Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

Since that private detective Homura Sōroku had often remarked how he wanted to see a talkie filming someday, on that day—May 1st—I went early to the apartment in Koishikawa to invite him out.

Given the nature of his work, I had assumed he’d be dead to the world or still lost in slumber at dawn, but no sooner had I knocked than he came bounding out like a rabbit—and I was not a little startled.

I immediately invited him to the talkie studio. Contrary to my expectation that he would gladly accept with an immediate reply, Homura shook his head, saying “No, no,” and—

“This is no time for talkies. I ended up pulling an all-nighter last night, you see.”

“Oh ho, so you were dragged into another case again?”

"That's not it. I was doing some thinking at home. Won't you come up for a moment?"

With that, Homura took my arm and pulled me inside.

Thoughts—what could these all-night thoughts be?

"Let me ask you—do you know what 'Bakuō' is?"

With that, Homura suddenly posed an outlandish question.

“Bakuō? —What’s that?”

Before I knew it, I inadvertently turned the question back on him.

He forced a wry smile and stared at my face for a while, but soon plucked a small triangular paper fragment from the desk cluttered with haphazardly scattered books and documents, then presented it before me.

“What’s this, then?”

I took the small paper fragment and carefully examined both front and back.
The back was blank, but on the front side, fragmented characters like the following could be discerned.

…0042…through miraculous luck…Bakuō…

This seemed to be a torn fragment from a letter or something of the sort.
Indeed, the two characters "Bakuō" were visible, but I couldn't begin to guess what they meant.

“Where on earth did you get this?”

“If you ask me that, it’s practically like I dragged you here just to explain the case to you.”

Homura said sarcastically, though with markedly more cheer than when I’d first entered. He clearly ached for someone to confide in.

“This is part of a secret document,” Homura declared, his eyes fixed on some distant point.

“Only three distinct phrases could be found there. After wrestling with it all last night, I’ve managed to decipher the first two.”

When I heard he had deciphered the secret document, interest suddenly sparked within me.

"First let's examine the number 0042. Looking closely at how both ends of this four-digit sequence are torn," he explained, "we can deduce there might be additional digits before and after."
"I took the bold step of interpreting this."
"It represents a date in April of Showa 10 - specifically around the 20th."
"You'll understand if we write the date horizontally."
"1042X—now considering months like December require two digits, April must be written as 04 rather than just 4 to maintain digit consistency."
"When we concatenate year, month and day without spaces, it becomes 10042X."
"So this fragment lacks the initial 1 and final unknown digit X, but clearly indicates a date."
"This is what's called the six-digit date format method—recently popularized among scientists."
"The crucial point is that April 20-something of Showa 10 translates to three to eleven days ago from today, May 1st."
"What makes this critically important is the recording of such an immediate recent date."

I could do nothing but remain silent and nod in response to my friend’s eloquence—something I hadn’t heard in quite some time.

“The other phrase, ‘through miraculous luck,’ seems ordinary at first glance,” Homura continued.
“Yet I can’t help sensing tremendous tension coiled beneath these seemingly mundane words. This isn’t mere luck—it means something considered ninety-nine percent impossible was achieved at the very brink of failure.”
“These words hold a triumphant cry—as if someone snuffed out a fuse one week before detonation, or a stubborn parachute finally opened a mere hundred meters above ground. They proclaim how immense difficulty was conquered in an instant.”
“A truly fantastical incident has indeed erupted.”
“What manner of incident could this be?”
“Yet what follows proves baffling.”
“The sole remaining clue is this—‘Bakuō!’ This here holds the key.”
“What an outlandish clue!”
“What an impenetrable clue!…”

Homura rested his elbows on the desk and pressed a hand to his broad forehead.
I was already completely drawn into the case that troubled Homura.

"Hey, Mr. Homura," I called out without much confidence.
"You know, long ago, there was a creature called the nue that Third Rank Minamoto no Yorimasa subdued."

"Ah, so you're thinking about that too now?"
Homura turned a gaze tinged with pity toward me and said.
"The nue is just nonsense from an uncivilized age."
"Such nonsense science doesn't exist in 1935."

“That might not be the case. Wasn’t there something about a Loch Ness Monster in the papers recently?”

“Until we confirm a monster’s true nature, even the Loch Ness Monster remains nonsense. Can you picture some creature with a baku’s head and a parrot’s body waddling down Ginza Avenue?”

My friend pressed me with a serious expression.
I grew slightly frightened and averted my eyes.
At that moment, on the opposite wall, I discovered what appeared to be a pen drawing—likely Homura’s work—depicting a baku and parrot joined at the torso, hanging there with an air of plausibility.
I found that bizarre figure so comical that I burst out laughing.

My friend too, wearing an expression as if he’d been caught in an embarrassing blunder over the unpleasant drawing, began to smirk,

“If it’s exactly as depicted in that picture, isn’t that utterly absurd? But this fragment of the secret document is no joke. The Bakuō undeniably exists. Moreover, this strange beast—or perhaps strange bird—existed with a date stamp of just two or three days ago. But even if we attribute it to ‘miraculous luck,’ such a union between beasts and birds remains inconceivable.”

"What if it's surgery?"

"I suddenly remembered and ventured."

“What surgery?”
“It’s not impossible that some renowned surgeon might attempt it capriciously, but the baku stands two and a half meters tall, while even the largest parrot doesn’t reach a fifth of that size.”
“Then where would they connect them?”
“Even if they could be joined, what purpose would there be in surgically fusing a baku and a parrot?”

“Purpose?”
“It shouldn’t be impossible to deduce from the circumstances of the secret document incident, I’d think...”

“That’s it!” Homura suddenly rose from his chair and began pacing about the room.
“Well then, let me give you a full account of the incident surrounding this secret document...”

That was exactly what I had been hoping for.

2

Homura thrust both hands into his pockets and began ambling around the room as he started recounting the secret document incident, addressing no one in particular.

“The morning edition of April 24, Showa 10 reported that a young man had been stabbed to death in the grove before Ueno Park’s zoo.”

“When they investigated the victim’s background, they discovered he was Kenji Hashimoto—twenty-eight years old—formerly known as Anchor Kenji of the Akatsuki Group.”

“The Akatsuki Group used to be an organization of Edo-born pleasure-seekers with deep traditions, but these days they’ve modernized into a bunch of young upstarts.”

“Their leader at the time was Masashi Edo—a young man barely past thirty.—Now we faced the questions of who killed Anchor Kenji and why, but nothing added up.”

“Then right when I was at the police station, we received a crucial anonymous tip-off call.”

“‘Kenji Hashimoto was stabbed under orders from his former commander Masashi Edo.”

“‘He’d left the Akatsuki Group to become bodyguard for Kinbei Tashiro—that eccentric millionaire they call the Ice King of Kōtō.’”

“‘But the Akatsuki had their eyes on Tashiro’s supposed hundred-million-yen treasure and tried using their old ties to make Kenji guide them—which he refused.’”

“‘So Masashi Edo finally ordered the hit,’ they said.”

“The police tried tracing the call immediately, but our informant was no amateur—they hung up after just two minutes.”

“By the time patrolmen reached the phone booth, it stood silent as an empty tower... Well? You following this?”

Homura came to a brief stop before me.
When I nodded silently, he resumed his account while starting to amble around the room again.

“Regarding the mysterious informant,” Homura continued, “Detective Tozawa—the Metropolitan Police Department’s foremost specialist in juvenile crime—delivered a definitive verdict.”
“He concluded it must be a member of a secret society called the Kōketsu Society.”
“Speaking of the Kōketsu Society—they’re an international gang led by a remarkably skilled boss named Dumdum Chin, which allows them to commit crimes without leaving any traces for the authorities.”
“On top of that, they’re rapidly absorbing delinquent groups and expanding their influence exponentially.”
“It appears they intend to instigate some horrifying major incident before long.”
“However, even Dumdum Chin of the Kōketsu Society, finding himself unable to act freely upon entering the imperial capital, is growing increasingly frustrated.”
“That’s because Masashi Edo’s Akatsuki Group—though just a gathering of youngsters—keeps executing clever maneuvers, so they’re always thwarted at critical moments.”
“Amidst the intensifying conflict between the Kōketsu Society and Akatsuki Group, there came a crucial tip-off regarding Anchor Kenji’s murder.”
“Detective Tozawa apparently concluded on these grounds that the informant belonged to the Kōketsu Society.”
“I too expressed general agreement with Detective Tozawa’s conclusion.”
“Even I wasn’t unaware of Anchor Kenji’s background and the conflict between both delinquent groups...”
“However, because I wanted definitive confirmation, on the night of the 29th, I went out to Kōtō myself.”
“Because I knew Café Giron—located in a narrow alley behind Kameido Tenjin—had long served as a contact point for Akatsuki Group members...”

When it came to Homura, he was more intimately familiar with Kōtō's affairs than anyone else in the area. Asakusa—once known as the dark underbelly of the imperial capital—had been completely obliterated by the Great Kantō Earthquake, he stated, with that darkness shifting to this Kōtō district. As for places like Shinjuku, they were merely bustling new developments said to hold no recognition whatsoever among delinquent circles—Homura took a hand-rolled cigarette from atop the table and placed it between his lips.

“At Café Giron, I was first to spot a suitable member lying in wait.”
At first glance she looked like a dancer in Western-style clothing.
She appeared twenty-two or twenty-three with an excellent figure.
Her chest’s swell and waist’s curves made her an alluring woman who couldn’t help attracting men.
Yet her face wasn’t particularly beautiful.
Rather, she camouflaged her plainness through meticulous grooming.
When I recognized her, I stepped briskly up to her side and made a signal.
This was the Akatsuki Group’s signature method—a gesture executed by pressing snugly against one’s body.
“You’re dying to know,” Homura continued, “but this particular technique stays secret, heh heh... Then came the reaction.”
The woman reached into her pocket and pressed something into my palm.
The texture of Western paper brushed against my skin.
“She tried passing it over...”

Homura suddenly fell silent there.
He click-clacked his way around the room, yet remained silent.

“Then what happened?” I urged discontentedly, pressing him to continue the story.

“Ah… A blunder.”
“Because I’d gotten too stiff, when taking the Western paper—that secret document—from the woman’s hand, I botched the Akatsuki Group’s protocol.”
“She startled and tried to snatch back the document she’d just handed over—I panicked and yanked my arm away... In the end, all that stayed in my palm was that triangular scrap you saw earlier....”
“That’s how I barely escaped Café Giron with my life…”

With that declaration, Homura began tossing the unlit hand-rolled cigarettes here and there.
But he suddenly spun around to face me,

“Well? With your skills, can you pull out anything resembling ‘Bakuō’ from all that I’ve told you so far?”

“Non—”
I shook my head from side to side.
"There’s not even a ‘BA’ from BAKUŌ here."

"As expected, it's no good."
"What a fiendish system of equations this is."
"Though perhaps we simply lack enough equations yet."

“Hey, Mr. Homura. Have you researched baku and parrots as well?”

“I did try that,” he said unhappily.
“The Baku is a mammal classified under the order Perissodactyla and family Tapiridae.”
“In shape, it resembles a rhinoceros—its entire body covered in short fur, tail abbreviated, with nose and upper lip fused into a short trunk-like appendage.”
“The forelimbs have four toes, the hindlimbs three.”
“From torso to lumbar region lies a large ash-white patch, while the remainder appears nearly black. It’s this patch that somewhat troubles me.”
“As evident in the illustration”—he pointed at the baku photograph on the wall—“doesn’t it seem precisely spliced together at the torso?”

“Uh-huh. And then…”

“And then? The baku, being timid by nature, dwells solitarily in deep forests, emerging at night to feed on plant buds and such.”
“No—there’s more they consume.”
“We mustn’t forget they devour the dreams humans see at night.”
“Habitat: Malay region...”

“That’s enough!” I cried out.

“Now, parrots belong to the avian order Cuculiformes and constitute the family Psittacidae.”
“There is no bird simply called ‘parrot,’ but its varieties include budgerigars, grass parakeets, Java sparrows, yellow-crested cockatoos, blue-fronted amazons, macaws, cockatiels, sulfur-crested cockatoos, lesser sulfur-crested cockatoos, palm cockatoos, and rose-breasted cockatoos.”
“Among these, the species particularly adept at understanding human speech and mimicking sounds are the yellow-crested cockatoo, blue-fronted amazon, lesser sulfur-crested cockatoo, palm cockatoo, and rose-breasted cockatoo.”
“When comparing their respective forms, starting with the budgerigar—the head and nape are yellow...”

“Ah, I get it.
“I’ll give your zoological expertise 120 percent—”

I covered my ears and stood up. I had no interest in memorizing parrot species or such things.

"Oh please, you've barely covered thirty-five points of this lecture..."

"That's enough... However, zoological expertise won't get you through detective examinations," he said. "Knowing that baku devour dreams and parrots mimic human speech—that's more than sufficient."

"You're absolutely right," Homura clapped his hands. "Given all that—and since I'm quite mentally tangled myself—yes, let me show respect for your invitation and have you take me to observe the talkie filming."

“Splendid. That works perfectly.”

I gladly stood up.
I thought how much more enjoyable it would be to agonize over a beautiful actress's face than to trouble myself with Bakuō.

Yet this mere act of inviting Homura to the talkie studio would drag us into a life-and-death crisis—something no mortal could have foreseen.

3

Along the banks of Tamagawa, renowned for its cherry blossoms, the flowers had completely scattered, and the leaf-covered cherry trees cast cool shadows upon the embankment.
That's right—today marked the beginning of May.

The Tokyo Kinema studio where I intended to take Homura—which had recently built a massive soundproof studio for talkies—stood clearly visible from the embankment above.

When we passed through the gate, the familiar guard suddenly plastered on a smile and came out to meet us.

“And your companion?”

“This is my best friend. Homura’s his name…”
“Homura…”

“Very well… Though I should warn you—it would be unwise to dig too deeply.”

The guard said something significant with a solemn expression.

“What do you mean, ‘dig too deeply’?”

“...”
He gave me a look that asked ‘Don’t you get it even now?’ before continuing, “You know… It’s about Miss Reiko Mihara."
“Your favorite…”

“Now, now.”

I glanced briefly at Homura, but he seemed utterly captivated by the studio’s enormous structure.

“What’s happened to Reiko Mihara?”

"The other day, detectives came barging in here."
“They stripped that girl naked and searched her thoroughly.”

“That’s overstepping their authority, I say.”
“Stripping her naked...”

“However, they insisted on taking her to the station immediately, but the director pleaded that she couldn’t be spared right now.”
“Instead, Ms. Kasumi Kirihana and other women oversaw the nude inspection.”

“Wh-what are you saying happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but it seems they were searching for something.”
“Well, nothing was found on Miss Reiko Mihara’s person, but two others—an actor and a lighting crew member—were taken into custody and still haven’t returned.”
“Anyway, I say you should stop focusing on Miss Reiko Mihara.”

“Don’t say such strange things, hahaha!”

I went to where Homura was waiting and invited him toward the filming location.

“What happened to that Reiko Mihara you mentioned?”
Homura had already been listening attentively.

I was thoroughly embarrassed.
But realizing I could no longer keep it hidden, I gave him a full explanation—Reiko Mihara was an up-and-coming intellectual actress serving as apprentice to Kasumi Kirihana, Tokyo Kinema's lead actress; she had been an auditing student in L University's science department alongside me, which made us old acquaintances.
This Reiko couldn't exactly be called a beauty and rarely appeared on screen; she primarily served as Kasumi Kirihana's personal attendant, where her reliability proved invaluable.
The meddlesome public whispered that Reiko's privileged position stemmed from a homosexual relationship with Kasumi Kirihana, but that was certainly a lie.
When I said that was all I knew, Homura stared at my face as if trying to bore holes through it; then he smirked slyly.

After passing through several rigorous checkpoints, we were finally able to enter the Talkie Studio.
When we stepped inside, all noise was absorbed by the thick felt walls, leaving us with a sensation as if our ears had gone deaf.
When I tried to speak, only a rustling sound emerged—an odd effect.
In the hall's center stood a set replicating Ginza's intersection, where filming of a modern drama had commenced.
Numerous actors and actresses in varied costumes moved about under the direction of a shirt-clad shooting director.
——Microphones resembling insect cages hung here and there like fishing lines cast into an abyss.

“Take a look—that’s Kasumi Kirihana.”

I informed Homura about the lead actress.

Homura maintained an indifferent expression and continued gazing up at the talkie studio's ceiling.

"And while I'm at it—the one applying rouge over there is that Reiko Mihara I mentioned."

"Reiko Mihara?"
Homura shifted his gaze from the ceiling to the crowd for the first time.
"Oh—that woman..."

Homura—startled by something—clamped down on my arm and stared wide-eyed.
I couldn't fully comprehend the situation unfolding around us, but he clearly had prior knowledge of Reiko.

“Hey, let’s get out of here.”

Even though we had just entered, Homura forcibly dragged me back outside.

I was more than a little dissatisfied.
When I voiced this complaint, Homura attempted to placate me.

“Don’t get worked up. That woman Reiko Mihara is a member of the Akatsuki Group.”
“To tell the truth, it was precisely that woman who tried to pass me the secret document at Giron.”

“What?!
“Reiko being an Akatsuki member...”

What an unexpected turn of events!
Of all people, Reiko being connected to the Akatsuki Group...
I put together what I had just heard from the guard.
In that case, I had no choice but to quickly inform Homura.

“I don’t want Reiko to see me for a while now,” Homura said with a grave expression. “But I want to confirm more definitively that she’s indeed that woman. Can’t you show me a photo somewhere?”

“Well—”

“I’d really like to see it moving—that is, in a motion picture.”
“What do you say we try the screening room?”

It wasn’t as if we could simply go to the screening room.
I thought taking him to the film editing room would be simplest and allow more flexibility.
When I suggested this, Homura nodded deeply with satisfaction.

The film editing room was located quite a distance from the studio. The people working there were ones I had long been acquainted with.

“Could you show us Ms. Kirihana’s film? This person here wants to see it...”

At this, an editor named Kido came out,

“Well, even though we’re filming right now, shall I show you the first half of Ginza ni Megumu?” he readily agreed.

Homura and I entered the small editing screening room and lowered the black curtain.

“Since the studio was built, the sound recordings have become much better…”

Mr. Kido boasted to us from inside the projection booth.
Before long, a jarring sound erupted from the small screen, and the modern drama Ginza ni Megumu abruptly began playing without subtitles.

Homura seemed to be intently watching the screen beside me, but Reiko Mihara did not appear for quite some time. And after a while, he brought his mouth close to my ear and whispered.

"There's something odd here... Kasumi Kirihana's voice sounds far better than the real thing, don't you think? I know because I heard it earlier, but this doesn't seem to be Kasumi Kirihana's voice."

To this question, I must admit I was astonished by the sharpness of Homura's attention.

Truth be told—though this was the company’s greatest secret—a certain artifice had been implemented regarding Kasumi Kirihana’s disagreeable voice.
When the talkie era dawned, someone of Kasumi Kirihana’s caliber was exactly the sort of poor vocalist who should have been cast out from the film industry.
However, the truth was she happened to be a certain executive’s kept woman; through his unreasonable insistence, she barely escaped being ousted.
Yet even the executives couldn’t stand idly by while their company’s films suffered plummeting popularity, so they conceived this stratagem.—Reiko Mihara was in reality Kasumi Kirihana’s “vocal stand-in.”

A voice performer—and Reiko Mihara had played the company's secret role, supporting Kasumi Kirihana.
What an utterly bizarre role that was.
For this reason, Reiko Mihara's existence remained almost entirely unknown to the general public.
When I briefly explained this to Homura, even he—true to form—seemed unable to process the revelation, shaking his head from side to side while...

"An actress without form—now where have I heard that phrase before..."

he muttered.

4

Kasumi Kirihana played a reputed Miss Ginza beauty salesgirl, while Reiko Mihara had the meager role of a gangster's mistress working as a waitress in a back-alley café—just as the story was developing nicely around a college student caught between them, the screening film snapped off...

“How was that? Shall I play another reel?”

Mr. Kido came out of the projection booth smiling.
I looked at Homura’s face—he, his eyes that had been fixed in deep thought suddenly focusing,

“...There was something strange toward the end of the film we just saw.
“In the café scene where Miss Reiko Mihara and all the waitresses were rowdily seeing off what seemed to be a drunkard returning from cherry blossom viewing—the screen suddenly jumped and became discontinuous.”

he began.

“Is that so?” Mr. Kido said with a puzzled look.
“Hmm, perhaps we mistakenly spliced this with the previous reel.”

Mr. Kido climbed into the projection booth and pulled out a round canister containing film.
And with practiced ease, he unspooled the film in fluttering motions and held it up to the window to examine.
“Ah, I’ve got it.”
Mr. Kido abruptly stopped his hands and said.

“A few days ago, someone cut out a section of the film and spliced the remaining parts back together as they were, which is why it became discontinuous like that. Since I had noticed this as well, I had set it aside separately, but it seems someone mistakenly spliced it into the edited film.”

“Film excision, you say?” Homura leaned forward.

“Was that scene really so good?”

“That’s not it. It’s just a scene where waitresses are noisily sending off a drunkard—there’s nothing noteworthy about it.”

“Isn’t that suspicious?”

“Well, if you call it suspicious, I suppose it isn’t entirely not suspicious...”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Kido, he’s something of an amateur detective who finds such oddities fascinating—do explain the details to him.”

When I provided this explanation, Kido—saying “In that case…” with an excessively serious expression—began recounting the incident of the film excision.

—This film had been shot on April 29th (the 29th—wasn’t that the day Reiko was interrogated by detectives!) and was fully developed and delivered to this editing department by the morning of the 31st.
He then threaded it through the projector and performed an audio-visual synchronization check while comparing it with the script.
However, at the aforementioned "café send-off" scene, there was a part where Reiko’s spoken lines were completely different.
Thereupon he marked red underlines on the script and, separating the "café send-off" film segment, completed the reporting procedures to the director.

The director called in and responded, ("Since that scene isn't directly related to the story's plot, leaving it as is would be acceptable").
And later, an attendant brought the film.
The director had approved this but still intended to consult with the traveling script supervisor and had left it set aside—only to discover upon checking this morning that a segment of the film had been cut out in that manner.

“What baffles me,” Kido said with emphasis, “is how the excised film section perfectly coincides with the mismatched dialogue portion.”
“The alignment was too precise for coincidence, so I determined this was intentional cutting.”
“Since I’ve already notified the director, we’ll be questioning Miss Reiko Mihara herself later today about her lines… Don’t you find that peculiar?”

…………
Homura seemed profoundly moved, silently pinching his chin.

I was terrified by how my Reiko Mihara had come to bob up and down in strange rumors over the course of a mere half-day.
Could she really be a member of the Akatsuki Group?
And just what purpose could there be for her to mess up her dialogue lines and then have that film stolen?
Could this be connected in some way to Anchor Kenji’s untimely demise or the Akatsuki Group’s conflict with the Kōketsu Society?
Strange—if one could call it strange—it certainly was.
The mystery of "Bakuō" entangled with her—just how far would it spread?

“Mr. Kido, have you now identified precisely which dialogue lines Miss Mihara supposedly misspoke?” Homura suddenly spoke up.

Kido nodded and left the room, but soon returned with a temporarily bound script.
On its cover was written in large letters: *Ginza ni Megumu*.

“Here it is—”

When he spread it open, the mimeographed text had been erased with red pencil.
The lines were written as dialogue for Naomi the waitress, played by Reiko,

“...You go straight home now, you hear?”
“And don’t you go wandering off somewhere else again, you hear?”
“If that’s the case, I’ll give you a good scolding then…”

Though her character had been given those scripted warnings, what she actually spoke in the talkie was: “Oh my~ Madam isn’t here—you tricked me now!”
“It’s cold outside, truly.”
“Oh, how cold!”

was what she had delivered.
Indeed, this made the continuity of the preceding and following lines somewhat off.

“This is interesting…” Homura wrote in his notebook,

“Oh my~ Madam isn’t here—you tricked me now! It’s cold outside, positively. Oh, how cold...”
“Now this is interesting!”

He repeated the lines with growing fascination, poring over them again and again.

“Mr. Homura, why do you think she messed up the dialogue lines?”

“Oh, this is a kind of cipher… A hidden message surpassing even ‘Bakuō.’”

Just as Homura said this, a clamor of voices suddenly arose near the entrance, and someone approached with heavy footsteps clattering toward us....
I turned toward the door.

And there, pushing through the door, appeared someone I was acquainted with—Detective Tozawa of the Metropolitan Police Department.

"Well..." Detective Tozawa stared at Homura with a look of dismay before blurting out.

"Mr. Homura, something terrible has happened!"

"What do you mean by 'something terrible,' Detective Tozawa?" Homura said, showing a startled look at the detective's sudden visit.

“The Ice King of Kōtō, Kinbei Tashiro, has gone missing—we just found out today, I tell you.”

“Ah! That Tashiro?”

“That was downright negligent.”
"According to the investigation, the disappearance occurred on the 29th of last month—in other words, three days ago."
“No one noticed that…” he said bitterly.

“This isn’t just a trip he’s taken, is it?”

“What do you mean ‘a trip’? It’s not a trip. The front door isn’t locked—the living room and bedroom are left open, even the entrance to the underground tunnel’s wide open. The whole house looks like he should be there, but he’s nowhere to be seen.”

“How about Tashiro’s prized giant safe underground?”

“Oh? You know about the giant safe too, huh?” Detective Tozawa smirked. “The safe shows no external abnormalities. No suspicious fingerprints remain on that complex combination dial or the iron door. I want to inspect the interior, but with the cipher nowhere to be found, I’m at my wit’s end.”

“Ah, the cipher?” Homura asked casually.

“That thing was what both the Kōketsu Society and Akatsuki Group had been after.”
“The Kōketsu Society’s planning to build a house right above that safe on the surface and dig an underground tunnel.”
“But this time I finally managed to catch their tail.”
“Still, Kinbei’s disappearance along with the murder of his former chief clerk Anchor Kenji—I’m certain that’s the Akatsuki Group’s handiwork.”
“The Metropolitan Police have been chasing down the Akatsuki Group, but those agile devils—from their leader Masashi Edo down to every last member—have completely vanished without a trace.”
“This is unheard-of business.”
“With the juvenile division being such a mess, I can’t act high and mighty anymore…”
The renowned detective pressed his close-cropped head where white hairs stood out starkly, his face etched with desolation.

“I see.”
“So a life-and-death struggle between the Akatsuki Group and Kōketsu Society has begun over Tashiro’s safe, then.”

“And the reason for your coming here is…” Homura inquired.

“Me?”
“I came here as part of the Akatsuki Group to arrest Reiko Mihara, but…”

“Has something happened to Reiko Mihara?”

“She was here until just now, but she’s hidden herself away somewhere.”
“Hah! Nothing’s worked out—not a damn thing.”

The veteran detective let out a hollow laugh, ridiculing his own failure.
I felt my eyes grow hot as I imagined the old investigator’s inner anguish.

“...I’ll track her down, Detective Tozawa.”

Homura declared resolutely.

“You’ll search?” The detective looked at Homura. “Fine, I’m counting on you… But Masashi Edo’s desperate too. You’d better watch out.”

Five

“...Oh my! Madam isn’t here.”
“You lied, didn’t you?”
“It’s cold outside, truly.”
“Oh, how cold...”

Homura Sōroku sat at his desk at home, ignoring the Kōtō district where the decisive battle was reportedly unfolding, and muttered the botched lines Reiko Mihara had supposedly misspoken—repeating them again and again like feverish incantations.
When it came to ciphers, he appeared to have entirely forgotten about "Bakuō."
"There must absolutely be a cipher hidden within these lines."
"This has to be the key to opening that Ice King of Kōtō's giant safe!"

Driven by this conviction, Homura paid no heed to worldly news and devoted himself entirely to deciphering the cipher. During this time, experts repeatedly turned the combination dial and examined the structure of the Ice King of Kōtō's safe, yet the giant vault remained as immovable as a colossal boulder.

Meanwhile, investigations into the Akatsuki Group continued, but they had vanished like rats fleeing an attic roofspace, their whereabouts rendered completely unknowable.

In that case, it was the Kōketsu Society members who were in their element.

Dumdum Chin had gathered the wisest members of his party at their usual hideout and repeatedly held earnest consultations. According to intelligence reports, it was said they were discussing plans to exploit the Akatsuki Group's absence by capitalizing on lapses in the guards' vigilance to seize Kinbei's treasure—reported to exceed 100 million yen in current value—from that vault. It was also rumored they were consulting on organizing the Akatsuki secrets obtained through great pains and submitting them to the authorities to eradicate the group from the face of the earth in one fell swoop.

“Where on earth had they vanished to?”

The special security team stationed before the giant safe also began to let their guard down as two or three days went by.
And they hatefully recalled the giant safe that was needlessly swallowing a colossal fortune.

At that moment, my friend Homura appeared like a ghost slipping into the underground chamber.
The security guards greeted him with an ironic remark the instant they spotted him.

Homura worked silently, extracting a notebook from his pocket.
He extended his right hand to the combination dial while pressing the electric button with his left, meticulously testing each decrypted character—first, second, and so forth—that he had deduced under the flashlight beam I held steady. Yet once again, today's efforts ended in futility.

"They’ve apparently decided to finally cut through this safe within two or three days…"

And so such rumors reached my ears.
That rumor alone was today’s ironic souvenir.

When he returned home, Homura worked in silence once more, continuing to write characters with a pencil on blank paper as if creating patterns.

“What do you want to do?”
“Why don’t you rest a bit?”

I suggested to him.

“I’m almost there… but…”
“Take a look at this.”

Homura showed me a scrap of paper like the following.

MUSAOONISA”
MAWAI」MUSAWATOSONENOTASHI」MADANOINAI」MUDAMAOOSO」MARAA」

“These are those famous lines written backward.”
“And take note of the part where Mu and Ma alternate at certain intervals.”
“I believe this must be the answer—at each Mu and Ma point, you change the safe’s combination dial rotation direction to right and left.”
“That’s why Mu and Ma maintain exact intervals while alternating with each other.”

“Well, well.”
I was astonished by Homura’s fervor.

“But damnable wretch!
“Even though I’ve figured it out this far, when I actually try it, the Giant Safe doesn’t budge an inch,” Homura bit his lip and said. “I truly don’t think there’s any answer beyond this.”
“And yet it won’t open! Ah—where did I go wrong?”

Homura threw down the paper and roughly tousled his hair.

“Hey, you,” I called out timidly.
“That bit about Madam’s little act is all well and good, but what about that ‘Bakuō’ business, huh?”

"Hmm... 'Bakuō'."
"I've already worked that part out..."

"What do you mean you've solved Bakuō? That's brilliant! Spit it out this instant!"

I was so delighted I nearly leapt into the air.
"What exactly is this monster 'Bakuō'?!"

"But I can't say anything until I decipher Reiko's lines," he said. "This interpretation might be flawed."

"If there's a link, what's the harm? Just tell me quickly!"

"A link?" Homura's eyes grew distant as he spoke. "The 'Baku' devours dreams... and the 'Ō' mimics voices..."

At that moment, I noticed something like a spasm streak across Homura’s face. He suddenly brought his violently trembling fingers to his mouth and shrieked wildly...

"I was a fool. Wh-why didn’t I notice that sooner?!"

“Where is ‘that’?” I asked in a panic, unable to stop myself from blurting out such a foolish question.

“Yeah, it’ll become clear soon enough. Now, take a look at this.”

Homura’s face flushed as red as vermilion. He picked up the pencil and pulled a blank sheet closer.

"ARAMASOOO, MADAMU INAI NO, DAMASHITA NO NE, SOTO HA SAMUI WA, MASANI, OOSAMU……"

Then he once wrote the familiar lines in katakana.

Then he took another sheet and began writing with his pencil again, but surprisingly, it was in Japanese-style Romanization.

ARAMASOO-MADAMUINAINO-DAMASITANO

NESOTOWASAMUIWA-MASANI-00SAMU

“Now, follow closely. I’ll attempt reversing the transcription.”

UMASOOINASAMAWIUMASAWOTOSENONATI

SAMADONIANIUMA DAMOOSAMARA

“Here it comes!”
“In the underlined sections, UMA stands for ‘right rotation’ and SAMA for ‘left rotation.’”
“With that in mind, let’s try converting this into Japanese text.”

Right rotation—SOOINA

Left rotation—I

Right rotation—SAWOTOSENONACHI

Left rotation—DONIANI

Right rotation—DAMO O

Left rotation—RA

“How’s that! You see it now, don’t you? This is the key to that giant safe!”

I stared dumbfounded at the decrypted cipher. I couldn’t comprehend why this had solved it.

But Homura, overcome with jubilation, darted about the room as if dancing while gathering his coat, hat, and other belongings.

“Let’s go. We need to hurry up and get a look inside the giant safe’s belly!”

We hurried outside.

“How did that manage to decrypt anything?” I asked about my lingering doubt.
“But I can’t tell you until we open the safe,” Homura insisted.
Instead, he asked a different question that piqued my interest.

“Hey, you—what do you think is inside that giant safe?”

“I already know that. Of course, it must be the Ice King of Kōtō’s hundred-million-something dazzling treasure!”

“Dazzling treasure? That stuff isn’t in there anymore. Masashi Edo mustered the entire Akatsuki Group and made off with every last bit of it!”

“Then what could be inside?… Kinbei’s corpse, I wonder?”

“That might be the case.”

× × ×

The Giant Safe's door finally opened.

The cipher decrypted by Homura contained not a single error.

Inside the Giant Safe, not a single piece of treasure remained. And inside lay something we could never have anticipated. What? By metric tonnage, it held over three tons of high explosives. The officials peering into the safe cried “Good God!” in unison and stampeded toward the exit—so startling was this unforeseen legacy. Through our efforts, Homura and I successfully removed the exquisitely calibrated chronometer-style detonator. Only three hours remained until detonation. What would have transpired had Homura’s decryption arrived three hours later? Masashi Edo had engineered an atrocity.

“What was Masashi Edo planning to achieve by planting this massive explosion?” I asked Homura.

“This is Masashi Edo’s terrifying wisdom,” he replied.
“He wasn’t satisfied with just the treasure—he meant to detonate this Giant Safe and annihilate every Kōketsu Society executive.”
“You understand?”
“Right above this vault sat their hideout targeting the same safe.”
“He planned to gasify the Akatsuki Group’s secrets in an instant... Let’s move.”
“No sense lingering in this death trap any longer.”

Homura urged me onward, and we went outside.

Outside, vivid young leaves cast a cool tree shade over the bench.
It had become thoroughly like early summer.
On the bench, Homura lit his tobacco and began smoking with evident relish.

“By the way, Mr. Homura—what happened to ‘Bakuō’? It hasn’t shown up at all.”
“It hasn’t shown up at all, has it?”

“Ha ha! Bakuō won’t be making an appearance,” he laughed cheerfully. “But first—let me explain about that cipher decryption.”
“I’d solved it up to what seemed certain as the final step—but failed because I kept reversing those ‘Ara ma sō ō’ phrases while they remained in kana.”
“So I transcribed them into Japanese-style Romaji—reversed that—then rewrote it all—and that’s how I finally completed the decryption.”
“The key realization came when reversing phonetic sounds—consonants and vowels separate—each consonant bonds with its neighboring vowel—each vowel with its neighboring consonant.”
“The reversed sound of ‘Arama’ isn’t ‘Maraa’—when written in reversed Romaji—it becomes AMARA… ‘amara.’”
“The character sequences of Maraa and Amara differ entirely.”
“I see,” I remarked with genuine admiration.

“I see,” I remarked, impressed.

“So why did I notice this? Because the cipher’s source lies in those dialogue lines that Reiko Mihara mistakenly recorded.”
“I’d always assumed ciphers were purely about written characters—that was my big mistake. I realized we also have to consider ciphers hidden in spoken words.”
“In this case especially, it’s perfectly valid as dialogue…… Reiko Mihara was relayed that precious cipher from Masashi Edo and entrusted with its safekeeping.”
Masashi Edo killed Kenji Hashimoto on the night of the 23rd in his quest to obtain the cipher, but Kenji—having already defected—insisted he knew nothing about it.
Fearing secret leakage and having no choice but to kill him, Masashi Edo then directly took Kinbei Tashiro prisoner on the 29th.
He stole the cipher, but when they were about to be traced, he relayed it even to the capable Reiko Mihara.
However, the detectives became suspicious and gave chase.
Reiko received the cipher but was at a loss how to dispose of it.
The pursuers were closing in.
If she stayed as she was, the cipher fragment would surely be discovered.—That’s exactly what happened.
She was indeed later stripped naked and searched.
—So she devised a plan and spoke the cipher into the talkie film.
This cipher, perfect as verbal code, had been exceptionally well-crafted from the start—after all, it was created by Kenji Hashimoto, who had originally been with her.
In short, during that critical moment, Reiko had the talkie swallow the cipher and escaped the crisis.
“That thing *is* Bakuō. Bakuō refers to the talkie—the baku devours human dreams, you see? The dream of immense wealth.”

“So ‘Bakuō’ meant having the talkie swallow the cipher?”

“Of course it was Reiko who later stole the talkie film.”
“Because if she hadn’t stolen that segment, the cipher would have been easily deciphered.”
“Because if you simply reverse that talkie film, you wouldn’t need to go through all the tedious steps I did—the decrypted text would naturally emerge as audible words.”
“In the secret document that nearly came into my possession, there was likely a report stating: ‘We’ve Bakuō-ed it, so rest assured.’”
“For instance…”

Having said that, he smoothly wrote the following characters on a sheet of paper.

100429: Though urgently pursued, due to miraculous luck,
the cipher text was fully Bakuō-ed as of today.
Reiko

As for what became of the immense treasure, the Akatsuki Group, and the Ice King of Kōtō—there still remained no leads.