Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Cursed Masterpiece

"What has happened to you?"

The young and beautiful Mrs. Kimiko followed after her husband, Sannosuke Tanahashi, and stepped out into the corridor of the Imperial Theater.
It was just the moment when the performance by a certain renowned pianist from France had begun.

“I can’t stand it—that piece is horribly ill-omened for me.”

“Oh—”

Though leaving after only listening to the first movement of Chopin’s “Funeral March Sonata” was considered quite a rude attitude, the beautiful wife did not resist in the slightest and settled herself deeply into one of the large round chairs at the entrance alongside her husband.

“Nothing good ever comes from listening to that piece—I did check the program beforehand, so I shouldn’t have been caught off guard like this, but who would’ve thought they’d include such a piece on opening night? That’s where I made my grand mistake.”

Sannosuke Tanahashi flicked his lighter to ignite the cigar, exhaling an indulgent plume of purple smoke as he spoke to his wife—though still making some effort to lower his voice.

At thirty-seven or thirty-eight, he carried the thriving appearance of a businessman yet retained an irrepressible boyishness—a quality undoubtedly nurtured by having inherited his predecessor’s enterprise without struggle, quietly amassing wealth through tradition, the shop’s noren curtain, and a dutiful manager.

Youthful enough to appear fashionably Westernized and exuding an enchanting aura, the wife—seeming to resent her husband’s stubborn attitude—slid closer across the cushion and placed her delicate hand on the man’s plump, rounded knee.

“Oh, but if you speak so loudly, it will be heard inside.”

“But saying such things isn’t without basis. As you know, I don’t care about unlucky days or dire directions, but somehow that Funeral March alone terrifies me.”

“What happened?”

Though it gave an eerie feeling, she seemed sufficiently stirred by curiosity. Looking up at her husband’s face, she narrowed large eyes and twisted slightly protruding lips—just as she always did when wheedling something from him.

“Don’t you laugh—”

Sannosuke began speaking with an air of carefree detachment that defied their surroundings, hearing in the distance what seemed to be the Funeral March concluding and giving way to the lively Presto of the fourth movement.

“Back in my student days, people said that Pachmann’s recording of that piece was cursed.
“From my own experience too—starting with my mother dying the very night after I bought that record—every time I played that Funeral March recording, some terrible thing would happen one after another. It was truly uncanny.”

Having said that far, Sannosuke cut off his words with a huff.

“Oh...”

“Finally—though I don’t know whether I should speak of this—Takashi’s mother—you’ve heard the stories, yes? She used to play the piano often—when she was alive, that was the piece she favored playing. And there’s more—”

As the conversation grew unexpectedly serious, Mrs. Kimiko furrowed her beautiful brows and drew closer to her husband with a shiver. She appeared to be twenty-four or twenty-five years old, with a somehow delicate constitution. Her haori—modest yet sewn with a luxurious all-over pattern—slipped softly from her shoulders as if about to slide off entirely, giving her a fragile air reminiscent of a paper doll.

“That’s enough—I’m scared, I tell you.”

“There’s just one more—five or six years ago, when we hosted a large gathering at our house, there was a pianist named Ishii among the guests. When someone requested a piece, what he played was that one.” “At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, but the next day, my father suffered cardiac paralysis and died.”

“How horrid.”

“That’s why I’m telling you that piece is terrifying! There’s no other piece as beautiful as that, but I just can’t bear to listen to it.”

As they were having such a conversation, it seemed the first part had ended, and as if driven out by thunderous applause, a flood of audience members began streaming into the corridor from all entrances.

“What’s the matter? Sneaking out halfway through like that?”

The one who had spotted them from afar and approached by weaving through the jostling crowd of well-dressed men and women was a man of the same age as Sannosuke with a handsome beard—Kimiko’s brother, Dr. Shiro Sakamaki.

“He says that piece is ill-omened and he hates it—”

As if to silence Mrs. Kimiko’s impulsive remark,

“You shouldn’t say such embarrassing things—I stayed up too late playing mahjong last night. Must be the lack of sleep making this headache unbearable.”

“What a shame—it was a magnificent Funeral March.”
“Why, Ms. Yamakita here was weeping buckets—”

“Oh Doctor, I did no such thing.”
“My eyes were simply bothering me.”

The tutor Michiko Yamakita emerged from the crowd behind them, approaching alongside a frail-looking boy of twelve or thirteen—Sannosuke’s son from his former wife, his only child Takashi.

Yamakita was a lonely woman of thirty-two or thirty-three who seemed to be a widow, her face stiff like an artificial human—perhaps from grief—yet despite this, she possessed an inexplicably alluring quality, like a carelessly handled gemstone whose brilliance could never be fully wrapped away. However, her deeply lined face was as cold as a mask; with her slightly receding forehead and the slight limp in her gait—no matter how charitably one considered it—she was by no means a beauty.

“Ms. Yamakita, your eyes aren’t bad at all—you were crying after all.”

"Oh, Young Master."

While embracing the intelligent-looking boy and guiding him toward his father's side, the tutor nevertheless blushed.

“It’s unusual to cry over a piano—whereas when hearing gidayū, someone like Ms. Yamakita here gets positively flustered! Ha ha ha!”

“Oh...”

As if to mediate her husband’s boisterous laughter, Kimiko gently turned toward the tutor.
Looking at her solitary figure in black mourning attire and slightly hunched, unattractive appearance—even if her face retained some semblance of allure—there was not a trace of anything that might stir jealousy in the high-strung wife.

Questionable Death

Sannosuke Tanahashi’s premonition had come true with dreadful precision.

The only child, Takashi, was found the next morning as a cold corpse atop his own bedroom bed.

“Master! The Young Master—the Young Master—”

Startled by the sound of knocking on the bedroom door, Sannosuke Tanahashi rushed out in his sleepwear to find the tutor Michiko Yamakita collapsed on the corridor carpet. Her unnervingly lined face had stiffened as she sobbed tearlessly.

“What’s happened?”

“The Young Master… he’s turned cold.”

“What?”

Barefoot, Sannosuke raced down the stairway and rushed into Takashi’s bedroom.
The beloved child’s corpse, lying peacefully with closed eyes upon the bed, no longer responded to his father’s desperate attempts to rouse him.

“Takashi! Takashi!”

When his hand—which had touched the forehead, cheek, and shoulder—recoiled at their horrifying coldness, Sannosuke planted his knees in his sleepwear beside the bed and broke into anguished, masculine sobs. Not only was this his only child, but within this frail boy who had just turned thirteen lingered the unforgettable visage of the former wife from whom he had parted ten years prior.

When he raised his face after a while, he saw Michiko Yamakita—the tutor clinging to the opposite side of the bed—also sobbing as if her body would float away. Though she had been employed for only a year, this woman’s affection for her pupil was remarkable to the point of being strange—so much so that even the doting Sannosuke sometimes felt jealous.

Before long, Kimiko, who had at least changed into her sleepwear, rushed in in a fluster.

“Takashi-san, what’s happened? Poor thing… Takashi-san.”

The wife circled around to the front of the bed and pressed her slender hand against the boy’s pale forehead, but recoiled in horror at the terrible coldness of death and withdrew it.

Dr. Sakamaki, who had been summoned by telephone, arrived by automobile in less than ten minutes.
After pushing aside the grieving people and conducting a thorough examination, all that could be determined was that the cause of death was cardiac paralysis and the time of death was around 2 AM.
The death of a thirteen-year-old boy from cardiac paralysis in the middle of the night was strange, to be sure, but with no other possible diagnosis to apply, one had no choice but to accept it.
Moreover, since he had always been frail—a textbook case of an adenopathic constitution—no one raised any doubts about his sudden death in the middle of the night.

Given that it involved a child, they held the farewell ceremony the following day and planned to take him directly to the crematorium that evening. The handling of this thirteen-year-old life seemed poised to conclude swiftly and without hesitation—until that very evening, when an unforeseen incident arose, utterly shattering this program.

It was from the jurisdictional police station—requesting an initial inspection of the corpse—that the judicial officer arrived accompanied by two detectives and a police doctor.

The father was a businessman of both reputation and status, and Dr. Sakamaki’s death certificate should have had no oversights; ordinarily such a thing would not occur. However, since a grave anonymous letter had arrived via express mail at the jurisdictional police station, they could not simply disregard it.

The anonymous letter was written on ordinary stationery using post office-supplied ink and stated: “The death of Sannosuke Tanahashi’s only child, Takashi, is undoubtedly murder.”

The phrase—“If you do not conduct an autopsy before cremation, it will be a grave oversight”—was written in somewhat rough yet quite skilled penmanship.

However, even the police doctor’s meticulous postmortem examination ultimately yielded nothing of value.
The corpse bore not even a wound as slight as a heron’s feather prick—no congestion, no discolorations, no traces of anguish—nor was there the slightest suspicion of death by poison.
Through Dr. Sakai’s explanation—revealing the chronic swelling of hilar lymph nodes, gastrointestinal frailty, and symptoms of hypochondria—the police doctor found himself compelled to attribute it solely to cardiac paralysis.

“At this point we’ll have to perform an autopsy—though even then it’ll likely prove futile.”

Since the police doctor made such pronouncements, the matter became practically settled.

“Anonymous letters do sometimes contain baseless accusations, you know.”

The judicial officer showed little enthusiasm.

As a precautionary measure, they investigated every family member yet found not a single suspicious individual among them.

On the way back from the concert, Dr. Sakamaki—who had accompanied them this far—engaged in idle chatter until eleven o’clock before departing, and Master Sannosuke and his wife retired to their bedroom at the same time.

The tutor Michiko Yamakita and Takashi withdrew to their respective rooms around the same time, and Takashi immediately entered his bedroom.
However, as there were times when his nerves became too heightened for him to sleep, the tutor and the boy had separate bedrooms, and a call bell had been installed by the boy’s pillow so he could summon help even in the middle of the night.

Sannosuke Tanahashi slept soundly and knew nothing; Mrs. Kimiko also claimed she did not take a single step out of her bedroom; and Michiko Yamakita, who had been sleeping in the adjacent room to Takashi, was said to have slept surprisingly well and likewise knew nothing.
Sannosuke’s love for Takashi was blatantly obvious, and Mrs. Kimiko—perhaps due to her lack of children of her own—doted on this stepson as if he were her own flesh and blood.
Michiko Yamakita’s doting was similarly excessive; just as a wet nurse can sometimes show deeper affection than a mother, this tutor too devoted herself wholeheartedly to raising her pupil.
The rest were just servants; even if there had been no locks, there should have been no one entering the master’s child’s bedroom in the middle of the night.

Murder or death from illness?

The jurisdictional police station settled the matter there, but the next day, the same anonymous letter was delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Metropolitan Police Department.
The letter’s wording was largely similar but adopted an extremely grave tone: “Trusting the attending physician’s nonsensical medical certificate and failing to conduct an autopsy constitutes a grave oversight.”
“There are by no means few clever murders where the cause of death remains unclear,” it severely rebuked, even citing famous examples from forensic medicine.

When the reasoning had become so well-founded, even a single anonymous letter could no longer be ignored.
They immediately halted the cremation and conducted an autopsy the following day, but ultimately found nothing conclusive.

As we had already seen, there were absolutely no external injuries. In foreign criminal cases, there had been instances where a gunshot to the ear canal—with the blood wiped away—made determining the cause of death impossible, but since a full autopsy had been performed, such a thing should not have remained unclear. There were also cases where a needle had been inserted from the hairline into the cerebellum, but naturally, no such traces were found.

Injections—such as powerful poisons or intravenous air injections—had been considered, but the skin across the entire body was as smooth as a peeled hard-boiled egg, with no traces of flea bites found.
The stomach contents had also been examined with utmost care, but not a trace of poison or anything of the sort was found—yet on the other hand, no conclusive evidence that he had died of illness could be obtained.
Indeed, as Dr. Sakamaki had stated, the hilar lymph nodes were markedly swollen and the gastrointestinal tract was weak, but these were merely indicative of a frail boy with an exudative constitution—there was no disease present that would have caused immediate death.

“Indeed.”
“If we don’t call it cardiac paralysis—”

The doctor had also completely given up.

“Is there absolutely no way to regard this as murder?”

When the assistant raised his face with a puzzled look,

“There’s just one point that could be doubted—but it’s unthinkable.”

With that said, the doctor fell silent.

However, the incident did not end there.

In the water pitcher in Michiko Yamakita’s bedroom—the one they had carelessly forgotten to refresh since that commotion—a clearly identifiable, considerably concentrated hypnotic drug was discovered mixed in.
When questioned, Michiko Yamakita claimed to know nothing about it; however, given her nightly habit of taking painkillers before bed, there was no doubt that someone had introduced the hypnotic drug into the water pitcher to ensure the tutor remained unconscious through the night.

But in the end, that was all there was to it.
If the autopsy had concluded Takashi’s death wasn’t murder, what could possibly come from pursuing it further?

Countless anonymous letters poured into the Metropolitan Police Department and Prosecutor’s Office: “Takashi’s death was undoubtedly murder.”
“Leaving this unattended is negligence,” they stated—but since bereaved relatives overwhelmed by grief often develop monomania, and there were precedents of grudge-bearers fabricating accusations against blameless third parties, the police and Prosecutor’s Office paid no heed whatsoever.

The grief of the father, Sannosuke Tanahashi, and the tutor Michiko Yamakita was so pitiful to witness, but as days passed, that too gradually faded. Moreover, Mrs. Kimiko’s composed demeanor—grieving without showing it—and her frequent comforting of her husband must have also played a role. Another factor was that Sannosuke—healthy and driven by business ambition—increasingly spent more time forgetting about Takashi without consciously trying to.

Once the student had died, there was naturally no longer any need for Michiko Yamakita as a tutor. There had been talk of simply keeping her employed and having her work as a housemaid, but since she was not yet of an age to be considered decrepit and her strangely alluring appearance as a middle-aged woman in black attire was not good for Mrs. Kimiko’s nerves, it was decided to dismiss her once Takashi’s forty-ninth day memorial service had passed.

Terrifying Memory

“Ah!”
“Who the hell is playing that song?!”

Master Sannosuke, having returned home, jumped out of the car and involuntarily shouted toward the entrance.

On the fiftieth day since Takashi’s death—from within the house where they had just completed the memorial service yesterday—the sound of a piano being played with abandon resonated crisply all the way to the entrance.
Moreover, the piece was Chopin’s ill-omened *Funeral March*—it was no wonder Sannosuke had involuntarily shouted his way into his own house.

“Welcome home, sir.”

The maids who had come to greet him appeared somewhat nervous due to the master’s unusually foul mood.

“What happened to the mistress?”

“—The mistress has gone to Kabuki.”
“Since today marks the end of the Young Master’s mourning period, she said she would go out for a change of scenery after so long—and that you, Master, were supposed to come directly from the company to Kobikicho…”

Despite making a puzzled face at the master’s sudden return, one elderly woman who appeared to be the head maid offered this explanation as if apologizing.
Now that he heard it, Sannosuke realized Kimiko had indeed been saying such things for two or three days prior.
Even so, something didn’t sit right.

“I got a call from Ms. Yamakita at the company. She said there was something she needed to discuss with the mistress and told me to come home right away—how suspicious… What’s she up to now?”

“She is playing the piano upstairs.”

The head maid, who seemed to resent the tutor’s overstepping behavior, spoke in a sharply pointed manner.

“What?! Ms. Yamakita?!”
“Ms. Yamakita...?”
“Is that Ms. Yamakita?”

Sannosuke was utterly astonished.
The fact that Michiko Yamakita, the tutor, was playing the piano was something he had never imagined, and moreover, judging by what he could hear from here, she was quite the professional.
Not only Mrs. Kimiko, of course, but even Takashi’s piano teacher couldn’t possibly play that well.

And yet—to play Chopin’s *Funeral March*, of all things ill-omened for this house—what on earth was she thinking?

“Don’t any of you come upstairs.”

Sannosuke, gripped by some grave emotion, flung off his overcoat and hat as he stepped onto the plush carpet and ascended to the second floor.

Cracking open the grand hall door just enough, he peered inside. Luxurious furnishings glowed under the streaming sunset that filled the room. There, immersed in that light at the window-side grand piano, sat the tutor Michiko Yamakita’s back—but what an astonishing transformation!

Perhaps believing this day marked her farewell to the house, she had discarded her usual black Western attire. Now clad in a Kohama-style crested kimono—its hem adorned with antique silk motifs popular a decade prior—and a Nishijin brocade obi woven with mountain cherries against black fabric, her nape exposed beneath a slightly antiquated high-rooted chignon, the figure’s back view bore no resemblance to the Michiko Yamakita known until now.

Sannosuke Tanahashi stopped short, startled without knowing why.
He recognized this woman.
He had been made to realize with clarity that this was unmistakably a woman he had known from much longer ago—not as Michiko Yamakita.

First, neither the antique silk-dyed Kohama crepe kimono with its old-fashioned crest nor the black-ground obi woven with mountain cherry blossoms—a peculiar aesthetic choice—were things Sannosuke had seen for the first time in recent days. They were phantoms from old, long-buried memories he had kept at arm’s length in daily life—yet paradoxically, they belonged to his most vivid and profound recollections.

The *Funeral March* was drawing to its close.
Its peculiar accent—a sob-like, visceral sorrow—and its terrifying expression, reminiscent of demonic spirits screaming from the underworld, were shaking Sannosuke’s old memories, ones he had tried yet failed to forget.

That was not all. Following the beautiful curve of the woman’s neck—bathed fully in the setting sun—from there tracing back behind her left earlobe, Sannosuke’s eyes discovered something astonishing. A tiny, tiny red mole, so faint it was barely there.

“Ah!”

At the moment he saw it, even Sannosuke was so aghast that he let out an involuntary cry.

The mole burned ruby-red like a flame, yet its minuscule size meant one would never have noticed it had Michiko Yamakita worn her hair tied at the nape in her customary style; even when coiled into a high chignon, the mark would have remained invisible unless bathed in sunset light.

Complete Disguise

The woman, startled by Sannosuke’s voice, turned around.
She wore unusually light makeup, but the mere sight of her cheeks—where deep dimples formed when she smiled forlornly—shattered Sannosuke’s memories and illusions to dust.
This woman could not possibly be someone from Sannosuke’s past—no matter how one considered it, she could only be Michiko Yamakita herself, who had entered their home just a year prior as the late Takashi’s tutor.

“Was it you? Was it you—”

“What are you so startled about?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Sannosuke ran his hand from his forehead to his cheek as if brushing away clinging cobwebs, then plopped down heavily into the armchair.

“You look quite pale.”

He brushed aside Michiko as she drew near.

“No, it’s really nothing—your figure from behind bore such a striking resemblance to someone I knew long ago that I was simply taken aback.”

“Oh—is it only my figure from behind? Does my face not resemble hers at all?”

“Not in the slightest.”

An ironic smile curled on Sannosuke’s lips.

“That person must have been more beautiful than I.”

“No—”

Though he had spoken the denial, Sannosuke’s face offered unconditional confirmation of Michiko’s words.

“Today I must finally take my leave. Finding our parting too poignant to endure alone, I allowed myself this small indulgence of playing the piano during your absence.”

Michiko stood up from before the piano and approached Sannosuke’s side.

“That’s fine—but why didn’t you ever play the piano so skillfully before?”

“No, I’m not skilled at all. Moreover—when I play, it inevitably becomes that piece. Fearing it might displease you, I refrained from doing so.”

“By that, you mean—”

“The way you played it must hold so many memories for you—”

“What on earth are you saying?!”

Sannosuke was aghast once more.
Leaning on the armchair’s backrest and peering forward in a half-crouch—how cold the woman’s face was!
Just seeing those obsidian-like eyes, Sannosuke’s entire body seemed to freeze solid.

“And then there’s the ruby-like mole behind my ear—”

“What?”

“The antique-silk-dyed Kohama crested kimono, the black-ground obi woven with mountain cherry blossoms—you must harbor extraordinary memories of these as well.”

“Don’t spook me with nonsense—what exactly are you? What are you to that woman?”

Sannosuke finally stood up.
Waving both arms as if warding off evil spirits, he tried to drive the woman toward the doorway.

“I’m not trying to threaten you. Take a good look.”

“…………”

The woman took a step forward. In the melancholic yet resplendent spring sunset, she exposed that eerily cold face—a face that seemed to have sealed away all passion before smothering it entirely with reason—

“Please examine my face closely. While my receding temples are partly due to age, one could easily broaden the forehead with a single pair of tweezers, you see.”

“…………”

“You must know that eyebrows can be reshaped into any form through hair implant surgery.”
“If I were to shave down these overly thick eyebrows and shape them into a slight crescent, what do you think I’d look like?”

“…………”

“Creating double eyelids from monolids is a simple procedure, but changing eye color is said to be the most difficult.”
“Even so, by injecting pigment into the iris, brown eyes can become black eyes, and black eyes can become brown eyes.”
“What if these pitch-black eyes of mine were just a bit more brown?”

“…………”

“The nose can be shaped into any form through paraffin injections or ivory inlays.”
“What if my nose were a bit lower, forming a soft curve?”
“Altering the shape of lips or realigning teeth requires only a little effort—even dimples can be freely created with electric needles—”

So saying, Michiko Yamakita deeply indented a dimple into one cheek and smiled sadly.

“That’s absurd! That’s absurd—”

Sannosuke, who had been staring at Michiko’s face as if entranced, staggered two or three steps, braced one hand against the corner of the table, and suddenly adopted a combative tone.

“Even after I’ve explained this much, if you still fail to comprehend—you are cowardly.”

“I’m not being cowardly, but I absolutely cannot believe such a thing.”

“There’s no reason you can’t believe it—the one standing before you is your former wife, Takashi’s deceased mother, Seiko, who parted from you ten years ago.”

“That’s impossible! Your face is different—completely different!”

“My face has been remade by renowned plastic surgeons from Japan and America as though it were practice sheets.”
“I couldn’t accept the half-hearted temporary disguises devised by people of old.”

“No—it’s a lie! A lie! Seiko should be dead!”

“Exactly as you say—I should have been dead.”
“However, no one saw the corpse, and no one held a funeral for me.”

“Ah, ah—I’m going out of my mind!”

Sannosuke finally collapsed as if struck down, throwing his upper body onto the sofa.

Robotic laughter

“I shall tell you everything.”

After observing Sannosuke’s condition for a while, Seiko—the mysterious woman who had introduced herself as Michiko Yamakita—sat down on the same sofa beside him and, switching to a quiet tone, began thus:

“There can be no doubt that I had a habit of stealing.”
"When the wife of businessman Sannosuke Tanahashi was discovered habitually shoplifting at department stores, even after the divorce, far from resenting you, I resigned myself to it as my own doing and remained grateful for your intervention in sparing me from arrest—that alone felt like salvation."

Seiko’s reminiscence carried an irrepressibly mournful undertone beneath its strangely brisk and businesslike delivery.
Observing Sannosuke’s face—torn over how to respond—with melancholy, she pressed on without regard for details.

“I spread rumors of my own death and actually went to America.”
“For eight years after that, how I toiled—studying and working there—and how I labored to alter even my face, figure, and voice.”
“To transform my face like this, I underwent every possible modern plastic surgery procedure. I used chemicals to swell my vocal cords and change my soprano voice into an alto. To make my body feel entirely different, I even severed the tendon in my right leg and deliberately became lame.”

What a terrifying disguise!
At this point, it was less a disguise than outright destruction—or perhaps rebirth. Sannosuke Tanahashi could only stare in silent astonishment at the utterly transformed figure of the former wife.

“I became so concerned about Takashi that I couldn’t endure it any longer.”
“Moreover, I wanted to see you again after all this time—when I heard through others that you were seeking a tutor, I moved every possible lever and finally infiltrated this household for that very purpose.”

Though she stressed her desire to meet her child, Seiko’s lingering attachment to her former husband Sannosuke must have remained thoroughly intact.
Her body, seated alongside him on the sofa, kept edging closer toward Sannosuke—the impulse to blindly press against him tormenting her with such vivid intensity it seemed nearly palpable.

“What happened afterward goes without saying.”
“The position I once held has been taken by Mrs. Kimiko—someone like me can no longer even approach it.”
“At least Takashi—the child I bore—unaware I was his true mother, blindly drawn by instinct to become attached to me… This consolation allowed the past year to pass without incident.”
“If only Takashi hadn’t been killed—”

“Hey, wait a minute!”
“Do you think Takashi was killed?”

The words of Sannosuke, who had sat up in surprise, had unawares reverted to those of his former self as a husband.

“W-well, no matter what anyone says, Takashi was undoubtedly murdered.”
“I, his mother, sensed it through instinct.”

“That’s impossible! The police, Dr. Sakamaki—”

“Do you think those can be trusted?”

It was Seiko’s piercing voice.

“Why do you say Takashi was killed? I’m Takashi’s parent too—give me a more detailed explanation.”

“I repeatedly warned both the police and prosecutor’s office—to no avail, as you’ve seen. Now there remains no choice but for me to personally exact vengeance upon Takashi’s enemy. For fifty days I researched without sleeping—not even closing my eyes at night—until I finally unraveled this secret.”

“Huh? What does that mean? Tell me!”

“Takashi was indeed killed.”
“That night, the culprit who drugged me also drugged you, killed Takashi in that very manner, and maintained an innocent facade all along.”

“Who is that?”

Sannosuke, half-believing and half-doubting, showed signs of agitation.
Even though she had been divorced for her kleptomania, knowing this woman Seiko’s extraordinary mental fortitude and tenacious investigative spirit made him want to question her seriously when told this.

“I’ll explain that later—if Takashi’s cause of death wasn’t poison, a blade, or an injection, then what could it be? They say even a timid child might die simply from fright, but Takashi’s expression was utterly serene—I simply cannot accept he perished from anything so crude.”

“…………”

“I considered many possibilities.”
“I read books and asked people—and finally, when I visited my distant nephew, a young medical scholar, I was told something extraordinary.”

…………

Under the terrible pressure, Sannosuke gulped audibly deep in his throat.

“People with an exudative constitution—that is, those with hypersensitive parasympathetic nerves—apparently have their heart function cease due to vagus nerve effects when a certain area is compressed using a specific method.”
“They wouldn’t disclose the specifics, deeming it too dangerous, but the German researcher Aschner, who published this experiment, reportedly documented a case where someone died using this method, and in Japanese experimental cases, there are accounts of doctors nearly killing patients.”

Seiko cut off her words there.

“…………”

A terrifying silence.

“Needless to say, Takashi was the very model of an exudative constitution—and to make matters stranger, Dr. Sakamaki—Mrs. Kimiko’s biological brother—had long been subjecting him to peculiar examinations under the pretext of treating neurasthenia: blindfolding him, making scratches on his arms, and other such oddities.”

“That’s impossible! Lies! Dr. Sakamaki is a gentleman—he’d never kill Takashi!”

“No, I’m not saying Dr. Sakamaki killed him.”

“Then who? Who claims Takashi was killed?”

“Dr. Sakamaki merely wrote a diagnosis of cardiac paralysis.”

“Who? Who is it?”

As Sannosuke became seized by violent agitation, Seiko conversely grew increasingly calm.

"I'll show you the culprit."

"Come on, show me!"

“First,”

“What do you mean ‘first’? What do you need?”

“You will reward me for my success, won’t you?”

“I’ll reward you—what do you want?”

“Love—like in the old days.”

“Nonsense!”

As Sannosuke tried to shake her off, Seiko lunged at his neck in a flash and wrapped both arms around it—

“What the—? What are you doing?”

he exclaimed—but too late.

The allure of a bewitching middle-aged woman revived in that single instant—even on her uncanny face, remade like an artificially crafted human’s, a flame-like passion and strange beauty bloomed riotously.

“Let go!”

“Enough. I won’t do anything more.”
“Now, come inside. Takashi’s enemy—I’ll show you the murderer’s terrifying form.”

Amidst a peculiar excitement, Sannosuke trembled with dreadful anticipation and followed Seiko.

Once out in the hallway, proceeding straight to the third door on the left and opening it revealed Sannosuke’s study.

“————”

Seiko silently entered and was pointing toward the far side.

When he looked, there in the corner of the room, leaning against an armchair and sleeping peacefully, was the figure of the beautiful Mrs. Kimiko—dressed in her finest attire—who had been the sole recipient of Sannosuke's love.

“What? Kimiko? Don’t tell me… you?”

“You must be shocked—that woman is the one who killed Takashi.”

“That’s impossible! Kimiko!”

Resolute, Sannosuke approached and touched Kimiko’s forehead—it was like ice.

“Ah—she’s dead!”

“Ho… ho… hohoho.”

A tremendous robotic laugh tore through the study’s air as twilight approached.

“You’re the one who killed her—aren’t you?”

When he flared up and tried to lunge at her, she swiftly dodged and slipped outside the door.

“As you’ve guessed—fortunately for us, that woman also had an exudative constitution, so she died with just a little effort.”

“Demon! Demon! Wait!”

“The medical certificate will be provided by that woman’s brother, Dr. Sakamaki—cardiac paralysis—”

“Demon!”

Inside, Sannosuke threw himself against the door and tried to open it—but since the key had been turned from outside, he could do nothing.

“Farewell—I will go on loving you until I die.”
“Please don’t think ill of me—the real demon is that beautiful young woman lying dead over there... Farewell.”

A voice choked with tears gradually faded away toward the stairs.