Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

It was probably a form of mental illness. Saburo Gouda found no interest in the world—no amusement, no occupation, nothing he tried could stir his fascination. After leaving school—though he could count the number of days he attended in a year—he had tried every conceivable occupation, but not yet encountered a single one he thought worthy of dedicating his life to. Perhaps no occupation capable of satisfying him existed in this world. The longest lasted a year, the shortest about a month, as he drifted from job to job. And so, having finally given up, he now no longer sought another occupation, literally doing nothing as he passed each dull day.

The same went for his amusements. From karuta and billiards to tennis, swimming, mountain climbing, Go, Shogi, and even all manner of gambling—every last amusement one could name, too numerous to recount here—he purchased something like an Encyclopedia of Amusements and exhaustively tried them all. Yet just as with occupations, none proved worthwhile, and he was always left disappointed. But in this world, are there not such marvelous pleasures as "women" and "alcohol"—pleasures that no human being could ever tire of in a lifetime? You must surely be thinking that, gentlemen. Yet Saburo Gouda curiously felt no interest even in those two things. As for alcohol, perhaps it didn’t agree with his constitution—he couldn’t drink a drop—and while he certainly wasn’t without desire when it came to women, having engaged in such pursuits quite extensively, he simply couldn’t bring himself to feel that these things gave his life any real purpose.

“Rather than enduring this dreary world any longer, I’d be better off dead.” He often found himself thinking such things. However, even he seemed to possess at least the bare instinct to cling to life, for despite constantly declaring “I’ll die, I’ll die,” he had lingered on without ever going through with it, right up until that very day of his twenty-fifth birthday.

Being able to receive a monthly allowance from his parents meant he never particularly struggled to make ends meet even without employment. Perhaps that very security had been what made him so self-indulgent. Thus he devoted himself to wringing some enjoyment from life using those remittance funds. For instance—just as with occupations and amusements—he made a practice of constantly changing boarding houses. To put it only slightly hyperbolically, he knew every last lodging house in Tokyo. After staying a month or even half-month, he would immediately relocate to another. Of course during these intervals there were times he wandered like some vagabond. Or tried sequestering himself mountain-deep like a hermit. But being city-bred through and through, he simply couldn't endure long in those lonely rural stretches. No sooner would he embark on some brief journey than—before he knew it—the city's electric glow and ceaseless bustle would draw him back to Tokyo. And needless to say, each return meant yet another change of lodgings.

Now, the place he had moved to this time was a brand-new boarding house called Tōeikan—so new that the walls still seemed damp—and there, he discovered a marvelous new diversion. And this tale takes as its subject a certain murder incident related to his newfound discovery. But before advancing the story in that direction, it becomes necessary to briefly recount how the protagonist Saburo Gouda became acquainted with the amateur detective Akechi Kogoro—this name you are likely familiar with— —and through what circumstances he came to develop a new interest in 'crime,' something he had previously paid no attention to whatsoever.

The catalyst for their acquaintance occurred when they happened to be at the same café, where Saburo's companion—who knew Akechi—introduced them. At that moment, Saburo became completely captivated by Akechi's intelligent appearance, manner of speaking, and graceful bearing. From then on, Saburo began frequently visiting him, while Akechi too developed the habit of occasionally coming to Saburo's boarding house, thus establishing their relationship. While Akechi may have found interest in Saburo's pathological nature—as a sort of research material—Saburo found pure delight in hearing the various captivating crime stories Akechi shared.

The tale of Dr. Webster, who murdered his colleague and attempted to reduce the corpse to ashes in a laboratory furnace; the murderous crime of Eugene Aram, who mastered multiple languages and even made groundbreaking discoveries in linguistics; the story of Wainwright, a notorious insurance fraudster who was also an accomplished literary critic; the account of Noguchi Otosaburo, who tried to cure his father-in-law’s leprosy by decocting a child’s buttock meat; and then the brutal crime stories of Landru—the so-called Bluebeard—who took numerous women as wives only to murder them, and Armstrong—how these must have delighted Saburo Gouda, who had been utterly bored! As Saburo listened to Akechi’s eloquent storytelling, those crime narratives would rise before his eyes with unfathomable allure, vivid as garish polychrome picture scrolls.

For two or three months after meeting Akechi, Saburo seemed to have almost forgotten the dreariness of this world. He bought up various books on crime and became engrossed in reading them day after day. Among those books were works by such authors as Poe and Hoffmann, or Gaboriau and Boileau, along with various other detective novels. “Ah! So there were still such fascinating things in this world?” Every time he closed the final page of a book, he would heave a sigh of relief and think such thoughts. And then, he began to entertain such audacious thoughts—that if possible, he too wished to attempt some striking, garish game (if one could call it that) like the protagonists of those crime stories.

Yet even Saburo—after all—found becoming a criminal utterly repugnant, no matter how he considered it. He still lacked the courage to indulge in his pleasures to the point of ignoring the grief and humiliation brought to parents, siblings, relatives, and acquaintances. According to these books, no matter how ingeniously a crime was committed, there would always be some flaw somewhere—which became the trigger for its discovery—and evading police detection for an entire lifetime appeared utterly impossible except in the rarest of exceptions. To him, it was only that which terrified him. His misfortune was that he felt no interest in all worldly affairs yet found an inexplicable allure solely in 'crime' of all things. And an even greater misfortune was that he could not commit this 'crime' for fear of being discovered.

Having finished reading every book on crime he could get his hands on, he now began imitating "crimes." Since it was mere imitation, there was naturally no need to fear punishment. For example, things like this:

He had long since grown utterly bored with Asakusa, yet found himself taking an interest in it once more. Asakusa’s amusement park—like a toy box upended and drizzled with garish paints—made the perfect stage for someone with a penchant for crime. He would go there to wander through narrow alleyways barely wide enough for a person to pass between the temporary theaters, and through strangely desolate open spaces behind public toilets that made one wonder how Asakusa could contain such voids. As if communicating with fellow conspirators, he drew chalk arrows on walls, tailed wealthy-looking pedestrians endlessly while imagining himself a pickpocket, slipped coded notes detailing gruesome murders between park bench planks, then hid in tree shadows awaiting their discovery—performing these games to amuse himself alone.

He would often disguise himself and wander from town to town. He tried dressing as a laborer, a beggar, a student—but among all these disguises, cross-dressing most delighted his pathological compulsion. For this purpose, he would sell off clothes and watches to raise money, gather expensive wigs and women’s used clothing, and after spending a long time transforming into his preferred feminine guise, he would drape an overcoat completely over his head and slip out of the boarding house entrance late at night. Then, after removing his overcoat in a suitable spot, he would sometimes wander through desolate parks, other times slip into temporary theaters just as they were closing and deliberately blend into the men’s seating area, and even go so far as to pull off risqué pranks. And from a kind of illusion created by his attire—as if he had become some toxic femme fatale like Daji no O-Hyaku or Mōja O-Yu—he delighted in imagining himself freely manipulating various men.

However, these imitations of "crime" satisfied his desires to some extent, and at times even sparked mildly interesting incidents that provided temporary solace. Yet imitations remained mere imitations—devoid of danger, which depending on one’s perspective is precisely where crime’s allure lies—and thus their appeal grew thin, lacking the power to keep him enraptured indefinitely. But after just three months had passed, he had unwittingly begun to distance himself from this amusement. And even his once-captivating association with Akechi gradually began to wane.

II

Having thus acquainted readers with Saburo Gouda’s interactions with Akechi Kogoro and his criminal proclivities through the preceding account, we shall now return to our main subject and proceed to the matter of what diversion Saburo Gouda discovered at Tōeikan—the newly built boarding house. Saburo had moved into Tōeikan the moment its construction was completed—unable to wait any longer—over a year after first forming his association with Akechi. As a result, he completely lost interest in those “crime” imitations, yet with nothing else to replace them, he found himself utterly unable to endure the tediously long hours of each passing day. When he first moved into Tōeikan, making new friends provided some distraction, but humans truly are such tedium-ridden creatures. No matter where he went, people merely exchanged the same thoughts with the same expressions in the same words, over and over again. Even after going to the trouble of changing boarding houses and meeting new people, within a week at most, he would sink back into unfathomable ennui.

And then, about ten days after moving into Tōeikan, there came a day. Out of sheer boredom, he suddenly hit upon a strange idea.

In his room—it was on the second floor—there stood a single closet beside a cheap tokonoma alcove. Inside this closet, precisely midway between the lintel and threshold, stretched sturdy shelves filling the entire space, divided into upper and lower sections. He had been storing several wicker trunks on the lower shelf and placing his futon on the upper one, but instead of taking it out each time to lay it in the center of the room, he wondered if he might always keep it stacked like a bed atop the shelf—climbing up to sleep there whenever drowsiness struck. He had considered such things. Had this been one of his previous boarding houses, even with similar shelves in the closet, the walls would likely have been filthy or cobwebs would have hung from the ceiling—conditions that would have deterred anyone from considering sleeping there. But this closet, being in a newly built structure, was immaculately clean: the ceiling pristine white, the smooth yellow-painted walls unmarred by a single stain. Moreover, perhaps due to the shelf construction, the whole space somehow resembled a ship’s berth, evoking an odd temptation to try sleeping there at least once.

So beginning that very night, he started sleeping inside the closet. The boarding house was designed such that each room could be locked from the inside—maids and others could not enter without permission—and he was able to continue this eccentric behavior undisturbed. When he lay down there now, it felt better than anticipated. Stacking four futons and flopping onto them to gaze at the ceiling looming two feet above his eyes produced an uncanny sensation. Snapping the sliding door shut to watch thread-like light seep through its gaps filled him with peculiar delight, as though he’d become a detective novel protagonist. Then cracking it open just enough to peer at his own room like a burglar surveying foreign territory, he found equal fascination in imagining impassioned scenes from this hidden vantage. At times he would crawl into the closet by day—within that rectangular box measuring one *ken* by three *shaku*—indulging in aimless daydreams while leisurely puffing beloved cigarettes. On such occasions, white smoke billowed through the door’s seams so profusely one might have thought flames raged inside.

However, after continuing this eccentric behavior for two or three days, he once again noticed something strange. Being fickle-minded, by around the third day he had already lost interest in the closet bed and—out of sheer restlessness—began doodling on its walls and the ceiling boards within reach while lying there when he suddenly noticed that the ceiling board right above his head seemed to shift loosely, as if someone had forgotten to nail it down. Wondering what was wrong, he pushed up on it with his hand, and though it came loose upward without much trouble, strangely enough, when he let go—despite there being no nailed-down sections—it snapped back into place exactly as before, as if spring-loaded. It felt as though someone was pressing down on it from above.

Wait a minute—could there be some creature right above this ceiling board? Saburo suddenly grew uneasy at the thought of a large bluish snake or something similar lurking there. Yet abandoning the investigation now would feel like a waste, so he kept pushing experimentally. Not only did he feel a solid, heavy resistance, but each movement of the ceiling board produced a dull rumbling sound from above. This was getting increasingly strange. So he resolutely mustered his strength and forcefully wrenched open the ceiling board, whereupon—with a clattering noise—something came crashing down from above. He had managed to leap aside in a startled flash—a split-second reaction that saved him—for had he not done so, he would have been struck by the object and suffered serious injury.

"What a letdown. How dull." However, when he saw the object that had fallen—he who had harbored no small expectation that it might be something unusual—he was utterly dumbfounded by its sheer mundanity. It was nothing more than a stone block resembling a small pickling weight. When he thought about it properly, there was nothing particularly strange about it. To create a passage for electricians to enter the attic, one ceiling board had been deliberately removed and weighted with a stone block to prevent mice from crawling into the closet through the gap.

It was truly an absurd farce. But that farce became the catalyst for Saburo Gouda to discover a remarkable new pleasure. For a while, he gazed at the ceiling hole gaping above his head—like a cave entrance—but then, driven by his inherent curiosity, cautiously inserted his head into the opening to peer around and see what this attic space was really like. It happened to be morning, with sunlight already beating on the roof. Through various gaps poured countless thin beams of light into the attic’s hollow space—like innumerable searchlights of varying sizes—making it unexpectedly bright.

First to catch the eye was a long, thick, twisting ridgepole resembling a giant serpent. Though bright for an attic, visibility didn’t extend far, and combined with the boarding house’s elongated structure—which indeed had a lengthy ridgepole—it seemed to stretch hazily into the distance, receding endlessly into obscurity. And at right angles to this ridgepole—corresponding to the ribs of a giant serpent—numerous beams protruded sharply from both sides along the roof’s slope. Even that alone made for a rather grand view, but moreover, to support the ceiling, countless slender rods descended from the beams, creating a sensation akin to gazing into the interior of a stalactite cave.

"This is magnificent."

After surveying the attic, Saburo inadvertently murmured those words aloud. His morbid disposition found no allure in ordinary interests that captivated others; instead, he felt drawn to things that seemed trivial to ordinary people with an inexplicable fascination. From that day on, his "attic strolls" began. Day or night, whenever he had a moment to spare, he would steal through like a cat burglar, treading along ridgepoles and beams. Fortunately, being a newly built house, the attic had none of the usual spiderwebs, not a speck of soot or dust had accumulated, and there wasn’t even a trace of mice defilement. Therefore, there was no need to worry about clothes getting soiled or limbs becoming dirty. Stripped down to a single shirt, he roamed the attic as he pleased. It being springtime, the attic was neither particularly hot nor cold despite its location.

III

The Tōeikan building followed a layout common to boarding houses—a central courtyard surrounded by rooms arranged in a square-shaped formation—and consequently, its attic continued uninterrupted in this configuration without any dead ends. Starting from the attic above his room and making a full circuit would bring one right back above his own room. The rooms below were each strictly partitioned with walls, their entrances even fitted with locking hardware—yet once you climbed up into the attic, what an astonishingly open space it was! One could freely walk around above anyone’s room. If one were so inclined, there were sections here and there weighted with stone blocks similar to those in Saburo’s room, so one could sneak from there into others’ rooms and commit theft. Using the corridor to do so—as mentioned earlier—was extremely dangerous not only because there were eyes in all directions of the square-shaped building but also because one might unexpectedly encounter other lodgers or maids at any moment. However, if done via the attic passageway, there was absolutely no such danger.

Moreover, there, peering into others' secrets could be done entirely at one's own discretion. Though called new construction, being a boarding house of shoddy build, the ceiling was riddled with gaps everywhere.—While inside the rooms one wouldn’t notice them, but when viewed from the dark attic, those gaps proved startlingly large—and occasionally even contained knotholes.

When he discovered this peerless stage called the attic, Saburo Gouda’s head was once again flooded with that criminal obsession he had unwittingly forgotten. On this stage, he could undoubtedly perform "mock crimes" far more stimulating than those he had attempted before. The moment he thought this, he could barely contain his excitement. How on earth could he have remained unaware until today that such fascinating possibilities existed right under his nose? Roaming the dark world like a demon, peeking one after another at the secrets of nearly twenty lodgers in Tōeikan’s second floor—just that alone was already thoroughly delightful for Saburo. And, for the first time in ages, he even felt a sense of purpose.

He did not neglect to dress like a genuine criminal from the very start of his preparations, to make his "attic strolls" all the more intriguing. A snug, dark brown woolen shirt and matching long underwear—if possible, he would have preferred to wear a jet-black shirt like the female thief Protea from old movies, but unfortunately he owned no such thing, so he resigned himself to compromise—tabi socks on his feet, gloves on his hands—though the attic’s rough-hewn wood left little worry of leaving fingerprints—and in his hand, instead of the pistol he craved but lacked, he decided to carry a flashlight.

Late at night—unlike daytime—the amount of light seeping through was vanishingly small. In darkness where even an inch ahead proved indistinguishable, he moved along the ridgepole in that attire with painstaking care to avoid making any sound—stealthily, stealthily—until he began feeling an uncanny thrill, as though he had transformed into a snake slithering around a thick tree trunk. Yet through some twist of fate, that very eeriness thrilled him to the marrow.

In this way, for several days, he continued his "attic strolls" in a state of ecstasy. During that time—contrary to expectations—various events occurred that delighted him, events so numerous that merely recounting them could fill an entire novel. However, as these matters bear no direct relation to this story’s main plot, they must regrettably be passed over here, with only two or three examples briefly mentioned. The bizarre fascination of peering through ceiling gaps is something one could scarcely imagine unless they’d actually tried it. Even if no particular incident were occurring below, simply observing humans who—believing themselves unwatched—revealed their true natures proved thoroughly fascinating. When he observed carefully, he discovered—not without surprise—that some people’s behavior and even their facial expressions changed completely depending on whether others were present or they were alone. Moreover, unlike viewing from the side at eye level as usual, looking down from directly above created such a difference in perspective that even an ordinary room felt remarkably strange. With humans, the tops of their heads and both shoulders; with objects such as bookshelves, desks, chests of drawers, and braziers—only their upper surfaces were primarily visible. The walls themselves were nearly invisible; instead, behind every object spread an expanse of tatami mats.

Even when nothing particular was happening, beyond such inherent interest, there would often unfold scenes of comical, tragic, or terrifying spectacle. The scene of a company employee who routinely espoused radical anti-capitalist rhetoric secretly taking out his newly received promotion notice from his briefcase, putting it away, then taking it out again to gaze at it delightedly countless times when unobserved; the scene of a stockbroker who flaunted audacious luxury by wearing a sleek silk crepe kimono as everyday attire, yet at bedtime folded that garment with feminine care—not only laying it under his futon but even meticulously licking stains from it (they say saliva best cleans small blemishes on such fabric)—performing a peculiar sort of laundering; the scene of a pimple-faced youth who was a university baseball player timidly placing a love note for a maid on his finished dinner tray, then retracting it, replacing it, and fidgetingly repeating this act with an unathletic hesitancy; even the scene of some lodgers brazenly bringing in prostitutes(?) and performing such lurid antics as one hesitates to describe—all these could be observed without restraint, seen as much as one wished to see.

Saburo also took interest in studying the emotional conflicts between lodgers. The spectacle of the same individual adopting different attitudes depending on their counterpart—there were those who, having just exchanged smiles in conversation moments prior, would enter the adjacent room and berate the other as if facing a mortal enemy; others flitted about like bats, spouting convenient pleasantries wherever they went while sticking out their tongues in derision behind closed doors. And when it came to female lodgers—there was a female art student on Tōeikan’s second floor—the interest only intensified. It was far from a mere "love triangle." Not only could one see the complex, pentagonal and hexagonal relationships as tangible as if held in one’s hand, but even the true intentions of the individuals—unknown to any of their rivals—were laid bare solely to the outsider known as the “attic stroller.” In fairy tales there exists something called a magic cloak of invisibility; Saburo in the attic was, so to speak, wearing just such a cloak.

If, on top of that, one could remove the ceiling boards of others’ rooms, sneak inside, and play various pranks, it would have been even more amusing—but Saburo lacked the courage for that. There were hidden passages weighted with stone blocks—similar to those in Saburo’s room—approximately one every five meters along the ceiling; sneaking in would have been straightforward enough, but there was no telling when the room’s occupant might return, and even otherwise, all the windows were transparent glass shoji screens, posing a risk of detection from outside; moreover, between prying open the ceiling board to descend into the closet, sliding open the fusuma to enter the room, and clambering back up the closet shelves to return to the attic—it was impossible to guarantee silence throughout. If they noticed it from the corridor or adjacent room, it would all be over.

Now, it was late one night. Saburo was making his way from beam to beam to return to his room after completing a circuit of his "stroll," when across the garden from his quarters—in precisely the opposite wing—he suddenly noticed a faint gap in the ceiling at one corner that had previously escaped his detection. It measured roughly two inches across with a cloud-like outline, a thread-fine sliver of light seeping through. Wondering what it was, he quietly switched on his flashlight and inspected it. The gap turned out to be a sizable wood knot—more than half detached from the surrounding board, its remaining portion barely clinging on—that had narrowly avoided becoming a full knothole. A mere nudge with a fingernail would dislodge it completely. After verifying through another gap that the room’s occupant lay asleep below, Saburo painstakingly worked to remove it without sound, finally succeeding after considerable effort. Conveniently, the resulting knothole formed a cup shape with its narrower bottom portion—as long as he pressed the wooden plug back into place, it wouldn’t drop downward, leaving this sizable peephole undetected by anyone below.

He thought this was a clever setup. Peering down through the knothole—unlike the other gaps that were vertically long but frustratingly narrow at barely a few millimeters in width—even the narrower bottom portion measured over an inch in diameter. The entire room lay easily visible before him. There, Saburo found himself pausing his journey to peer into the room—which, by chance, belonged to Endo, among Tōeikan’s lodgers the one Saburo found most repulsive: a dental school graduate currently working as an assistant at some dentist’s office. That Endo lay sleeping right below him, his already smooth and featureless face—the kind that made one’s skin crawl—now rendered even more flat and lifeless. The man appeared absurdly fastidious—the interior of his room was organized more meticulously than any other lodger’s. The position of stationery on the desk, the arrangement of books in the bookcase, the way the futon was laid out—even the unfamiliar-shaped alarm clock placed by the pillow (perhaps foreign-made), the lacquered cigarette case, and colored glass ashtray—each detail attested that their owner possessed a fastidiousness bordering on neurosis, the sort who would pick apart every minute detail like someone probing a multi-tiered box’s corners with a toothpick. Furthermore, Endo’s own sleeping posture was remarkably proper. The sole incongruity amidst these scenes was the fact that he lay with his mouth agape, snoring like thunder.

Saburo frowned as if looking at something dirty and gazed at Endo’s sleeping face. His face was, in a way, handsome. Indeed, as he himself boasted, his face might be one that women found appealing. But what a drawn-out, elongated facial structure it was. Thick hair; a face that was overall long yet oddly narrow at the forehead; short eyebrows; narrow eyes; crow's feet that seemed perpetually smiling; a long nose; and an abnormally large mouth. Saburo couldn't stand this mouth. From beneath the nose, a step-like formation protruded bulkily forward with both upper and lower jaws, their entire area presented a strange contrast against the pallid face as large purple lips hung agape. And whether due to hypertrophic rhinitis or some such condition, he kept his nose perpetually congested and breathed through that large mouth hanging agape. The fact that he snored while sleeping must also have been due to the nasal disease.

Whenever Saburo saw Endo’s face, a tingling sensation would creep up his back, and he would feel an urge to suddenly punch those smooth, featureless cheeks of his.

IV

And then, while gazing at Endo’s sleeping face, Saburo suddenly hit upon a peculiar idea. It was the idea that if he spat from that knothole, it would neatly enter into Endo’s widely opened mouth. Because his mouth was positioned directly beneath the knothole as if custom-made for it. Out of sheer curiosity, Saburo pulled out the string from his fundoshi undergarment worn beneath his hakama trousers, dangled it vertically over the knothole, and pressed one eye against the string as if aligning a rifle’s sights. When he tested this arrangement, an uncanny coincidence revealed itself. The string, the knothole, and Endo’s mouth aligned perfectly at a single point. In other words, he realized that if he were to spit from the knothole, it would undoubtedly fall into his mouth.

Of course, he couldn’t actually spit down at him. Saburo replaced the knothole as it had been and was about to leave when—a terrifying idea suddenly flashed through his mind. In the attic’s darkness, he turned deathly pale and trembled violently. It was indeed the thought of killing Endo—who had given him no reason for hatred. Not only did he bear no grudge against Endo, but they had not even known each other for half a month yet. Moreover, since their move-in dates had coincidentally fallen on the same day, they had merely visited each other’s rooms two or three times on that basis, with no particular depth to their relationship. Now, as for why he came to consider killing Endo—as I mentioned earlier, while his repulsive appearance and behavior—so detestable as to make one want to strike him—did play some role, Saburo’s primary motive in this scheme lay not in the person of his target, but solely in his fascination with the murderous act itself. As I have been explaining, Saburo’s mental state was highly abnormal, afflicted by what could be called an addiction to crime, and since among such crimes it was murder that most captivated him, the emergence of such ideas was by no means accidental. Until now, even if he had often harbored murderous impulses, it was only that he had never once thought to act on them for fear of discovery.

However, in Endo’s case now, it seemed that murder could be carried out without incurring any suspicion or fear of discovery. As long as there was no danger to himself, Saburo wouldn’t hesitate over such matters—even if the target were a complete stranger. Rather, the more cruel the act of murder became, the more his abnormal desires were satisfied. Now, as to why the murder of Endo alone would go undetected—or at least why Saburo believed it would—there existed the following circumstances.

It was about four or five days after moving into Tōeikan. Saburo went out to a nearby café with a fellow lodger he had just befriended. Endo happened to come to the same café, and the three gathered around a table drinking sake—though Saburo, who disliked alcohol, had coffee—until they all grew quite cheerful and returned together to the boarding house. Somewhat drunk from the liquor, Endo insisted, “Well now, come to my room,” and forcibly dragged them into his quarters. Endo alone grew boisterous, heedless of the late hour—calling the maid to make tea and repeating amorous tales carried over from the café. It was from that night Saburo began to detest him. At that moment, Endo—running his tongue over crimson bloodshot lips—proudly declared the following.

“With that woman, you see, I once attempted a lovers’ suicide.” “When I was still in school—you see, mine was a medical school.” “Getting the poison was no trouble at all.” “So I prepared enough morphine to let the two of us die easily—get this—and we ended up heading out to Shiohara.”

As he said this, he unsteadily stood up, went to the closet, rattled open the sliding door, retrieved a tiny brown bottle—no larger than a pinky fingertip—from the bottom of a trunk stacked inside, and presented it to the listeners. Inside the bottle, at the very bottom, was contained a mere speck of some sort of glittering powder. “That’s it. “This tiny bit is enough to kill two people, you know. “But you all—I really don’t want this getting talked about.” “...to outsiders.”

And though his amorous tales had continued at great length without end, Saburo now found himself unwittingly recalling that poison from that time. "Drip poison from the knothole in the ceiling and commit murder! What an outlandish, magnificent crime this is!" He became utterly ecstatic over this ingenious scheme. Upon closer examination, it became clear that this method was merely dramatic and lacking in feasibility. Moreover, there should have been any number of simpler murder methods available without resorting to such a laborious approach. Yet he, bewitched by this abnormal idea, had no capacity to consider anything else. And in his head, only convenient rationalizations about this plan kept surfacing one after another.

First, I needed to steal the poison. But that was no trouble at all. If I were to visit Endo’s room and engage him in conversation, sooner or later he would likely excuse himself—to use the restroom or some such reason. In that time, all I needed do was retrieve the small brown bottle from the familiar trunk. Since Endo wasn’t constantly checking the bottom of that trunk, he probably wouldn’t notice anything missing even after two or three days. Even if he were to notice—since merely possessing such poison was already illegal—there would be no reason for it to become public. Moreover, if I did it skillfully enough, no one would ever figure out who stole it.

Wouldn’t it be easier to sneak in from the ceiling rather than go through all that? No—that was dangerous. As he had mentioned earlier—there was no telling when Endo might return—and there remained the risk of being seen through the glass-paneled door outside. First of all—unlike Saburo’s room—Endo’s ceiling lacked that escape route weighted down with a stone block. How could anyone possibly manage such a perilous act—prying off nailed-down ceiling boards and slipping inside?

Now, if he were to dissolve the powdered drug obtained this way in water and drip it into Endo’s large mouth—perpetually agape due to his nasal ailment—that would suffice. The only concern was whether Endo would swallow it properly—but that would be fine. Because the drug required only an extremely minute amount—if prepared at high concentration—a few drops would suffice, so if administered during deep sleep, he likely wouldn’t even notice. Even if he did notice, there probably wouldn’t be time to spit it out. Moreover, Saburo knew morphine was bitter, but with such minimal quantity and sugar mixed in, there was no risk of failure—after all, no one would imagine poison raining from above, so in that critical moment, Endo would never notice.

However, would there be a scenario where the poison failed to take effect properly—whether due to an overdose or underdose relative to Endo’s constitution—leaving him in mere agony without death? This was the problem—admittedly, it would prove extremely regrettable if so—but there remained no danger to Saburo himself. For the knothole had originally been properly sealed, and no dust had yet accumulated in that section of the attic either. Therefore, no traces would remain. Fingerprints had been prevented through gloves. Even were the dripping of poison from the ceiling discovered, there existed no means to determine whose doing it was. Moreover, given their recent interactions being common knowledge—showing no resentful relationship between him and Endo—no logical basis existed for suspicion to fall upon him. But even without such considerations, Endo—deep in slumber—could never have discerned the direction from which the poison descended.

This was the self-serving logic Saburo had devised both in the attic and after returning to his room. The reader must have already noticed that, even if all the aforementioned points were to proceed smoothly, there remained one critical flaw beyond them. But, strangely enough, until he finally began carrying it out, he had not noticed it in the slightest.

V

It was about four or five days later when Saburo, having chosen an opportune moment, visited Endo’s room. Needless to say, during that time he had considered this plan over and over until he could confirm there was no danger. Not only that—he had also added various new refinements. For instance, there was his scheme concerning disposal of the poison bottle. If he succeeded in killing Endo, he resolved to drop the bottle down through the knothole. By doing so, he would secure two advantages. First, he would avoid the trouble of hiding what would become critical evidence if discovered; second, with the poison container lying beside the corpse, everyone would surely conclude Endo had committed suicide. Moreover, the man who had once heard those amorous tales alongside Saburo would undoubtedly provide perfect proof that the bottle belonged to Endo himself. Another favorable circumstance was that Endo slept each night with everything securely fastened. The entrance was of course secured with metal fixtures from within, as were the windows—making it utterly impossible to enter from outside.

On that day, with tremendous patience, Saburo engaged in a long conversation with Endo—Endo, whose very sight made his stomach churn. During their conversation, he barely managed to suppress the dangerously extreme urge—repeatedly arising through veiled hints of murderous intent—to frighten his companion. "I’ll kill you soon—in a way that leaves no evidence whatsoever; your days of prattling on like a woman are numbered. You’d better get all your talking out now while you still can." Saburo gazed at the other man’s ceaselessly moving, large lips while repeating such thoughts in his mind. The thought that this man would soon become a bloated blue corpse filled him with unbearable delight.

While they were deep in conversation，sure enough，Endo got up to go to the restroom. It must have been around ten o'clock at night by then．Saburo，leaving nothing to chance，carefully checked his surroundings—including outside the glass windows—and then，making no sound but working swiftly，opened the closet and retrieved the familiar medicine bottle from the trunk. Since he had previously noted exactly where it was kept，searching for it wasn’t difficult． But even so，his heart pounded violently，and cold sweat trickled from his armpits． To tell the truth，the most dangerous part of his current plan was this task of stealing the poison． There was no telling what might cause Endo to return unexpectedly，and someone might be watching． But regarding that，he had reasoned as follows． If I were discovered—or even if not—if Endo noticed the missing medicine bottle—that would become apparent soon enough if one paid close attention． After all，I had the advantage of the ceiling peephole；all I needed to do was abandon the murder． After all，merely stealing poison wouldn’t amount to any serious crime．

Be that as it may, in the end, he had managed to obtain the medicine bottle without anyone noticing. When Endo returned from the restroom shortly after, he casually brought the conversation to a close and returned to his room. Then, having drawn the curtains tightly over the windows and secured the entrance door, he sat down at his desk. With his heart racing, he took out a charming little brown bottle from his pocket and began gazing at it intently.

MORPHINUM HYDROCHLORICUM(o.g.) This was likely written by Endo. The small label bore these characters. Though he had read pharmacology texts and knew something of morphine, this marked his first encounter with the actual substance. This must be what they called morphine hydrochloride. Holding the bottle up to the lamp, he peered through it to see a scant half-teaspoon of white powder—so meager it barely registered—glittering with pristine brilliance. He found it uncanny enough to wonder: Could this truly kill a man?

Saburo naturally had no precise scale to measure it with, so concerning the dosage he had no choice but to trust Endo’s words—yet even drunk as he had been that time, Endo’s demeanor and tone had hardly seemed nonsensical. Moreover, the numbers on the label showed exactly twice the lethal dose Saburo knew of, so there could hardly be any mistake.

Thereupon, he placed the bottle on the desk, arranged the prepared sugar and water beside it, and began earnestly mixing with the meticulousness of a pharmacist. The lodgers all seemed to have already gone to bed, and the surroundings were steeped in profound stillness. As he carefully dripped clear water soaked into a matchstick—drop by drop—into the bottle, his own breath began to resound with a strange, horrifying intensity, like the sigh of a demon. How that must have satisfied Saburo’s perverse tastes! Before his eyes floated the figure of that ancient tale’s terrifying witch—grinning slyly in the darkness of a cavern, her gaze fixed on a cauldron of poison bubbling and seething.

Yet, at the same time, from that very moment, an emotion resembling terror—one he had never anticipated—began to well up in a corner of his heart. And with the passage of time, little by little, it began to expand.

MURDER CANNOT BE HID LONG, A MAN'S SON MAY, BUT AT THE LENGTH TRUTH WILL OUT. That eerie Shakespearean quote he had memorized from someone’s citation radiated a blinding light that seared into his brain. Even as he clung to his ironclad conviction that this plan held no possible flaw, he remained helpless against the anxiety swelling inexorably with each passing moment.

To kill a person who’s done you no harm—just for the thrill of murder—is that the act of a sane mind? Are you possessed by a demon? Have you gone mad? How can you not find your own heart utterly terrifying?

For a long time, unaware of the night deepening, he sat lost in thought before the bottle of poison he had finished mixing. He decided to abandon this plan once and for all. Countless times he had nearly resolved to do so. But in the end, he simply could not bring himself to relinquish the allure of that murder.

However, as he vacillated between these thoughts, with a start, a fatal fact flashed through his mind.

“Hff hff hff…” Suddenly, Saburo began laughing—as if something struck him as unbearably comical—though he took care to remain quiet in the sleeping stillness around him.

"You idiot! What a first-rate clown you make! To hatch such a scheme with deadly earnestness... Has your numbed brain lost even the ability to distinguish chance from necessity? Just because Endo's gaping mouth lay directly under that knothole once—what makes you think it would be there again? No—if anything, isn't that nearly impossible?"

It was an utterly farcical mistake. His plan had already fallen into a grand delusion at its very inception. But even so, how could he have failed to notice something so obvious until now? It must truly be said to be strange. Is this not evidence of a significant defect in his brain—he who carried himself as though so clever? Be that as it may, through this discovery, he was greatly disappointed on one hand, yet simultaneously felt an odd sense of relief on the other.

"Thanks to this, I no longer have to commit that horrifying murder. 'Phew, saved!'"

That said, from the very next day onward, whenever he went on his "attic strolls," he would lingeringly open that familiar knothole and never failed to monitor Endo’s movements. This was partly due to his anxiety that Endo might notice the stolen poison, but it could not be said he wasn’t longing for the chance that, somehow, his mouth would come directly beneath the knothole again as it had before. In fact, he had never once let his poison leave his shirt pocket during any of his "strolls."

Six

One night—it had been about ten days since Saburo began his "attic strolls."

For ten whole days—crawling through the attic countless times daily without ever being noticed—his efforts were no simple matter. Meticulous attention—no, such commonplace words could never express it—Saburo was once again prowling the ceiling space above Endo’s room. With a feeling akin to drawing a fortune slip—would it be good or bad?—he wondered if today might finally bring good fortune. Praying that the gods would grant him auspicious luck, he opened the familiar knothole and peered through.

Then, ah—could it be that his eyes were deceiving him? There, in precisely the same position as when he had last seen it, lay Endo’s mouth—snoring—directly beneath the knothole. Saburo rubbed his eyes repeatedly to verify, then removed the cord from his loincloth and even took measurements—there could be no mistake. The cord, the hole, and the mouth formed a perfect straight line. He barely stifled the cry that nearly burst from his lips. In the darkness, he turned deathly pale—caught between the joy of this long-awaited moment and an indescribable terror, their collision sparking an uncanny excitement within him.

He took the poison bottle from his pocket, steadied his trembling fingertips with deliberate effort, removed the stopper, and used the string to aim—oh, that indescribable feeling in that moment!—plop plop plop, several drops. That was all he could manage. He immediately closed his eyes.

“Did he notice? He must have noticed.” He must have noticed. “And now—oh now—at any moment—what a scream he’ll let out!” If his hands had been free, he thought he might have covered his ears.

Despite his considerable precautions, Endo below made neither a groan nor a sound. Since I definitely saw the poison fall into his mouth, there could be no mistake about it. But what could explain this silence? Saburo timidly opened his eyes and peered through the knothole. Then Endo mumbled and moved his mouth, rubbing his lips with both hands in a gesture—as if he had just finished doing so. Once again, he fell soundly asleep, snoring loudly. How true it was that fearing proved harder than doing. Endo, in his drowsy state, remained completely unaware he had swallowed the terrible poison.

Saburo was staring fixedly at the pitiable victim’s face without moving a muscle. How interminable it felt—though in reality less than twenty minutes had passed, to him it seemed as though he had been doing so for two or three hours. Then, at that moment, Endo suddenly opened his eyes. And then, raising his upper body, he looked around the room with a puzzled expression. Perhaps feeling dizzy, he shook his head, rubbed his eyes, muttered meaningless phrases like delirious ramblings—displaying various madness-tinged gestures—yet finally lay back down on his pillow, only to begin tossing and turning vigorously this time.

Before long, the strength of his tossing gradually weakened until he stopped moving altogether, only to be replaced by thunderous snores that began to reverberate. When he looked, the man’s complexion had turned crimson as if drunk, with beads of sweat welling up at the tip of his nose and across his forehead. Within his sleeping form, a terrifying life-and-death struggle might now be unfolding. The thought of it made the hair on his body stand on end.

Before long, that once-crimson complexion gradually faded to white as paper, and no sooner did it do so than it rapidly transformed into a bluish-indigo hue. And before he knew it, the snoring ceased, and indeed, the frequency of his inhalations and exhalations diminished... When suddenly his chest stopped moving—he thought this must finally be the end—after a while, as if remembering something, his lips quivered once more, and a faint breath returned. Such a thing repeated two or three times, and that was the end of it... He no longer moved. On the face that had slipped limply from the pillow, a smile of a kind utterly separate from those of our world surfaced. He had finally become what one might call a 'Buddha.'

Holding his breath, clenching his sweaty hands, and staring intently at the scene, Saburo let out a sigh of relief for the first time. At last, he had become a murderer. Even so, what an effortless way to die that was. His victim had died without uttering a single cry, without even a look of agony on his face, all while snoring. "What... So murder's this anticlimactic?"

Saburo found himself feeling strangely let down. In the realm of imagination, murder had been the ultimate fascination, but when actually carried out, it proved no different from any other mundane affair. "If this was how it worked," he thought, "I could still kill any number of people." Yet even as he entertained such thoughts, an indescribable terror began creeping into his emptied heart.

In the pitch-dark attic, amidst monster-like beams and crossbeams crisscrossing vertically and horizontally, Saburo suddenly felt creeped out by the sight of his own figure clinging to the ceiling below like a gecko or some such creature, staring at a human corpse. An eerie chill crept up his neck, and when he suddenly strained his ears, he even felt as though somewhere, slowly, slowly, his own name was being called. Involuntarily tearing his eyes away from the knothole, even as he looked around in the darkness—likely due to having stared too long at that bright spot—before his eyes, large and small yellow ring-like things appeared one after another only to vanish. When he stared fixedly, from behind those rings, Endo’s grotesquely large lips seemed about to abruptly emerge.

But he had undoubtedly carried out exactly what he had initially planned. Dropping the poison bottle—which still contained several drops of toxic liquid—through the knothole; plugging the hole afterward; checking with a flashlight to ensure no traces remained in the attic; and once satisfied there were no oversights, he hurriedly crawled along the ridgepole and returned to his room.

"Finally, it’s done."

His head and body felt strangely numb, and with an anxious mood—as if he had forgotten something—that he forcibly heightened, he began dressing inside the closet. But at that moment, he suddenly realized—what had become of that string from the fundoshi he had used for measuring? Could it be that he had forgotten and left it there? At this thought, he hurriedly felt around his waist. It didn’t seem to be there. He grew increasingly flustered and checked his entire body. Then, why had he forgotten such a thing? Wasn’t it properly tucked away in the shirt pocket after all? Relieved with a mental "Whew, that was close," he started retrieving the string and flashlight from the pocket when—startlingly—another object was found inside. ...the small cork stopper from the poison bottle was inside.

When he had poured the poison earlier, thinking it would be disastrous to lose track of the stopper later, he had deliberately stored the cork in his pocket, but it appeared he had forgotten about it and only dropped the bottle down below. Although it was a small thing, leaving it as is would be the source of the crime’s discovery. He steeled his fearful resolve, returned to the scene once more, and had to drop it through the knothole.

That night, when Saburo went to bed—by that time having ceased sleeping in the closet as a precaution—it was around three o'clock in the morning. Even so, thoroughly agitated, he found himself unable to fall asleep. If he had been careless enough to forget dropping the stopper, there might have been other oversights too. At this thought, his anxiety became unbearable. Forcing his disordered mind to settle, he began retracing each action of that night in sequence, checking for any lapse. Yet within his own reckoning, he could find nothing amiss. In his crime, no matter how he considered it, there existed not the slightest oversight.

He had continued thinking this way until daybreak, but when the sound of early-rising boarders walking through the hallway to reach the washroom finally reached his ears, he abruptly stood up and began preparing to go out. He feared the moment when Endo's corpse would be discovered. What attitude should he adopt when that time came? If by any chance he were to behave strangely in a way that might later invite suspicion, that would spell disaster. He therefore concluded it would be safest to be away during that interval—but wouldn't going out without eating breakfast seem even more suspicious? "Ah! Of course—what a careless oversight," he rebuked himself. Realizing this, he burrowed back into his futon once more.

How Saburo spent those roughly two hours until breakfast in a state of nervous agitation—fortunately, nothing occurred before he had hurriedly finished his meal and fled the boarding house. When he left the boarding house, he wandered aimlessly from town to town with no particular destination in mind, simply to pass the time.

Seven

In the end, his plan succeeded splendidly. When he returned from outside around noon, Endo’s corpse had already been cleared away, and the police inspection had been fully completed. Upon inquiry—just as expected—no one suspected Endo’s suicide, and the authorities too, after conducting only a perfunctory investigation, had soon left, or so it was said. Although they had no understanding whatsoever of why Endo had committed suicide, everyone’s opinion converged on the notion that it was likely the result of a passionate affair, inferred from his usual conduct. In fact, even the fact that he had recently suffered a failed romance with a certain woman had come to light. Well, this business of endlessly repeating "I’m heartbroken, I’m heartbroken"—for a man like him, it amounted to little more than a verbal tic, carrying no real significance. But with no other apparent cause, they ultimately settled on that explanation.

Not only that, but whether there had been a cause or not, his suicide left not a single shred of doubt. The entrance and windows had been locked from the inside, the poison container lay by his pillow—and since it was known to be his possession—there remained no room for suspicion. No one entertained such absurd notions as poison having been dripped from the ceiling.

Even so, Saburo spent that entire day feeling somehow unable to fully relax—in a state of nervous agitation—but as one or two days passed, not only did he gradually calm down, he even began to take pride in his own efficiency.

How about that? Truly, I am impressive. Look—not a single person here realizes there’s a terrifying murderer living right within one of these very boarding house rooms!

He thought that if things continued like this, it was impossible to tell just how many hidden, unpunished crimes existed in the world. “The net of heaven may be vast, but its mesh is sparse—nothing escapes it.” Such notions were surely nothing more than age-old propaganda by rulers or superstitions among the masses. In reality, any crime could remain undetected forever if executed cleverly enough. He would think in such terms too. Admittedly, even he found nights unsettling—haunting visions of Endo’s deathly face flickering before his eyes—and since that night, he had discontinued his usual “attic strolls.” Yet this was merely a matter of his mind, something he would surely forget in time. In reality, as long as the crime remained undiscovered, wasn’t that sufficient enough?

Now, it was exactly three days since Endo had died. Saburo had just finished his evening meal and was using a toothpick while humming to himself when Akechi Kogoro unexpectedly came to visit after a long absence.

“Hey.” “It’s been some time.”

They exchanged greetings with apparent ease, but Saburo—given the circumstances—could not help feeling somewhat uneasy about this amateur detective’s visit. “They say someone at this boarding house drank poison and died.” Akechi, having taken his seat, immediately brought up the very subject Saburo had been trying to avoid. Undoubtedly, he had heard about the suicide from someone and—fortunately, since Saburo was in the same boarding house—must have come to visit out of his inherent detective-like curiosity.

“Ah, Mokubihi𣵀.” “I wasn’t present during the commotion, so I don’t know the details, but it seems to have been the result of a passionate affair.” Saburo answered in this manner, feigning an expression of personal interest while trying not to let his desire to avoid the topic show. “What kind of man was he, anyway?” Immediately Akechi pressed further. For some time thereafter, they continued exchanging questions and answers about Endo’s character, the cause of death, and the method of suicide. At first Saburo had responded to Akechi’s questions nervously, but as he grew accustomed to them he gradually became more careless, until he even began feeling inclined to mock the detective.

“What do you think?” “I wonder if this might not be a murder after all.” “Not that I have any particular evidence, but there are often cases where what one firmly believes to be a suicide turns out instead to be murder.” "How about that? Even the great detective probably couldn’t figure this out," he thought mockingly, as Saburo went so far as to say such things. That was unbearably delightful to him. “That’s hard to say.” "Actually, when I first heard about this from a friend, I too felt the cause of death was a bit unclear." “What do you think—could we go take a look at Mr. Endo’s room?”

“No trouble at all.” Saburo answered rather smugly. “In the neighboring room, there’s a hometown friend of Endo’s, you know. He’s been asked by Endo’s old man to keep his things. If I tell him about you, he’ll gladly show us.”

Then, the two of them decided to go and see Endo’s room. At that moment, walking at the head of the corridor, Saburo was suddenly struck by a strange sensation.

"The criminal himself guiding the detective to the scene of the murder—there’s never been such a thing in all history."

He barely managed to suppress the grin spreading across his face. In his entire life, Saburo had likely never felt as triumphant as he did at this moment. "Boss!" He felt like giving himself such a rallying cry—so consummate was his villainy in that moment.

Endo’s friend—a man named Kitamura who had testified that Endo had been heartbroken—was well acquainted with Akechi’s name and obligingly opened Endo’s room. Endo’s father had come from his hometown and completed the provisional funeral earlier that afternoon; inside the room, his belongings remained unpacked and left as they were.

The discovery of Endo’s unnatural death had apparently occurred after Kitamura left for work, and while he did not know the exact circumstances of its discovery, he provided a rather detailed explanation by piecing together what he had heard from others. Saburo too chattered about it as if he were a complete outsider, spinning rumors and such. While listening to both men’s explanations, Akechi surveyed the room with an expert’s scrutiny when he suddenly noticed the alarm clock on the desk—and stared at it for a long time, though his thoughts remained unclear. Perhaps its peculiar decoration had caught his eye.

“This is an alarm clock, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Kitamura elaborated at length. “It was Endo’s pride and joy.” “He was an extremely methodical man—without fail every night, he’d wind it to ring at six in the morning.” “Someone like me always relied on hearing that bell from the next room to wake up.” “It was no different even on the day he died.” “That morning too, since it had gone off as usual, I never could’ve imagined such a thing had occurred.”

When he heard this, Akechi ran his fingers through his long hair, tousling it vigorously, and assumed an air of intense concentration.

“There’s no doubt that the alarm went off that morning, correct?” “Yes, there’s absolutely no doubt about that.” “Did you not mention this to the police?” “No… but why are you asking such a thing?” “Why? Because isn’t it strange? For someone who resolved to commit suicide that night to have wound the alarm clock for the next morning—”

“I see—now that you mention it, that does seem odd.” Kitamura had apparently been too obtuse to notice this point until now. Moreover, he still didn’t fully grasp what Akechi was implying—though this was hardly unreasonable. The locked entrance, the poison container lying beside the corpse, and all other circumstances had made Endo’s suicide appear beyond doubt.

However, upon hearing this exchange, Saburo felt a shock as if the ground beneath his feet had suddenly begun to crumble. And he couldn't help but bitterly regret his own foolishness in bringing Akechi to such a place.

Akechi then began to investigate the room with even greater thoroughness. Naturally, he would not overlook the ceiling either. He tapped each ceiling board one by one, thoroughly investigating whether there were any traces of human entry or exit. To Saburo's relief, even the astute Akechi appeared not to have noticed the novel method of dripping poison through a knothole and resealing it exactly as before; having confirmed that not a single ceiling board had been pried loose, he ceased further investigation.

Well, in the end, that day came to an end without any particular discoveries. After finishing his inspection of Endo’s room, Akechi returned to Saburo’s place, exchanged casual conversation for a while, and then left without incident. However, I cannot neglect to record the following exchange that occurred during that casual conversation, for though it may appear completely trivial at first glance, this matter in fact is of the utmost importance to the conclusion of our story.

At that moment, Akechi said while lighting an Aerushi he had taken from his sleeve—as if suddenly noticing something—

“You haven’t smoked a single cigarette since earlier—have you quit?”

When he was told this, Saburo realized that over the past two or three days, he had not once smoked those cigarettes he so dearly loved—as if he had completely forgotten about them. “That’s strange—I’d completely forgotten about it. And even though you’re smoking like that, I don’t feel the slightest urge.” “Since when?” “Now that I think about it, I haven’t smoked for two or three days—that’s right, since I bought this Shikishima here on Sunday, that means I haven’t smoked a single one for three full days now.” What’s wrong with me?

“So that’s exactly since the day Mr. Endo died.” When he heard that, Saburo instinctively gasped. However, since he could not possibly imagine any causal relationship between Endo’s death and his own cessation of smoking, he had simply laughed it off at the time, but upon later reflection, it turned out to be no laughing matter—nothing so trivial. —And strangely enough, Saburo’s aversion to cigarettes persisted indefinitely thereafter.

8

At the time, Saburo found himself unsettled by that alarm clock matter, unable to sleep soundly at night. Even if it were discovered that Endo hadn't committed suicide, there should be no evidence whatsoever to suspect him as the perpetrator—he shouldn't need to worry so much—but knowing Akechi was aware of this made it impossible to feel at ease.

However, about half a month passed without incident. The Akechi he was worried about did not come even once afterward.

"Well, well—is this finally the grand finale, I suppose?"

Thus, Saburo finally began to let his guard down. And though he was sometimes tormented by terrifying dreams, by and large, he was able to spend pleasant days. What particularly pleased him was that, ever since committing that murder, various amusements he had previously felt no interest in had strangely become fascinating. Therefore, these days, he left the house nearly every day to roam about and amuse himself.

One day, Saburo had again stayed out late and returned home around ten o’clock. Having decided to go to bed, he casually slid open the closet door to take out his futon—and that was when it happened.

“Gah!”

He suddenly let out a terrified scream and staggered back two or three steps. Was he dreaming? Or had he gone mad? There, inside the closet, hung the head of that dead Endo, hair disheveled, dangling upside down from the dimly lit ceiling.

Saburo first attempted to flee, reaching the doorway, but feeling he might have misperceived something external, trembling with fear he turned back and stealthily peered into the closet once more—only to find not only was there no mistake, but this time the head suddenly grinned at him. Saburo let out another gasp, leapt to the entrance in one bound, slid open the shoji screen, and tried to flee outside.

“Mr. Gouda.” “Mr. Gouda.” When he saw this, repeated calls of Saburo’s name began emanating from within the closet. “It’s me. “It’s me.” “You don’t need to run away.”

Since this was not Endo’s voice but rather that of someone from outside whose voice he seemed to recognize, Saburo finally managed to halt his flight and timidly turned to look. “My apologies.”

As he said this, descending from the closet ceiling in the same manner Saburo himself had often done before was—unexpectedly—none other than Akechi Kogoro. “My apologies for startling you.” Akechi, now dressed in Western clothes and emerging from the closet, said with a smirk. “Just thought I’d try imitating you.” This was indeed a fact more real—and far more terrifying—than any ghost. Akechi must have grasped everything beyond doubt.

At that moment, Saburo’s state of mind was truly indescribable. Every conceivable matter spun like a windmill in his head, leaving him as blank as when not thinking anything at all—so that all he could do was stare vacantly at Akechi’s face. “Let’s get straight to it—this is your shirt button, isn’t it?”

Akechi began in a thoroughly businesslike tone. In his hand he held a small shell button, thrusting it before Saburo’s eyes as he—

“I checked with the other boarders, but none of them have lost such a button.” “Ah, that’s from your shirt.” “Look, the second button on your shirt is missing, isn’t it?”

With a start, he looked down at his chest—sure enough, one button was missing. Saburo had not noticed at all when it had come off. “The shape matches too—no mistake there. By the way, where do you think I found this button?” “It’s in the attic—and right above Mr. Endo’s room at that.” Even so, how could Saburo have lost something like a button without noticing? And at that time, shouldn’t he have thoroughly checked with a flashlight?

“Wasn’t it you who killed him?” “Mr. Endo.” Akechi grinned innocently—which felt all the more eerie under these circumstances—peered into Saburo’s desperate eyes like probing an impasse, and delivered his final thrust. Saburo thought everything was finished now. Even had Akechi constructed ever so ingenious deductions—if they remained mere deductions—there would still have been ample room for rebuttal. But confronted with this unforeseen physical evidence—there was nothing left he could do.

Saburo stood frozen with a childlike expression on the verge of tears, remaining silent endlessly, endlessly. Before his eyes—which sometimes grew hazily blurred—strangely enough, events from the distant past, like those from elementary school days, would surface phantom-like.

About two hours later, they remained in the same state as before, having maintained almost the same posture the entire time, facing each other in Saburo’s room. “Thank you for properly revealing the truth.” Finally, Akechi said. “I would never report you to the police or anything like that. I simply wanted to confirm whether my judgment was correct.” “As you know, my interest lies solely in ‘knowing the truth,’ so anything beyond that is of no real concern.” “And you see, there isn’t a single piece of evidence for this crime.” “The shirt button… Haha… That was my trick.” “I thought you wouldn’t admit anything unless there was some physical evidence.” “When I visited you before, I noticed your second button was missing, so I decided to make use of it.” “Well, I went and got this from a button shop.” “No one really notices when a button comes off, and since you were agitated, I thought it would probably work out, you see.”

“As you know, my doubts about Mr. Endo’s suicide began with that alarm clock. Afterward, I visited the chief of this precinct’s police station and obtained a detailed account from a detective who had conducted the inspection here. According to his report, a morphine hydrochloride bottle was found rolling inside a tobacco box, its contents spilled onto the cigarettes. The police didn’t pay particular attention to this, but don’t you think it’s rather strange? They say Endo was an extremely meticulous man—someone who had even prepared himself properly to die lying in bed. Yet he supposedly placed the poison bottle inside a tobacco box and spilled its contents over the cigarettes? Doesn’t that strike you as unnatural?”

“So I grew increasingly suspicious, but what suddenly struck me was that you had stopped smoking since the day Endo died. Don’t you think these two coinciding matters are somewhat strange when considered mere coincidence? Then I remembered how you used to take such delight in those crime imitation games. You had a perverse proclivity for criminal acts.” “I came to this boarding house frequently since then, investigating Endo’s room without your knowledge. Since I had determined the criminal’s passageway wasn’t outside the ceiling, I resolved to investigate the boarders’ activities through your so-called ‘attic strolls.’ Especially above your room, I often crouched for long periods. And I thoroughly observed your restless behavior.”

“The more I investigated, the more every circumstance pointed to you.” “But unfortunately, there isn’t a single piece of conclusive evidence.” “So you see,” “That’s why I devised that little performance—hahahahaha!” “Well then, I’ll take my leave.” “We likely won’t meet again.” “Because—look—you’ve already resolved to turn yourself in, haven’t you?”

Saburo no longer felt any emotion, even toward this trick of Akechi’s. He remained oblivious to Akechi’s departure, vaguely wondering what it must feel like to be executed. He was simply sitting there vaguely pondering such things. He had thought he hadn’t seen where the poison bottle fell when dropping it through the knothole—yet in truth, he had clearly witnessed the poison spilling onto the cigarettes. And so, that being suppressed into his subconscious, it mentally made him develop an aversion to tobacco.