Pathway to Japanese Literature

“That bastard Tsujidō has finally died.”

When his confidant reported this with some pride, Mr. Hirata was considerably surprised.
To be sure, he had heard long ago that Tsujidō had fallen ill and taken to his bed—but even so—he simply couldn’t believe that man—the one who had doggedly hounded him; who had made avenging a grudge (a vendetta he’d unilaterally decided upon) his life’s purpose; that very Tsujidō who’d habitually declared “I’ll die a thousand deaths before I drive this dagger deep into that bastard’s gut!”—had died without ever achieving his goal.

“Is it true?”

Hirata inadvertently asked his confidant in return.

“I’m telling you, I just witnessed that bastard’s funeral procession myself.”
“Just to be thorough, I even checked with the neighbors.”
“Indeed, it was true.”
“Since the father who’d been living alone with his son had died, that poor son of his followed the coffin with a tear-stained face.”
“It doesn’t suit the father—he’s such a weakling, isn’t he?”

When he heard this, Hirata was disappointed.
Whether it was encircling his estate with towering concrete walls, embedding shards of glass atop those walls, renting out the gatehouse to a policeman’s family for a pittance, hiring two strapping student lodgers, avoiding outings even in daylight except when absolutely necessary, or insisting on being accompanied by those lodgers whenever he did venture out—every single one of these measures stemmed solely from Hirata’s fear of that one man: Tsujidō.
Hirata was a man who had built his current vast fortune in a single generation, so it stood to reason he had occasionally committed quite a few wrongdoings along the way.
There were more than a few who harbored deep resentment toward him.
That said, Hirata was not one to dwell on such things—except when it came to that half-mad old man Tsujidō, with whom he had been utterly at his wit's end.
When he heard his adversary had died, he heaved a sigh of relief even as he felt an oddly deflated loneliness settle over him.

The following day, Hirata himself went to the vicinity of Tsujidō’s residence just to be certain, discreetly investigating the situation. He was able to confirm that his confidant’s report had not been mistaken. Having finally concluded that all was well, he lifted his stringent precautions and savored a sense of relaxation he hadn’t experienced in quite some time.

The family members, unaware of the details, were rather puzzled that the usually gloomy Hirata had suddenly become cheerful, with laughter they had never before heard spilling from his lips. However, his cheerful demeanor did not last very long. The family members now had to endure Hirata’s melancholy, which was even more severe than before.

Three days had passed without incident since Tsujidō's funeral, but on the morning of the fourth day—
Leaning back in his study chair and casually sifting through that day's mail, Hirata turned pale upon discovering—amidst the numerous letters and postcards—a single envelope containing a letter written in unmistakably familiar handwriting, albeit rather disordered.

This letter will reach you after I die.
You must be leaping for joy over my death.
And well, you must be feeling quite at ease now, thinking, 'Finally, I'm safe.'
But don't you count on it!
Even if my body dies, my soul will never perish until I destroy you.
Indeed, those ridiculous precautions of yours would be effective against living humans.
Indeed, I was completely helpless.
But here's the thing—no matter how tight your security, against a soul that can slip through like smoke, even a wealthy bastard like you won't have any countermeasures.
Hey, while I was bedridden with a grave illness that left me immobile, I swore an oath like this.
If I cannot destroy you in this world, then after death I shall become a vengeful spirit and surely kill you—that is what I swore.
For dozens of days, I lay in bed thinking of nothing but that.
That desire of mine—how could it not come to pass?
Be careful—the curse of a vengeful spirit, you see, is far more terrifying than the power of any living human, I tell you.

The handwriting was disordered, and apart from kanji, it was all written in katakana, making it quite difficult to read, but it contained roughly the same phrases as those written above.
Needless to say, it was undoubtedly something Tsujidō had written with all his soul while groaning on his sickbed.
And there was no doubt that he had his son mail it after his own death.

“What nonsense!”
“Do you think I’d cower in fear over such childish threats meant to deceive a child?”
“At his age, so it turns out that bastard had become somewhat senile from his illness.”

At the time, Mr. Hirata had dismissed the dead man’s threatening letter with a scornful laugh. Yet as time passed, an indescribable unease gradually welled up in his heart—one he found himself powerless to suppress.
The lack of any means to defend himself and the utter uncertainty of how or from where the opponent would strike became no small source of irritation to him.
Day and night, he came to be tormented by eerie delusions.
Insomnia grew increasingly severe.

Meanwhile, he was also concerned about Tsujidō’s son.
That man seemed weak-willed, unlike his father—surely he wouldn’t do such a thing—but if by chance he had carried on his father’s vendetta and was still targeting him, it would be disastrous.
Upon realizing this, he promptly summoned the man he had previously hired to watch Tsujidō and this time ordered surveillance on the son.

The next few months passed without incident.
Hirata’s nervous sensitivity and insomnia showed no signs of abating, yet there were no indications of the vengeful spirit’s curse he had feared, nor any troubling developments concerning Tsujidō’s son.
Even the ever-cautious Mr. Hirata had gradually come to regard his excessive fretting over nothing as utterly absurd.

But one evening.

Mr. Hirata was unusually holed up alone in his study, writing something.
In the mansion district, even though it was still early in the evening, an eerie silence had settled over everything.
Occasionally came the lonely howls of distant dogs.

“This has arrived.”

Suddenly, the student lodger entered, placed a postal item on the edge of his desk, and left without a word.

It was clear at a glance that it was a photograph.
About ten days prior, when a company’s founding celebration had been held, the promoters had gathered to have their photograph taken.
Mr. Hirata had also been one of them, so there was no doubt this was what had been sent.

Mr. Hirata wasn’t particularly interested in such things, but having grown tired from his writing and wanting to take a break, he immediately tore open the wrapping paper and took out the photograph to examine it.
He gazed at it for a moment before suddenly tossing it onto the desk as if touching something filthy.
Then, with an uneasy look in his eyes, he glanced around the room.

After a while, his hand timidly reached toward the photograph he had just tossed aside.
However, when he spread it out and took a brief look, he once again tossed it away.
After repeating this strange action two or three times, he finally managed to calm himself and scrutinize the photograph.

It was by no means an illusion.
Even when he rubbed his eyes or stroked the photograph’s surface, the terrifying shadow there did not vanish.
A chill crawled up his spine with a shudder.
He suddenly tore the photograph to shreds and threw it into the stove, then staggered to his feet and fled the study.

At last, the thing he had feared had arrived.
Tsujidō’s tenacious vengeful spirit had begun to manifest its form.

There, behind the clear figures of the seven promoters, hazily spreading to cover almost the entire surface of the photograph, was there not Tsujidō’s eerie face captured larger and larger? And within that mist-like visage, were there not two pitch-black eyes glaring resentfully at Mr. Hirata?

Overwhelmed by terror, Mr. Hirata pulled the futon over his head like a frightened child and spent the entire night trembling uncontrollably. Yet when morning came, the power of sunlight proved remarkable indeed. He had regained some measure of composure.

"There’s no way such an absurd thing could be real. Last night, my eyes must have been playing tricks on me."

Forcing himself to think so, he entered the study where the morning sun blazed through. To his dismay, the photograph had burned away without a trace, but as proof it hadn’t been a dream, the photo’s wrapping paper remained neatly on the desk.

When he thought about it carefully, it was terrifying either way. If Tsujidō’s face had truly been captured in that photograph—and with that threatening letter already in play—there could be no story more eerie than this. In this world, there may well exist an unreason beyond reason. Or even if it were actually an ordinary photograph that only appeared that way to Mr. Hirata’s eyes, then that would mean he was finally falling under Tsujidō’s curse and beginning to lose his mind—a thought that made him feel all the more terrified.

For two or three days, Mr. Hirata thought of nothing else but that photograph.

Could it be—he wondered—that Tsujidō had once taken a photo at the same studio, and they had double-exposed the original plate of this photograph with Tsujidō’s? He even entertained such an absurd notion, going so far as to send someone to the studio to investigate. Of course, there had been no such oversight, and furthermore, the studio’s ledger contained no entries under Tsujidō’s name.

About a week later.
When told it was a call from the manager of an affiliated company, Mr. Hirata carelessly pressed the desk telephone receiver to his ear—only to hear bizarre laughter emerge from it.

“Hee-hee-hee…”

At times it seemed to come from a great distance, yet in the next moment, it felt as though someone were laughing with tremendous volume right beside his ear. No matter how much he called out, the other end merely laughed.

“Hello? Aren’t you Mr. X X?”

When Mr. Hirata flew into a rage and shouted like this, the voice gradually grew smaller—*Uu... uu...*—before fading away into the distance.
Then came the operator’s high-pitched cry of “Number! Number! Number!” in its place.

Mr. Hirata suddenly slammed down the receiver with a clang and remained frozen for some time, staring fixedly at one spot.
As he did so, an indescribable terror began searing up from the depths of his heart.
...Wasn’t that Tsujidō’s own laughter he’d heard?... Mr. Hirata began slowly backing away from the desk telephone as though it were some monstrous thing—yet unable to look away—until he finally fled the room.

Mr. Hirata’s insomnia grew increasingly severe.
Just when he had finally managed to fall asleep, there were often times when he would suddenly let out a creepy scream and bolt upright.
The family members were quite concerned about their master’s strange behavior.
And they persistently recommended that he see a doctor.
Mr. Hirata, if possible, wanted to cling to someone—exactly like a young child crying “I’m scared!” and clinging to their mother.
And he wanted to pour out all the terror and dread he’d been feeling lately.
But even he couldn’t bring himself to do so. “Bah, it’s just a nervous breakdown,” he said, keeping up appearances in front of his family and refusing to undergo a doctor’s examination.

And then several more days passed.

One day, there was a shareholders meeting at the company where Mr. Hirata served as an executive, and he had to give a brief address at the gathering.
The company’s business performance over the past half-year had shown unprecedented success, and there were no other particular concerns to worry about, so all he needed to do was deliver a routine report speech to settle matters.
He stood before the nearly hundred gathered shareholders and, being thoroughly accustomed to such matters, proceeded with his speech in a perfectly polished demeanor and tone.

However, as he continued his address for a while—glancing from one face to another among the shareholders—something strange suddenly caught his eye.
When he noticed this, he involuntarily stopped speaking and stood frozen in silence for so long that the shareholders began to wonder.

There, from behind the numerous shareholders, a face indistinguishable from that of the deceased Tsujidō was staring fixedly in this direction.

“As per the aforementioned circumstances…”

Mr. Hirata, as if regaining his composure, raised his voice even further and attempted to continue his speech.
But try as he might to muster his energy, he found himself unable to look away from that eerie face.
He became increasingly flustered.
The coherence of his speech had become increasingly muddled.
Then, the face—identical to Tsujidō’s in every detail—suddenly grinned slyly, as if mocking Mr. Hirata’s panic.

Mr. Hirata had been in such a daze that he hardly knew how he had managed to finish his speech. He gave a quick bow and stepped away from the table, then—heedless of the people’s suspicious glances—ran toward the room’s exit to search for the owner of that face which had threatened him. However, no matter how hard he searched, such a face was nowhere to be found. Just to be certain, he returned once more to the head of the room and, from a spot near his original position, scrutinized each shareholder’s face one by one—but even a face resembling Tsujidō’s was nowhere to be found.

The venue’s great hall was located in a building where people could freely come and go, but depending on how one considered it, there might have coincidentally been someone resembling Tsujidō among the audience who had already left by the time Mr. Hirata searched. But could there really exist a face so strikingly similar in this world? No matter how he reconsidered it, Mr. Hirata couldn’t help feeling that this was connected to that terrifying declaration Tsujidō had made on his deathbed.

Since then, Mr. Hirata frequently saw Tsujidō’s face.
At times in theater corridors, at times in park twilight, at times amid bustling thoroughfares of cities he visited, and even at the gate of his own residence.
In this last instance, Mr. Hirata nearly fainted.
Late one night, when his car returning from elsewhere was about to pass through the gate,
a single figure emerged soundlessly from within the gate and brushed past the car—a fleeting instant as they crossed paths.
That face peered abruptly from the car window.

It was indeed Tsujidō’s face. However, by the time Mr. Hirata—having reached the entrance and finally regained his composure through the voices of the students and maids who had come out to greet him—ordered the driver to search, the figure was no longer visible in the vicinity.

“Maybe that bastard Tsujidō is still alive after all.”
“And isn’t he putting on this act to torment me?”

Mr. Hirata suddenly began to entertain such doubts.
However, according to reports from his confidants—whom he had constantly watching Tsujidō’s son—there was nothing at all suspicious to report.
If Tsujidō were alive, over time he would likely visit his son’s place at least once—yet there was no trace of such a thing.
What seemed most suspicious was this: could any living person possibly know my whereabouts so precisely?
Mr. Hirata had always been secretive by nature, often not even informing his family members—let alone servants—of his destinations when going out.
For that face to appear wherever he went, someone would need to stake out his residence’s gate and follow his car relentlessly. Yet the area was desolate; any approaching vehicle would surely be noticed, and there was no nearby office to hire cars. Following on foot seemed equally impossible.
No matter how he considered it, he could only conclude this was the vengeful spirit’s curse.

“Or is this just my mind playing tricks?”

But even if it were a delusion, the terror remained undiminished.
He found himself endlessly torn by uncertainty.

However, as he wrestled with these myriad worries, a clever idea suddenly flashed into his mind.

"This settles it once and for all."
"Why didn't I realize that sooner?"

Mr. Hirata hurriedly entered his study, took up a brush, and wrote a family register copy request addressed to the town office in Tsujidō's hometown under his son's name.
If the family register copy showed Tsujidō was still alive, then the case would be closed.
Mr. Hirata prayed fervently that it would be so.

After a few days, the family register copy arrived from the town office.
However, to Mr. Hirata’s dismay, Tsujidō’s name bore a bold red cross through it on the document, with the upper section clearly stating the exact date and time of death alongside the date the notification was received.
Now there was no longer any room for doubt.

“Has something happened to you lately?
Aren’t you feeling unwell?”

Whenever they met Mr. Hirata, everyone would put on a worried expression and say such things.
Mr. Hirata himself somehow felt as if he had aged remarkably.
The white hairs on his head also seemed to have increased considerably compared to a month or two before.

“How about…”
“Why don’t you try going somewhere for recuperation?”

Since no amount of urging could get him to see a doctor, his family members this time recommended a change of scenery.
Even Mr. Hirata, since encountering that face at the gate, could no longer feel at ease even within his residence, and so—unable to dismiss the thought that perhaps taking a trip to change his mood might help—he heeded that advice and decided to relocate for a time to a certain warm coastal area.

Having someone send a postcard in advance to reserve a room at his regular inn, having someone prepare necessary items for the trip, and selecting attendants to accompany him—such tasks left Mr. Hirata in an uncharacteristically cheerful mood for the first time in ages. Though somewhat forced, he found himself frolicking like a youth setting off on an excursion.

When he reached the coast, his mood lightened completely as anticipated. He took to the bright, open seascape. He appreciated the townspeople’s simple forthrightness. The inn room proved comfortable too. Though coastal, the area was better known as a hot spring town than a beach resort. He passed his days alternating between soaking in the springs and strolling along the warm shoreline.

The face he had been dreading showed no signs of appearing in this cheerful place. Mr. Hirata had now become such that even when strolling along the deserted coast, he no longer startled so much.

One day, he went for a walk farther than ever before. While walking absentmindedly, he suddenly noticed that dusk was creeping in unnoticed. Around him stretched a vast sandy beach devoid of any human presence; only the waves’ rhythmic *thud... crash, thud... crash*—their ceaseless ebb and flow—resounded eerily, as though ominously foretelling some ill-boded event.

He hurried back toward the inn.
It was quite a distance.
If things took a turn for the worse, he might not even make it halfway before night had completely fallen.
He hurried on, sweat streaming down his face as he trudged step after step.

At his own footsteps echoing like someone following behind, he involuntarily turned around with a start.
The dim shadows of the pine rows—where something seemed to lurk—also unsettled him.

After walking awhile, he glimpsed a human figure beyond a low sandy hill ahead.
This sight somewhat reassured Mr. Hirata.
Thinking that speaking to them might dispel his unease, he quickened his pace and approached the figure.

As he drew closer, he saw it was a man—quite elderly—facing away and crouching motionlessly. His posture suggested he was utterly absorbed in some profound thought.

Perhaps having noticed Mr. Hirata’s footsteps, the figure suddenly whipped around in surprise. Against the gray backdrop, a pallid face stood out starkly.

“Gah!”

At the sight, Mr. Hirata let out a strangled cry. He immediately broke into a run. The fifty-year-old man sprinted with frantic abandon, like a schoolboy fleeing a game of tag.

The face that met his gaze when he turned around was none other than Tsujidō's—the very man he had been completely sure was safe here.

“Look out!”

When Mr. Hirata, in his frantic run, tripped over something and collapsed, a young man came running over.

“What happened, sir?
“Ah, you’ve hurt yourself, haven’t you?”

Mr. Hirata tore at his fingernails, groaning in pain.
The young man produced a new handkerchief from his sleeve and deftly bandaged the wound; then, supporting Mr. Hirata—who was too weakened by terror and injury to take another step—he all but carried him back to the inn.

He had even worried that he might become bedridden, but such a thing did not come to pass—Mr. Hirata was able to rise with relative vigor the following day.
Although he couldn’t walk around due to the pain in his foot, he ate meals as usual.

Just as he had finished breakfast, the young man who had helped him the day before came to visit.
He too was staying at the same inn.
The words of sympathy and expressions of gratitude gradually shifted to casual conversation.
Hirata, both wanting someone to talk to on such occasions and out of a sense of gratitude, spoke with uncharacteristic cheerfulness.

When Hirata’s servant, who had been present with them, was no longer there, as if he had been waiting for that moment, the young man slightly altered his manner and said the following.

“Actually, I’ve been observing your condition with particular interest ever since you first arrived here… There’s something troubling you, isn’t there?”
“Might you tell me about it?”

Mr. Hirata was not a little startled.
What could this young man he’d only just met possibly know?
And really—what an impertinent question!
He had never once spoken to anyone about Tsujidō’s vengeful spirit.
The shame of it—he couldn’t bring himself to utter such an absurd tale.
Thus even now, faced with this young man’s inquiry, he naturally made no move to disclose the truth.

But as their verbal exchange continued for some time—what remarkable conversational skill it was.
The young man, like a magician, had effortlessly pried open even Mr. Hirata’s resolutely sealed lips.
Mr. Hirata’s slight slip of the tongue had been the catalyst.
Had his interlocutor been an ordinary person, he might have easily glossed it over, but with this young man, it proved futile.
With extraordinary deftness, he drew out revelation after revelation.
Part of it may have been the timing—the morning after that dreadful incident—but Mr. Hirata found himself sinking ever deeper into the mire the more he tried to divert the conversation, like a man stripped of all agency.
At last, every detail concerning Tsujidō’s vengeful spirit had been laid utterly bare.

Once he had heard everything he wanted to hear, the young man shifted to other casual topics with a conversational skill as remarkable as when he had drawn out the story.
And when he apologized for overstaying and left the room, not only did Mr. Hirata feel no displeasure at having been forced to divulge secrets, but the young man even seemed somehow reliable to him now.

Then about ten days passed without any particular incidents.
Although Mr. Hirata was already weary of this place, he continued staying there because his foot injury still pained him and because he thought remaining in these lively inn lodgings would be somewhat more comfortable than forcing himself to return to his lonely mansion in Tokyo.
Another factor was that the young man he newly befriended was quite an interesting conversationalist, which also contributed to keeping him there.

That young man visited his room again today.
And then, suddenly laughing oddly, he proceeded to say such a thing.

“It’s safe for you to go anywhere now.”
“The apparition won’t appear.”

For an instant, Mr. Hirata was bewildered, unable to grasp the meaning of those words.
In his dumbfounded expression was mingled the displeasure of someone whose sore spot had been touched.

“I realize it’s only natural to be startled when I bring this up so abruptly, but I assure you this is no joke.”
“The apparition has already been driven away.”
“Look at this.”

The young man unfolded a single telegram he held in one hand and showed it to Mr. Hirata.
There, the following words were written.

“In accordance with police report: First case confessed by principal person under investigation.”

“This came from my friend in Tokyo, but this ‘first case confessed’ refers to Tsujidō’s apparition—or rather, not an apparition but the living Tsujidō—having confessed.”

In the heat of the moment, with no time to make a judgment, Mr. Hirata could only stare dumbfoundedly between the young man’s face and the telegram.

“Actually, I’m a man who goes around investigating such things, you see.”
“It’s my favorite pastime to seek out secret incidents and bizarre cases from every corner of this world and unravel them one by one.”

The young man explained casually with a grin.

"When I heard that ghost story from you the other day, it was also due to that habit of mine that I considered whether there might be some trickery involved here."
"From what I observe, you do not seem to be a person of such fragile nerves as to conjure apparitions yourself."
"Moreover, you yourself may not have noticed, but isn't there a certain restriction on where the apparition appears?"
"To be sure, when you see how it follows you to your travel destinations, it does indeed seem to appear freely and unrestrainedly anywhere. But upon closer consideration, one notices that it is almost entirely limited to outdoor locations."
"Even if there are instances indoors, they are limited to places where anyone can come and go, such as theater corridors or inside buildings."
"If it were a real ghost, there's no reason it should seem restricted to only appearing outdoors. Wouldn't it make sense for it to show up at your mansion as well?"
"But when it comes to your mansion—aside from that photograph and the phone call—it only briefly showed its face at the gate, a place anyone can enter or exit."
"Doesn't that go somewhat against the natural behavior of an apparition?"
"So I thought through various possibilities, you see."
"Although there were a few troublesome points that took some time, I have finally managed to capture the apparition alive."

Even after hearing this, Mr. Hirata still couldn't quite believe it.
He too had once suspected that Tsujidō might still be alive and had even gone so far as to obtain a copy of the family register.
And then he had been disappointed.
By what method had this young man managed to uncover the ghost's true identity so effortlessly?

“Well now, it’s actually a very simple mechanism.”
“The reason you didn’t realize it might be precisely because the method was too straightforward.”
“But even someone besides you might have been fooled by that convincing funeral.”
“This isn’t some translated detective novel—one could hardly imagine such theatrics being performed right in central Tokyo.”
“Then there’s Tsujidō having persistently cut off contact with his son—this was an extremely crucial point.”
“As with other crimes, the key to deceiving your opponent lies in suppressing your own emotions and acting in ways completely contrary to ordinary human sentiment.”
“People invariably measure others’ hearts against their own selves, and once they make an erroneous judgment, they find it remarkably difficult to notice their mistake.”
“Moreover, the procedure for manifesting the apparition proceeded smoothly.”
“As you yourself mentioned the other day, when someone follows you to every destination like that, anyone would feel unsettled.”
“And then to cap it all off—the family register copy—the entire apparatus was perfectly arranged, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s it.”
“If Tsujidō were alive, what still doesn’t make sense is—first, that strange photograph. But even if that were my own misjudgment, there’s also how he knew about the destinations you mentioned earlier, and then the family register copy.”
“I simply can’t believe there could be any mistake in the family register copy!”

Before he knew it, Mr. Hirata found himself drawn into the young man’s explanation and inadvertently posed his question.

“I too focused mainly on those three points,”
“wondering if there wasn’t some way to rationalize these seemingly irrational facts.”
“And ultimately, I discovered a common thread linking these three entirely disparate matters.”
“Well, it’s rather trivial,”
“but it’s crucial for solving this case.”
“The key was that all were connected to postal correspondence.”
“The photograph arrived by mail.”
“The family register copy followed the same path.”
“And your destinations—those too related to your daily letters and telegrams, did they not?”
“Hahaha! You’ve grasped it now.”
“Tsujidō served as a deliveryman at your local post office.”
“Naturally in disguise—”
“Remarkable you never noticed.”
“He must have scrutinized every piece of mail entering and leaving your residence.”
“The method was elementary.”
“By steaming open seals without leaving traces, he altered photographs and documents.”
“Your destinations became predictable through intercepted letters—on his days off or under false pretenses, he’d arrive first to stage his ghostly performances.”

“However, while creating the photograph may not be impossible with some effort, could something like a family register really be forged so hastily?”

“It is not a forgery.”
“It’s merely a matter of imitating the family registry clerk’s handwriting and adding to it.”
“While erasing what’s already written on a family register copy’s paper would be difficult, adding to it is no trouble at all.”
“Even flawlessly prepared official documents have their loopholes here and there.”
“It may sound strange, but a family register copy does not have the power to prove that someone is alive.”
“If it’s not the head of the household but another member, all one needs to do is draw a red line over their name and note in the upper column that a death notice was accepted—then even someone alive can be registered as dead.”
“After all, when it comes to official documents, anyone ends up blindly and unreasonably trusting them as a matter of habit, so they don’t notice easily.”
“I sent a letter to Tsujidō’s registered domicile—the one I inquired about from you that day—requesting another copy of the family register be sent, and when I examined the one that arrived, it was exactly as I had suspected.”
“This is it.”

The young man, having said this, took out a copy of the family register from his pocket and placed it before Mr. Hirata.
There, in the head of household column was Tsujidō's son, and in the next column was recorded the name of Tsujidō himself.
He had already retired before feigning death.
When he looked, there was no red line drawn over the name, and in the upper column, there was only a note stating that a retirement notice had been accepted, with no character for “death” to be seen.

It was due to these circumstances that amateur detective Akechi Kogorō’s name came to be inscribed in businessman Mr. Hirata’s register of associates.