Pathway to Japanese Literature

Gathered in search of abnormal excitement, seven solemn men (myself among them) leaned back in the deep armchairs upholstered with scarlet velvet—chairs specially prepared for this so-called "Red Room"—and waited with bated breath for tonight's storyteller to begin some bizarre tale.

At the center of the group of seven, upon a large round table likewise draped in scarlet velvet, three thick candles inserted into an ornately carved antique candlestick burned while swaying faintly, their gentle flicker casting tremulous shadows.

Around all four walls of the room, leaving not even windows or entrance doors uncovered, heavy crimson draperies hung from ceiling to floor, forming rich folds.
The romantic candlelight, like blood freshly flowing from a vein, cast our seven unnaturally large shadow figures against the surface of the dull black drapery.
And those shadow figures, moving with the candle flames, crawled along the curves of the drapery's folds - stretching and shrinking as if they were several gigantic insects.

As always, that room made me feel as though I were sitting inside the heart of some impossibly gigantic creature.
To me, that heart seemed to beat with a sluggishness befitting its size, even making me feel as though I could hear its thudding pulse.

No one spoke.
I was gazing absentmindedly through the candlelight at the shadow-filled, reddish-black faces of the people seated across from me.
Those faces, strangely enough, seemed as expressionless as Noh masks, not even twitching a muscle.

At last, Mr. T—tonight's designated storyteller and new member—while remaining seated and staring fixedly at the candle flames, began to speak as follows.
I watched with a feeling akin to observing some strange mechanical automaton as his jaw—appearing skeletal in the play of shadows—clacked desolately together with each word uttered.

“Though I certainly consider myself sane and people do treat me as such, I don’t know whether I’m truly sane.”
“I may be a madman.”
“Even if not to that extent, I might be some sort of mental patient.”
“In any case, I find this world boring to a strange degree.”
“The very act of living has become utterly, unbearably tedious to me.”

"In the beginning, though, there was a time when I indulged in various worldly pleasures like anyone else, but not a single one of them could comfort my innate boredom; rather, they only left me disappointed, thinking 'Is this all the world has to offer? How utterly dull.'"
"And gradually, I became hesitant to do anything."
"For instance, when told about some supposedly thrilling activity that would surely send you into raptures - 'Oh! Such a thing exists? Let's try it immediately!' - instead of getting excited, I would first thoroughly imagine all its potential pleasures in my mind."
"And after exhaustively imagining it all, I always end up dismissing it with 'Oh, it's nothing special.'"

In that manner, for a time I literally did nothing but eat meals, wake up, and sleep through my days.
"And so, spinning fantasies solely in my mind only to dismiss them one after another as 'This is dull' or 'That's tedious,' I lived a life more agonizing than death - yet one that appeared utterly effortless to others."

"If I had been scrambling for my daily bread like others, it might have been better."
"Even forced labor would have been bliss - anything to do at all."
"Or perhaps had I been an extraordinarily wealthy man..."
"Had I possessed such wealth, I could have indulged in splendid luxuries like history's tyrants - bloody games and various pleasures through fortune's power. But since even that remained beyond reach, I had no choice but to spend each dreary day in motionless stagnation - so listless that dying like folktale's Lazy Taro seemed preferable."

“When I put it this way, you must be thinking: ‘Exactly! Exactly! But when it comes to being utterly bored with worldly matters, we’re certainly not inferior to you.’”
“‘Isn’t that why you formed this club—to desperately seek abnormal excitement?’”
“‘It’s precisely because you too are terminally bored that you’ve now joined our circle.’”
“‘You must be thinking exactly that—we already know all about your boredom; there’s no need to explain it now.’”
“That’s absolutely true.”
“I had no need to tediously elaborate on boredom.”
“And it was precisely because I believed you understood boredom’s essence so thoroughly that I resolved to take my place here tonight and recount my peculiar personal history.”

“I had been frequenting the restaurant downstairs here so often that I naturally became on friendly terms with the proprietor, and not only had I known about this ‘Red Room’ gathering for quite some time, but I had even been urged to join on multiple occasions.”
“And yet, despite being precisely the sort of boredom connoisseur who would leap at such stories without a second thought, the reason I refrained from joining until today—though this may sound rude—is that I had been utterly bored beyond any measure you all could ever hope to match.”
“It was because I had been too bored.”

“Is it games of crime and detection? Séances and other spiritual experiments? Obscene picture films and live performances and other sensual games? Visits to prisons, lunatic asylums, and anatomy classrooms? You who can still hold even slight interest in such things are fortunate.
“I wasn’t the least bit surprised even when I heard you were planning to sneak a peek at an execution.
“For at the time when the proprietor first mentioned this matter to me, I had not only grown utterly weary of such commonplace stimuli, but had already discovered a certain marvelous game—though I hesitate to call it that given its slightly terrifying nature—something that could indeed be termed a game for me, and had become engrossed in its pleasures.”

“To state it abruptly—though you may be shocked—this game... is murder.”
“It’s real murder.”
“Moreover, since discovering that game, I have taken the lives of nearly a hundred men, women, and children—solely for the purpose of alleviating boredom.”
“You may be quick to assume that I now intend to repent of these terrible crimes and offer a confession—but rest assured, that is absolutely not the case.”
“I feel not the slightest remorse.”
“I do not fear the crimes I have committed.”
“Far from it—ah, what a dreadful state of affairs!”
“I have even grown utterly weary of the bloody thrill of murder itself lately.”
“And then, shifting from others to matters akin to killing myself, I began indulging in that opium smoking.”
“Even someone like me must have still valued my life at that point, for I endured through sheer force of will—but when even murder grows tiresome, what choice remains but to contemplate suicide? There’s simply no other way to seek stimulation.”
“I will soon have my life taken by opium’s poison.”
“When I think that, I want to lay bare everything I’ve done to someone while I can still tell a coherent story.”
“In that case, wouldn’t the members of this Red Room be the most fitting?”

“Therefore, in truth, I did not seek to join your esteemed company out of any desire for fellowship, but solely to have you all hear this strange tale of mine—which is why I was admitted as a member.”

“And fortunately, as it was stipulated that new members must share some story aligning with the club’s purpose on their very first night, I was able to grasp this opportunity tonight to fulfill my wish.”

That was roughly three years ago now.
At that time—as I mentioned earlier—having grown utterly weary of all stimulation and finding no purpose in living, I spent my days idling about like some creature named Boredom itself, until one night that spring (though it was still cold, likely late February or early March) I encountered a strange incident.
"The very incident that night became the motive for my taking nearly a hundred lives."

Having stayed up late somewhere—it must have been around one o'clock?
I think I was slightly drunk at the time.
On that cold night, I wandered aimlessly home without even taking a rickshaw.
Just one more alleyway turn—about a block from my house—and as I casually rounded that corner, I collided head-on with a man rushing toward me in apparent panic.
Though startled myself, the man seemed even more shocked; he stood frozen momentarily before blurting out under the dim streetlamp’s glow: “Is there a doctor around here?”
Upon questioning, he revealed himself as a car driver who had just run over an elderly man there—likely a vagrant wandering alone at such an hour—inflicting grave injuries.
Sure enough, a few meters ahead sat a parked car beside which lay what appeared to be a person moaning faintly.
With the police box far off and the victim suffering terribly, the driver must have prioritized finding medical help above all else.

Being familiar with the area's geography as it was near my home, and knowing well the locations of clinics, I promptly instructed him thus:

"If you go left here for about two blocks, there's a house on the left with a red lantern lit."
"It's called M Hospital."
"You should go there and bang on the door to wake them up."

Thereupon, the driver immediately had his assistant help carry the injured man toward that M Hospital.
I watched their retreating figures until they vanished into the darkness, but thinking there was no point getting involved in such matters, I soon returned home—being a bachelor—crawled into the bedding the housemaid had laid out, and likely due to drunkenness, fell asleep unusually quickly.

It was actually nothing significant.
"If I had simply forgotten that incident as it was, that would have been the end of it."
However, when I awoke the next day, I still remembered the minor incident from the previous night.
And I began pondering even unnecessary things like whether that injured man had survived.
Then, I suddenly noticed something strange.

"Oh, I’ve made a terrible mistake!"

I was startled.
Even if I was drunk, I certainly hadn’t lost my senses—so how on earth could I have directed them to take that injured man to M Hospital of all places?

"If you go left here for about two blocks, there's a house on the left with a red lantern lit..."

I still remember every word I spoke at that time.
"Why, instead,"

“If you go right there for about a block, there’s a surgeon at K Hospital.”

"I wonder why I didn't say it. The M Hospital I directed them to was a notorious quack doctor's practice—one could even doubt whether he was capable of performing surgery at all. Yet in the opposite direction from M, and much closer at that, there existed a splendidly equipped surgical hospital called K. Of course I should have known this perfectly well. Why did I give them the wrong directions when I knew better? The strange psychological state I was in at that time remains unclear even now—perhaps it could be called something like 'trunk-forgetting.'"

Having grown somewhat concerned, I had the housemaid discreetly inquire about the neighborhood rumors, and it turned out that the injured man had died in M Hospital’s examination room.
Any doctor would dislike having such an injured person brought in.
Given that it was one o'clock in the middle of the night, this was only natural, but at M Hospital, no matter how much they knocked on the door, those inside seemed to keep refusing to open it, offering various excuses.
After keeping them waiting endlessly, by the time they finally carried in the injured man, it must have already been far too late.
But if at that time the director of M Hospital had instructed them, saying something like "I’m not a specialist—take him to the nearby K Hospital," perhaps the injured man could have been saved. What utter recklessness!
He seemed to have tried to handle that difficult patient himself.
And he failed—according to rumors, Mr. M panicked and needlessly fussed over the injured man for an excessively long time.

When I heard that, I found myself feeling somehow strange.

"In this case, who exactly killed that pitiful old man?
It goes without saying that both the driver and Dr. M each bear responsibility.
And if legal punishment were to be meted out here, it would likely fall upon the driver's negligence—but in reality, wasn't the person most truly responsible none other than myself?
Had I directed them to K Hospital instead of M Hospital at that time, the injured man might have been saved without complications.
The driver merely caused injuries.
He didn't actually kill him.
Since Dr. M botched the treatment through inferior medical skills, even this can't be wholly condemned.
Even if he bore some responsibility, tracing it back reveals the fault lies with me for directing them to the unsuitable M Hospital.
In other words, through my instructions at that moment, I could have either kept the old man alive or killed him.
That the injuries were caused by the driver is undeniable.
But wasn't it I who truly killed him?"

This considers the scenario where my instructions were purely an accidental mistake, but if instead of being an error, they had stemmed from my deliberate intent to kill that old man—what would that mean?
It goes without saying.
“Have I not in fact committed murder?”
“But even if the law were to punish the driver, it would likely never even suspect me—the actual murderer.”
“Because it’s well understood that I have absolutely no connection to the dead old man.”
“And even if they were to suspect me, I would just need to answer that I had forgotten about the existence of a surgical hospital, wouldn’t I?”
“That is entirely a matter of the mind.”

“Everyone.
“Have any of you ever contemplated such a method of murder?
“It was through this automobile incident that I first became aware of it, but when I consider the matter, what an utterly treacherous place this world proves to be!
“There’s no telling when a man such as myself might deliberately—without reason—direct someone to an improper physician, causing a life that otherwise could have been preserved to be unjustly forfeited.”

This was something I later actually attempted and succeeded at—an elderly country woman was about to cross the train tracks, just as she placed one foot on the rail. Of course not only trains but automobiles, bicycles, carriages, and rickshaws were weaving through that intersection like threads in a loom, so the old woman's mind must have been thoroughly addled.

At the precise moment her foot touched the rail, let us assume an express train came barreling down like a whirlwind, closing to within three or four meters of her.

Had she failed to notice it and simply crossed, nothing would have happened—but should someone bellow "Granny, look out!" she'd instantly panic, hesitating whether to press forward or retreat.

And if we suppose the train was too close to brake in time, that single shouted warning could inflict grave injuries—or in the worst case, end her life entirely.

"As I mentioned before," I concluded, "there was indeed an occasion when I successfully killed a country bumpkin using precisely this method."

(Mr. T paused here for a moment and let out an eerie laugh.)

"In this case, I who shouted 'Danger!' am clearly a murderer."
"But who would suspect my murderous intent?"
"Would anyone imagine there exists a man who would try to kill complete strangers he bears no grudge against, merely out of an interest in murder?"
"Moreover, no matter how you interpret that warning 'Danger!', it can only be seen as having come from goodwill."
"On the surface, I may indeed be thanked by the deceased—there could never be any cause for resentment."
"Everyone, what an utterly safe method of murder this is, isn't it?"

People in the world believe that evil deeds will inevitably violate the law and receive appropriate punishment, remaining utterly complacent in their foolishness.
No one would ever imagine that the law would let murder go unpunished.
"But what do you think?
When you think about it, aren’t there countless methods of murder—such as can be inferred from the two actual examples I just mentioned—that involve not the slightest fear of breaking the law?"
When I realized this fact, rather than shuddering at the horror of the world, I found it supremely delightful that the Creator had left room for such evil.
"Truly, I was ecstatic about this discovery."
"How utterly magnificent!"
"By employing this method alone, even in this enlightened age of Taisho, I alone am effectively granted the samurai's privilege of killing with impunity."

“So I conceived the idea of alleviating that mortal boredom through this type of murder.”
“Murder that absolutely defies the law—murder no Sherlock Holmes could ever detect—ah, what an impeccable remedy for boredom!”
“Ever since then, for three years, I indulged in the pleasure of killing people, and before I knew it, I had completely forgotten even that profound boredom.”
“Everyone, you must not laugh.”
“Just like the heroic figures of the Sengoku era who performed the hundred-man slaying—though not literally cutting them down like that—I swore to myself that I would never stop these killings halfway until I had taken a hundred lives.”

“About three months ago now, I had just finished with ninety-nine people. And when only one remained—as I mentioned earlier—I had already grown thoroughly weary of even that killing, but be that as it may, how did I kill those ninety-nine people? Of course, none of the ninety-nine people held even the slightest grudge against me; since this was work I undertook purely out of interest in unknown methods and their results, I never once repeated the same approach. After killing someone, thinking about what new method I would use next became another pleasure.”

"However, I do not have the time at this gathering to recount all ninety-nine different murder methods I employed; moreover, my purpose in coming here tonight is not to confess such individual techniques, but rather to share my extraordinary state of mind—how I committed these heinous crimes to escape boredom, only to grow utterly weary of the crimes themselves and now seek my own destruction—and thereby seek your judgment. Therefore, regarding the murder methodologies, I shall limit myself to presenting merely two or three concrete examples."

Not long after I discovered this method, there occurred such an incident.
In my neighborhood, there was a masseur who was a terribly stubborn man of the sort often found among the disabled.
When others would kindly offer him various warnings, he would instead take them the opposite way—saying something like, “Don’t look down on me just because I’m blind! I know that much!”—and would invariably do the contrary of what they advised.
It was no ordinary stubbornness.

One day.
When I was walking along a main street, I encountered that stubborn masseur coming from the opposite direction.
He was walking jauntily with impudent confidence, shouldering his cane and humming a tune.
In that town, sewer construction had begun just the day before, and a deep hole had been dug on one side of the road. But being blind, he couldn't see the sign prohibiting passage on that side, so he walked nonchalantly right along the edge of the pit without a care.

When I saw that, an ingenious idea suddenly occurred to me.
So,
“Hey there, Mr. N!” I called out to the masseur by name (since I often requested his treatments and we were acquainted).
“Look out! Move left—get to the left!”
I shouted.
I did this deliberately in a somewhat joking tone.
The reasoning was that by saying this, given his usual disposition, he would surely misinterpret it as being mocked and consequently decide not to move left but deliberately shift right instead.
Sure enough, he,

“Heh heh...”
“Nothin’ but jokes!”

While retorting in a mocking tone, he abruptly took two or three steps to the right instead, immediately stepped into the sewer construction pit, and in an instant plunged to its bottom, which was over ten feet deep.
I feigned a look of shock and rushed to the edge of the pit,
"Did it work?" I wondered as I peered down, but he must have hit a bad spot—there he lay limp at the pit's bottom, likely struck by the sharp stones protruding around its edges.
On his closely cropped head, dark red blood was trickling down.
And then, apparently having bitten through his tongue, blood was flowing from his mouth and nose in the same manner.
His complexion was already pale, and he didn't even have the strength to let out a groan.

Thus, this masseur lingered in a critical state for about a week but finally passed away.
My plan succeeded splendidly.
"Who would ever suspect me?"
I had regularly patronized this masseur to such an extent that there could never have been any grudge constituting a murder motive, and moreover, since on the surface I had instructed him with "Move left, move left" to avoid the pitfall on the right, while some might acknowledge my goodwill, no one could possibly imagine that those seemingly kind words concealed such dreadful murderous intent.

Ah, what a terrifying yet delightful game it was!
The joy when devising an ingenious trick—perhaps rivaling an artist’s—the pulse-pounding tension when executing that trick, the inexpressible satisfaction upon achieving my purpose, and moreover, the spectacle of men and women who became my sacrifices—twisting in bloodied frenzy during their final agonies without ever knowing the murderer stood before their eyes—how those things lifted me to the very heights of ecstasy in those early days!

Another such incident occurred.
It was a dull, cloudy summer day when I found myself in what might be called a suburban cultural village.
I was walking through an area where a little over ten Western-style houses stood sparsely lined up.
And just as I was passing behind the most splendid concrete Western-style house among them,
suddenly, something strange caught my eye.
The reason was that at that moment, a sparrow that had just flown briskly past my nose momentarily alighted on a thick wire stretched from the roof of the house to the ground, then suddenly dropped down as if repelled and died right there.

Thinking it strange, when I looked closely, I realized that the wire extended from the lightning rod atop the pointed roof of the Western-style house.
Of course, the wire was insulated, but for some reason, the part where the sparrow had landed had its covering peeled off.
I don't know much about electricity, but I remembered hearing somewhere that strong currents could flow through lightning rod wires due to atmospheric electrical effects or something like that, and I realized that must be what happened.
Since this was the first time I had encountered such a thing, finding it unusual, I stood there for a while gazing at that wire.

Just then, from the side of the Western-style house, a group of children who seemed to be playing soldiers came out noisily. Among them was a small boy of about six or seven who remained behind alone while the others hurried off ahead. As I watched to see what he would do, he stood on a slightly elevated spot before the lightning rod wire, hitched up his front, and began urinating.
When I saw this, another ingenious idea occurred to me.
I had learned during my middle school years that water conducts electricity.
From where the child now stood on that little rise, directing his urine onto the exposed section of wire would be effortless.
Since urine is water, it would naturally conduct electricity.

So I called out to the child as follows.

“Hey kid! Try pissing on that wire there! Think you can reach it?”

Then the child,

“No problem! Watch this!”

No sooner had he said this than he shifted his stance and abruptly began urinating toward the exposed section of the wire.
And whether his stream reached the wire or not—how terrifying it was—no sooner had the child suddenly jerked upward as if dancing than he collapsed there in a heap.
Later, I heard that it was extremely rare for such a strong current to flow through a lightning rod, but in that manner, I witnessed for the first time in my life a human being electrocuted to death.

In this case as well, naturally, I had not the slightest worry of being suspected. All I had to do was offer solemn condolences to the mother clinging to her child's corpse and weeping, then leave the scene.

This too happened one summer.
"I had a certain friend whom I aimed to make my next victim—though it wasn't that I bore him any grudge; in truth, he had been my dearest companion through many years of friendship. Yet within me festered this perverse desire: to see such an intimate friend transformed into a corpse in the blink of an eye, all while smiling silently without uttering a word."

There was a time when I went to a remote fishing village in Bōsō for summer retreat with that friend.
It was by no means what one would call a proper beach resort—the sea saw only the village's coppery-skinned urchins splashing about, and as for visitors from the city aside from us two, there were merely several art student types who wandered the shoreline with sketchbooks in hand rather than actually entering the water.

Unlike well-known beach resorts where one might glimpse the elegant figures of city girls, the lodgings resembled Tokyo flophouses, and aside from sashimi, the food was unpalatably bad—it was quite a desolate and inconvenient place. However, my friend was entirely different from me, being someone who enjoyed savoring solitary life in such rustic locales, while I myself was desperately seeking an opportunity to eliminate this man. Thus, we managed to stay settled in that fishing village for several days.

One day, I took that friend to a place located a considerable distance from the coastal village—a spot that somewhat resembled a cliff.
"And while declaring things like 'This is the ideal spot for diving,' I took the initiative and removed my kimono."
My friend too, having some swimming experience, remarked "Ah yes, this looks perfect," and following my lead, stripped off his kimono.

There at the cliff's edge, I stood with arms stretched straight above my head, bellowed "One! Two! Three!" in a resolute voice, then sprang upward to trace a magnificent arc through the air before plunging headfirst into the sea below.

With a splash as my body hit the water, I used controlled breathing through chest and abdomen to slice through the surface, diving barely two or three feet before emerging like a flying fish on the far side—this being the essence of proper diving. I had been skilled at swimming since childhood, and such dives were child’s play to me. Emerging fourteen or fifteen yards from shore, I treaded water while briskly wiping my face with one hand,

“Hey, take the plunge!”

I called out to my friend.
Then, the friend, completely oblivious,

"Alright," he said while assuming the same posture I had taken, then dove vigorously after me into that spot.

However, even after some time had passed since he dove into the sea with a splash, he did not show himself again...
I had anticipated that.
At the bottom of that sea lay a large rock about one ken below the water's surface.
I had investigated it beforehand and determined that given my friend's skill level, any dive attempt would inevitably submerge him more than six feet—thus ensuring his head would collide with this rock. This was the scheme I had devised.
As you may know, skilled divers minimize their submersion depth when executing a plunge—being thoroughly practiced in this technique myself, I had surfaced beyond the underwater rock before impact—whereas my friend remained a complete novice at diving, having plunged headfirst to the seabed where he must have struck his head against the rock most terribly.

Sure enough, after waiting a short while, he suddenly bobbed up to the surface like a tuna carcass.
And he drifted at the mercy of the waves.
Needless to say, he was unconscious.

I carried him ashore and ran straight back to the village to urgently alert the inn staff.
Fishermen who had suspended their fishing came to tend to my friend—likely due to the severe cerebral trauma.
No hope remained of reviving him.
Looking closer, the crown of his head was split open with a five- or six-inch gash, white flesh bulging outward.
The ground beneath where his head had rested lay caked with a dark crimson mass of congealed blood.

Before or since, I was only interrogated by the police twice, and one of those occasions was this case. As it was an incident that occurred unwitnessed, undergoing formal questioning was only natural. However, given that my friend and I were known to have been close companions who had never once quarreled before—and considering how circumstances showed neither of us had known about the seabed rock, with my swimming skill letting me narrowly escape danger while his lack thereof caused this tragedy—the suspicions evaporated effortlessly. I even found myself receiving condolences from the police officers themselves, who told me, “We’re sorry for your loss of a friend.”

“But if I were to list each example one by one like this, there would be no end. If I may present just this much, I believe everyone has generally come to understand my so-called murder method that absolutely does not break the law. Everything follows this pattern. At times I would blend in with circus spectators and suddenly strike some absurd pose too shameful to describe here, distracting a female tightrope walker performing high above until she fell to her death; or at a fire scene, plant suggestions in a half-mad housewife searching for her child—‘Don’t you hear crying? They’re still napping inside’—making her leap into the flames to burn alive; or again, shout ‘Wait!’ in a shrill voice behind a young woman about to drown herself, startling her into plunging into the water when she might have otherwise reconsidered. Though these tales could fill endless nights, the hour grows late and I imagine everyone has had their fill of such cruelty—allow me to conclude with just one final peculiar example.”

“In what I have related thus far, it may appear that I always killed one person at a time, but there were also frequent cases where that was not so. Otherwise, I could not have killed as many as ninety-nine people in less than three years using methods that never once violated the law. Among these, the instance where I eliminated the largest number at once was—yes—last spring. I am sure you all must have read about it in the newspapers at the time—that incident where a Chuo Line train derailed, causing many injuries and fatalities. That was my doing.”

The method itself was absurdly simple, but finding suitable land to execute it proved quite troublesome. From the very beginning, I had only estimated that it would be along the Chuo Line. This was because not only did this line pass through mountainous terrain most convenient for my plans, but also since the Chuo Line already had numerous daily accidents—a derailment here would be dismissed as just another mishap, offering less conspicuous advantages compared to other lines.

Even so, finding a location that met all my specifications proved no small feat.
In the end, it took a full week before I resolved to use the cliff near M Station.
Since M Station had a modest hot-spring resort, I took up lodging there—bathing daily and taking strolls, doing my utmost to appear as a long-term convalescent guest.
This necessitated wasting another ten-odd days, but once I judged the timing finally right, one day I set out on my customary walk along those mountain paths.

And having reached the top of a small cliff about two kilometers from the inn, I waited there motionless as dusk encroached.
At the cliff's base ran train tracks curving through the terrain; across the rails stretched a deep precipitous valley where a narrow mountain stream flowed along its distant floor, visible through the haze as a faint silvery thread.

After some time, the predetermined hour came.

Though no one was watching, I deliberately feigned a slight stumble and kicked a large rock I had previously sought out and positioned.
It was placed such that even a light kick would send it rolling down from the cliff precisely onto the railway tracks.
"I had intended to try again with other rocks as many times as needed should I fail," but when I looked, that rock was perfectly perched atop one of the rails.

Half an hour later, the down train would pass over that rail. By that time it would already be pitch dark, and since the rock was positioned on the far side of a curve, the driver had no way of noticing it. Once confirming this, I hurriedly turned back toward M Station (the two-kilometer mountain path taking a full thirty minutes or more), entered the stationmaster’s office, and cried out in a thoroughly flustered tone, “It’s terrible!”

“I came here for a hot spring cure, and while taking a walk along a cliff by the tracks about two kilometers away just now, as I was about to run down a slope I accidentally kicked a rock from the cliff onto the tracks below.”
“If a train passes through there, it will surely derail.”
“In the worst case, there’s no telling if it might even plunge into the valley.”
“I tried various ways to remove that rock, but since it was an unfamiliar mountain after all, there was simply no method to descend that high cliff.”
“So, thinking it better than dawdling around, I rushed here—what do you think?”
“Could you possibly remove that immediately?”

"I said with an extremely worried expression."
Then the stationmaster was startled,

“That’s terrible! The down train has just passed through there.
“Under normal circumstances, it would have already cleared that section by now…”

he said.
That was precisely according to plan.
As we went through this exchange, a report arrived from the conductor of that down train—who had narrowly escaped the danger zone—detailing countless casualties from the derailment.
Pandemonium broke out.

Owing to procedural formalities, I was detained overnight at M Police Station—a thoroughly calculated outcome.
There could be no oversight.
Naturally I received a stern reprimand, but nothing meriting actual punishment.
Later inquiries revealed my actions didn’t even qualify under provisions like Article 129 of the Penal Code—which would have imposed a mere ¥500 fine at most.
“And thus,” I concluded, “through a single stone—without incurring so much as a penalty—ah yes, seventeen people.”
Seventeen lives successfully extinguished.

“Everyone.”
“I am the man who has taken ninety-nine human lives in such a manner.”
“And rather than feeling any remorse—indeed having grown utterly weary even of such bloody stimulation—I now stand as a man resolved to sacrifice his own life.”
“You all frown thus at my excessively cruel deeds.”
“Yes.”
“These are undoubtedly atrocities beyond ordinary imagination.”
“Yet I beg you might glimpse this feeling of mine—this terrible, unbearable boredom that compelled me to commit such enormities merely to escape it. For I could find no meaning in existence save devising such wickedness.”
“Everyone—I implore you to judge.”
“Am I a madman?”
“Am I to be named a murderous fiend?”

Thus concluded tonight’s storyteller’s terrifyingly grotesque personal account.

With eyes somewhat bloodshot and unnervingly glazed—the whites dominating in a manner befitting a madman—he looked around at each of our faces, we listeners.
However，not a single one of us responded or opened our mouths to criticize.
There, illuminated only by the eerily flickering candle flames, the flushed faces of seven men remained lined up without even a twitch.

Suddenly, something glinted on the surface of the drapery near the door.
As I watched, the silvery gleaming object gradually grew larger.
It was a round silver thing that appeared through gaps in the red drapery while gradually forming a perfect circle—exactly like a full moon breaking through dense clouds.
From the very first moment, I knew this was the large silver tray carried in both hands by the waitress bearing our drinks.
Yet even so, this Red Room’s atmosphere—which could not help but render all phenomena dreamlike—transformed that ordinary silver tray into an apparition resembling the platter from Salome’s play: one thrust abruptly from an ancient well by a slave bearing the prophet’s severed head.
And once the silver tray had fully emerged from the drapery, one could almost imagine that from behind it would spring forth a broad gleaming blade like a Qinglongdao.

But from there emerged not a thick-lipped, half-naked slave but our usual beautiful waitress. As she began bustling cheerfully among the seven men to distribute drinks, it felt as though a wind from the mundane world had blown into that phantom room utterly divorced from reality, giving rise to an indefinable sense of disharmony. She carried with her an air of the downstairs restaurant’s lively song and dance, drunken revelry, and shrill shrieks of young women—all fluttering about her person.

“Right, I’ll shoot.”

Suddenly, Mr. T said in the same composed tone as his previous storytelling voice.
Then, inserting his right hand into his pocket, he pulled out a glittering object and slowly pointed it toward the waitress.

The "Ah!" of our voices, the "Bang..." of the pistol's report, and the "Agh!" of the woman's startled scream all occurred nearly simultaneously.

Of course, we all rose from our seats in unison.
But ah! What a fortunate turn of events—the shot woman stood unharmed, blankly facing nothing but the drink vessels that had been shamelessly shot to pieces before her.

“Bwahahaha!”
Mr. T burst into laughter like a madman.

“It’s a toy! It’s a toy!”
“Ahahaha…”
“Hanako! You fell for it hook, line, and sinker!”
“Hahaha…”

So was that pistol still emitting white smoke from Mr. T’s right hand nothing more than a toy?

“Oh my… What a fright…”
“So… that’s really just a toy?”
The waitress—who seemed long acquainted with T yet still pale-lipped—approached him as she spoke.

“Well now, let me see that.”
“My goodness, it’s exactly like the real thing!”

She took the supposed toy revolver—this six-shooter—in hand as if to mask her fluster, turning it this way and that to inspect it, until—

“This is so annoying—well then, I’ll shoot you too.”

No sooner had she spoken than she bent her left arm, placed the pistol’s muzzle upon it, and with an impudent stance took aim at Mr. T’s chest.

“If you can shoot me, go ahead and try,” Mr. T said teasingly while grinning.

“I can’t get it to fire, you know.”

Bang... A gunshot sharper than before reverberated throughout the room.

"Ughh—"
No sooner had an indescribably eerie groan sounded than Mr. T abruptly stood up from his chair and collapsed heavily onto the floor. Then, flailing his limbs wildly, he began to writhe in agony.

A joke? But if it were a joke, wouldn’t this thrashing be far too realistic?

We instinctively ran to gather around him.
One from the adjacent seat took the candlestick from the table and held it out over the writhing man.
Looking, Mr. T's pallid face convulsed as he thrashed desperately—extending and contracting every muscle like a wounded earthworm writhing in coils.
And from the blackened-seeming wound on his carelessly exposed chest, bright crimson blood trickled down his white skin with each movement.

The second chamber of the six-shooter that had been disguised as a toy was loaded with a live bullet.

We stood there in a daze for what felt like an eternity, not a single one of us moving.
This incident following that bizarre tale had struck us with too violent a shock.
By the clock's measure, it might have been but a mere moment.
Yet to me in that instant, the time we spent standing there motionless seemed excruciatingly long.
For even amidst that sudden crisis—faced with the writhing injured man before us—my mind found ample space to develop the following chain of reasoning.

"This was undoubtedly an unexpected turn of events. However, upon closer consideration, might this not be a matter that had been properly written into T’s program from the very beginning? He had killed up to ninety-nine others, but might he not have reserved the hundredth for himself? And might he not have chosen this 'Red Room'—most fitting for such matters—as his final death site? Considering this man’s utterly bizarre nature, this is hardly a far-fetched notion. Exactly. That trick of making us believe the pistol was a toy and getting the waitress to fire it—isn’t that method consistent with his other murders—distinctively his own? If he arranged it this way, the waitress who pulled the trigger would have no fear of punishment. There are six of us witnesses here—in other words, could it be that Mr. T applied to himself the same method he used on others, that method which leaves perpetrators completely blameless?"

The others besides myself also appeared immersed in their own emotions.
And those emotions were likely identical to my own.
Indeed, in this situation, there had been no alternative way to perceive it.

A dreadful silence had seized control of our assembly.
There remained only the hushed sound of the sullen waitress's mournful sobs quietly audible in that space.
This tragic tableau illuminated by the Red Room's candlelight appeared too phantasmal to belong to events of this world.

“Kukukuku…”

Suddenly, outside the woman's sobbing, another eerie voice reached my ears.
It seemed to emanate from Mr. T's mouth—he who had long ceased struggling and now lay corpse-like and motionless.
An ice-cold shiver crawled up my back.

“Kukukukuku…”

The sound grew louder and louder.
And in the blink of an eye, Mr. T’s seemingly moribund body rose frailly to its feet.
Even after rising, the strange “Kukukuku…” showed no sign of ceasing.
It resembled a groan of agony wrenched from the depths of the chest.
But... Could it be... Ah! So that was it after all—he had, surprisingly, been suppressing unbearable amusement from the very start.

“Everyone,”
He burst into loud laughter and shouted.
“Everyone.”
“Do you see now? This—”

Then, ah—what on earth was happening now? No sooner had the waitress—who had been sobbing until that very moment—suddenly stood up cheerfully than she bent her body into a crouch and burst into laughter, as though she could no longer contain herself.

“You see...”

Eventually, Mr. T explained, holding out a small cylindrical object on his palm before us who stood stunned.
“It’s a bullet made from a cow’s bladder.”
“Filled with red ink inside—when it hits, the mechanism makes it flow out.”
“And then—”
“Just as this bullet was fake, my whole life story from start to finish—all of it—is pure fabrication.”
“But I must say—quite the skillful performance, wouldn’t you agree...”
“Now then, my fellow boredom connoisseurs.”
“I wonder if this fails to provide that stimulation you’re all so desperately craving...”

While he was making this revelation, the waitress who had served as his assistant must have flipped the downstairs switch with quick thinking—suddenly, a midday-bright electric light dazzled our eyes. That white glare instantly swept away the dreamlike atmosphere that had permeated the room. There lay exposed the ugly carcasses of revealed magic tricks. The scarlet draperies, scarlet carpet, matching tablecloths and armchairs—even that supposedly elegant silver candlestick—how wretched they all appeared! Throughout the Red Room, no corner retained even a trace of dreams, illusions, or shadows.