“We also requested a search from the police, but they told us: ‘Since there seems to be no particular motive for him to die, he should return around tonight.’”
“However, we find ourselves so uneasy that we simply cannot remain idle and wait as things stand.”
“If it seems that Father has been subjected to harm in any way, we wish to find and rescue him at the earliest possible moment.”
“That is why Mother and I discussed it and have come to request your assistance.”
“What do you make of it—my father’s life or death?”

Miss Toshiko, having finished speaking, raised her faintly flushed face and awaited Homura’s judgment.

“Well—” Homura pinched the tip of his rather short chin with his right hand out of habit.
“With just that information alone, I’m afraid I cannot determine whether Director Kōchi is alive or dead. However, if you wish it, I would like to hear more from you first before investigating other avenues.”

“Thank you ever so much for taking on this case.”
Miss Toshiko let out a relieved sigh.
“Please ask me anything at all.”

“Did they conduct an extensive search at the zoo?”

“I was told they conducted an extremely thorough search.”
“This morning, when I went to the zoo and met with Vice-Director Mr. Saigō, he mentioned that as a precaution after closing on the thirtieth—the day Father disappeared—they had split up and conducted a thorough search of the entire grounds.”
“This morning as well, they are apparently conducting another thorough search.”

“I see.” Homura nodded.
“Was Mr. Saigō surprised?”
“Oh, this morning he was terribly concerned.”
“What about Mr. Saigō’s home and family?”

“Imado in Asakusa.”
“He is still unmarried and currently boarding.”
“However, Mr. Saigō is a splendid person.”
“If you dare to voice such suspicions, I would bear resentment.”

“No, I’m not currently entertaining such thoughts.”

Homura offered both respect and bewilderment to this rare woman of traditional Japanese tastes in the modern age.

“Then, I hear that the Director sometimes returns home at one or two o’clock in the middle of the night—where does he spend his time until then?”

“Well, I don’t know the details myself,” she said, “but according to Mother, he would visit old friends and make rounds drinking with them.”
“That was Father’s sole pastime and pleasure—because those friends were comrades-in-arms who survived the Russo-Japanese War. When they met, memories of those days would resurface, making it impossible for them to part after just a brief encounter.”

“So the Director was deployed in the Russo-Japanese War?”

“Yes—during the Battle of Shahe, he sustained several bullets and was subsequently repatriated to the homeland, but until then, he had fought bravely.”

“Then he’s a Golden Kite Medal recipient.”

“Yes, he was a Sergeant Sixth Class.”
Even as she answered, Toshiko couldn’t help feeling somewhat disappointed in the detective’s intellect—what relation could this possibly have to her father’s disappearance?

However, in the end, neither of them could have dreamed at this moment that what seemed trivial would become one key to solving the case.

“On such occasions, does the Director go out without wearing a hat or jacket, not even informing your household, just strolling off?”

“Such a thing is absolutely out of the question. Even if he didn’t inform the household about his departure, as for hats and jackets—in warm weather that might be one thing—but now that November has come, it’s rather the season when one would want an overcoat. I believe he would have worn his hat and Western clothes.”

“Where might that jacket be located? I should like to examine it briefly…”

“The jacket is at our home, so please do come by.”

“Then we shall visit immediately. On the way, I would ask you to tell me more about those old comrades-in-arms as well.”

“Ah, are you referring to Mr. Hanzaki Kōhei?”
Miss Toshiko had uttered the name of her father’s comrade-in-arms for the first time.

2

Having visited the Director’s residence, Homura consoled the grieving wife, meticulously examined the left-behind jacket, jotted something down in his notebook, borrowed a single photograph of the Director, gathered a full set of his fingerprints, and then slipped through the adjoining zoo’s back gate.

Vice-Director Saigō readily met with Homura.
He wasn’t as corpulent as the statue of Saigō Takamori, but he was still quite a large-framed man.

“I hear the Director has gone missing—you must be terribly worried.”

Homura greeted him.
"Exactly when did you notice it?"

“It’s turned into quite a predicament, you know.”
The burly Bachelor of Science replied with a clouded expression.
“There was no particular moment when we noticed anything amiss, but my suspicions arose around noon that day.”
“The Director had not returned for his meal at all, you see.”

“What was the Director doing during the morning?”

“When he arrives for work at 8:30, he immediately makes a round of the grounds—which first takes about an hour.”
“Then, until just before eleven o’clock, he attends to administrative duties, after which he makes another round of the grounds—though on these occasions without any particular destination—he goes to the enclosures he had noted during the morning and inspects the animals’ care.”
“On the day he went missing as well, there didn’t seem to be any significant deviation from this routine.”

“That day—regarding which animals he would be looking after—did you hear any talk about that?”

“There wasn’t any.”

“Who was the person who last saw the Director?”

“Well, since the police came earlier and conducted their investigation, I heard about it too—one was Kamoda Tosaburō, a reptile house researcher and Bachelor of Science and Medicine; the other was Mukashima Jirō, chief breeder at the small bird greenhouse—these two individuals.”
“However, both men claimed nearly identical sighting times—around 11:20.”
“According to their accounts, the Director entered each facility separately, spent two or three minutes giving instructions, then departed just as he’d arrived.”

“What is the distance between the Reptile House and the small bird greenhouse?”

“I’ll show you later, but they’re neighbors separated by about twenty ken (approximately 36 meters). However, sandwiched between them and set far back is a building called the Feeding Room, which is where we prepare and store food for the animals. If I were to sketch a rough diagram, it would look like this.”

With that, Saigō, the Bachelor of Science, took up a pencil and proceeded to sketch a schematic diagram of the area around the Reptile House.

“Is there nothing in this twenty-ken (approximately 36 meters) vacant lot?”

"No, there are about twelve paulownia trees planted."

"Did the Director not show up at that Feeding Room?"

"During this morning’s inspection, they said the Director hadn’t come in."

"Who was it that said that?"

"The chief of the feeding staff, a man named Kitahoshi Seikichi."

"Could you tell me about the circumstances surrounding when it became clear that the Director was indeed missing?"

“Very well.
“Even as closing time approached, the Director had not returned.
“When we looked, his hat and jacket remained exactly as they were, and the lunch delivered from his home stayed completely untouched.
“Since we couldn’t simply leave without a word, we mobilized all the keepers and gardeners to search every corner of the zoo.
“I took Hiruma the gardener and thoroughly inspected all the predator enclosures, but found nothing amiss.”

“This may be an amateurish thought, but have you checked whether a body might be hidden deep at the bottom of the hippopotamus’s tank, for example?”

“That’s a perfectly reasonable point,” Vice-Director Saigō nodded.
“As such areas require some preparation before they can be inspected, we couldn’t attend to them immediately, but this afternoon we are proceeding with each one systematically.”

“That’s perfect!” exclaimed Detective Homura.
“I’d like to join immediately, if I may.”

Saigō, the Bachelor of Science, agreed and began making calls on the desk telephone to various parties. After considerable effort, he determined that the search party was about to move toward the Reptile House and arranged for Homura to be guided there.

As they walked along the white gravel path, leaves borne by a wind from nowhere rustled and scattered audibly around them.
It was already November.
In the grove’s shade, a single vivid maple tree seemed to dissolve into the air—still as water—a provocative ardor infused within.
Homura resolved to ask a rather delicate question.

“Is the Director’s daughter still unmarried, I wonder?”

“Huh?”
Mr. Saigō asked back as if doubting his own ears.

“The young lady is still unmarried.
“Detective, you do seem preoccupied with all manner of things.”

“As a young man myself, I can’t help being curious about such matters.”

“Well now, that’s unexpected!”
Saigō, the Bachelor of Science, writhed his bulky frame in amusement.
“You’re welcome to say such things in my presence, but mention them before Dr. Kamoda and he’ll sic his pythons on you.”

“This Dr. Kamoda—he’s affiliated with the Reptile House, correct?”

“That’s correct,” he answered, though Mr. Saigō immediately regretted carrying the jest too far.
“He was my classmate—a man of formidable seriousness. You’d do well not to provoke him.”

Homura gave no response, but in his mind he was organizing both what had been discussed earlier with the Director's daughter Toshiko and what Vice-Director Saigō had just said under the guise of a joke. Now, meeting Kamoda, the Reptile House researcher, became something to look forward to.

“Dr. Kamoda isn’t the chief, then?”

“The chief has been on sick leave for a long time. Dr. Kamoda was originally focused solely on research, but unfortunately, he’s also been handling the chief’s duties under such circumstances.”

“Regarding this research—”

“He is an authority on reptiles. He holds both a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Science, but as he’s set to submit his doctoral thesis in science shortly, he’ll soon be a Doctor.”

“He’s quite an unusual person.”

“Oh no—he’s a remarkable man. He spent three whole years in Sumatra associating with pythons. Since he also has assets, when that Reptile House was built, he contributed half the funds from his own money. Currently, there are two pythons on display, but behind that area, they keep six or seven large ones.”

“Hoh,” Homura rounded his eyes.
“Did you examine those non-display snakes as well?”

“Of course we did,” replied the Vice-Director.
“They’re research specimens—we don’t show them to visitors—but we inspected them as thoroughly as the public exhibits.
There were none extravagant enough to swallow the Director whole.”

Homura found himself unable to readily accept this assurance.
Given that the Director had last been seen near this Reptile House and Small Bird Greenhouse area, he resolved that nothing less than exhaustive scrutiny would suffice.

“Well, here is the Reptile House.”

At the Vice-Director’s voice, he looked up with a start—there stood a sturdy, flesh-colored building that seemed every bit a greenhouse, enveloped in an alluring secret before the two of them.

3

When he pushed open the door and entered, a stifling, gag-inducing raw stench of warm air assailed Homura’s nostrils head-on.

Within a spacious cage as large as a small theater stage—divided by sturdy wire mesh—two coiled pythons lay sleeping cozily in opposite corners they had claimed.
Their torsos—brown with black mottling—reached pine tree thickness from deep mountain ranges at their widest points; their fine scales emitted an unpleasant luster through mucus.
Their heads proved unexpectedly small, making locating the eyes laborious—but when he finally found those half-open yellow orbs carved like recessed gems, it left him with no pleasant sensation.
Whether they had sensed Homura and the others entering or not—huff-huff—parts of their bodies undulated as though buffeted by wind.

When he thought there were still six or seven more such creatures in the back, Homura—who had detested snakes since birth—became utterly despondent.

At that moment, Vice-Director Saigō opened the rear sliding door and pulled in a somewhat small-statured, pale young gentleman who looked like he could be swallowed whole by a python.

“Allow me to introduce.”
“This is Dr. Kamoda, the researcher at this Reptile House.”

The two men bowed their heads without a word.

“I would like to ask about the Director’s last visit to this room.”

“Since the Metropolitan Police Department already subjected me to considerable interrogation this morning, I can speak without reserve now,” Dr. Kamoda prefaced. “I have an ingrained habit of not checking timepieces, you understand. Estimating from when the noon siren sounded, I believe it was approximately 11:20 when the Director entered wearing his khaki laboratory coat. Yes—he remained perhaps two or three minutes. After remarking on the listlessness of one python displayed here and issuing dietary precautions, he departed straightaway.”

“Did he enter only this room, or—”

“The earlier conversation took place in the back.”
“Though I didn’t personally escort him, it seems the Director did indeed pass through this sliding door to enter this room.”

“Did you hear any sounds of him going out to the front?”

“No—I didn’t particularly take note of it.”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“There wasn’t.”

“Between the time you believe the Director went out to the front and noon, did you hear any unusual cries outdoors?”

“Let me see... A truck arrived at the back feeding room—there was some rattling like they were bringing in animal feed. That’s about it.”

“Hoh.”
Homura widened his eyes.
“About what time was that?”

“Well，it was about fifteen minutes or so after the Director had left.”

“So that would be around eleven thirty-five then.”
“When it comes to what animals eat，those items must take up considerable space.”

“That’s quite a load, I tell you,” interjected the Vice-Director from the side.

“Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, soy pulp, wheat bran, straw, fresh grass—then things like bread loaves, milk, rabbits, chickens, horse meat, fish varieties—they all come loaded onto trucks.”

“I see,” Homura turned back toward Kamoda again.
“This may seem an absurd question, but do these pythons swallow humans?”

“I can’t guarantee they never swallow anyone, but they don’t typically attack humans.”
“As I mentioned earlier when you asked the same question, it’s certain they haven’t swallowed the Director.”
“Swallowing a human takes time, and even if they did swallow one, their bellies would be visibly swollen—you’d know immediately.”

Homura nodded silently.

However, upon considering that cutting a human body into nine or so pieces and feeding each piece to one of these pythons would allow relatively easy disposal without causing significant abdominal swelling, he thought of posing the question—but since this seemed likely to yield grave consequences, he resolved to inquire about it later. And he thought to discreetly check the extent of abdominal swelling on all the pythons. When he requested to see Dr. Kamoda’s laboratory at the rear, permission was promptly granted, and the entire group passed through the sliding door and entered.

There was an utterly bizarre, spacious room.
It was a vertically elongated single chamber spanning about thirty tsubo (approximately 99 square meters), divided lengthwise into two sections. One side featured desks liberally coated in white paint, bookshelves, document boxes, something resembling an operating table, glass-door chemical cabinets, specimen displays, and surgical instrument racks—all lavishly arranged. Additionally, two or three unintelligible tank-like apparatuses large enough to hold a human were positioned about.
The windows were small and set high up, while a mercury-vapor lighting fixture in the ceiling cast a ghastly bluish-white light.
There was a group of gardeners who had opened a section of the floor and descended underground—undoubtedly the search party that had been mentioned.
In one corner of the room, about two uniformed officers from the Metropolitan Police Department stood with sharply gleaming eyes.

The other lengthwise half contained a sturdy cage where seven terrifyingly large pythons lay as if dead, having claimed random positions for themselves. Homura gripped the cage and began inspecting each python's belly one by one starting from the end. Yet none of the snakes had a stomach swollen enough to raise suspicion. But supposing they had fed dismembered body parts to the pythons—if one assumed the crime occurred around noon on the 30th, with today being the afternoon of the 2nd making it over two days later—wouldn't the pythons' bellies have diminished enough in that interval to become inconspicuous?

“Dr. Kamoda.”
Homura turned around to look behind him.
“I hear you feed goats to the pythons—about how many days does it take for them to digest?”

“Let me think...”
Kamoda rubbed his hands together and assumed a look of earnestness.
“If a python were to swallow a goat weighing six kan—I’d estimate three days for digestion.”

If one were to cut the Director—who weighed twelve or thirteen kan—into eight or nine pieces and feed them to nine pythons, then with two full days having passed since then, the remains must have sufficiently dissolved by now.
But who had killed him? Who had dismembered the body? Who had fed it to the serpents?
The answers remained shrouded in uncertainty—yet the involvement of this pallid Researcher Kamoda stood beyond doubt.

“Ah, Saigō,”
It was Dr. Kamoda who said that.
"The fountain pen I found in front of this Reptile House the day before yesterday and turned in to the office—they say the police officers earlier examined it and determined it belongs to the Director."

“Ah, right.”
Vice-Director Saigō gave a brief reply but immediately afterward shot a quick glance in Homura’s direction.

Homura maintained an air of ignorance while contemplating the secret underpinning this exchange.
That someone had retrieved the Director’s belongings before the Reptile House wasn’t necessarily advantageous for Dr. Kamoda under certain interpretations.
While fountain pens do get dropped occasionally, one wouldn’t typically lose them so conveniently at a building’s entrance.
Moreover, for someone as composed as the Director to have dropped it seemed inherently suspect.
Either someone had planted it there intending to implicate Kamoda later—or Kamoda himself had fabricated discovering it there when he’d actually dropped it.
If the former scenario held true, this begged who might seek to frame him; if the latter suggested Kamoda willingly inviting suspicion—both possibilities revealing profound criminal intent—Homura began scouring every corner of the room to understand Kamoda’s character through any suspicious objects he might find.

“Is this Dr. Kamoda’s briefcase?” Homura pointed at the black leather document case resting on the shelf.

“Yes, it’s mine.”

“It’s quite large, isn’t it?”

“We use it to carry animal sketches, so a custom-made case like this is necessary.”

“Over here—three large tank-like structures of identical shape lie horizontally. What are these?”

“That is an apparatus I employed for my doctoral thesis.”
“They’re currently unused, hence equally empty.”

“What previously occupied them?”

“They serve diverse functions—when pythons catch colds, we place them inside for steam treatment.”

“For something that’s supposedly not in use, these tanks look suspiciously like they contain liquid.”

“We do occasionally put hot water in them as well.”

“But there’s no visible breathing from the pythons, and those heavy-duty locks suggest more than steam treatments.”

“This device’s interior must remain confidential until my thesis receives official approval.”

“What’s the thesis title?”

“On the Endocrine Glands of Pythons—that’s what it concerns.”

At that moment with a clamor, a group of police officers and gardeners surrounded Dr. Kamoda.

“We’ve already searched this building from ceiling to subfloor but found nothing unusual. The only remaining items are those three tanks—trusting your word, we’ll leave them undisturbed.”

Homura rushed out upon hearing that.

“Wait.”
“You must investigate those tanks!”

“But they can’t be opened.”
The police officer beyond Homura’s discernment said.

“That’s not true. Look, Dr. Kamoda—opening them would be in your own best interest. Wouldn’t those tanks alone prove your innocence beyond doubt?”

“No—they can’t be opened so readily.” Kamoda vehemently opposed the idea. “Unsealing them would cause the Reptile House’s temperature and humidity to crash catastrophically. Even a partial opening would endanger every specimen here.”

“I doubt it would cause such drastic effects. Why not test that theory?” Homura pressed undeterred.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Having been entrusted by the Director with full responsibility for the reptiles, I retain the right to refuse.”
“Of course, should all other avenues prove fruitless in finding a solution, I would open them—though that requires preparation.”
“To move these reptiles back to their original warm room, we must first sufficiently heat that space and properly adjust its humidity.”

“Troublesome.”
Homura’s face twisted bitterly.
“Exactly how many hours would preparing this separate room require?”

“Well… probably five or six hours.”

“That’s quite a predicament. Then I’ll take some time to consider it as well,” Homura declared decisively. “In the meantime, I’ll go inspect another room. Mr. Saigō, please show me this feeding room.”

4

Homura exited the Reptile House, lit his Cherry, and puffed contentedly.

From his observations, if Kamoda were to be suspected, it would be because he had dragged Director Kōchi into the Reptile House for some reason, murdered him, stripped him naked, dismembered him into pieces on an operating table, and fed portions of the body to the pythons he bred.
Since they hadn’t noticed that the body had been dismembered into pieces, the search team did inspect the pythons’ bellies, but as there were no pythons with bellies swollen enough to suggest they had swallowed a human whole, they must have felt reassured.
Inside those special devices must surely be concealed the bloodstained clothes and shoes of the Director.
The fountain pen had been dropped when someone strangled the Director at the building’s entrance; they must have later reported it as a lost item under some pretense.

However, he couldn’t help but notice Vice-Director Saigō—now walking alongside him—acting suspiciously regarding the fountain pen. First, if it had been reported as a lost item on the 30th, Saigō should have immediately suspected and investigated it—yet he had remained silent until now. Why keep quiet when one glance should have revealed it as the Director's property? Combined with that unpleasant glance he had given Homura—was it possible Saigō had orchestrated everything, deliberately dropping it before the Reptile House to cast suspicion on Kamoda? The method of the Director’s murder and the body’s whereabouts remained unknown, but the motive was likely either professional resentment or a failed romance. Thinking this through, when he looked at Saigō’s profile, there was indeed something faintly villainous about him.

However, suspecting even Saigō—against whom there was scant evidence—felt like plunging into a detective’s terrifying abyss of endless doubt.
Even considering Director Kōchi’s daughter Toshiko’s testimony made suspecting the Vice-Director seem unjustifiable.
Yet if one pursued suspicion, Toshiko hadn’t uttered so much as a syllable about Kamoda—instead mounting defenses for Saigō.
Might this mean she defended Saigō out of guilt for failing to return his affections, while remaining silent about Kamoda because their romantic entanglements had already been settled?
As tangled threads of suspicion coiled ever tighter around Homura’s feet, an object that might unravel them lay before him.
It was a single button.

“Ah! This must be a button from the Director’s suit.”
“Why would this be here?”

Homura thought it was extremely fortunate that he had previously noted down the characteristics of the button from the jacket the Director had left behind in his notebook.
Even so, given that the location where the button had been picked up was the pavement wedged between paulownia wood materials right before the Feeding Room, one could not help but cast initial suspicion upon the Feeding Room staff.
No—if we assumed that the Director’s fountain pen said to have been dropped in front of the Reptile House fell almost simultaneously with this button, wouldn’t this combination itself be telling us the route taken to transport his body?
Probably, the fountain pen fell first, followed by what appeared to be the vest button—it would be reasonable to assume this.
It could be considered that the Director’s body was transported from the front of the Reptile House to the feeding room.

But how someone had managed to transport it without attracting notice became the next question.
If that were possible, special circumstances would have been required.
In broad daylight, this would necessitate there being few visitors and no animal keepers or gardeners present at the scene—a fortunate coincidence—whereas at night, it could have been carried out with relative ease.
However, since the fountain pen was discovered on the day of the Director’s disappearance, the transportation must have occurred before nighttime.
Moreover, given that people reportedly saw the Director until around 11:20 AM, he should have returned to his office for lunch by noon—if he did not do so, common sense dictated that his disappearance must have occurred between 11:20 AM and noon.
The route was not from the Feeding Room to the Reptile House but rather considered to be from the Reptile House to the Feeding Room.
There, Homura recalled that Dr. Kamoda from the Reptile House had mentioned hearing about a commotion around 11:35 AM when a truck arrived at the Feeding Room to unload animal feed.
Then—had the crime been committed before or after this?
Homura could not help but consider that numerous unanswered questions likely lay concealed within the Feeding Room’s interior as well.

When Homura entered the feeding room with Saigō, the Bachelor of Science, he nearly let out a “Gah!” Imagining the Feeding Room from outside the wall versus actually seeing this—a massive chopping block bearing a chunk of horseflesh oozing blood—created a wholly different visceral sense of what a feeding room truly was. On the walls hung a massive axe and saw that seemed fit for butchering elephants, along with a meat cleaver akin to a small qinglongdao, all gleaming with dazzling brilliance. In the warehouse, vertically split horse carcasses and cages of rabbits with their long ears drooping limply caught the eye.

The instant Homura beheld this horrifying spectacle, a vision flashed through his mind like lightning.
It was a vision of the Zoo Director’s corpse being brought into the feeding room, where a cook took down a large meat cleaver from the wall and severed the body in one swift motion.
And with terrifying skill, they would portion out the flesh from the chest, buttocks, legs, and arms, load it onto a transport cart, then head straight to the lion and tiger cages to toss in the Director’s flesh. No—how horrifying.

“This is Mr. Kitahoshi Seikichi, chief of the Feeding Room.”
Vice-Director Saigō introduced a man as plump as a rubber ball.

“Oh, Mr. Homura?”
Feeding Room Chief Kitahoshi grinned amiably.

“I’ve been well acquainted with your name for some time.”
“This case seems tailor-made for you—a truly perfect challenge, wouldn’t you say?”

Homura found himself at a complete loss for words in response to Kitahoshi’s cheerful yet somehow teasing greeting.
However, as he looked at the perfectly round, plump face of this man who resembled a child sumo wrestler, he found it impossible to believe that he was the type of person who would plot evil deeds.
Homura mustered the courage to pose bold, direct questions to this man.

“Mr. Kitahoshi, I believe the Director’s body was processed either here in this Feeding Room or next door in the Reptile House.”

“Hah... hah...”
Kitahoshi opened his small mouth as wide as he could and theatrically feigned shock.
“Well now, that’s quite the revelation.”

“Where were you between approximately 11:20 AM and noon on the morning the Director went missing?”

“So I’m your prime suspect, am I?”
Kitahoshi grinned slyly.
“Now regarding the time in question—if I told you I stayed alone in this room, you’d be thrilled—but truth is, my whole crew was right here the entire time."
“You see, around 11:40 AM when the animal feed materials arrive, we couldn’t slip away from this room even if we wanted.”

“Then what were you doing around that time?”

“First, before that time—even on that day—six animal keepers were bustling about sharpening cleavers and opening cages.”
“Then when the usual hour came, truckloads of materials would come rushing in.”
“Then it turned into battlefield chaos—working shirtless in this cold yet sweating like they’d been doused with water.”
“Once that was done, we’d start meal prep right away.”
“Not much boiling involved, but cutting everything to size for each beast and portioning into containers—that’s the real work.”
“For live rabbits and chickens? Just affix red tags for their trip to the underworld. But fish need whole heads, horse meat gets weighed and chopped—some cuts must keep bones too—all that prep means lunch never hits at noon proper. Always closer to one.”
“Now imagine adding to that mess—snatching the Director, prepping him as some special feast for elephants and hippos! My word, what a production that’d be!”

Homura turned aside with a wry smile—he hadn't expected his careless remark to a gardener about feeding humans to elephants and hippos to resurface here of all places. At any rate, it had become evident that it would have been extremely difficult for the Feeding Room staff to commit the crime during that timeframe.

So what exactly were the Director's fountain pen and button trying to communicate? Logically speaking, suspicion would naturally fall upon the Feeding Room personnel, yet Kitahoshi's account made such suspicions untenable. This left only one conceivable conclusion: someone had deliberately dropped the fountain pen and discarded the button before the Feeding Room to implicate its staff. Though the perpetrator's identity remained unknown, this suggested the culprit had devised an extraordinarily meticulous plan.

There, Homura felt like carelessly tossing away the trump card he had been holding onto.

“Mr. Kitahoshi. About those pythons in the Reptile House next door—there are nine of them in total. If one were to cut a human body into nine separate chunks of flesh and serve those serpents, they’d surely devour them with gusto.” Homura waited for Kitahoshi’s response in sweat-beading tension.

“Bwahahaha!”
Kitahoshi laughed unrestrainedly.
“No, I’m sorry, Mr. Homura—those pythons are gourmets, you see. They’ll leap at living prey and swallow it even if it splits their jaws, but dead things? They won’t spare a glance no matter how appetizing.”
“Here we mainly feed live chickens and goats.”
“You’re probably referring to the Director’s corpse, but if it’s chopped into pieces, those esteemed pythons won’t even bother with it.”

Homura felt as if he had been pushed off the cliff he had painstakingly scaled.
If there were a hole to disappear into, this would be the moment to do so.
He said his goodbyes to Feeding Room Chief Kitahoshi and left the room as though fleeing.

He walked away briskly, as if loathing to be seen by others.

On the opposite side of the zoo grounds lay the Tōdō family graveyard.
Surrounded by a dense forest, it was a truly quiet place blanketed in thick moss.
When he reached that spot, leaving the zoo's clamor behind him, he sat facing an evergreen thicket so dense it seemed daubed over with paint.

Ah—everything was gone!

Homura picked up a cigarette, lit it, and sighed.

"What on earth could possibly remain?"

As he retraced each step from the beginning, two particular points had caught his attention.
One was meeting Hanzaki Kōhei—the Director’s old comrade-in-arms whom he had always casually visited as a drinking companion.
Doing so might expose aspects of the Director’s life that still remained unknown.
The other was conducting another thorough search of the Reptile House—which seemed undeniably connected to the case.
This included those three tanks Dr. Kamoda had painstakingly created under the pretense that opening them would endanger the reptiles—they absolutely had to be unsealed now.
Those tanks—whether by design or coincidence—were sufficiently large to conceal an entire human body.

As he formed such conclusions, a defiant vigor gradually welled up throughout Homura’s entire body.

“I should call Sunaga.”

He entered a public telephone booth, summoned Assistant Sunaga from the Homura Detective Agency, and immediately ordered him to come to the zoo.

5

Detective Homura Soroku strode purposefully into Dr. Kamoda’s laboratory in the Reptile House and found the researcher with his back turned, noisily stirring a brownish liquid in a beaker. No one else was present outside.

Kamoda seemed to detect Homura’s approaching footsteps. He briefly stilled the hand agitating the beaker but didn’t turn around. Shifting sideways, he swiftly poured the liquid into an elaborate sink made of hard-fired ceramic. Thick white smoke immediately billowed upward—evidently some intensely acidic toxic chemical.

What was he doing?

“Dr. Kamoda, I’ve come to trouble you again.”
Homura stated bluntly.

“Oh!” Kamoda turned only his head toward Homura with feigned cordiality. “Do you still have matters to discuss?” he asked with a smirk, rinsing the beaker’s bottom under tap water.

“I’ve come to give my response to your earlier inquiry.”

“What do you mean by your earlier response?”

“That’s right,” Homura said, pointing at the three large, slender tanks. “I want you to open this tank immediately.”

“Now see here—” Dr. Kamoda retorted with a hardened expression. “As I told you before, opening this now would kill all the animals.”

“But human life cannot be traded.”

“Human life? Ha! So you think the Director who vanished three days ago is hidden inside this tank?”

“That’s right! The Director is inside that tank!”

Homura flared up in irritation—a result of his bad habit—and blurted out something momentous.
Although he had harbored some suspicion about it from the beginning, he hadn’t yet gathered sufficient conditions to make a definitive conclusion.
Although he deeply regretted shouting afterward, strangely, there was none of the catharsis that usually follows such an outburst.

“Are you insulting me?”

“I’m not thinking about that now. But more than that, I want you to open this tank even a minute sooner.”

“Very well, let’s open it.”
Kamoda declared resolutely.
“However, if the Director isn’t inside this tank, what will you compensate me for?”

“As you wish—I’ll put on the performance of a lifetime at your and Miss Toshiko’s wedding celebration.”

Homura’s words seemed to have struck a vital nerve in Dr. Kamoda.

“Very well.”
He nodded with a not entirely displeased expression.
“I will open this device, but since we must move the reptiles to another building, preparing for that will take five or six hours starting now.”
"You must agree to these conditions."

“Then please proceed as quickly as possible. Hmm，it’s already four o’clock now．Then it will take until around ten o'clock．I’ll call the police and my assistant，so please don’t take offense．”

“Please，by all means，” Kamoda said．“I won’t be going home tonight either．”

Homura called a police officer from that room．He also sought approval from Vice-Director Saigō，who likewise stated he would remain at the Reptile House until the tank was opened tonight．

However，Homura had resolved to take a different course from them．Just then，the assistant Sunaga arrived，so Homura gave meticulous instructions regarding all matters，ordered him to keep watch over the Reptile House，and left through the zoo’s stone gate alone．

The autumn sun had already sunk beyond the hill, and through gaps in the jet-black cedar forest, the lingering twilight lake surface glimmered in fragmented pale patches.
And soon Detective Homura's figure too disappeared into the shrouding darkness.
After that, there was nothing but the ticking of the clock's second hand.

Five PM, six PM, seven PM—and even when eight struck and nine struck—Homura’s figure did not return to the Reptile House. After half past nine, numerous keepers and gardeners came in carrying cages, haphazardly placing one python into each before transporting them to another heated room. The work was soon completed. Sunaga, the assistant, had been glaring at Dr. Kamoda’s increasingly triumphant figure from a corner since earlier. Before long, the grandfather clock in the Reptile House began striking ten o'clock—BONG, BONG—its vibrations seeming to shake the very walls around them. The people raised their heads and fixedly gazed at the clock face, then turned to look back at the entrance, but it seemed the footsteps they awaited were no more audible than the sound of ants scurrying.

“Mr. Homura might not return at all.”

Dr. Kamoda rubbed his hands together and said.

“Since waiting any longer is pointless, why don’t we close up as we are and return?”

The police officer and Vice-Director Saigō stretched their backs and stood up.
Sunaga also stood up.
However, he had not stood up because he agreed with Kamoda’s proposal to disband.

“Please wait a little longer.”
“Master will surely return.”

Sunaga shouted.

“No—we’re not leaving!”

Kamoda persisted.

“In that case—” Sunaga declared resolutely.
“Since I will examine it in Master’s stead, please open this tank.”

“That is something we must decline.”

Amidst Kamoda’s detestable voice and Sunaga’s continued desperate protests, the entrance door had opened unnoticed—and there stood Homura, gazing at the scene before him with an amused smile.

“My deepest apologies for keeping you all waiting,” he greeted them before continuing: “Ah—the pythons have all vacated the premises. Now it appears either I shall make my exit next, or Dr. Kamoda here will take his leave.”
“Let’s have that opened now, Dr. Kamoda.”

“...”
Kamoda moved wordlessly to the first tank’s side and began loosening the hexagonal clamps one by one with his wrench—clank-clank-clank.
They all craned their necks forward behind him, gulping down saliva as they awaited what might emerge.

“Clank!”

With a clank, the upper half of the tank snapped open.
But the interior was structured like concentric pipes, their inner surfaces—adorned with large, shark fin-like folds—merely appearing whitish, with nothing contained within.

“It’s empty!”

Someone shouted.

Dr. Kamoda silently moved to the front of the second tank.
The same operation was repeated, but the opened interior of this one too was empty, just like the first tank.
A sigh that seemed both disappointed and relieved arose from nowhere.

Finally, it was the third tank’s turn.
Even the unflappable Kamoda now pulled the wrench with hands trembling faintly from tension.

"Clank!"

At last, the final coffin-like container was opened.

“Ah!”

“This one’s empty too!”

Homura signaled to Sunaga with his eyes and stepped forward alone.
Clutched in his hands were a pipette and beaker roughly the size of a car horn's grip.

He meticulously searched around the white folds, sucked up some yellowish liquid with a pipette, and transferred it into a beaker. But it was not a significant amount, merely enough to moisten the bottom.

Homura continued using the pipette tip to separate the elastic folds one by one and examine them, but—

“Ah!”

With a shout, he pressed his face closer.

“This is it! I’ve finally found it!”

As he said this, he swiftly picked up with his fingertips a dull-glinting metal object—a little over an inch in length, about the thickness of a willow chopstick—that appeared to be shaped like a rifle bullet.

Everyone wore looks of bewilderment as Homura gazed at the object at his fingertips. Homura took the bullet-like object and brought it right up to Kamoda’s nose.

“Do you know what this is?”

Kamoda shook his head silently with an unconvinced expression.

“You didn’t know about this, did you?”

What had come over Homura? He sighed deeply and said:

“You see—”

The group stared at Homura’s lips.

“This is a rifle bullet fired by a Russian soldier.”
“And this had lain hidden within Director Kōchi’s body for twenty-eight years—since he had gone missing on the 30th.”
“In other words, this was Director Kōchi’s identification tag.”
“Moreover, this was a permanent identification tag that wouldn’t emerge unless someone burned or dissolved Director Kōchi’s body!”

“Such nonsense—stop it!”

Kamoda shouted while trembling violently, his face ashen.

“No—I’m afraid your plan failed spectacularly at the final hurdle, Dr. Kamoda."
"You studied medicine, learned science, even journeyed to Sumatra to conduct research on pythons—all to murder the Director."
"And upon returning to Japan, you made a large donation to build this Reptile House and continued your research."
"The seven pythons served not only as your research subjects but also as the source of invaluable murder weapons."
“While we in medical classrooms often witness experiments where dogs are surgically altered—their salivary glands drawn outside the body—and their saliva collected into external containers by showing them appetizing food, you, with your exceptional talent in biology and surgery, drilled holes into a python’s abdominal cavity and meticulously harvested the fluids from its digestive organs.”
"That had been stored with meticulous care until today."
“And furthermore, these tanks lined up here were artificial stomachs and intestines with an ingenious structure!”

At Homura’s utterly unexpected words, the group could only stare dumbfounded at his lips.

“Dr. Kamoda, around 11:20 AM on the 30th, you secretly lured Director Kōchi to this deserted room and killed him with poison."
"You immediately stripped him down to bare skin, packed his light clothing into that large suitcase, and carried it out of the zoo that evening with an innocent face—though that comes later—then pried open his mouth, removed all gold teeth that wouldn’t dissolve in python digestive fluid, and confident everything would now melt away, placed him into this third tank."
“Thereupon, you poured the python digestive fluid stored for years into the tank and sealed it, then activated the electric mechanism to set these concentric pipes—these artificial stomachs with folds—into motion.”
"By maintaining optimal temperature throughout—as your research dictated—you’d calculated that by around 8 PM tonight, every trace of Director Kōchi’s body would have dissolved within this tank."

It was precisely because Dr. Kamoda possessed that confidence that he consented to open the tank at this hour.
And proceeding further with the plan, he decided to drain the solution in the tank directly into the sewer.
If he had drained it quickly, the sound would have been noticed in such a quiet place, so he set the drainage valve to half-open and slowly drained out the tank’s contents where the Director had dissolved.
However, this left one critical oversight.
Due to the extremely slow drainage rate, the bullet that had been lodged in the Director’s body was not carried away, instead remaining trapped between the folds.
This bullet was one that Director Kōchi had received during his valiant fighting in the Battle of Shahe when several enemy rounds struck his body—one that remained inside him after major surgery at a field hospital failed to remove it.
That single bullet had ironically remained in this tank instead of a coffin.
“Truly a dreadful thing, isn’t it?”
“As an additional note, you boldly dissolved the Director’s gold teeth in aqua regia within a beaker right before my eyes and flushed them into the sewer.”
“The fountain pen and button were ones that Dr. Kamoda himself planted—a minor diversionary tactic characteristic of criminals.”

“That’s nonsense! A fabrication!”

Kamoda continued to roar.

“Since there’s no alternative, I shall now present the final account.”

Homura said in a calm tone:
“The motive for this crime stems from a truly tragic fact.”
“The story goes back to the distant days of the Russo-Japanese War—when Director Kōchi was deployed to the fields of Manchuria, became a sergeant, and led a squad of soldiers in fierce battles at the Shahe front and the Battle of Liaoyang.”
“At that time, Private Second Class Sakayama Nangō committed an utterly deplorable act before the enemy—conduct so egregious that when part of the Imperial Army was about to collapse, he had no choice but to execute Private Sakayama with tears streaming down his face.”
“This was an unavoidable killing prescribed by military code—but a certain squad member who witnessed it carelessly spoke of it to Private Sakayama’s widow after returning home victorious.”
“The widow—more resolute than her slain husband—lifted her then still-young son and swore vengeance against Sergeant Kōchi.”
“That boy—Tosaburō—has since taken his mother’s surname Kamoda, inherited the will of his mother who died along the way, and thus ended up as you see before you.”

Homura stopped speaking.
Yet this time Dr. Kamoda kept his head lowered without uttering a word.

“I suppose there’s no need to say anything more. There is one final person I would like to introduce—Hanzaki Kōhei, an elderly comrade-in-arms of the late Director, who provided the initial hint for this case and greatly contributed to my investigation. This elderly man was from the same hometown and had been dispatched as a medical corps member; he was present when the Director later viewed the bullet inside his body through X-rays and had heard secret battlefield stories from him. Since he was aware of your late father’s circumstances, Dr. Kamoda, I brought him here. I shall now take you to him.”

Having said that, Homura stood up and opened the entrance door—but there was no sign of the old man there.
When he looked ahead, the Reptile House entrance stood open just wide enough for a person to pass through, beyond which lay pitch-black darkness.

“Ah! Dr. Kamoda has committed suicide!”

Homura heard this cry from behind but didn’t even bother to turn toward it.

And within his heart welled up once more that bitter-sour melancholy he always experienced upon solving a case—rising in its familiar rhythm.