Pathway to Japanese Literature

A morning thick with fog—

I had the camera around my neck and was standing at the base of the wide Takahashi Bridge.

In the morning fog, the towering Takahashi Bridge drew a gentle curve like a woman's breast, demarcating the horizon. The assembled iron bridge beams were damp with condensation. Beyond the bridge, the gray walls of identically shaped warehouses stood facing each other in silence, but from midway they melted into the fog, their distant ends remaining unseen as usual.

The weather bureau’s forecast proved accurate. The announcer had said that a rather thick fog would roll in at dawn—and indeed it was.

From within the morning fog came the sound of footsteps; frost-powdered khaki work clothes would appear in scattered groups only to vanish back into the mist.
It was solely because I wanted to capture that composition in a photograph that I stood at the base of the bridge this early.

As I removed the lens cap and adjusted the lever controlling the image on the focusing screen, I became aware of someone stealthily approaching from behind me.
But—

Reflected on the focusing screen was a car that had suddenly appeared from beyond the bridge.
It came lumbering toward me.
The shape was truly bizarre.
Resting on the low-slung chassis lay something resembling a black Western-style coffin.
The driver was a woman.
A face with an aristocratic nose that suggested intelligence—yet belonging to a woman whose hysterical leanness showed through her emaciation.
Clutching at this unexpected photographic subject, I tenaciously tracked its movement before finally pressing the shutter with a decisive click.

I raised my eyes and took a closer look at the car loaded with strange cargo passing through there.
The driver of the low-slung open-top vehicle was a woman in her early thirties who appeared surprisingly youthful given her well-balanced features.
Her face was translucent white like wax sculpture, with a geometrically sharp nasal ridge, jet-black bobbed hair, and a dress as black as mourning clothes.
One glance told you she was an intellectual.

Upon closer inspection of the strange black coffin-like cargo, not only were there heavy-duty golden locks fastened in multiple places, but there were also two sturdy black leather handgrips attached like protruding ears.

It was not a coffin.
It appeared to be a peculiar large briefcase.

The woman passed by like a wax doll, not moving a single eyebrow as she gradually drove the car forward.
With my camera still hanging around my neck, I continued watching without tiring as that peculiar car gradually receded into the distance.

“Did you like it? Hey there, sir.”
“Ah, you liked it?”
“That... that right there is what they call ‘Dr. Hillmi’s Refrigerated Briefcase’—”
“Huh? Dr. Hillmi’s Refrigerated Briefcase?”

I snapped back to awareness.
To the voice of an unfamiliar conversation partner that had slipped in unnoticed—

“Hey, who the hell are you?”

I turned around and stared at the young man standing there.

“Who am I? I’m just a man clinging to this city like grime.”

With that, he laughed, showing his toothless gums.

“However, when it comes to Dr. Hillmi’s refrigerated briefcase, there’s no one in this city who knows more than me.”
“For a cup of fragrant coffee and Swiss cheese on toast, I might just tell you what’s inside that briefcase of hers, you know.”

Having said that, the young man brought his trembling fingers to his purple-tinged lower lip.

The tale of a young man in the quiet cafeteria of a certain high-rise building, longing for coffee and cheese toast—

“The Dr.Hillmi you saw earlier—that woman holds the title of Doctor of Medicine.”
“Her specialty is plastic surgery.”
“But that’s not all—she’s mastered every field of medicine.”
“A genius so extraordinary you’d find none like her in this world.”

“The Taniuchi Plastic Surgery Technique—that was Dr.Hillmi’s crowning achievement.”
“Are you not familiar with it?”
“Modern plastic surgery has been completely rewritten by Dr.Hillmi’s hand.”
“Do you not grasp how thoroughly she transformed it?”
“As my story unfolds, you’ll come to understand naturally—through Dr.Hillmi’s efforts these past five years alone, she accomplished progress that would normally require fifty.”
“Enough of political grandstanding—let us turn to factual matters.”
“What follows is a bizarre incident so unbelievable you’d scarcely accept it as truth!”

And with that, the young man began speaking haltingly—

Dr. Hillmi, who had become the foremost authority in her field, finally entered married life the year before last.

That greatest bridegroom in all three realms was a young man of twenty-five—five years her junior.
It was rumored he was the third son of a wealthy family from a northern town famed for its silk textiles.
Everyone believed it.
Yet this was a crimson lie.
To substantiate this claim, there exists a story that serves most conveniently as evidence.
A brief episode indeed...

That was an incident from February two winters prior.

In a certain downtown area, there was a terrible slashing incident.

Both sides suffered over a dozen casualties in the fierce clash, but in addition, there was a delinquent youth named Sentaro "Monica" who was unluckily caught in the crossfire and cut down.
The white-painted ambulance that came rushing in carried him to none other than Dr.Hillmi's surgical hospital.

Sentaro "Monica" had been slashed in three places across his face and about six inches down his side, leaving him in critical condition.
In a regular hospital, he would never have survived, but Dr.Hillmi, sensing something significant, admitted him to her special research laboratory and personally attended to his treatment day and night.
Thanks to her efforts, the patient regained remarkable vigor—even startling the police officers who came to visit—but just as the bandages were about to be removed, Sentaro escaped from the hospital.

At Dr.Hillmi’s report, the police rushed over in alarm, but even with tight security—it being a hospital—there were countless ways to slip out.
Well, it was deemed unavoidable.

The police remained surprisingly composed, reasoning he’d surely return to his old haunt before long—then they could arrest him then and there.

Yet after that, Sentaro never once showed his face at his former stomping grounds.
The police grew suspicious—had he perhaps left Tokyo wearing straw sandals for the provinces? They made inquiries everywhere, but Sentaro had never arrived anywhere to take them off.
Thus did Sentaro “Monica” join the ranks of the missing, along with his cherished harmonica.

Dr.Hillmi entered married life two months after that.

She had taken as her husband a man named Mankichiro who was five years her junior, but true to Dr.Hillmi’s discerning eye, he was a handsome man with features as finely sculpted as a doll’s.

As they say—who could have known?—this bridegroom Mankichiro was in fact none other than Sentaro “Monica” himself.

Putting it that way might indeed make it sound like a contrived tale.
No matter how thoroughly Sentaro disguised himself as the bridegroom Mankichiro, one might expect officers familiar with his face or his former comrades to immediately recognize that Sentaro “Monica” was poorly concealed—yet things never unfolded that way.
Until then, Mankichiro had been completely indistinguishable from Sentaro at first glance.
In other words, Mankichiro the bridegroom possessed an entirely different face from Sentaro “Monica”.
While Sentaro had been handsome himself, Mankichiro’s face exhibited an even more refined attractiveness—features that should rightfully belong to an entirely separate classification.

And yet, there was no doubt that Mankichiro was Sentaro in disguise.

So how did such a mysterious difference in their facial features come about?
The answer was simple.
Within Dr.Hillmi’s special research laboratory, Sentaro’s face had been reshaped into Mankichiro’s new visage.
That very transformation was achieved through Dr.Hillmi’s epoch-making academic endeavor—the formidable power of her Taniuchi Plastic Surgery Technique.

“I have long harbored profound contempt for society’s egregious discriminatory treatment of humans based on beauty and ugliness,” Dr.Hillmi wrote in her thesis.
“When considering where lies the essence of the difference between beauty and ugliness, it fundamentally resides in the three-dimensional geometric problem of facial features.
If the measurements and arrangement of facial features hit the mark, one becomes a beauty; but if they miss, one becomes an ugly person.
Yet the differences in the measurements and arrangement of facial features between beauty and ugliness are exceedingly minimal.
The eyes of a beautiful person tilt a mere one degree and they instantly transform into an ugly person; the lips of an ugly person shorten a mere centimeter and they become a beautiful person—such was the balance she described.
The fact that so few devote their lives to such trivial geometric problems—a mere degree or centimeter—is truly laughable.
In my plastic surgery, techniques such as shortening those minimal measurements are extremely easy.
Among all parts of the human body undergoing plastic surgery, there is no other part where shape modifications can be performed as easily as the human face.
Particularly, the transformative effect of such plastic surgery was beyond comparison to other body parts.
‘If my Taniuchi Plastic Surgery Technique as expounded in this work comes to be adopted worldwide, not a single ugly person would remain in existence—and so on.’”

It was a truly audacious theory of Dr.Hillmi’s.
Or rather, it might be better described as an expression of such formidable confidence.

According to Dr.Hillmi’s assertions, altering a human’s appearance was said to be a simple matter.
In particular, she asserted that uneven human faces—being neither particularly large in area nor flat in surface—could be freely reshaped like clay figurines.
The fact that surgeons seeking guidance at Dr.Hillmi’s door had recently increased to such extraordinary numbers was likely due to her astonishing surgical results being passed from one person to another.

Why Dr. Hillmi was drawn to Sentaro “Monica” and chose him as her bridegroom remains another intriguing question, but in any case, Sentaro took the name Mankichiro and came to play the prince in his older wife’s fairy-tale romance.

Excluding those involved, no one knew this great secret.
Of course, even the police never realized Sentaro had completely altered his face to become Dr. Hillmi’s groom.
Thus did this peculiar bride and groom—layering ever more thrilling excitement upon their clandestine truth—come to lament fleeting nights spent side by side on emerald-draped pillows in crimson chambers, their whispers of eternal union echoing through the bridal suite.

Dr. Hillmi’s lifestyle underwent a complete transformation with the start of their cohabitation.
She, being a dedicated scholar, approached her new lifestyle with superhuman exploration and execution, and like one who had forgotten her soul, she continued to wander each night into unfathomably deep ecstatic realms.

“No matter how you look at it, life can’t go on like this.”

And now, the timid young bridegroom secretly uttered unreserved words.

Mankichiro—no longer Sentaro, who as a delinquent had undergone training unbearable to ordinary people and left nothing unknown—had become a captive to a superhuman woman beyond even his vast knowledge’s capacity to imagine, reduced to such a wretched state that he could only let out a shrill scream of despair.

“You.”
“You seem completely lacking energy today, aren’t you?”
“What’s wrong?”

Wrapped in a diaphanous garment, Dr. Hillmi asked her young husband while combing her hair before the mirror.

“No matter what, you—”

Mankichiro exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling and responded in a hoarse voice.

“Well—”

Dr.Hillmi gazed through the mirror at her husband’s face, which had grown terribly sallow and withered of late.
The gradually mounting anxiety was causing Dr.Hillmi to slip away, step by step, from being a 100% devoted wife.
And soon she became fully 100% Dr.Hillmi.

“Ah-ha, I understand,” said Dr. Hillmi, puffing out her chest and sharply tilting her nose upward.
That was a habit Dr. Hillmi always displayed during examinations.
“Men are truly such delicate creatures, aren’t they?
But now that I’ve realized that, everything will be fine.
You can rest completely at ease.
For the time being, I’ll give you daily injections.”

Just as Dr. Hillmi had declared with conviction, the withered Mankichiro began recovering vigor through the injections.
And within less than a month, he had become a man of far, far greater vigor than he had possessed before his marriage.

“When it comes to treatment, the old lady’s really something,” Mankichiro said, firmly rubbing under his nose with his index finger. “No—or rather, if I were to imitate her way of talking, modern medicine has truly made a leap forward—or should I say, hmm, heh.” “Anyway, now that it’s come to this, I guess I gotta take a deeper interest in modern medicine or something.”

After such events, Mankichiro began actively pestering Dr. Hillmi for various treatments.

For Dr. Hillmi, Mankichiro was the world’s greatest treasure; therefore, she gladly acquiesced even to somewhat unreasonable requests.
However, when conducting new treatments—no matter how troublesome—it was necessary to ground them in thorough clinical experiments.
For this purpose, Dr. Hillmi donned her surgical gown from early morning until late at night, zealously cutting and suturing hospitalized patients.

Dr. Hillmi’s reputation grew ever higher.
Voices of praise could be heard from all quarters, saying that Dr. Hillmi, having been married, had become utterly devoted to her work.
Truly, Dr. Hillmi burned with research fervor even more intense than the fierce dedication she had once shown while mastering the Taniuchi New Plastic Surgery Technique, continuing to wield her electric scalpel within the hospital.
Yet compared to the purity of Dr.Hillmi’s former zeal, this current ardor was nothing but an effort to curry favor with her young husband Mankichiro—a circumstance one might lament on behalf of Ms.Junketsu, that paragon of purity. But when considering what rendered Dr.Hillmi so endearing, one cannot help but pity the volcanically scorching heart of love she bore toward her husband Mankichiro.

Dr.Hillmi’s position may indeed have been pitiable enough to warrant compassion, but for Mankichiro—the object of her deranged affection—this could hardly be said to feel like sitting in paradise.

To put it plainly, for Mankichiro—a former delinquent—the act of protecting Dr.Hillmi alone had grown utterly wearisome.

Of course, Dr.Hillmi had completely transformed Mankichiro’s physical strength with her exceptional medical skills, achieving miraculous results that could be likened to the emergence of that very super-dreadnought battleship.
Therefore, Mankichiro had now literally become a demon fortified with an iron club.
Dr.Hillmi herself had attained complete satisfaction, and Mankichiro began to demonstrate his formidable prowess in full measure.
Moreover, deep within Mankichiro’s heart lingered a terror he had once felt toward Dr.Hillmi during their sallow, withered newlywed days—stained like an indelible blemish. This fear would intermittently resurface to evoke disquieting threats, and those threats would gradually transform into feelings of revulsion toward Dr.Hillmi, a process he found himself powerless to halt.

Mankichiro wanted to somehow extricate himself from Dr. Hillmi’s control.
If he were to completely extricate himself, he would face a great threat in his life.
He no longer had any intention of working diligently to live a salaried life with a meager monthly salary of 50 yen.
He had no intention whatsoever of abandoning his current life—living under Dr. Hillmi’s care with hands tucked in sleeves, never wanting for three meals a day, having new suits tailored each season, and scattering nearly 100 yen in pocket money on nights out downtown.
He wanted to leave his economic situation as it was and only free his body from Dr. Hillmi’s control.

Could such an extravagant wish possibly be attained?

But Mankichiro was no mere swallow either.
If we trace his origins, he had been both the brains and the chief strategist among his delinquent comrades.
Though not in Napoleon’s exact words, when it came to what he set his sights on, there was scarcely anything he failed to obtain; thus, if one were to pit their intellects against each other absolutely, Mankichiro’s mind might have held a slight edge over Dr.Hillmi’s.

Mankichiro changed his mood to devise a solution to this six-month conundrum and sauntered out to Ōkawabata Riverside where he used to enjoy wandering in his youth.

The murky river water slapped noisily against stone embankments.
A motorized ship chugged downstream trailing three mud-laden barges while spewing violet smoke.
Five or six seagulls bobbed windblown trajectories while clattering slender beaks.
From the river mouth came intermittent whiffs of briny tidal decay.

Mankichiro sat down at a deserted riverside gravel storage area to leisurely ponder his assignment.

Was there not some brilliant idea like this?

He even considered making up an excuse and going on a trip.
But even at its longest, it would be a matter of two or three months at most.
Compared to the length of a lifetime, what would such a brief period of liberation amount to?

What if he were to feign madness and have himself committed to a hospital?
However, if they investigated the hospital, his ruse would be immediately exposed.

Then what if he were to skillfully kill Dr. Hillmi?
No—murder was not at all suited to Mankichiro’s tastes.
If he were to be suspected and actually sent to prison, that would be too great a sacrifice.

In that case, how about finding an exceptionally handsome man and making Dr.Hillmi fall in love with him—wrong as it feels to force infidelity?
Still, that plan was flawed.
Dr.Hillmi wasn't such a fickle woman.
She remained madly devoted to her one and only Mankichiro; not the type to casually switch men.
Then this one's no good.—

Mankichiro kept unconsciously picking up gravel stones and hurling them at the river's surface, then picking up more to throw again.

Then, an utterly unexpected incident occurred with sudden violence.
Before Mankichiro stood a high stone wall that had collapsed into the river.
From beyond that stone wall, a human head abruptly thrust itself into view.

“—Cut it out! Why the hell are you throwing stones at me? I was having such a nice nap…”

Mankichiro let out a sharp cry.

The face that jutted out suddenly from beneath the stone wall—it was unmistakably that of a youth at first glance. Under the stone wall, there must have been a narrow space just wide enough for a person to lie flat. After giving a cigarette and such to the man who had climbed up the stone wall, Mankichiro sat him down beside himself. “Sir, don’t you have something to fill my belly?”

“How about chocolate?”

As he engaged in a murmuring, disjointed conversation with the young man chewing on a chocolate bar, Mankichiro suddenly hit upon a splendid idea.

“Hmm, this is perfect!”
“Why hadn’t I noticed that before?”
“Ah, what a quantum leap great medical science has achieved!—”

Mankichiro, overwhelmed with joy, took the man’s hand and pulled him up; together they embraced and danced wildly on the gravel bank—a joy so absurd it bordered on foolishness.

“Come on, you—come with me. I’ve got an amazing money-making opportunity for you. And there’s a woman too—a delicious-looking woman who seems to drip with allure, one exquisitely fragrant at that.”

The man stared open-mouthed, utterly dumbfounded.

What could Mankichiro’s big idea have been?

Indeed, she was the sharp-witted Dr. Hillmi.

She had already detected her young husband Mankichiro's resentment.

That said, as Mankichiro had already come to fully understand, Dr. Hillmi would never have dreamed of divorcing him, however much her young husband might commit resentful acts.
No matter what means she had to resort to, she thought she must keep her beloved husband Mankichiro by her side.
If Mankichiro were to leave her side even for a single day, she would surely lose her mind.

In such a manner, the lovely Dr. Hillmi was fixated on her young husband Mankichiro.

Matters of clinical experiments and hospital management now gradually faded from her mind.
Keeping Mankichiro from slipping out of the house and ensuring other women didn’t steal him away—she devoted herself entirely to these two concerns day after day.

Therefore, whenever Mankichiro went out, an uproar ensued—the kind that others could never witness.
Although the details cannot be fully described here, Dr. Hillmi clung to Mankichiro’s body like a leech and showed no sign of letting go.
Even though Mankichiro was merely going to the barber, this ridiculous commotion ensued.

Such things steadily pulled Mankichiro’s heart away from Dr. Hillmi.
That was something so natural it bordered on being too obvious, yet it was undeniably a tragedy in the world of human compassion.

“You actually came back to me.”

When her husband returned, Dr. Hillmi would cling to his sturdy chest without a shred of hesitation, streaming silent tears.

Had Dr. Hillmi’s fidelity affected Mankichiro? According to her observations, her husband had recently adopted an almost entirely different demeanor—a purity and passion infusing all his actions.
At times she would scold him in her usual tone, but when they later retreated to the room, his mood would improve to an almost suspicious degree.
In Dr. Hillmi’s view, she had come to hold expectations that the satisfaction of their former life would surely be restored before long.

One day, Dr.Hillmi was alone in the laboratory.
That day, feeling inexplicably weary, she laid her voluptuous body on the chaise longue and kept her eyes tightly closed.
She used to often sleep like this in the past.
Dr.Hillmi thought she wanted to sleep here for a while, for the first time in a long time.

But when she closed her eyes properly at last - though why this should happen - instead her mind grew only sharper still; sleep was nowhere near possible.
*I might have neurasthenia.*
Dr.Hillmi gently pressed fingertips against a faintly throbbing brow.

Unable to sleep, Dr. Hillmi nevertheless lay perfectly still.
With only her eyes wide open, as she gazed at her motionless form, it began to seem as though someone else’s corpse lay there.

Dr. Hillmi found herself growing increasingly unsettled by a peculiar sensation.
It felt as though only her brain might pop right out of her skull.
Within that brain, various phenomena appeared and disappeared like a rapidly spinning kaleidoscope, vanishing only to reappear transformed.
Amid that dizzying barrage of flashes, Dr. Hillmi suddenly saw a terrifying phantom.
It was a scene of two men who looked exactly like her beloved husband Mankichiro standing hand in hand.

Ah… Could it truly be…?
No—such a thing can’t possibly be real!—

Dr. Hillmi panicked to dispel that terrifying phantom as quickly as possible, yet it spitefully persisted, growing ever more vivid and distinct. In the end, both Mankichiros pointed at Dr. Hillmi and doubled over with hollow, rattling laughter.

What a terrifying phantom this was!

Could there truly be not one, but two beloved husbands? That dewy hair, that noble forehead, those dignified brows, those cool-seeming eyes, that well-shaped nose, those moist crimson lips, those full cheeks, those captivating earlobes—could another man truly exist bearing all these features in flawless replica?

Dr. Hillmi suddenly shuddered with cold.

Yet Dr.Hillmi's lucid mind trembled in fear on one hand, while on the other drove sharp analytical talons into that meaningless phantom in an attempt to assign it significance.

That was it.
Such a special case could exist.
Moreover, wasn't that sort of thinking already within common sense these days?

Dr. Hillmi let out a long, deep sigh at this.

It was terrifying.
What a terrifying idea.
What a terrifying snare.

What was it that caused Dr. Hillmi to cry out about a terrifying snare?
That was the terrifying suspicion: whether her beloved husband Mankichiro was truly the real Mankichiro.

In this world, there could be no such thing as two humans with completely identical faces and figures—or so people certainly could have declared in days gone by.
But in today’s world, can the same truly be said? Can the same be believed?
No, no—in today’s world, or at least since Dr. Hillmi’s Taniuchi New Plastic Surgery Technique achieved great success, such things had become utterly impossible to believe.

Just as when taking a death mask, as long as there existed a single prototype, it had become possible to effortlessly create any number of completely identical faces. Of course, this would not have been possible without the function of Dr.Hillmi's newly developed surgical technique.

That Dr.Hillmi's new surgical technique was trustworthy was something she herself knew best. Moreover—that she had to destroy with her own hands the idol of love she had staked her life upon, all because of the very surgical science she herself had created—what irony was this?

Could the husband I had believed to be firmly within my grasp truly be the real Mankichiro? Was he truly Mankichiro, or an imposter mimicking him?

Dr.Hillmi had never imagined until this very moment that the divine skill she herself had perfected would torment her so.
If I had known such a thing could happen, I should have kept it to a more imperfect degree.
The attempt to create exact replicas of humans—ones indistinguishable from those wrought by God—might itself have been an irreparable blasphemy against the divine.

On Dr. Hillmi’s eyelids, tears that had lain withered for over twenty years now gushed forth like a geyser.

Dr.Hillmi collapsed onto the chaise longue with a heavy thud, shook both shoulders violently, let out a childlike wail, and began sobbing convulsively.

Ever since that incident, Dr.Hillmi’s cheeks had hollowed abruptly and shadowed circles had surfaced beneath her eyelids—developments that followed with grim inevitability.

When she shut herself alone in her room, her white teeth—quivering with nervous agitation—would inevitably bite through her lips until they stained crimson; her soft hair would be savagely torn at by her own fingertips until disheveled like wild mugwort; and her dreadful countenance would take on the appearance of a wraith cast down into hell.

Nevertheless, the astute Dr.Hillmi would dress herself impeccably as though she were a different person whenever welcoming her husband Mankichiro to her side, greeting him with a countenance of jade-like warmth.
She never committed the folly of allowing even a trace of her disturbed mind to be detected by her husband Mankichiro.

Moreover, during these moments, Dr.Hillmi never neglected her sharp observations of her husband Mankichiro’s appearance and behavior—scrutinizing even the minutest details—from beneath that serene mask.
If by any chance she discovered evidence that her husband was not the real Mankichiro, she was resolved to immediately leap upon him and shatter the imposter Mankichiro’s skull in a single blow.

However, her husband stubbornly refused to show his tail.
The fact that he refused to show his tail served as proof that her husband—that man—remained the true Mankichiro. Yet at the same time, Dr. Hillmi found herself compelled to stimulate her own nerves and exhaust every ounce of her being in even sharper observation, tormented by the possibility that this man might have completed his cunning transformation into an exact replica of the real Mankichiro.
Truly, this must be what they mean when they speak of Avici Hell—this state of Dr. Hillmi’s tormented psyche.

The torment continued day after day, night after night.
Suspicion bred fresh suspicion, and the ripples of confusion spread ever wider with each passing day.

And finally, in the end, she was driven to the razor-thin margin between sanity and madness.

Dr. Hillmi sat motionless in her unlit evening room, her mummified emaciated body settled on an oil drum as she remained steeped in thought.
Would she meet defeat here and succumb to madness, or would she grasp some unforeseen idea to barely cling to the realm of sanity?

“Ah—”

Dr.Hillmi groaned once in the darkness.

A divine idea flashed through Dr.Hillmi’s mind.

“Ah—I might find salvation.”

Like litmus paper turning from blue to red, a flush of crimson surged up into Dr.Hillmi’s pallid cheeks.

“—What a brilliant idea.”

Dr.Hillmi kicked the floor with a thud and sprang up from the oil drum like a spring-operated doll. She picked up the surgical gown discarded nearby, pushed open the heavy door, and strode briskly down the wide corridor toward her husband Mankichiro’s room.

Dr. Hillmi’s perpetually empty refrigerated briefcase became stuffed full less than two hours later.

That refrigerated briefcase had always been kept in Dr. Hillmi’s special research laboratory.
It was the latest model portable refrigerator.
She would occasionally put dissected carcasses of dogs and rabbits used in animal testing into this briefcase and carry it around outside.

However, on this particular day, the dog and rabbit carcasses had been completely removed and transferred to the waste bin.
The inside of the briefcase had first been thoroughly cleaned, then dismembered human hands, feet, torso, and even the head were crammed tightly into it.
That dismembered body was none other than Dr. Hillmi’s beloved husband—the one for whom she had staked her life—Mankichiro’s own.

Dr.Hillmi had dismembered her husband Mankichiro’s body while he was still alive and placed it inside this refrigerated briefcase.
So had Dr.Hillmi finally killed her beloved husband?

But perhaps it was still too soon to jump to that conclusion.

And so, Dr.Hillmi had packed away her beloved husband’s body within the refrigerated briefcase.
From that point onward, Dr.Hillmi began keeping the refrigerated briefcase by her side at all times.
Whether she was simply stepping out of her room to walk down the hallway or heading into town on an errand, that refrigerated briefcase always accompanied Dr.Hillmi.
With this, Dr.Hillmi believed she had finally made her beloved husband completely her own.
Now her husband would no longer go strolling through the city, and of course there was no longer any worry of him being stolen by other women.

Dr. Hillmi, overwhelmed with joy, wrote down her impressions of the day in her diary.
That was the first diary Dr. Hillmi had ever kept in her life.
That diary entry was indeed a truly short one—though—

“× Year × Month × Day.”
“Rain.”

Atmospheric pressure 750 mmHg.
Room temperature 19.7°C.
Humidity 85.

Finally, I carried out my resolution.

I brought my one and only beloved husband in this world into the special research laboratory and completely dismembered him with an electric scalpel.
It appears my husband never imagined until the very end that he would now be dismembered.

What I had so desperately wanted to ascertain was whether the man lying beside me as my husband was indeed the true Mankichiro himself.
That is why I completely dissected my husband’s body into pieces.

According to the autopsy results, it was unquestionably the body of my true husband, Mankichiro.
Or rather, it might be better to say it was undoubtedly Mankichiro’s body.
No, no—there can be no such ambiguous phrasing.
It could be none other than Mankichiro himself.

Because that man’s body possessed every single characteristic of my husband that I had meticulously verified over time.
For example, regarding the internal organs, I confirmed the presence of a lesion in the left lung hilum and a stomach prolapsing five centimeters downward.
(What if there existed another man with the same face and age as my husband—a man who also had a lesion in his left lung hilum and a stomach prolapsing five centimeters downward?)
No—there could be no such person.
If it were coincidence, such a thing might not be impossible—but coincidence is ultimately impossible.
I am not some unscientific fool who'd be frightened by coincidence like it's a monster!)

I couldn’t help but shout “Banzai!” like a child.
My beloved husband is now completely mine.
All that hellish suffering up until this very day had vanished without a trace, like storm clouds scattering to reveal crystal-clear skies.
Why hadn’t I noticed that brilliant idea sooner?

Initially, I had intended to reassemble my husband’s body and revive him after completing the autopsy.
Given my surgical skills, such a thing would be no trouble at all.
But I suddenly changed my mind.

I packed my beloved husband’s dismembered limbs into the refrigerated briefcase just as they were.
I decided to postpone assembling my husband’s limbs and reviving him for the time being.

Why?

For I had unexpectedly conceived of a second astonishing big idea.
I will likely not reassemble my husband Mankichiro's dismembered limbs until twenty years have passed.
I intend to preserve my husband's limbs inside the refrigerator until twenty years have passed.
Why?

In twenty years from now, I will have become a fifty-year-old old woman.
Even with the formidable power of plastic surgery, though my appearance may remain as fresh as a bride's, I will likely be unable to conceal the decline in my vitality.
And if I were to revive my husband Mankichiro today, he would become a forty-five-year-old old man in twenty years' time, meaning he would inevitably suffer an equally severe decline in vitality.
Oh, a husband who has become a forty-five-year-old old man!
The mere thought of that makes me utterly depressed.

It was best for my husband to remain as youthful as possible.
Especially when my own vitality began declining later on, having a vigorous husband might prove such excellent medicine for my health.
That was when I realized.

My beloved husband Mankichiro - I would keep him frozen in this refrigerated briefcase for twenty years.

When I turned fifty years old, I would revive Mankichiro at exactly half that age - twenty-five years old.

Moreover by then, I intended to have thoroughly researched and devised medical means through which I could firmly capture and never release a man's heart.
Twenty years would provide more than enough time for everything.

Oh, my beloved husband!
Now sleep peacefully for the next twenty years within the refrigerated briefcase!

“This concludes my story.”
“Well? Did it meet your satisfaction—my explanation of ‘Dr. Hillmi’s Refrigerated Briefcase’ that you saw earlier on that fog-shrouded street—”

Having said that, the young man swept back the long hair hanging over his broad forehead and noisily gulped down the cold coffee with evident relish.

I didn’t respond, silently keeping my gaze fixed on the yellow wall.

“—Not to your liking?”
“After such an entertaining story—”

The young man tightened his grip on the butter knife and crouched like a cat ready to pounce.

I deliberately laughed lightly through my nose.

“It’s not uninteresting—but it would be truly fascinating if you told me more.”

“But that’s all there is to the story.”
“This is everything I know.”

“Go ahead and lie.”
“There still remains a crucial part of the story.”

“What did you say?”

“Shall I ask a question? Hmm.”
“That is to say, Hmm—the question is why the storyteller knows these secret matters in such detail.”
“The way he tells it makes it sound like he was alone with Dr. Hillmi in some private room, hmm?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I want you to tell me that name.”

“……”

This time, it was the young man who fell silent.

“Hey, how about this version of the story? — Mankichiro, desperate to escape Dr.Hillmi, reverted to his Sentaro-era self and concocted some monkey-like cunning.”
“He cleverly pulled in some urchin who’d crawled up from below the stone embankments along the river, put him in a new surgical hospital, and reconstructed his face to look exactly like his own.”
“In other words, two Mankichiros came into existence.”
“Having done that, Mankichiro left the fake Mankichiro with Dr.Hillmi and indulged in whatever frivolous pursuits he pleased wherever he liked.”
“Before long, Dr.Hillmi—unaware of this—dissected the fake Mankichiro.”
“What’s inside the refrigerated briefcase now is none other than the fake Mankichiro.”
The one to be pitied was Dr.Hillmi.
Seizing upon lesions in the lung hilum and gastroptosis, scientists may shout about eliminating coincidence, but the real Mankichiro would likely want to mockingly declare, “Science always yields a step to chance.”
“And the real Mankichiro, having fully realized everything, is using old tales as a pretext to beg for coffee—how about that, hmm?”

When I said that much, the young man suddenly stood up for reasons unknown and, despite my telling him to wait, pretended not to hear as he swiftly went outside.

Left all alone, having lost my conversation partner, I stuck my head out the window in restless boredom and gazed out at the distant world below.
I waited there thinking the young man would soon come rushing out from the building’s entrance—I wanted to catch another glimpse of him—yet strangely, no matter how long I waited, his figure never appeared.

However, I noticed that Dr. Hillmi’s refrigerated briefcase—carrying that coffin-like black case—was just now gradually passing through the distant crossroads below, though where it was headed I couldn’t say.