Pathway to Japanese Literature

Wax Doll

For those two boys, it was the first time in their lives they had encountered such a terrifying experience.

On a certain Sunday in early spring, sixth-grade elementary school students Shimada-kun and Kinoshita-kun went to visit their teacher’s house, listened to various interesting stories, and finally left the teacher’s house in the evening. It was on their way home that it happened.

“Huh, this is strange. I’ve never passed through this town before.” Shimada-kun looked around curiously and said.

“You’re right.” “I’ve never passed through here either.” “This town feels kind of lonely, doesn’t it?” Kinoshita also made a strange face as he scanned the wide, completely deserted avenue.

In the dim, hazy light of evening, a town they had never seen before spread out before the two boys. Fruit shops, confectioneries, beef shops, and the like lined the street in a row, yet not a single person could be seen in any of them. It was so eerily quiet that one might suspect every last human had vanished from the earth, leaving only the storefronts behind.

“This is strange,” he thought as he walked along, when a splendid antique shop caught his eye. Inside the large show window, numerous items such as old Buddha statues and ceramics with beautiful patterns were lined up. The two boys involuntarily came to a stop before it. “My dad likes these kinds of Buddha statues. When we’re walking together and there’s an antique shop, he’ll definitely stop. And he gazes at them endlessly. But I hate old Buddha statues. I don’t know why, but they just give me the creeps.”

When Shimada-kun said this, Kinoshita responded, "Yeah, they do give you the creeps. The Buddha statue room at the museum—those all seem alive, don't they? Once when I went there, I got scared. But those statues are mostly national treasures, right?" "Hey, look at that black metal Buddha in the center—it has an Indian-looking face, doesn't it?" "Buddha statues usually have Indian faces. After all, Buddhism started in India."

While exchanging these remarks, the two boys gradually circled around to the side of the show window. There was a Buddha statue that couldn’t be properly seen except from an angle. When they suddenly became aware of it, there at the front of the show window where they had initially stopped stood a Western-suited gentleman. He wore a soft hat pulled low over his brow, with his overcoat collar turned up to conceal his chin as he stared fixedly at one particular Buddha statue. This was a small fifteen-centimeter-tall statue made of dark metal, displayed on an ornate stand at the very center of the window as if it were some treasured object.

The boy Kinoshita had been staring at the gentleman’s face for some time when—for some reason—he suddenly jabbed his elbow into Shimada’s side as if startled.

When Shimada looked up in surprise, he found Kinoshita's eyes opened perfectly round, looking as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. And those perfectly round eyes were staring so intently at the gentleman’s face beyond the glass that it seemed they might bore holes through it. Shimada also looked at the gentleman’s face. Then, Shimada’s eyes also became perfectly round like Kinoshita’s, looking as though they might pop out of their sockets.

What could have startled the two boys so much? It was because that gentleman’s face was not human. The boys first thought he might be wearing a mask. But if it were a mask, there should have been strings fastened around both ears—yet upon closer inspection, no such strings existed. There was no boundary between the mask and his actual face. If it was indeed a mask, it must have been a special one that covered his entire head from the top down.

The gentleman’s face looked exactly like a Western doll in a clothing store’s show window. That doll was not made of wax, but this gentleman’s face was smooth as wax and translucent white. It was a wax doll. The wax doll was plodding through the town and had come to stand before the show window. A pure white face faintly tinged with red, a high nose, a well-shaped mustache—the face of a handsome Western man. However, it was not a living face. His eyebrows, eyes, and mouth—no matter how long one stared—did not move in the slightest. They were as motionless as a wax doll. Moreover, this gentleman had no eyeballs. The two eyes only appeared as pitch-black hollows.

The gentleman was staring at the small Buddha statue as if devouring it, seemingly completely unaware of the two boys being on the side of the show window.

Both Shimada-kun and Kinoshita-kun wanted to quickly escape from this eerie gentleman's side. However, their bodies had stiffened as if frozen, leaving them unable to move a muscle. They feared that if they moved even slightly, the wax doll might suddenly come leaping at them. Though this interval felt interminably long, less than five minutes had actually passed. Eventually, the wax-doll gentleman left his position before the show window and began walking. Using a bamboo cane with many joints, he walked away in a strange manner like a mechanical doll - clunk, clunk.

The two boys exchanged glances. Should they flee in the opposite direction now, or should they follow that strange gentleman and expose his true identity? The two boys held that discussion entirely through their eyes, without speaking a single word. And so, after all, they decided to try following him. Rather than mischief, their desire to know the truth was stronger.

The two boys, bending their backs and creeping along the eaves, began tailing the mysterious gentleman.

The Third Follower The evening streets were strangely empty of people. An eerie stillness hung over everything. The entire town seemed veiled in mist—if they blinked, the wax-faced eerie gentleman might vanish soundlessly into that haze at any moment. Shimada-kun found himself wondering: *Am I dreaming right now?* The eerie gentleman rounded corner after corner. With each turn, the boys found themselves plunging deeper into unfamiliar neighborhoods.

Before they knew it, they had entered a residential district where long concrete walls stretched along both sides of the street. The boys had nothing to hide behind. They had no choice but to press themselves flat against the wall and crawl sideways like crabs. The mysterious gentleman was walking through the mist about thirty meters ahead, maintaining the same rhythm—clunk, clunk. With each step, the bamboo cane creaked and bent.

Wasn't he about to turn this way? The two boys were already trembling with fear, thinking he might spot them with those hollow eyes and come chasing after them, but fortunately, the mysterious gentleman never once looked back and walked straight ahead like a mechanical doll unable to turn its neck. When the concrete walls ended, the town became one of hedges. The hedges were convenient for hiding, but the loneliness only grew more intense.

However, around that time, another strange thing occurred. The number of followers had grown by one. The two boys hadn’t noticed at all, but from about twenty meters behind them, another gentleman was tailing them as well. Though referred to as a gentleman, he was no wax doll. It wasn’t that the wax doll had multiplied into two. He was a nimble-looking gentleman in his mid-thirties, dressed like a newspaper reporter.

It wasn’t clear whether this man was following the two boys or tailing the wax doll walking further ahead, but one thing was certain—he wasn’t trembling with fear like the boys were. As proof of this, the gentleman had been walking with a smirk plastered on his face the whole time. It was an odd sort of laugh. An unsettlingly eerie sort of laugh. Before long, the hedges too came to an end, giving way to an increasingly desolate field. All around lay stones scattered like pebbles, broken bricks heaped in mounds, garbage piled mountain-high—a place so ravaged by neglect it felt terrifying.

The wax-faced mysterious gentleman plowed straight through the desolate field, walking onward without deviating. The surroundings grew increasingly dim. If they remained too cautious, they risked losing sight of the mysterious gentleman, so the boys boldly closed the distance to about ten meters behind him. Then, as if crawling along the ground, they advanced. The journalist-like gentleman, still smirking, likewise narrowed the gap between himself and the boys as he continued tailing them.

After passing through the field strewn with scattered stones and bricks, something large and jagged loomed blackly ahead. A two- or three-story brick building had been violently destroyed, its walls left jagged like a mountain of saw blades. The wax-faced mysterious gentleman walked clunk, clunk toward the ruined brick building. That might be the mysterious gentleman's lair.

The brick walls remained only on three sides, with one side broken as if forming an entrance. It must have originally been a large room. The mysterious gentleman soundlessly disappeared into the brick wall through the broken entrance. When they saw that, the boys became so frightened they began to tremble. Both of them looked ready to bolt at any moment, but Kinoshita-kun steeled himself and grabbed Shimada-kun’s arm. And then, in a faint whisper,

“Let’s go check it out.” he said. When he said that, Shimada-kun couldn’t very well run away either. He mustered his courage,

“Let’s go check it out,” he answered.

**Bizarre**

The two boys got down on all fours and painstakingly crawled across the ground strewn with scattered stones and bricks, proceeding with utmost caution until they finally reached what appeared to be the entrance where the mysterious gentleman had vanished. Shimada-kun on the right side and Kinoshita-kun on the left lay prone by the edge of the broken wall, hiding their bodies as they peered into the depths of the building through gaps in the shattered bricks, only their eyes exposed. The wax doll stood blocking the path about ten meters ahead before the brick wall, facing their direction. And strangely enough, he was removing his overcoat, then his jacket, and now attempting to take off his white shirt.

The shirt’s buttons were torn off one by one, and just as the bottommost button came undone, the white shirt floated up into the air and fell to the ground.

Oh, how great must have been the shock of those two boys at that moment! Did they let out a blood-curdling scream? No—they couldn’t even let out a scream. They had simply turned to stone, their bodies stiffened in a deep, deep astonishment so profound they couldn’t breathe. The mysterious gentleman was a monster. No—he was something even more terrifying than a monster. What do you think was under the shirt he had removed? Could there have been something terrifying? However, no matter how terrifying it might have been, had there been something there, they wouldn’t have been this astonished. There was nothing there at all. Under the shirt was empty.

The monster’s wax-doll-like face remained intact. The hat still sat firmly atop it. Yet below that face lay nothing—no neck, no chest, no stomach, no shoulders, no arms. From the waist downward, two legs clad in trousers stood upright. The void between face and trousers revealed itself through glimpses of brick wall behind. Had a torso existed, those bricks would have stayed hidden.

The two boys wondered if they themselves had gone mad. They doubted whether they were dreaming.

But then, something even more terrifying happened. First, the monster’s fedora was snatched away as if by an invisible hand, floating smoothly off its head before being flung to the ground. Then, while its two legs remained standing rooted in place, that wax mask-like face alone was hoisted seventy centimeters upward. As it swayed unsteadily left and right at this new height, the head was abruptly tossed aside and rolled across the ground. In other words, only from the waist down did anything remain of the mysterious gentleman; above that was nothing.

But that wasn’t all. This time， an invisible hand was trying to remove the pants. The belt came undone. Then， the pants’ buttons came undone one by one， the trousers were forcefully pushed down until crumpled， and before they knew it， had slipped completely off the legs. And inside those trousers was indeed empty. All that remained were two shoes. The shoes began to move. They moved with a steady， rhythmic motion， as though invisible human feet were inside them. Then， the two shoes suddenly floated into the air and began a mad dance. After dancing wildly for a moment， both fell to the ground with a plop and lay still as death. And then， the two socks were crumpled up and thrown there.

The monster had even taken off the socks. From the top of his head to the tips of his toes， he was now completely naked， not wearing a single thing. And then， he vanished completely. He became something like air， completely invisible to human eyes.

Then, yet another strange thing occurred. The wax doll’s head, hat, coat, pants, shirt, shoes, socks, and bamboo cane—all scattered about the area—slid smoothly of their own accord, gathered into one spot, where the overcoat swirled around and enveloped them. In other words, everything had been enveloped by the overcoat. The bundle floated smoothly up into the air. Then, moving along the brick wall behind it, it drifted toward the right. At the edge of the wall was a large hole big enough for a person to pass through. The overcoat bundle, still floating midair, disappeared into the hole.

The moment it vanished, suddenly from outside the hole came a strange scream—"Agh!"—followed by the violent sound of something crashing. Then, after a while, the area fell completely silent. But when they looked, from the hole in the wall, a pair of legs in pants slid out smoothly, and soon a man in Western clothes appeared. The boys were startled, thinking the wax-faced monster had returned wearing clothes again, but it was not the monster—it was that third tailer from before, the journalist-like gentleman.

“Hmm, he got away clean.” “He’s got some serious power…” “Ah, don’t worry. Now that I’ve seen through his true form, we’ll be fine.” “They’ll catch him soon enough.”

The gentleman had been muttering such things to himself, but when he turned toward the two boys hiding behind the bricks,

“You kids, it’s all right now. Come out. He’s escaped,” he called out in a loud voice.

Even so, the two boys were so terrified that their bodies had turned to stone; they couldn’t move a muscle, let alone utter a sound. “Ha ha ha ha… Completely terrified, aren’t you? He’s not coming back anymore. Cheer up and come out. I’m not a monster. I’m an ordinary human. I’m not going to say I’ll gobble you up. Ha ha ha….”

At his hearty laughter, the two boys finally regained their composure. And then, with a heave-ho, they stood up, brushing the dirt off their bodies, and timidly approached the gentleman. “You kids tailed him, didn’t you?” “Impressive.” “Actually, I’ve been tailing him right after you kids.” “And I thought I’d lie in wait outside this hole and catch him, but since he’s an invisible monster, I ended up letting him get away.”

Having said that, he let out a dry chuckle. He was a bold gentleman, just like the warriors of old who vanquished monsters.

“Mister, what on earth is that thing?” Kinoshita asked, deathly pale with eyes bulging as if about to pop out of their sockets. “Don’t tell me you don’t know either?” “It’s a monster.” “The unidentified creature that’s been stirring up panic across Tokyo.” “What? Across all of Tokyo?” “You likely haven’t heard yet.” “But that fellow’s been appearing everywhere in Tokyo playing tricks.” “No—more than just tricks.” “He’s operating as a master thief.”

Having said that, the gentleman began a detailed explanation.

What kind of story was that?

Where did that completely invisible, air-like monster come from? Is it a human? Is it an animal we’ve never known until now? Or is it a creature from another world that leaped from a distant star country to this Earth?

Air Man

The gentleman continued speaking. “You kids probably don’t know about that monster yet.” “I’m a newspaper reporter, so I know all about it.” “I’m a reporter for Tōyō Newspaper.” “I’ve been tailing him for some time now.” “But since he’s like air—invisible—he always manages to slip away.”

“It’s so strange. He’s transparent like air, isn’t he?” “So, he’s still human?” “He’s human.” “And what’s more, he’s a master thief.” The journalist, having said that, paused to think for a moment while comparing the faces of the two boys,

“You kids—are you from around here? Well then, since there’s still some time before dinner, let’s go somewhere around here, have tea, and I’ll tell you about that guy. Since you’ve bravely tailed that eerie fellow after all. You have the right to hear this story.” The boys, of course, agreed to this, so the three of them left the vacant lot for the town and entered a small coffee shop. The journalist ordered coffee and cake, and while urging the boys to partake, he began the following story.

"It was about ten days ago that I noticed that strange monster. When I was walking through Ginza, something suddenly slammed into me. I staggered and shouted, 'Hey, watch where you're going!'—but when I looked, there was nobody there. A human body had definitely collided with me. But that human had completely vanished."

Then, I saw two women walking right behind me stagger as if shoved by something, exclaiming, “Oh!” “But there was no sign of whoever had pushed them.”

“I thought, ‘This is strange,’ and stood watching when behind the women, another young man staggered.” “Then he shouted, ‘Hey, watch out!’ but with no visible person who had collided with him, he looked around in bewilderment.”

“Well, it’s your fault.” “What on earth was that?”

The two women had both turned deathly pale. "A person definitely collided with me." "But I couldn't see anything." "This is strange."

The young man also came to a stop and was looking around restlessly.

At that time, there were many others who had been bumped into by the invisible guy. Everyone came to a stop and exchanged remarks: "How strange." "How strange." Why such a strange thing had happened was beyond anyone's comprehension. After arguing noisily for a while, they simply went their separate ways.

I suddenly recalled a novel called *The Invisible Man*. “It’s a famous novel written by an Englishman named Wells,” I explained. “A scholar invented a drug that makes human bodies transparent. If you drink it, your body becomes completely invisible.” The moment I realized what had collided with us might be that *Invisible Man*-like creature, an involuntary shudder ran through me.

“But *The Invisible Man* is just a novel.” “Such a conveniently effective drug couldn’t possibly exist.” “There can’t possibly be such a thing as an invisible human.” I dismissed my strange notion and simply returned home. “But wait—but wait!” Then two or three days later， I encountered another truly bizarre incident. And I couldn’t help but think that there really was a Transparent Monster in Tokyo after all.

“You kids know about the shoeshine boys lined up under Yūrakuchō’s overpass, right? Far from that crowded row, there was a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old shoeshine boy working his stand all alone. That evening, I was standing at a street corner waiting to meet a friend when my eyes drifted toward the shoeshine boy. A rough-looking youth with a mean face was getting his shoes polished. The earnest boy scrubbed away until those shoes gleamed like new. Then the youth dug into his pocket and gruffly said, ‘No small bills—give me change.’ The boy lifted the lid off his cardboard box and started counting the money crammed inside—it was stuffed shockingly full with 100-yen notes and 10-yen coins.”

The young man had been eyeing the cardboard box out of the corner of his eye but suddenly reached out, snatched it away, grabbed a fistful of the money inside, and stuffed it into his pocket. After tossing the emptied cardboard box onto the ground dismissively, he tried to walk off just like that. The boy’s face twisted as if on the verge of tears, and he clung to the young man. But he was no match for the strong delinquent youth. Shoved hard, he fell on his rear and sat there fighting back sobs.

That was the moment. At that moment, a truly strange thing occurred. The delinquent youth staggered as if he had collided with something and let out a cry of “Ah!” And with his face turning bright red, he began wrestling alone. Even though there was no opponent, he started a fierce struggle all by himself.

I thought this youth had gone mad. “Ugh!” “Goddamn it!” he growled, thrashing about wildly all by himself.

People began to stand up—first two, then three. Everyone was surprised and stared. No one tried to subdue the young man. But before a large crowd could form, the one-man sumo match had reached its conclusion. The young man was thrown to the ground so thoroughly that he ended up sprawled out flat.

“You ask who threw him?” “An invisible opponent.” “A being made of air.” “Do you get it?” “That delinquent was wrestling with *the Invisible Man*.”

As soon as the young man was sprawled out, the area around his pants pocket began to swirl hazily, and then the wad of money that had been stuffed there leapt out on its own and whooshed into the air. Then, it returned to the shoeshine boy’s cardboard box exactly as it had been before. After that, the box began moving on its own again and was neatly placed onto the knees of the boy who had fallen on his backside.

At that moment, I definitely saw it. I saw something shaped like a human moving hazily like mist. That mist-like figure had retrieved the money from the youth’s pocket and put it into the boy’s cardboard box. The one who threw and pushed the youth was, of course, that mist-like figure. “Air Man—you see, I call this Transparent Monster ‘Air Man’—that Air Man is a master thief, but on the other hand, he does these kinds of good deeds too. He’s messing around. And he delights in making everyone gasp in surprise.”

Million-Yen Necklace

Such mysterious incidents occurred here and there. Rumors that an invisible entity was causing mischief gradually grew louder. The rumors also reached the police’s ears. To the newspaper companies as well, letters came pouring in. Yet neither the police nor the newspaper companies could determine the entity’s true identity. It was such a dreamlike affair that they simply couldn’t find a way to handle it.

However, last night, Air Man finally committed a theft. He stole a million-yen necklace. “You know Ginza’s Daihōdō, right?” “It’s a famous jewelry store.”

“It was last night after all customers had left when they were about to close up shop.” “The grand glass-fronted display case installed at the back of the store slid open by itself with a smooth hiss—and from inside emerged that store’s most expensive jeweled necklace being yanked out as if grabbed by something.” “Then it began floating through midair like dandelion fluff.”

The manager had gone to the back. The two employees had gone outside to close up. In the store, there was only one young employee. When the necklace began drifting through the air, the employee finally noticed it. And then, they let out a gasp and stood frozen in place, unable to move for some time.

The employee first thought that the necklace was suspended from the ceiling by an invisible thin thread. However, in the plaster-hardened white ceiling—painted uniformly without gaps—there could be no space for hanging threads to move about. As if possessed by a soul, the necklace began moving on its own, sending a chill through them as they grew frightened. Yet when they mustered courage to approach and reach out, the necklace darted away repeatedly like an elusive fish—swiftly evading each grasp.

Before long, the necklace drifted through the air, gradually approaching the entrance, and in the blink of an eye darted out of the store. The employee let out a loud cry and gave chase. The employees who had been outside also joined in, causing an uproar. The manager came rushing out from the back. Passersby began to gather too. Yet the necklace was nowhere to be found. The million-yen jewel had left the store on its own.

Immediately, this matter was reported to the police. The officers went to investigate the scene, but the whole affair was like something out of a dream—they couldn’t grasp any concrete leads. They considered whether it might be Air Man’s doing, since he’d been stirring up trouble lately, but with absolutely no clues to go on, there was nothing they could do.

The newspaper reporters learned of this incident this morning. So it didn’t make the morning edition, but you’ll see the article splashed across the evening paper. “Take a look when you get home.” “Unprecedented Bizarre Incident: Air Man Appears in Ginza” was what it declared.

“At Tōyō Newspaper, I’ve been assigned to take charge of this case.” “I was also the one who wrote the article in the evening paper.” “I’ve been running around like mad since this morning trying by any means to uncover Air Man’s true identity.” “And luckily, I found that guy with the wax mask.” “I didn’t think that was Air Man.” “However, since a wax doll was walking around town, as a journalist I couldn’t let this slip by.” “I’d been tailing that guy before you kids were.”

However, that guy peered into the antique shop's show window. Staring fixedly at the Buddha statue in the center without moving, I thought for the first time then that there was something wrong with him. "Perhaps inside that wax mask... it might be hollow." The thought struck me. If this was Air Man, that Buddha statue was in danger. He might later remove his clothes, become the Transparent Monster, and come to steal it.

Having thought that, after you kids started walking away, I entered the antique shop and warned the owner to hide that small metal Buddha statue somewhere. "You kids probably don’t know this, but that Buddha statue is called a Sui-kofu Buddha—an item far more valuable than a million-yen necklace." "However," I continued, "I finally managed to confirm his identity." "Up until now, I could only see something like a haze, but today I saw that guy taking off his clothes." "I saw him removing the wax mask." "And I confirmed that the inside was completely empty."

“Moreover, I wasn’t the only one who saw it.” “You’re here as witnesses.” “The three of us saw it with our own six eyes.”

“This will make a fantastic article! Tomorrow’s newspaper will devote an entire page to this story. Tonight, our company’s photography team will come to take your photos. And tomorrow’s paper will feature the tale of your brave pursuit. The three of us exposing Air Man’s true identity—that’ll be front and center!”

“Well then, let’s part ways here for now. It wouldn’t do to have people at your homes worrying about you.” “But I’ll ask one more thing of you kids.” “If you encounter that wax-masked figure again, tail him just as skillfully as before.” “And when you find out where he went, call me.” “I’ll give you my business card.”

The Department Store Mystery

The business card the journalist had given was printed with “Tōyō Newspaper Company, Social Affairs Department, Kurokawa Katsuichi.” When parting with the boys, Reporter Kurokawa asked for the addresses and full names of the two and wrote them down in his notebook.

The next day’s Tōyō Newspaper, just as Reporter Kurokawa had said, filled most of its social page with yesterday’s article. A large photo of the two boys, Shimada and Kinoshita, was featured, and the events—from their tailing of the wax-masked figure to its removal of the mask and clothes within the Western-style house’s walls before vanishing—were reported in detail, complete with a map.

That day, all over Tokyo, wherever one went, in every place people gathered, it was all anyone could talk about—the terrifying rumors of Air Man. Something that science could not explain had occurred. A completely invisible transparent human was hiding somewhere in Tokyo. Since he was as insubstantial as air itself, there wasn’t a moment one could let their guard down. Right beside where people were gathering and gossiping like that, that Air Man might have been standing there eavesdropping, grinning slyly all the while.

Jewelers all over Tokyo installed locks on their glass cases and show windows. In the show windows of art shops and antique stores， expensive items had vanished from view. They had hidden them away somewhere.

The ones most troubled were the banks. Because there was no way to know when the invisible creature might break in. And because the bundles of bills left on the cashier’s desk might be swiftly taken away. A million yen in thousand-yen bills was compact enough to be held in one hand. If Air Man were to hold it with both hands, he could carry off tens of millions of yen.

However, about a week passed without incident since that newspaper article was published. People began to think, “Wasn’t that all a lie?” “There’s just no way a human as transparent as air could exist.” “The Tōyō Newspaper reporter and those two boys must have been bewitched by a fox or something.” “...Otherwise, they must have written nonsense to increase newspaper readership,” people began to think.

However, that was not the case. Air Man popped up in a place no one could have possibly imagined.

That was a Sunday.

Kinoshita went out to the Nihonbashi department store with his mother. He was accompanying his mother as she purchased dress fabric. Kinoshita-kun wasn’t interested in dress fabrics or such, but he had an ulterior motive to drag his mother to the book department and beg for books.

Because they had left home early, when Kinoshita-kun and his mother arrived at the department store, the main entrance had only just opened. In the spacious interior of the store, people were still sparsely scattered about. They boarded the elevator without difficulty. They got off on the third floor and hurried to the fabric section. In the middle of the display stand where fabrics of various colors hung like a waterfall, there was a sort of round stage upon which mannequins of men, women, and children dressed in various Western-style clothes stood beautifully arranged. The mannequins had high noses and large eyes that made them look just like Westerners, but their skin bore a fox-like hue, leaving no doubt they were meant to be Japanese.

Around the mannequin platform, there were still only five or six customers. Kinoshita-kun and his mother walked slowly around the circular platform, observing the colors and shapes of the clothes worn by the mannequins. Kinoshita found looking at clothes utterly uninteresting, so he kept gazing at the mannequins’ faces instead—when suddenly he noticed something that made him gasp. Among the mannequins, there was one with a different face. All the others had the fox-like hue of Japanese faces, yet that one alone was the face of a Western man with pure white skin tinged faintly with red. Moreover, unlike the other mannequins, it was made of a translucent wax.

Kinoshita-kun involuntarily stopped in his tracks and stared fixedly at the mannequin. It wore a finely tailored tailcoat. The outfit was entirely different. But that face—oh—was identical. It perfectly matched that wax doll which had been peering into the antique shop's show window. Kinoshita-kun's eyes snapped wide open and perfectly round, looking as if they might burst from their sockets at any moment.

A clerk in a suit happened to pass by Kinoshita’s side. The boy involuntarily grabbed the clerk’s sleeve. The clerk stopped and looked at the boy’s face, but upon noticing those perfectly round eyes, he startled and began glancing around nervously at the mannequins. “Mister, that wax doll that looks like a Westerner... “Why doesn’t it have eyes? “It has no eyes—just black holes?”

Kinoshita-kun said in a whisper. When the clerk saw the doll, he let out a small, startled cry—"Ah!" Such an eyeless wax doll hadn't been there until yesterday. Because this department store wasn't supposed to have any real wax dolls at all.

The clerk beckoned to another clerk across from him. The two clerks whispered something to each other, and then one climbed onto the stage-like platform and tried to approach the doll. However, the clerk couldn’t take a single step forward and froze stock-still, as if he himself had turned into a doll. Because the wax doll wearing a tailcoat had moved.

A startled cry, a clattering noise—two female mannequins fell with a loud crash. The wax doll broke into a run. And the mannequin that had been blocking the path was knocked over.

The wax doll leapt down from the platform with terrifying force, fluttering the tail of its tailcoat, dashed past Kinoshita-kun, and ran off into the distance. From among the gathered customers, a collective cry erupted. The two clerks, having finally regained their composure, let out incoherent shouts and chased after the doll. The monster ran down the corridor at extraordinary speed, veering left and right. There was no one to stop it. When people caught a single glimpse of the wax doll’s face, they all fled in terror at its sheer horror.

The monster ran like a madman until vanishing into the narrow staff-only staircase. The pursuing clerks had grown to seven or eight. Jostling through cramped steps while shouting incoherently，they rushed downward. Sliding past three floors—second，first，basement—the monster raced down an unbranching corridor toward storage. A door stood ahead. He had no choice but open it. Behind pressed throngs of clerks. With sudden force，the monster flung open the door and leapt within.

“We’ve got him! He’s a cornered rat now!”

The burly clerk who had been running at the front shouted. Then leaping at the door, he slammed it shut and leaned against it to keep it from being opened from the other side.

“It’s safe now,” “The entrance here’s the only way in—all windows have iron bars. He’s a cornered rat.” “Someone hurry and call the police!” “Alright, I’ll make the call.” “Don’t let him escape!”

One of the clerks ran off. The remaining people gathered in front of the door and formed a strict security line.

The wax-masked monster had foolishly leapt into a dead-end room with no exit. No matter how much of an Air Man he was, escaping through the gaps in the window's iron bars proved impossible. This was because he was no ghost. Though invisible to the eye, he still possessed a physical body.

Whirlwind.

After a while, one of the clerks returned with three detectives in suits. They were the detectives who had been patrolling the department store at that very moment. The three detectives pushed through the clerks and approached the entrance door. Then, assuming a guarded stance, they flung the door open.

Then, at that moment, something truly terrifying was happening inside the room. Though called a warehouse, after all items had been taken out, it stood completely empty like a vacant room. In one corner lay only two or three large wooden crates scattered about, with nothing else remaining. Gray concrete walls. Gray concrete floor. Since light entered solely through small high windows barred with iron lattices, the vast hollow room was dim as evening.

At first, what caught the detectives' eyes was a human head flying through the air. A human head alone fell to the floor with a whoosh as if thrown, swaying gently. The detectives, caught off guard, were startled—but upon closer inspection, it was the head of a wax doll. Beside it lay tailcoats, shirts, trousers, and shoes, all messily strewn about. And there was no sign of the monster's form anywhere. Because he had taken off everything he was wearing and had become transparent. Finally, he had taken off the wax mask he had been wearing and had just thrown it away.

The three detectives, suddenly realizing this, abruptly stepped into the room. Even though it was invisible to the eye, they intended to capture the monster by groping around. The three split into three directions—right, left, and center—spread their arms wide, and advanced. Then they searched every corner of the room without leaving a single spot unexamined, but nothing tangible came to their hands. Since the opponent could see them perfectly, this game of cat and mouse was hopelessly one-sided. The monster had completely eluded them.

Then, at that moment, a startled cry of “Wah!” came from outside the door. When they turned around in surprise, a young clerk was sitting on the corridor floor having fallen on his backside.

“It’s him! He pushed me!”

Still sitting where he had fallen, his face deathly pale, he pointed toward the staircase behind him. This meant the monster had pushed him and fled toward the stairs. The people suddenly tried to rush that way, but then another scream—"Wah!"—rang out as a man tumbled down from the dimly lit staircase. He had been pushed when passing the invisible monster on the stairs. The man was a laborer who had been carrying goods from the wholesaler.

“It was just like a whirlwind. As I was going down the stairs, a gust of wind came whooshing up from below and slammed right into my chest. The force was terrible. I unintentionally missed my footing and tumbled all the way down.”

The laborer later explained it in that manner.

And then，the Transparent Monster escaped to whereabouts unknown． Once he emerged onto the staircase and blended into the crowd，there was nothing they could do． It was inside the vast department store．

Even a human with a visible form was hard enough to find—trying to search for an invisible monster was unimaginable. Later, upon investigation, they discovered that nothing had been stolen from places like the department store’s jewelry section. Of course, the Transparent Monster had likely intended to disguise itself as a doll and commit theft, but before it could achieve that objective, it was discovered because of Kinoshita.

Now, the commotion at the department store had ended without any particular incident, but the Transparent Monster was still hiding somewhere in Tokyo. And now, it was targeting its next prey. And what on earth could this next prey be? Strangely enough, it was an item located in the home of the boy Shimada, who had first discovered the monster. The Transparent Monster, aiming for it, would come to appear in Shimada-kun’s vicinity. The story finally entered its main plot.

Laughing Shadow

Two or three days after the department store incident—on one such evening—Shimada was strolling about the garden of his home. The sky hung thickly clouded over, and for early spring, it was an unseasonably warm day.

Shimada-kun’s father had been extremely wealthy before the war. Though he was now employed at a bank, only their house remained as splendid as it had been in the old days, with a spacious garden. In front of the Japanese-style room lay an expanse of lawn, beyond which stood a hillock with trees growing as thickly as a forest. Shimada-kun had been in front of the backyard chicken coop teasing the chickens, but when he grew tired of that, he wandered over to the garden lawn. The Japanese-style room had its glass doors tightly shut, and inside was hushed with no sign of anyone.

As he rounded the corner of the building and emerged onto the lawn with a light step, Shimada-kun froze in place there for some reason. Because something truly strange was happening on the lawn. Shimada-kun liked skating and owned roller skate equipment. They hadn’t been used for some time and had been placed under the veranda of the Japanese-style room, but now, upon looking, those roller skates were lined up in the middle of the lawn. But that wasn’t all. They were moving on their own. They were advancing forward alternately, just as if worn on human feet.

Shimada-kun wondered if he was dreaming. However, it was not a dream. He remembered everything that had happened since returning from school all too clearly. There was no way he could have fallen asleep.

"Oh, that's it. Maybe…" Shimada-kun felt a chill run down his spine as if someone had poured cold water down his back. He had remembered the Transparent Monster. He had realized that if that guy were wearing roller skates and walking around, this was exactly how it would look. Since it was on the lawn, they didn’t glide as they would on a skating rink, but even so, they gradually moved away from the veranda of the Japanese-style room and approached a cluster of fatsia plants growing thickly at the base of the hillock.

“Mom—! Quick, someone—hurry…!” Shimada-kun finally found his voice. And when he later thought about it, he realized he’d been shouting something embarrassingly childish. But by then, the roller skates were already plunging into the thicket of fatsia plants. The broad leaves rustled noisily, moving exactly as if someone were pushing through them. Beyond the fatsia bushes, clusters of large and small evergreen trees grew so thickly they formed a forest-like darkness.

Eventually, hearing Shimada-kun’s scream, his mother and the maid Take came running. Father had not yet returned from the bank.

Then there was a great commotion—they called over the neighbor, notified the police, and searched the entire garden—but they couldn’t discover anything. The only thing found was the roller skates lying deep within the fatsia thicket. The Transparent Monster must have taken off the skates there and escaped over the wall from behind the hillock. Even so, why on earth had the Transparent Monster been walking around wearing skates? Even after investigating, there seemed to be nothing that had been stolen. As seen when Air Man had helped the shoeshine boy, he did good things at times and was a mischievous fellow, but there seemed no reason for him to sneak into Shimada-kun’s garden and skate on a lawn that wasn’t even a skating rink. Could there not have been some reason behind this? Could it be that, knowing Shimada-kun had seen its true form at some point, it had been trying to torment him?

Then, late at night the following day, yet another terrifying incident occurred.

Shimada-kun was sleeping alone in his six-tatami-mat room when he abruptly opened his eyes in the dead of night, sensing some strange noise. Facing the backyard was a window with its frosted-glass shoji shut tight. Since there was a wooden storm shutter lattice outside, the sliding panels had been left open. The light from a distant garden lamp shone through the frosted glass—and there on the glass, a dim black human shadow hovered.

The figure appeared to be standing a short distance from the window, their upper body reflected at roughly twice the size of an ordinary person. Strangely, the figure did not appear to be wearing clothes, and the contours of naked flesh were discernible. The face was turned sideways, with tangled hair, sunken eyes, a high nose, and parted lips—all twice their actual size—vividly projected. It was a somewhat dim, faint shadow, but its shape alone was clearly discernible.

Shimada-kun was so terrified he could hardly breathe. He could clearly feel his heart pounding. He couldn’t even make a sound. As if drawn by some magic, he could only stare fixedly at that shadow.

“Eh heh heh heh……” It was a voice so chilling it seemed to make one’s body cower. The shadow laughed. The shadow’s enormous mouth split open up to its ears and flapped open and shut as it laughed in a low voice.

Shimada-kun could no longer endure it. From the pit of his stomach, anger welled up. A desperate courage had welled up within him.

He sat up abruptly on top of the futon,

“Who’s there?!” he shouted. Then, in a single bound, he dashed to the window and suddenly flung open the glass shoji. He had steeled himself to come face to face with the man. He had steeled himself to meet eye to eye. And, mustering every ounce of his voice, he intended to rebuke it.

But what on earth had just happened? When he flung open the window, there was no one outside. Since the rough wooden lattice was wide enough to stick his face through, he poked his head out and looked around, but there was no sign of anyone anywhere. Until he opened the shoji, the shadow had been reflected. However, when he opened it, the human who was the shadow's source vanished as if erased.

“Ichirou, what’s wrong?” The noise and shout had woken his father. Ichirou was his given name. “There was a strange figure standing right here just now. But when I opened the shoji, there was no one there. Dad, it might be that guy again.” Mentioning “that guy” was enough to understand. Of course, it meant the Transparent Monster. When he heard this, a serious look came over his father’s face.

Then there was another great commotion. Everyone in the house woke up, turned on every light in every room, and even took flashlights and clubs to begin searching the backyard. However, there was no trace of anyone. Since the garden soil was dry, not even footprints could be found. Here yet another mystery presented itself: the fact that a monster as transparent as air cast a shadow. Though upon later reflection, that shadow wasn't pitch black like an ordinary one but rather a hazy, semi-transparent silhouette as if projecting something indistinct. Though invisible to human eyes, perhaps the monster couldn't conceal its shadow—that faint shape might have been its only manifestation.

Pearl Tower

The next day, when Shimada-kun met Kinoshita-kun at school, he immediately told him about the previous night’s events.

“It’s getting really strange, huh.” “That guy is definitely targeting your house.” “Are you trying to get me into some terrible trouble?” “No, if that were the case, he’d target me first.” “Thanks to me, that guy had a rough time at the department store, you know.” “That’s not it.” “There must be something that guy wants in your house.”

“Hmm… now that you mention it, Dad did say something like that too.” “But he doesn’t tell me.” “It seems like there’s something in our house that guy is after, but…” “Then that must be it.” “Hey, you—let’s tell Mr. Kurokawa about this.” “You know, Mr. Kurokawa from the Tōyō Newspaper.” “He might come up with a good idea, you know.”

“Oh, right!” “That’s a good idea.” Thereupon, the two explained the situation to their teacher, used the school’s telephone to summon Reporter Kurokawa, and briefly informed him of everything that had happened so far. “In that case, I’ll pay a visit to your house once.” “Today in the evening, around when your father gets home.” “And then I’ll hear the full details.” Reporter Kurokawa confirmed the directions to Shimada-kun’s house and hung up the phone.

That evening, Reporter Kurokawa came to visit Shimada-kun’s house as promised. Since his father had also just returned home, they were promptly shown into the Western-style mansion’s parlor, where he and Ichirou took turns recounting the events from two days prior.

“Hmm… So it did reveal its shadow after all. Speaking of shadows, I also had a terrible time with that guy’s shadow.”

Reporter Kurokawa began the following story with evident irritation.

“It was two or three days ago.” “It was a fine day.” “It was when I was walking through the Yashikimachi district of Minato Ward on company business.” “It was a desolate place with long concrete walls stretching along both sides.” “It was already evening, and the red sunlight was fully illuminating the concrete wall on the right side, casting my walking shadow there.”

However, when I suddenly noticed, hadn't that shadow somehow become two? Startled, I looked around, but there was no one there. There was only me—a single person—yet there were two shadows. Astigmatism is a condition where things appear double, but there's no way I could've suddenly developed it. Even with astigmatism, unless it's extremely severe, you don't see shadows double like that.

However, upon closer inspection, one of the shadows wasn't wearing a hat or any clothes. So it must be naked, then. Of course, that meant it couldn't be my shadow. Moreover, compared to my shadow, that one looked somewhat hazy and faint—like frosted glass projected onto a wall. I looked around once more. There was still no one there. Yet the shadow alone kept walking as if chasing mine. I grew frightened and quickened my pace. Then the other sped up too. When I stopped, the other stopped as well.

“Who’s there?!” I shouted with all my courage. Then from nowhere came an unpleasant laugh—“Ehehehehehehehe”—a bone-chilling sound. When I stopped moving, its shadow circled around to face me head-on. Now our shadows stood directly opposed. Suddenly the other shadow spread both arms and lunged at mine. But it wasn’t just shadows—an invisible hand made contact with my actual body.

It was a truly unpleasant feeling. I shuddered and leapt back. And then, shoving the invisible one aside with all my strength, I fled for dear life. “I was in a complete panic by then.” After running a full two hundred meters straight and reaching a town bustling with people, my shadow finally became just one again. “The invisible one had gone off somewhere.” “Air Man holds a grudge against me, you see. However, he only plays pranks.” “He doesn’t seem to have pistols or daggers.” “You’re at fault here, but he’s a somewhat likable fellow.” “Shimada-kun, it might just be playing a prank on you too.”

“I hope that’s the case, but I’m afraid it’s not just that.” Shimada-kun’s father said worriedly, lowering his voice.

“So, do you have some idea about this?” “There’s only one.” “I too lost many things after the war, but there’s one item I could call our family treasure that I’ve carefully preserved.” “Hmm… So you’re saying that guy’s after it, then.” “And what exactly is it?”

“Are you familiar with something called the Pearl Tower? It’s a five-storied pagoda about twenty centimeters tall, densely covered with pearl beads. It is a gem-studded tower made of hundreds—perhaps thousands—of the finest pearls. This Pearl Tower was exhibited at the Great Taisho Exposition by the Pearl King of Mie Prefecture, and my late father purchased it. At the time, it cost 100,000 yen. In today’s terms, that would be close to 30 million yen. That invisible fellow supposedly stole a necklace from a jeweler, but this tower is worth dozens of times more than that necklace. I think that guy knows about it and has been targeting it.”

“Where is the Pearl Tower kept?”

“I’ve hidden it in a place no one knows.” “The fact that I possess the Pearl Tower is probably known to the public, but where it’s located is known only to me and my wife.” “Ichirou doesn’t know either.”

“Is it inside this house?” “That’s correct. Since I must rely on your assistance in various ways, I will confide in you—the truth is, it is stored in a vault within a basement that was converted from an air-raid shelter.” “You mean an air-raid shelter?” “Isn’t it dangerous to keep it in such a place?”

“However, that’s not the case.” “Though we call it an air-raid shelter, it’s a robust structure built with thick concrete.” “During the war, you could access it from the garden too, but we’ve now sealed that entrance with concrete and covered it with soil.” “So there’s only one entrance left—in the study of my Western-style room.” The study’s floor functioned as a trapdoor. “And since it’s beneath the carpet, no one but me could even locate where that trapdoor is.” “When you open it and go under the floor, there’s another thick iron door.” “That won’t open without my special key.” “Beyond that, after descending some steps, you’ll find a concrete room about four tatami mats wide with a safe at its center.” “The safe also needs its own special key.” “What’s more, it has a combination lock—even with the key, you can’t open it without knowing the code.”

When he realized it was being targeted, he had even considered depositing it in a bank vault. Of course, the bank would undoubtedly be safer. However, transporting it to the bank posed a risk. Since the opponent was an invisible entity, we couldn't afford to let our guard down even slightly. "After all, I think it's better to leave it in the basement as it is."

“I see. If it’s that secure, it should be safe. You shouldn’t open the trapdoor in your study for the time being. Though he can’t be seen with the eye, since he has a physical body unlike a ghost, he can’t get in if the entrance is shut. However, he’s quite a cunning fellow—there’s no telling what kind of scheme he might devise. It’s crucial not to carelessly fall into his trap.”

When the conversation reached this point, a faint click sounded somewhere. Reporter Kurokawa jolted with a terrified expression, suddenly rose from his chair, and lunged toward the open door. It was as if he had gone mad. But by the time he rushed to the entrance, the door had already shut itself with a loud noise.

At that moment，Reporter Kurokawa shouted，＂Damn it！＂，staggered backward as if someone had shoved him，yet kept both hands thrust forward trying to grab something． A white sheet of paper fluttered down through the space before his eyes． Reporter Kurokawa caught it with both hands before it hit the floor，stared intently，then muttered，＂Damn it…＂ again．He returned to the table and placed the scrap of paper in front of Shimada-kun’s father． On it，in large pencil letters，was written：

I will come to take what you all were just talking about tomorrow night. I’ll set the time at nine o’clock. Air Man

Mr. Kurokawa, thank you for giving me such a splendid name.

Basement. Shimada Ichirou, his father, and Reporter Kurokawa read the terrifying message on that scrap of paper and could do nothing but exchange pale looks. The sun had already set, leaving the room pitch dark. The three of them had even forgotten to turn on the lights. “Ah!”

Suddenly, Shimada the boy clung to his father’s arm. His eyes bulged as if about to pop from their sockets, wide open and fixed on one corner of the room. Father and Reporter Kurokawa turned in surprise to follow his gaze. What Shimada-kun stared at was a tightly shut glass window—a Western-style casement fitted with frosted panes. Upon its clouded surface hovered a faint human silhouette. A profile nearly twice life-size gaped with a crescent-shaped mouth.

“Hehehehe…” That hoarse, hair-raising laughter could faintly be heard. Every time it laughed, the shadow’s lips flapped loosely. It was no ordinary human shadow. It was the faintly hazy, ghost-like shadow unique to the Transparent Monster.

Reporter Kurokawa was, true to form, brave. Upon seeing this, he shouted “Hah!” and lunged at the window with falcon-like speed. Then, as he put his hand on the swing-up window, it suddenly swung open with a clatter. However, there was no sign of anyone outside the window. There was no way anyone could be seen. “Hehe…”

Only that horribly unpleasant laughter drifted from somewhere in the dark garden. Eventually, the laughter ceased, and for a while there was dead silence—when suddenly, "Do not... forget... tomorrow evening... at nine o'clock." The hoarse voice was heard as if falling from the sky. The Transparent Monster had spoken for the first time. What an unnervingly eerie voice it was. A drawn-out, faltering speech—as if a foreigner were speaking Japanese—paired with that strangely hoarse voice. Upon hearing it, the two adults and one boy inside the room froze as if under a spell, rendered completely immobile.

“Mister! Hurry! Close the window now!” Shimada the boy whispered to Reporter Kurokawa. Otherwise, the Transparent Monster might come in through the window. Because even if he did come in, no one would notice. Reporter Kurokawa, perhaps convinced by this reasoning, hurriedly slammed the glass window shut with a bang. Then, once again— “Hehehehe…”—that laughter could be heard from outside the windowpane, growing gradually fainter as if moving away until at last it faded entirely.

“Does that guy know about the secret entrance to the basement?”

Shimada-kun’s father said with a pale face, looking worried. “There’s a hidden door beneath the carpet in your study, correct?” “Have you opened it at all recently?”

Reporter Kurokawa asked. “Just four or five days ago, I entered the basement to check whether the Pearl Tower was safe.” “About once a month, I open the safe and check to make sure.”

“Hmm… If that guy had followed you and slipped into the basement four or five days ago…” “What? What did you say?” Mr. Shimada stared at Reporter Kurokawa’s face as if startled. When he mentioned it—since the adversary was an invisible entity—such a thing couldn’t be ruled out. When he considered that perhaps it hadn’t been stolen at “tomorrow’s nine o’clock” but had already been taken during that time, Mr. Shimada suddenly grew anxious.

“Let’s check.” “Please come along too.” “Ichirou, come here.” “With the three of us here, even if that guy tries to sneak in, stopping him will be no trouble at all.” “That’s right.” “It might be best to verify things once.” Thereupon, the three hurried into the study, first locking the door from the inside and fastening all the windows with latches. By doing so, the Transparent Monster would be unable to enter.

By the time the three of them entered the study, the monster might have already taken the initiative and been hiding inside. However, there was a way to prevent that.

Mr. Shimada moved the chair aside, rolled up the carpet laid on the floor, gripped the floorboard, and lifted it with a grunt. The floor had been cut into a square, forming a trapdoor. Mr. Shimada opened it just enough to create a gap barely large enough for someone to squeeze through. “Now, you two—enter through this gap.” “I’ll go in after you and close it.” “If we do this, even if that guy’s right beside us, we’ll be safe.” “He can’t possibly slip in without brushing against us.”

Doing exactly as instructed, the three entered beneath the floor. When they lowered the trapdoor, everything plunged into darkness, but Mr. Shimada pressed a switch installed under the floorboards, and the light flashed on abruptly. Looking around, they found themselves in a box-like space about one meter square, surrounded by concrete walls. The floor beneath their feet was also concrete, with an iron plate roughly sixty centimeters square lying in one corner. This was the entrance to the deep basement.

The box-like space became so crowded when the three entered that unless they pulled in their necks, their heads would bump against the ceiling—narrow and cramped. Mr. Shimada secured the ceiling trapdoor from the inside as he spoke. “What do you think? This should keep us safe. Since we’re packed in here, even the Transparent Monster can’t find a gap to slip through. Once we’ve done this, we’ll open the iron door beneath our feet,” he explained with evident pride.

he said with evident pride. Then, after opening the iron door and once all three had gone inside, he locked it again from below. There, a narrow concrete staircase—barely wide enough for one person to pass—led downward. Descending about six steps brought them before the safe. It was a basement about the size of four tatami mats, surrounded by thick concrete on all six sides. Of course, there was a light on the ceiling there as well.

“Now, here it is. Mr. Kurokawa, even with all this caution, do you think that guy managed to come in with us?” Mr. Shimada said as he took the safe key out of his pocket.

“No—with this setup, it’s safe. Even the Transparent Monster has a physical body—there’s absolutely no way he could slip in. It’s completely safe now.” Reporter Kurokawa finally broke into a smile and answered. Mr. Shimada turned the safe’s dial several times to align the code characters, then opened its door with the key. “Ah! There it is. It’s unharmed. This is the Pearl Tower.” A bright smile appeared on Mr. Shimada’s face. When they looked, in the center of the safe stood a slender glass case, inside which a lovely five-storied pagoda made of beautiful pearls was gleaming.

“Hmm, this is splendid. I’ve never seen anything this beautiful before.” Reporter Kurokawa let out an involuntary sigh and said, “No wonder that guy’s targeting it. But it’s safe now. Let’s report this to the police immediately, do everything possible, and protect this treasure.” “That’s right. I must inform the police… I can finally rest easy now.”

Mr. Shimada closed the safe's lid there, locked it, and turned the dial round and round.

Then the three returned to the study. However, needless to say, when exiting the basement as well, they locked the aforementioned iron door with the same meticulous caution as before.

9 PM

Now, various things had occurred between then and the following day’s 9 PM—the very hour promised by the monster—but since detailing them all would grow tedious, I shall record only the essentials here. When they notified the police, officers began keeping watch around Shimada-kun’s house that very night. The next day saw Inspector Nakamura—head of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Investigation Division—visit the Shimada residence, confer with his father, then depart. As twilight deepened, Inspector Nakamura returned with three detectives in tow: he stationed one officer at the study’s concealed door, directed the remaining two to persist in patrolling outside the house, and positioned himself resolutely before the basement safe.

Furthermore, the Boy Detectives Club was finally set to begin their activities. The fact that the Transparent Monster was targeting Shimada-kun's house had become widely known among his school friends, and as it turned out, there was a Boy Detectives Club member at the same school who reported this to Kobayashi Leader. Kobayashi Leader refers to the renowned boy assistant of the famous detective Akechi Kogorō. Readers who have read books such as *The Boy Detectives Club* and *Dr. Monster* should be well acquainted with the Boy Detectives Club led by Kobayashi Leader.

Upon hearing this, Kobayashi Leader met with Shimada-kun and Kinoshita-kun to discuss plans, then selected five club members living near Shimada-kun’s house. Leading these five, he resolved to stand guard against the Transparent Monster. Even though they were keeping watch, since their opponent was an invisible monster, merely watching would accomplish nothing. At that point, Kobayashi Leader came up with a brilliant idea. The idea was that both he himself and the five members would each carry flashlights, and once night fell, they would split into three groups of two each to patrol around Shimada-kun’s house and through the garden while sweeping their flashlight beams around.

Why would they do such a thing? The Transparent Monster was invisible to the eye, but it did cast a shadow. While they swung their flashlights around, sweeping the beams here and there, if a strange shadow appeared within that light, that would be evidence of the Transparent Monster’s presence there. Using that shadow to get a sense of its position, they would then suddenly pounce on it—that was the plan.

When Kobayashi explained this to Inspector Nakamura, the inspector was so impressed that he even recommended the same method to his own detective subordinates.

Thus, around the Shimada residence, once night fell, flashlight beams flickered here and there, creating a scene as beautiful as it was eerie—like fireflies darting about in disarray.

Now, this was the basement.

The time was ten minutes to nine. Four chairs were arranged around the safe, and for over an hour now, Shimada Ichirou, Mr. Shimada, Reporter Kurokawa, and Inspector Nakamura had been staring unwaveringly at the safe door. When the four of them entered there, just as they had the previous night, they took every possible precaution to ensure that the monster could find no opening to slip in. Therefore, there was absolutely no way the monster could be in this basement. Furthermore, since the double doors at the entrance had been locked from the inside, the Transparent Monster could not enter afterward either.

“Perhaps because I’ve never once had the...*honor* of meeting that guy, I find it somewhat hard to grasp why everyone here is so terribly alarmed.” “With this level of precaution, it should be perfectly safe now.” “A threat to come at nine o’clock is nothing more than a public nuisance’s scare tactic.”

Inspector Nakamura, in his suit, said as he took out a cigarette box from his pocket. Then Reporter Kurokawa— “No—he’s practically a demonic entity.” “We must never let our guard down.” “At any moment, right before our eyes, the safe door might slide open by itself—we can’t rule out such a possibility.”

“Hahaha… That’s quite alright. Kobayashi Leader came up with a clever idea. That guy has a shadow. We just need to watch out for the shadow. This basement has electric lights. If that guy comes in, a shadow should appear somewhere, right?”

“However, Inspector, there are times when he doesn’t cast a shadow at all. Once, when he helped that shoeshine boy, I was there and saw it—but even as he grappled with the delinquent youth, his shadow didn’t appear at all. Only the shadow of the delinquent youth struggling alone was projected on the ground. Perhaps he has mastered a kind of magic where he only casts a shadow when he wants to scare someone.”

“Hahaha… You seem to have a bit of respect for that guy, Kurokawa.” Inspector Nakamura said this with a laugh, but before his laughter had faded, a strange, dull *thud* echoed from somewhere. The four of them gasped and exchanged glances. The room fell utterly silent—until Shimada Ichirou peered at his father’s wristwatch and involuntarily blurted out.

“Dad, it’s one minute to nine o’clock.” Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa each checked their own watches. It was indeed one minute to nine o'clock. All three had synchronized their watches with the radio beforehand. No one spoke. Inspector Nakamura, too, now wore a serious expression. The quiet was such that the ticking of the three watches’ seconds could be clearly heard. Ten seconds, twenty seconds—in the blink of an eye, time pressed onward. Eight eyes were glaring fixedly at the safe door.

The boy Shimda stared fixedly like that when he felt something hazy - a human silhouette standing beside the safe.

"Oh!" he thought, but when he looked again, there was nothing to be seen. Was it just his imagination? Or perhaps…

At that moment, once again somewhere came a faint clunk. The faces of the four people staring at the safe turned pale. Shimada-kun cried "Wah!" and—though suddenly seized by the urge to flee—barely managed to hold his ground. It was an indescribably strange sensation, the kind that made him feel his heart might leap into his throat at any moment.

“Bwahahaha….” Suddenly, a thunderous laugh resounded throughout the room. Inspector Nakamura stood up from his chair and laughed. “Gentlemen, nine o’clock has passed. In twenty seconds, it’ll be one minute past. Even as I said this—look—it turned 9:01. Mr. Kurokawa, what do you say? That guy didn’t keep his promise. The safe is unharmed. That scrap of paper was nothing more than an empty threat.”

Inspector Nakamura declared, as if thoroughly amused.

“Please wait.” “Then what was that strange sound we heard twice?” “Mr. Shimada, just to be safe, please check inside the safe.” Without needing to be told by Reporter Kurokawa, Mr. Shimada stood up and approached the safe. Then he turned the dial, inserted the key, and opened the door.

The moment he opened it and peered inside, Mr. Shimada let out an “Ah!” and stood frozen in place. “What’s wrong?”

Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa rushed to his side.

“Ah! The Pearl Tower’s gone.”

Shimada Ichirou clung to his dad and cried out. Inside the safe, only an empty glass case remained. And then, at that moment,

“Heh heh heh….”

That nasty, nasty laugh came echoing from nowhere—didn’t it? Of course it was inside the basement. That guy was here somewhere. The four of them looked around wildly as if they’d gone mad. But there wasn’t even a shadow of anyone to be seen. “I’ve got it! That guy—when Mr. Shimada opened the safe just now—must’ve slipped his hand in from the side and stolen it! I saw a hazy white figure!”

Reporter Kurokawa shouted frantically. However, if that were the case, even if the Transparent Monster remained invisible, the stolen Pearl Tower should have been floating somewhere in the room. Yet no matter how hard they strained their eyes, there was no trace of it—not under the chairs, behind the safe, nor anywhere in the air. The three adults quickly exchanged glances, spread their arms wide, and darted about the room searching for the invisible foe. But their hands found nothing to grasp.

Inspector Nakamura ran up the concrete stairs and strained his ears under the iron door at the entrance. Then, once again, that unpleasant laughter could faintly be heard.

“Ah! It’s outside the Iron Door. “That guy’s outside!”

Undoubtedly, it was a voice from outside. The laughter that had clearly been heard inside earlier was now, somehow, passing straight through the locked iron door and being heard from outside. So could it be that the Transparent Monster could freely transform its very body, like smoke or a ghost? “Do you get it now? I always keep my promises...” It was a faint voice. From outside the iron door, they could hear the Transparent Monster saying such things in that halting voice.

Then, some time after the four had exited the basement, Kobayashi boy came running up, panting. And then, suddenly, he made this report.

“We caught a suspicious person,” reported Kobayashi Leader breathlessly. “Outside the hedge wall—a vagrant-looking man was crouching there, trembling violently. When we questioned him, he told us something terrifying. We can’t tell if it’s true or not. But he seems to have witnessed something so horrifying that he still can’t stop shaking. Should we bring him here?” The inspector immediately ordered them to fetch the man. But who exactly had the Boys’ Detective Club apprehended? And what unspeakable horror had this vagrant youth encountered?

The Gentleman Retrieving His Head Following Inspector Nakamura’s orders, Kobayashi Leader immediately turned back and brought the young vagrant, whose arms were gripped by two boy detectives. He was a twenty-four- or twenty-five-year-old vagrant who looked thoroughly filthy. He wore a dirty khaki-colored outfit, held a tattered old soft hat in his hands, and his feet—caked with mud—were bare. His hair was a tangled mess, his sallow gaunt face dominated by eyes that gleamed sharply.

Inspector Nakamura had the man sit on a chair and kindly asked him to tell them in detail what he had seen. Thereupon, the vagrant youth timidly began the following terrifying tale. That night, while wandering from town to town in search of a place to sleep, this vagrant youth happened to pass by the hedge wall of the Shimada residence. This occurred immediately after the Transparent Monster had stolen the Pearl Tower from the basement vault—though one would only realize this connection later—when the youth noticed something squirming in the dark garden within the hedge wall.

So he stopped and peered inside through a gap in the hedge. The youth’s eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness from having spent so much time in dark places. Moreover, in the far side of the garden, a night light was on, its faint glow dimly lit that area. When he peered closely, strange objects lay scattered in the clump of grass beneath a standing tree. A mouse-gray overcoat, a dark suit, white shirts and undergarments, a mouse-gray soft hat—even a pair of shoes was neatly arranged. If it had just been that, there would have been nothing to it, but mixed among those clothes lay something truly horrifying. A pale, round object. And it had a tangled mass of hair growing from it.

At first, the youth had no idea what it was, but as he stared intently, he gradually realized the round object had eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It was a human head.

The youth, overwhelmed by terror, let out a shriek and nearly bolted. Since there was a human head lying in the grass, no one could help being shocked. As if he'd witnessed a murder scene, a piercing chill ran down his back.

However, at that very moment, something even more bizarre occurred—something that made the youth, who had been about to flee, stop in his tracks involuntarily. The youth, as if under a spell, found himself unable to look away from the moving thing. That’s right. It was moving. Not the severed head. The trousers of the suit. The black trousers rose smoothly from the ground as if lifted by something, squirming and twisting—then suddenly stood upright on their own. In other words, they were standing on two legs in exactly the shape of a human wearing trousers. They weren’t just standing there. They began walking here and there.

The youth nearly let out a shriek once again. However, thinking some terrible fate might befall him if he made a sound, he managed with great effort to suppress his voice.

As he continued watching, sweat pouring down his face, this time a white shirt fluttered up into the air and squirmed about until it took on the shape of a human wearing a shirt. Then next, a white dress shirt fluttered and similarly formed into the shape of someone wearing it. In other words, it felt exactly like watching an invisible human put on trousers, don a shirt, and slip into a dress shirt.

The vagrant youth wondered if he had been bewitched by a fox or was trapped in some terrible nightmare. Otherwise, there was no way such a bizarre thing could be happening—because that was the only explanation. The invisible being then put on a jacket, stepped into shoes, and pulled on gloves. He had completely transformed into a well-dressed gentleman. However, there was just one thing missing. The head was missing.

“Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever seen a human with nothing above the shoulders—a headless human? It was the first time I’d ever seen such a thing in my life—it was downright bizarre.”

The youth said such things to Inspector Nakamura and the others in a thoroughly frightened manner.

However, next came something even stranger. As previously described, only a human head lay on the ground. The headless man in the suit bent down and retrieved that head from the earth. His both hands raised the pale head. "Huh? So what fell there was this guy's head?" As the youth pondered this bizarre notion, the headless man smoothly lifted the head held in both hands and neatly positioned it atop his own shoulders. Then came something strange—once attached there, the head adhered firmly and wouldn't detach. The headless man had gained a head. He now became a proper full-fledged human being.

The youth remained crouched outside the hedge in a dreamlike daze, utterly unable to move—but then the suited gentleman with a head, now wearing an overcoat and soft hat, suddenly began approaching this way. The youth was frozen in terror. He shrank down and could only tremble violently.

However, the Transparent Monster did not approach the youth. He stopped inside the hedge and looked around until finding a broken section nearby; making a rustling noise through foliage, he emerged from there. After slowly surveying his surroundings once more, he departed toward the dark town ahead. The youth had managed to remain undiscovered.

When the vagrant youth finished speaking, Inspector Nakamura was the first to break the silence.

“The severed head you saw is none other than the Transparent Monster’s infamous wax mask." “He can’t walk around town without a head, so he deceives people by pulling that wax mask completely over his head.” "I heard about that from the children here." “I don’t read newspapers, so until now I hadn’t known about the Transparent Monster.”

The youth said with a vacant look.

“So you just stayed put like that.” “You didn’t even try to chase after the monster, did you?”

Reporter Kurokawa asked the youth in a scolding tone. “Well… I didn’t know he was such a bad guy, so…” “Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have had the courage to chase after that awful guy of yours.” “Not letting out a scream was all I could manage.” “What an idiot.” “Why didn’t you scream?” “If only you had told us—we had plenty of people here.” “You could’ve captured the great monster causing panic across Tokyo if you’d tried, you know.” “To let it slip away like that…”

“No, I didn’t have the courage myself, but there’s one person who did chase after that guy alone.”

“Huh? What did you say? Why didn’t you mention that sooner? Who was it? Who was it that chased him?”

“A child.” “A child just like the ones here—the kids who caught me.” The vagrant youth answered in a somewhat resentful tone while staring intently at Kobayashi Leader and the two boy members. “As I was crouching by the hedge, a child passed by, swinging a flashlight around.” “And when he spotted me, he asked what I was doing.” “I was still too scared to make a sound, but since the figure of that suited gentleman who had picked up the head was visible in the distance, I pointed at it.” “Then, that child seemed to grasp something on his own, turned off his flashlight, and quietly began trailing the suited gentleman monster.”

“Clever. Kobayashi, that must be one of your club members. But being all alone must be nerve-wracking. In the heat of the moment, there was no time to make contact, so he must’ve decided to tail him regardless—but I’m worried about that child’s safety. Kobayashi, who could that be? Hurry up and go check.” Reporter Kurokawa stood up from his chair as though unable to contain his worry.

The Transparent Monster’s Lair

The child who had tailed the Transparent Monster all alone was none other than Daisuke Hisashi—vice-leader of the Boys’ Detective Club and right-hand man to Leader Kobayashi. He was a second-year middle school student named Daisuke Hisashi. When Daisuke saw the suspicious figure that the vagrant youth was pointing at outside the hedge, he instantly thought this must be the Transparent Monster. The figure’s appearance from behind perfectly matched the description of the monster’s outfit that everyone had been told about.

This boy was small in stature. Moreover, in the desolate residential district where streetlights were scarce, tailing proved relatively easy. At a dark street corner about a hundred meters from the Shimada residence sat a car with its headlights off. The suspicious gentleman approached the vehicle and knocked on its exterior in an odd rhythm—*knock, knock, knock-knock-knock*—before opening the door to settle into the back seat. He then began murmuring indistinctly to the driver.

Daisuke Hisashi was light on his feet and excelled at the wooden horse and horizontal bar. Furthermore, he was extremely adventurous. He wasn’t about to let this golden opportunity slip away. It must have been what they call a warrior’s trembling. For some reason, his body began to tremble and his heart started pounding. Daisuke mentally shouted “Alright!”, then muffled his footsteps as he approached the rear of the car, nimbly leaped onto the rear wheel cover, stood on tiptoe there, and smoothly climbed up onto the car’s roof. It was a maneuver too quick for the eye to follow. By the time Daisuke had clung to the roof like a flatfish, the car had already started moving.

The car avoided police boxes, driving from one dark town to another for over thirty minutes. Neither the mysterious man nor the driver seemed to have the slightest inkling that the vice-leader of the Boys’ Detective Club was clinging to the roof directly above their heads. Every time the car turned a corner, Daisuke found himself on the verge of being thrown off, yet through sheer effort, he managed to cling to the roof. The place where the car stopped was undoubtedly within Tokyo Metropolis, but it was an overgrown field that might have been the site of an old military barracks. As far as the eye could see, there were no houses—only large trees charred by wartime fires still jutting up defiantly. Against the distant glow of the bustling town’s night sky, their skeletal forms loomed faintly.

The mysterious man got out of the car and began walking off somewhere. Realizing he couldn’t afford to lose sight of him, Daisuke also slipped down quietly from the roof and pressed himself flat against the ground to observe. With a loud *Grrrr…*, a terrible noise erupted right above his head. Startled, he looked up to find the car beginning to move. The driver, a subordinate of the Transparent Monster, was likely transporting the car—now that its business was done—to some secret garage. In the blink of an eye, the car vanished into the darkness beyond.

Now came the final tailing—the last pursuit. The Transparent Monster’s lair was somewhere within this vast field. What on earth kind of place was this? The danger surrounding Daisuke Hisashi had grown increasingly dire. When he looked ahead stretched a cliff about ten meters high entirely overgrown with grass continuing on and on. The Transparent Monster proceeded toward that cliff.

Daisuke crawled across the grass and followed after the Transparent Monster. Because it was a pitch-black field，even if the Transparent Monster turned around，there was little risk of being discovered. As long as he didn’t make any noise，he would be safe.

The Transparent Monster approached the base of the cliff. It was so dark there that shapes became indistinguishable. Daisuke opened his eyes wide and round, staring fixedly into that gloom. Then came a rustling of grass—and the Transparent Monster’s figure vanished completely. No matter how hard he peered, there remained only the cliff’s soil and grass.

Had the Transparent Monster used magic once again? No, that wasn’t the case. There was a large hole hidden by grass there. There was a tunnel-like horizontal hole. The Transparent Monster had entered that tunnel.

As soon as Daisuke noticed this, he approached the tunnel entrance, listened intently, and peered inside. A rustling sound came from within. The Transparent Monster was proceeding deep into the tunnel. It would later be discovered that this was a horizontal air-raid shelter dug during the war. Because it stood in a desolate area and no one had filled the hole, it had remained exactly as it was. At the entrance of the hole, grass had grown so thickly that it had become impossible to tell there was even a hole there anymore.

Daisuke proceeded to enter the pitch-black horizontal tunnel, taking utmost care not to make a sound. However, after advancing just ten meters, he found himself at a dead end with not a single branching path. "Huh? That’s strange. Did the Transparent Monster hide somewhere?" Yet there was nowhere to hide. Since the tunnel was narrow, if the Transparent Monster were present, it should have made contact with Daisuke’s body.

“Did he pull out another secret trick and vanish?” Daisuke wondered curiously while remaining perfectly still—when suddenly he noticed a faint light right in front of him. There was a round hole about forty centimeters square, and beyond it, things were dimly lit.

“Ah! There’s a wide space on the other side of this small hole.” “There’s a light on there—its reflection reaches all the way here.” “Then without doubt—that guy must have gone through this little hole.”

Daisuke finally noticed this. Even if someone were to enter this horizontal tunnel，that small hole likely served as a passageway to prevent them from noticing the Transparent Monster’s lair deeper within. Normally，a lid might have been placed over that hole from the inside.

"Alright, I'll try going inside here."

Daisuke made a split-second decision. To tell the truth， Daisuke had acted too hastily. Since he had discovered the Transparent Monster’s lair， he should have turned back there and reported to Kobayashi and Inspector Nakamura. If he had done that， he could have avoided such a horrifying ordeal. However， Daisuke，the adventurous boy，had already become as single-minded as a hound that had found its prey. He had no time to calmly consider the consequences.

The hole was small—so small that one had to turn sideways to barely squeeze through. Daisuke listened intently to confirm no one was on the other side of the hole, then slowly began crawling inside. Then, when he stuck his head out of the hole and looked around, he realized—just as he had thought—that the interior formed an extremely large cavern.

Far in the distance, something like a crack in a board—a vertical, elongated glint—stood out, and by that light, the interior of the hole was dimly visible. The ceiling was high enough for an adult to stand and walk, and the width was at least one meter—a place like an earthen corridor.

Daisuke boldly entered the space, stood up, and cautiously walked toward the glowing object that resembled a crack in a board. When he approached closer to check, it turned out to indeed be a board. It was a crude door-like structure made of planks. Through cracks in the boards seeped a reddish, flickering light. There could be no mistake—a candle had been lit on the other side.

When he listened closely, he could hear a faint sound from beyond the door. It was the sound of someone moving about. Daisuke knelt before the door and peered through the crack in the board. No sooner had he peered inside than he shuddered as if startled. Yet even as he shuddered, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. As if turned to stone, he remained frozen in that posture for an interminable time without moving a muscle.

Daisuke Hisashi’s Adventure

It was a narrow room. On the front wall hung what appeared to be a black curtain covering its entire surface. Before it stood an iron bed painted white like those found in hospitals, upon whose white sheets sat a man facing this direction - a man clad in thick blue-and-white striped pajamas. Yet strangely, this man had no face. Nothing existed above his neck. Only the pajamas sat there.

Eventually, the pajamas stood up. And then they took two or three steps. On their feet were slippers. However, there were no hands. At the ends of the pajama sleeves, there was nothing. And yet, exactly as if hands existed there, the sleeves moved. Beside the bed stood a small round table painted white. The headless pajama-clad man drew near it.

Daisuke's eyes followed the man and shifted toward the table. And when he glanced at what was placed on top of it, he shuddered with a chill. On the table, a candle set in a Western-style candlestick was burning. There was a flask filled with water and a cup. There was a tobacco case and an ashtray. That alone wouldn’t have been strange, but there was another odd thing there as well. On the table—a place where it should never have been—something was perched. It was a human head. The head of a wicked human stared fixedly this way from atop the table.

Daisuke instinctively began to flee but suddenly noticed something and kept peering in. What lay on the table wasn’t a real head—he realized—but a wax mask. The Transparent Monster wore pajamas and was preparing to sleep. Since sleeping with a wax mask would prove cumbersome, he must have removed it and left it on the table. That explained why the pajama-clad figure lacked a head. It wasn’t absent—merely invisible.

At that moment, the headless pajama-clad man took the stopper from the flask on the table and poured water into a cup. Since he wasn’t wearing gloves, the hands were not visible. As the pajama sleeves moved, the flask rose on its own, floated in midair, its mouth gradually tilting downward until water poured into the cup. It was exactly like watching a magic trick. Next, the cup filled with water floated smoothly into the air and came to rest near the pajama collar. Just like the flask earlier, the cup remained floating in midair, gradually tilting until the water inside was sucked away into empty space.

In reality, the Transparent Monster was holding the cup in his hand and drinking water, but since both his face and hands were transparent and invisible, the cup appeared to dance in midair all by itself. Even as water streamed from the cup, none of it spilled downward. Because it was being poured into the mouth of an invisible monster.

Daisuke had often heard tales of the Transparent Monster, but this was his first time seeing it. He was so overwhelmed by the sheer bizarreness that he found himself utterly astonished. He began to doubt whether he was dreaming. As he kept watching, the Transparent Monster this time took a cigarette from the table, lit it with the candle flame, and began puffing vigorously. A single white cigarette lay perfectly still in midair above the pajamas. One end would occasionally flare red, each time sending smoke billowing forth from empty space. The Transparent Monster was exhaling smoke through his nose and mouth.

As Daisuke was engrossed in peering at this strange spectacle, a rustling sound—like garments brushing against each other—came from the darkness behind him. And he felt as though someone were breathing right behind him. He had believed only the Transparent Monster was in this hole—could there still be someone else living here? When Daisuke thought that, his body froze in fear, leaving him unable to turn around. What being lurked in the darkness behind him? Whether it was human or animal—since he could hear breathing sounds—there was no doubt it was a living creature.

Daisuke quietly reached a hand behind him and groped around. Then something soft made contact. It felt like an overcoat. "So there really is someone standing behind me after all."

Daisuke was so terrified he could hardly breathe, but now found himself in dire straits. He had no choice but to turn around. He had no choice but to turn around and look at the face of whoever stood there.

Daisuke suddenly spun around and looked up at the large man standing there in the darkness.

Mysterious Old Man Though it was dark, candlelight leaking through the door's gap kept it from being pitch black enough to obscure shapes. When he peered through the gloom, an old man stood looming there. He had fluffy white hair cascading down his chest and wore a bizarre black coat with bat-like sleeves. Gleaming sharply were square-shaped rimless glasses. Though dimness made details unclear, behind those lenses narrow eyes appeared to be smirking slyly.

The mysterious old man and Daisuke glared at each other for a while, but before he knew it, the old man’s hand had firmly gripped one of Daisuke’s hands. “I need to talk to you,” said the old man in an unexpectedly gentle voice. “Come here. There’s nothing to fear.” “No! I’m going home now!” Daisuke mustered his courage and managed to speak up despite his terror. “Let me go!” He suddenly tried to wrench free and run away, but found himself powerless against the old man’s iron grip—the mysterious figure possessed inhuman strength.

“Hahaha, I’ll never let you escape. Those who’ve seen this place’s secrets can never return to the outside world. Now quit struggling and come here. There’s something I must show you—something we must discuss.” The old man declared this while maintaining his iron grip on Daisuke’s hand, marching deeper into the shadows. Though the boy dug his heels into the floor with all his might, the old man’s inhuman strength rendered his resistance futile—Daisuke could only stumble helplessly as he was dragged along.

With a creak, the wooden door opened, and a red light abruptly shone in. There stood a candle there as well. It was a small room containing two tables and chairs with no other decorations. The walls were made of concrete.

“Not here. There’s still a secret room further back, you see.” While still gripping Daisuke’s hand, the old man reached out his other hand and pressed a spot on the wall. Then—perhaps there had been a secret push button there—one of the concrete walls began moving soundlessly and smoothly, creating a gap wide enough for someone to pass through. What had appeared to be a wall was in fact a thick concrete door.

When he was led by Mysterious Old Man through gap,the concrete wall had closed back into its original state.It was pitch-black tunnel-like space.After they advanced about ten meters through tunnel,Mysterious Old Man seemed press another button on wall;door ahead smoothly opened,bright light streamed from beyond.

“Well, this is my laboratory. Let’s have a good, long talk here.”

When Daisuke entered the room, he started and glanced around nervously. He had never imagined such an impressive laboratory could exist deep inside an air-raid shelter. The room measured about fifteen tatami mats in size, with concrete-reinforced floors, ceilings, and walls. Various mysterious tools filled the space. The first thing that caught his eye was a white-painted metal table resembling a surgical operating table in one corner. Beside it stood an equally white large glass cabinet, its shelves crammed with countless glinting knives, scissors, and other ominous-looking surgical instruments.

In another part of the room stood a large table, upon which lay an assortment of glass bottles used for chemical experiments—peculiarly shaped ones, large and small, haphazardly cluttered together. On the table, acetylene gas burned with a blue flame, and atop it sat a large round glass bottle in which a purple liquid bubbled and boiled, frothing vigorously. Beside the chemical experiment table stood a large medicine cabinet, with bottles of medicine in various colors neatly lined up in a row. In addition, unfathomable devices filled the room to a terrifying degree. On the chemical experiment table was placed a three-pronged Western candlestick, and three large candles were burning brightly.

“Surprised, are you? Hahaha… You never imagined there’d be such a laboratory in the depths of the earth, did you? However, this basement wasn’t built by me. This was an air-raid shelter constructed by the Army during the war—they’d properly built these splendid secret chambers. This room was meant to become their headquarters. Nobody knew about those secrets left forgotten here… so I’ve humbly borrowed them for my own purposes. Now, sit in that chair.”

The Mysterious Old Man said this and sat down in one of the chairs. Under the bright light, his face appeared even more sinister—snow-white hair, a long snow-white beard, a hawk-like nose, and behind square rimless glasses glared sharp eyes that gave him the air of a monster professor. “You’re Daisuke, the vice-leader of the Boys’ Detective Club.” “I know full well.” “To ride on a car roof tailing someone—you’re quite a brave boy.” “Recognizing that bravery, I’ll make you my disciple.” “Hahaha… How about it? Pleased?”

“Who are you, mister?” “I can’t become a disciple of someone I don’t know.”

Daisuke had fully steadied his resolve. "Hahaha... It's me, you see," "I am the world's greatest scientist." "I've created an invention far more tremendous than atomic bombs." "Yet no one knows of my invention." "If they did, the entire world would erupt in chaos." "No—this invention is so dreadful that I might be murdered for it."

The Mysterious Old Man made an absurd claim. Daisuke began to feel sick, wondering if the old man had lost his mind. What great invention on earth could the old man have made?

Transparent Monster No. 4

The old man’s terrifying story continued.

“What do you suppose that Transparent Monster causing such a commotion in society really is? Do you think such a strange human could have been born naturally? Of course it wasn’t born. Nor did it come flying from some starry realm. That was created. And the one who created it is none other than me.” Daisuke stared in astonishment at the Mysterious Old Man’s glittering square-framed glasses and snow-white beard that swayed with every word.

“When I say ‘create,’ I don’t mean fashioning human beings themselves. “When I apply a certain chemical change to the bodies of visible humans like yourselves, their entire forms become transparent and vanish from sight. “For thirty years, piling effort upon effort, I invented the chemical that induces such a transformation. “And as the first prototype, what I created is Transparent Monster No. 1—the one now causing an uproar in the world.”

“That’s the pajama-clad one you saw peeking in. That’s the one who stole the Pearl Tower from Shimada-kun’s house. I created up to Number Three. In other words, three Transparent Humans have been created. However, I’ve only released Number One to the world. Numbers Two and Three are still kept in my possession. They need a bit more training, you see. Those two Transparent Monsters are still in this room. Even I, who created them, cannot see where they are, but there’s no doubt they’re in this room. Hey, No. 2! Are you there? If you are, answer me.”

Then, from the far side of the room, a voice responded, "Yes." "Is No. 3 here?"

In response, from a different direction, a different voice answered, “Yes.” “How about it, Daisuke? There are indeed two of them.” “But their forms remain completely invisible.” “Still unconvinced?” “Very well—I’ll demonstrate.” “No. 2! Place the glass bottle from the right end of the experiment table onto the chemical shelf.” Before the old man had even finished speaking, the glass bottle on the experiment table floated smoothly upward. Rising higher and higher, it settled neatly atop the chemical shelf and grew still.

Undoubtedly, there were indeed invisible humans in this room. How on earth could such a thing be possible? Was it truly possible for a drug's power to make humans transparent at will and render them completely invisible? But when shown proof right before my eyes, I couldn't help but believe. Daisuke felt as if he were dreaming within a dream. "How about it? Have you realized what I say isn't a lie?" "Up until now, I've only created three." "But it doesn't end with three." "If subjects consent, Transparent Humans can be made—a hundred, a thousand, no—tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of them." "Do you understand? Do you grasp how terrifying this is?"

“If there were a hundred thousand Transparent Humans, they could take on the entire world as their enemy and still never lose. Since they’re invisible humans, they can enter any place. They can uncover any secret. But on the opponent’s side, even if they try to attack the Transparent Humans, they can’t do a thing. You can’t catch them even if you try. If there are not just one but a hundred thousand of them, they can oppose even hundreds of millions of people in the world. Could there be anything more terrifying for humanity?”

“The great invention surpassing the atomic bomb—this is it. Through my invention, the world will be transformed. It will become impossible to wage war. Not only that. I can even make it so that not a single visible human remains on Earth. I can transform every person in the world into an entirely new race—Transparent Humans.”

Behind the Mysterious Old Man’s square glasses, his two eyes blazed with an intense light. They even appeared to glow golden. The old man was already in ecstasy over this great invention. Daisuke, too, found his body shuddering uncontrollably—the more he heard, the more the sheer terror of this invention left him powerless to stop it. The old man fell silent for a while, staring at Daisuke’s face, but soon, with a strange grin spreading across his own, he said the following.

“How about it, Daisuke? Don’t you want to become my disciple?” “And don’t you feel inclined to aid this great invention?” “What would I need to do for that?”

Daisuke asked timidly.

“All you need to do is become Transparent Human No. 4.” The old man said this horrifying thing while still grinning. “No. “I don’t want to. “I don’t want to be turned into a Transparent Human.”

Daisuke turned deathly pale and screamed. “Ha ha ha… You’re scared.” “Oh, come now, there’s absolutely nothing scary about it.” “All you need to do is sleep for one night on that operating table over there.” “First, I’ll inject a sleeping drug, so you’ll fall fast asleep without knowing a thing.” “And then, when you wake up, you’ll already be a Transparent Human.” “You’ll be able to do anything without anyone seeing you.” “You’ll be just like a wizard from a fairy tale.” “Well? What do you think?” “Isn’t this like a dream come true?” “Do you think there’s anything else as thrilling as this?”

“No.” “I don’t want my face and body to disappear.” “I won’t be able to see Father and Mother, and I’ll have to say goodbye to all my friends.” “I don’t want that.” “I don’t want to become something like a wizard.” Daisuke desperately pleaded his refusal, but the old man had no intention of listening.

“Do you dislike it that much? But no matter how much you say you dislike it, you are my captive. Even if you try to escape, there’s no exit in this room. You don’t even know how to open the secret door. You have no choice but to obey my commands. Come now, be a good boy and do as the old man says—stay still.” As he said this, the Mysterious Old Man suddenly stood up from his chair, flared his overcoat sleeves like bat wings, and lunged at Daisuke. And in an instant, he grabbed him by the side, moved to the operating table, and laid him down on top of it. No matter how much he thrashed around, it was no use. Restrained by the Mysterious Old Man’s iron-hard arms, he couldn’t even move a muscle. Daisuke finally closed his eyes in resignation.

He knew his left sleeve had been rolled up. However, he did not open his eyes. Even if he struggled, it was no use. Before long, he felt a sharp, stinging pain in his arm, like an insect bite. The syringe needle had pierced. “There we go. That should do it. You’ll be asleep soon enough.” Daisuke stopped thinking and remained perfectly still. After a while, his entire body began to feel sluggish. He felt strangely pleasant. He grew drowsily sleepy. From somewhere, he thought he could hear a dear lullaby. And before he knew it, he had fallen into a deep sleep.

Transparent Boy

Then, unsure how much time had passed, Daisuke opened his eyes naturally, as if waking from a dream. Sure enough, his limbs were restrained by something, and he couldn’t move an inch. However, it wasn’t the Mysterious Old Man’s arms but a coiled thin cord. Daisuke had been forced onto a chair, his arms and legs bound tightly with thin cord.

There was no one around. It was a narrow, box-like space about three square meters in size. When he suddenly noticed, there was something shining on the wall ahead. It was a mirror. A mirror about thirty centimeters square was embedded in the wall. It took Daisuke nearly a minute to realize it was a mirror. For there, reflected in it, was an indescribably bizarre, unfathomable thing. In the mirror, only the upper half of a school uniform, from the chest up, was facing this way. However, above the collar of that uniform, there was no neck. The school uniform - from the way its wrinkles folded to the pattern on its buttons - was exactly identical to the one Daisuke was wearing. The thing reflected in that mirror was undoubtedly himself. And yet, only his neck had vanished as if blown away.

Daisuke’s body trembled violently from sheer terror. His face must have turned ashen. However, that face was not visible to human eyes. His face had disappeared. His body had also disappeared. Daisuke had been turned into a transparent human before he knew it. That was why only the school uniform was reflected in the mirror.

Everyone, what kind of feelings do you think you would have if your own body were to become completely invisible? You would vanish from this world. However, you are still alive. It is said that ninjutsu practitioners of old could make their bodies vanish, but that was only temporary. They could return to their original form again. However, Daisuke could never return to his original form again. He would have to live his entire life as a transparent human. Could there possibly be anything more horrifying in this world?

When Daisuke thought of that， an indescribable sadness welled up within him. He clenched his teeth and barely managed to suppress the urge to scream out， “Mom!” However， he could not stop the tears. He could clearly feel hot tears streaming down his cheeks. But those tears were not visible to the eye. The mirror in front reflected nothing.

“Oh, have you noticed? How do you feel?”

When he turned around, the small side door had opened, revealing the Mysterious Old Man’s square-framed glasses peering through. “You’ve already become a Transparent Human invisible to people’s eyes. Whether you’re grinning now or pouting like a baby—I can’t see that either. How about it—are you lonely? Or are you enjoying it? From today onward, you can do anything—just like Sarutobi Sasuke. You’ve become a magnificent Transparent Monster. Come on, buck up now.”

The Mysterious Old Man approached Daisuke, lifted him along with the chair, and led him out of the small room. It was a dark earthen corridor. There, he untied the ropes binding his limbs, picked up Daisuke, and began carrying him somewhere. “Just a bit of patience.” “Until you can get used to living as Air Man, I must have you endure some discomfort.” “If you were to try escaping, that’d be quite the problem.” “If you try to escape now, you’re not yet accustomed to being a Transparent Human—you’ll be caught immediately.” “Even if you can’t be seen, you still have a physical body. Once caught, it’s all over.” “So you’ll be staying here for a while.”

With a clang, the iron-barred door opened. On the floor in front of it stood a desk, where a small candle's faint light dimly illuminated the surroundings. The Mysterious Old Man placed Daisuke inside the iron bars, shut the door tight, and locked it from outside. It was an iron-barred cell like those used for zoo beasts. Daisuke had been sealed within.

“Endure this for a while. I’ll make sure to bring your meals properly.” The Mysterious Old Man shook his long white beard and laughed without making a sound. The square-framed glasses caught the candlelight and glittered ominously. The Mysterious Old Man took the candle in hand and vanished into thin air.

Daisuke Hisashi was crouching on the cold concrete floor in pitch darkness where the candle had gone out. Crushed by an indescribable loneliness and sorrow, he was crouching there.

B.D. Badge

Now shifting focus—here we have the boys of the Boys' Detective Club, led by Leader Kobayashi. The day after Daisuke became imprisoned in the cave, the boys gathered at Shimada's house immediately upon returning from school.

The police searched until late last night for Daisuke, who had gone missing, but as it was late at night, they ultimately could not find him. Therefore, Inspector Nakamura and his team temporarily withdrew to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, established an investigation headquarters in one of its rooms, and began a large-scale operation spanning all of Tokyo. Reporter Kurokawa was also stationed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s press club and constantly showed up at the investigation headquarters.

However, for the Boys' Detective Club members, their immediate concern was not capturing the Transparent Monster but rather Vice-Leader Daisuke's safety. No matter what, they had to find Daisuke. Therefore, the boys resolved not to leave it to the police and to track down the vice-leader's whereabouts themselves. Kobayashi Leader borrowed a phone at Shimada Ichirou's house and, through a method of giving instructions to members who had phones and having them relay messages to nearby members, soon had six boys come rushing to the Shimada residence.

In about an hour, since the full number of members had gathered, Kobayashi Leader divided the ten boys into five groups and decided to have them search along five different routes starting from the Shimada residence. “Look for the B.D. Badges. Daisuke must have used those—if we can just find them, it’s in the bag.” Leader Kobayashi gave such instructions to the departing boys. What on earth were these B.D. Badges?

That would soon become clear. One pair of boys would soon find the B.D. Badge.

Of the boys’ search team divided into squads from the 1st to the 5th, the two boys assigned to the 2nd Squad ended up being responsible—entirely by chance—for the direction in which the Transparent Monster’s car had fled the previous night. However, since the boys knew nothing of this connection, they simply walked aimlessly wherever their feet took them. One took the right side of the town while the other covered the left—dividing their tasks accordingly—peering around their surroundings while scanning the ground with sharp eyes as they advanced.

After turning many street corners and walking about one kilometer, the boy on the right suddenly jerked to a halt. A small silver-glinting object lay on the ground right before his eyes.

The boy crouched there, swiftly picked up the silver object, and beckoned to his friend on the left side. “I knew it! It was just as we thought.” “This is a B.D. Badge.” “Yeah, that’s right.” “It’s the same as this one.” One of the boys took out a silver badge from his pocket and compared them. It was indeed a B.D. Badge. “That’s perfect!” “With this, we can figure out Daisuke’s whereabouts, right?”

Vivid expressions of joy appeared on the boys' faces.

At this point, we must provide a brief explanation of the B.D. Badges. "In the book titled *The Boys’ Detective Club*, the details of this badge are written; it is the official emblem of the Boys’ Detective Club members." The name "B.D." came from taking the initial letters of the English words for "boys" and "detective," combining the B and D into a patterned design to create the emblem's motif. Beyond serving as a symbol for members, this B.D. Badge had various other uses. First and foremost, since they were made of heavy lead, keeping many of them in one’s pocket during ordinary times meant they could serve as substitute stones in emergencies. Secondly, when confined in an enemy’s hideout, one could write a message on the soft lead surface on the back of the badge with a knife and throw it outside a window or over a wall to communicate. Thirdly, by tying a thread to the needle on the badge, you could measure the depth of water. Fourthly, if captured and taken somewhere, dropping this badge along the road would create a marker to indicate the direction. In addition, there were still many other uses.

The members attached these badges inside the chests of their school uniforms and, on certain occasions, opened them to show others they were members. Additionally, each member always carried twenty to thirty badges in their pockets, ready at any time. While lying flat on the roof of the Transparent Monster’s car, Daisuke had taken out a B.D. Badge from his pocket and dropped it on the road each time they turned a corner. What the two boys had now found was undoubtedly one of them.

From then on, the two of them advanced with eyes wide like saucers, staring fixedly at the ground. Each time they reached a street corner, they would split up and dash off in separate directions; whenever one found a badge, he would whistle to summon his companion before proceeding down that road together. Following from badge to badge like breadcrumbs, they finally emerged into that burnt-field lot.

“This is strange.” “We’ve ended up in such a wide burnt field lot!” “There must be some secret in this burnt field lot.” “Look, there’s a badge over there too.” “It looks like Daisuke isn’t far off now.” And when they advanced to where the badge lay, they saw another silver-glinting object in the grass beyond. “Oh! There’s another one over there!” “Here’s another one,” one muttered obsessively, and while picking up badges as they walked, the boys finally reached the entrance of that air-raid shelter.

When the two boys discovered the entrance to the air-raid shelter overgrown with weeds, a strange chill ran down their spines, and they instinctively exchanged glances.

“Look, there’s so many badges here—Daisuke must’ve been taken into this hole.” One of them pointed at five or six badges clustered on the ground and whispered.

In the darkness of the hole, it was impossible to tell what lurked within. Carelessly raising a loud voice was out of the question.

“Alright, we’ll settle here,” one said. “I’ll hide around here and keep watch, so you go find a nearby telephone and inform Leader Kobayashi. If we go into this hole by ourselves, we might fail. It’s better to have Leader Kobayashi notify Inspector Nakamura.” This boy was more cautious than Daisuke. He crouched in a nearby clump of grass and kept watch on the cave entrance. The other boy dashed toward town like an arrow to borrow a telephone.

Phantom in the Dark

A little over an hour later, around 5 PM. In front of the air-raid shelter in the burnt-field lot, a formidable police force gathered. At the front were one of the boys who had discovered the cave acting as guide, Leader Kobayashi, followed by Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa, with six officers armed and ready bringing up the rear. Since they were stepping into the darkness of the cave, all of them held flashlights in hand.

“You three, hold position at this entrance and apprehend anyone trying to escape from inside. Since our opponent’s invisible, mere surveillance won’t suffice. Extend the arrest ropes and set up a net at the entrance after we’ve gone in. Stretch them out in a grid pattern—vertically and horizontally. That way, even the Transparent Monster has a physical body; any escape attempt will be detected instantly. If the ropes show peculiar movement, leap immediately and seize it. Understood?”

Inspector Nakamura gave those orders to the three officers, then said, "Alright, I'll take the lead," and bending down, abruptly stepped into the dark cave. True to his moniker "Demon Inspector," he proved himself a courageous chief investigator indeed. Not to be outdone, Reporter Kurokawa followed close behind him, after which—in proper sequence—Leader Kobayashi, the remaining two boys, and three police officers were all swallowed into the cave's depths.

Unlike Daisuke's situation, they had flashlights and were a group of eight, so they felt reassured. Crawling through the small hole at the dead end of that cave, they emerged into a spacious area at the back. They opened all the wooden doors there and looked, but Daisuke's figure was nowhere to be found. Since the Transparent Monster was an invisible being, it was impossible to tell whether it was present or not, but strangely, there wasn't the slightest trace of human presence. It was deathly still, as silent as an empty house.

After thoroughly examining every last one of several small rooms, they finally arrived at the Mysterious Old Man’s laboratory. Strangely enough, all the secret doors leading there had been left wide open. The laboratory was also empty. Inspector Nakamura and Leader Kobayashi, entering this room for the first time, had no way of realizing it, but the state of the laboratory had changed drastically from when Daisuke had seen it. More than half of the medicine bottles on the shelves and strange instruments had disappeared, leaving behind nothing but worthless junk. It felt exactly like after moving out. Had the Mysterious Old Man, knowing the police force was coming, already fled somewhere?

They were utterly overwhelmed by the cave’s vastness and the laboratory’s grandeur, but since they knew nothing of the Mysterious Old Man having resided there, they harbored no suspicions and merely continued searching every corner of the room. “Oh, there’s another entrance here.”

Reporter Kurokawa found a small secret door. It too had been left wide open. "There's still more back here." "Let's go check it out."

Inspector Nakamura took the lead and stepped inside. In the hollow darkness hung a damp, unpleasant air. It was a place as sinister as hell itself. The flashlight beams in people’s hands scattered chaotically, casting the shadows of those who entered the light onto walls and ceilings like giant specters. The overlapping, swaying forms created an indescribably eerie scene.

“Ah! Who’s there? Who was that? Someone just passed right by me!”

Kobayashi’s shrill voice rang out.

“No one’s passing through here—we're all advancing forward together—there isn't anything coming from beyond.”

It was Reporter Kurokawa's voice. "But someone definitely touched me." "I felt like something brushed past me and went behind." Kobayashi had genuinely felt it. Something soft had touched his shoulder and arm before slipping away behind him.

“Ah! Something just passed right by me!” “It’s definitely human.” “But it can’t be seen with the eyes.”

One of the police officers shouted. Then voices rose from all directions—here and there—each claiming something human-like had brushed past them. The Transparent Monster was here in this darkness. Moreover, there seemed to be not just one of them. It was an indescribable terror, as if countless jellyfish were drifting weightlessly through the abyssal sea—a dread beyond all understanding.

“Kobayashi-kun! Here! Here!” At that moment, a familiar voice reached their ears from somewhere. It was Daisuke-kun’s voice. Daisuke-kun was somewhere in this darkness. “You’re Daisuke-kun, right? “Where are you?”

Leader Kobayashi swung his flashlight in a wide arc as he called back. “Here! Here!”

Daisuke-kun’s voice echoed from ahead. Leader Kobayshi advanced toward where the voice was coming from. Then, within the beam of his flashlight emerged iron bars—a structure resembling a wild beast’s cage formed by iron rods—appeared before them—and Daisuke kun s'voice resonated seemingly emanating directly behind these metallic confines.Kobayashis'companion alongside fellow detective club youth hurriedly approached said barrier; together utilizing dual handheld torches scanned meticulously across entirety confined space only find nothingness therein—an absence palpable amidst eerie silence enveloping scene

“Ah, Kobayashi-kun and Tamura-kun.” “I’ve been through something terrible.” “There was an old man with square glasses and a white beard.” “That guy did this to me.” Kobayashi-kun and the boy member Tamura were startled and looked around them. Certainly, right before their eyes, Daisuke-kun’s familiar voice was indeed heard. However, no matter how hard they strained their eyes, Daisuke-kun’s figure was nowhere to be seen.

“Daisuke-kun, where are you?” “Here I am—right in front of you. Look, I’m right here inside these iron bars.”

Then came the sound of fingernails tapping against the iron bars. It had to be coming from the iron bars right before their eyes. And yet, Daisuke was still nowhere to be found.

Kobayashi-kun and Tamura-kun, unaware that Daisuke had been turned into a Transparent Human, found it utterly eerie to hear only his voice emanating from the empty iron-barred room—as if they’d encountered a ghost.

Cave Jellyfish

Kobayashi-kun and the boy member of the Boys' Detective Club clung to the iron bars as if their lives depended on it and shouted. "Daisuke-kun, you're there, right?" Leader Kobayashi couldn't help checking again—no matter how intensely he swept his flashlight beam across the iron bars, there was nobody inside.

“Yeah, I’m here. “I’m right in front of you.”

Daisuke-kun’s voice answered thus and demonstrated by tapping the iron bars with his fingernails—clack, clack. “While I was asleep, that old man with square glasses turned me into a Transparent Human.” “And I was stripped naked and locked up here.”

It was a sorrowful voice, on the verge of tears. The members of the search party each held up flashlights, but the pale, feeble light had no power to dispel the darkness. From that darkness, only the plaintive voice of the unseen boy could be heard. “We searched every corner of these underground passages, but that old man wasn’t anywhere.” “But somehow, I get the feeling there are several invisible ones here.”

When Kobayashi-kun said this, Daisuke-kun’s voice picked up where he left off, “Then that must be Transparent Humans No. 1 through No. 3. “No.1 refers to that Transparent Monster who caused such a stir, and Nos.2 and 3 haven’t been permitted to go outside yet. Those three might still be remaining in this hole, taking advantage of being invisible.” “Hmm… So they’ve made four Transparent Humans, including you.” “Just what do they intend to do by creating so many invisible humans?”

Kurokawa Katsuichi interjected from beside Kobayashi-kun. Daisuke-kun’s voice responded to this.

“Ah, it’s Mr. Kurokawa, isn’t it? “The old man with square glasses has a terrifying plan in mind.” “He plans to create thousands—no, tens of thousands—of Transparent Monsters.” “Then there’d be nothing they couldn’t do.” “He says neither the police nor the military are anything to fear—that he’ll never lose to anyone.” “When I heard that, I was utterly shocked.” Reporter Kurokawa, Inspector Nakamura, Leader Kobayashi, and the police officers were all rendered speechless for a moment. The concept of a massive horde of Transparent Monsters struck the adults to the core even more profoundly than Daisuke had imagined. For they thought that if such a Transparent Army were created, it would unleash even greater horrors than atomic bombs.

The police were being troubled even by a single Transparent Monster. When they thought of that number growing to ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, then ten thousand, a shiver ran through them, chilling them to the core. It was an unpleasant feeling, as if they were trapped in a terrifying nightmare. Inspector Nakamura thought that if such a thing were to happen, it would be disastrous. It wouldn’t be just Japan—something so terrifying it would make people across the entire world tremble in fear. He realized they had to act now—capture the Mysterious Old Man and destroy his invention before it was too late.

“Ah! There’s someone here!” At that moment, Reporter Kurokawa’s shout suddenly rang out. The iron-barred cell confining Daisuke had a swing door at its entrance secured by a large lock on the outside, and Reporter Kurokawa happened to be standing right before that very door.

When they heard someone shout “There’s someone here,” three police officers rushed toward the spot. However, they didn’t make it in time. The reinforced iron door clanged open before clanging shut again. “It’s the Transparent Monster!” “He just opened this door and went inside!” Reporter Kurokawa shouted. There had been a Transparent Monster—No.X—lurking nearby. Using a master key, it unlocked the padlock, swung open the iron-barred door,and slipped into the cell.

Then, at that moment, from inside the iron bars, “Who’s there?! Ah! What are you doing?!” the boy Daisuke’s cry was heard. The Transparent Monster that had just entered was now doing something to Daisuke-kun.

“Daisuke-kun, what’s wrong? “Who’s there?”

Inspector Nakamura shouted in a loud voice. Then, the three police officers’ flashlights swept across the inside of the iron bars, probing every corner. But they couldn’t see anything. It was utterly empty there. From that vacant space came labored human breathing—gasping, gasping. It wasn’t just one person—two distinct breaths overlapped in the air.

“Daisuke-kun, answer me! What’s happened?” “What happened?!” The inspector shouted again.

“Daisuke-kun!” “Daisuke-kun!”

Kobayashi-kun and the two boys also shouted at the top of their voices. However, the two breaths only grew increasingly violent. It seemed Daisuke-kun and another Transparent Human were gasping for breath, locked in a desperate struggle. Two large amorphous blobs were tangled together in the darkness.

At that moment, Daisuke-kun’s agonized, hoarse voice could be heard.

“Ah! Damn it...! This guy... this is No. 1...! Kobayashi-kun...! No. 1... Transparent Monster No. 1 is... he’s grabbing me... trying to drag me somewhere...!” His voice came in broken fragments—shouting while desperately shaking off, again and again, whatever was covering his mouth. “Ah! Help! Help me…!” Then his voice vanished completely, as if something had abruptly clamped over his mouth.

“Daisuke-kun, I’ll save you right now! Hang in there!” Inspector Nakamura shouted as he rushed toward the iron-barred door. However, they didn’t make it in time. In the blink of an eye, something like a whirlwind whooshed past with a rush. The iron-barred door swung open suddenly from the inside. And something large and soft, like a jellyfish, shoved Reporter Kurokawa aside and fled into the darkness.

Reporter Kurokawa staggered backward from the impact and collided with a police officer standing there. The two collapsed in a tangled heap. Inspector Nakamura and Kobayashi Leader rushed to their side. “Kurokawa, pull yourself together! What happened?”

“He escaped! That way! The Transparent Monster grabbed Daisuke-kun, shoved me aside, and ran off! Quickly, chase after them!” With Inspector Nakamura leading, everyone ran in the direction Reporter Kurokawa had pointed, swinging their flashlights as they went. However, their opponent was an invisible creature. Moreover, every corner lay sealed in darkness within the cave. No matter how frantically the police officers rushed, it was already too late. No matter how thoroughly they searched, the Transparent Monster was never found.

The bottom of an old well

The members of the search party had searched every room in the cave and returned to the entrance. At the entrance hole, they had crisscrossed wire netting vertically and horizontally to prevent the Transparent Monster from escaping. And outside the hole, three police officers had been keeping watch.

“You—any issues?” Inspector Nakamura called out to the police officers outside the hole. “Yes sir, no issues here.” “This wire netting didn’t move at all?” “No sir. It didn’t move.” If the Transparent Monster had escaped through here, the wire netting would have moved. Since it hadn’t budged, there was no conclusion but to assume he hadn’t passed through this way. Then did that bastard—the Transparent Monster—remain hidden somewhere in the cave still clutching Daisuke-kun?

“How bizarre...” “Even after searching so thoroughly, there was no sign of anyone anywhere.” “Where on earth did he hide?” Inspector Nakamura muttered resentfully. Then Reporter Kurokawa, who was nearby, tilted his head slightly and said: “Mr. Nakamura—I just had a sudden thought.” “A cautious villain wouldn’t feel safe living in a sack-like place with only one entrance.” “There must be another secret passage.” “If the Mysterious Old Man escaped through there too, everything would add up.”

“Hmm, that’s a possibility,” Inspector Nakamura replied. “But we searched so thoroughly—we should’ve noticed any escape route if one existed.” “The problem was your search method,” Kurokawa countered. “If he didn’t escape through this entrance, there are only two options—either he’s still inside the hole, or there’s another entrance. Either way, let’s search again.”

So the people had to head back into the cave once more. And swinging their flashlights, they walked from room to room again.

“Ah! Mr. Nakamura, Mr. Kurokawa, please come here.”

Kobayashi Leader called out in a hushed voice from the corner of the room. That place was the chemical laboratory. When Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa rushed over, they found Kobayashi Leader opening one of the closet doors and shining his flashlight inside. Inside the closet were wooden boxes, empty bottles, and other items messily stored, now scattered and broken as if someone had trampled them.

“Please look at that.” Kobayashi Leader directed his flashlight beam at the wall before him. Embedded in its surface were numerous thick iron nails, each nearly a centimeter in diameter. “Could these nails serve as footholds to reach the ceiling?” As he spoke, Kobayashi slowly angled his flashlight upward. A ceiling board hung slightly askew, its tilted position revealing a narrow gap.

“See? You get it now.” “I’ll try climbing up.” Kobayashi Leader stuffed the flashlight into his pocket, gripped the large nails with his hands and feet, and clambered up toward the ceiling. And when he pushed hard on the board with the gap, it opened easily, revealing a large square hole there.

Kobayashi Leader took out the flashlight from his pocket and shone it upward into the hole for a while, then suddenly let out a delighted “Ah!” “Just as I thought—this is the exit! The large hole continues all the way up. And there’s an iron ladder hanging there.” It was a deep hole resembling an old well, with a sturdy iron ladder fixed to one side. This meant the closet’s ceiling corresponded to the bottom of that ancient well.

“Alright, Kobayashi, let’s climb that iron ladder.” “I’ll follow right behind you.” “Mr. Nakamura, please come too.” Having said that, Reporter Kurokawa entered the closet. Encouraged by his voice, Kobayashi Leader grabbed the iron ladder and began climbing cautiously up through the pitch-dark old well, one rung at a time. Reporter Kurokawa and Inspector Nakamura followed after him.

After climbing twenty rungs of the iron ladder, their heads hit an obstruction, making it impossible to proceed any further.

“Oh, we’ve hit a dead end here.” As Kobayashi Leader hesitated, Reporter Kurokawa shone his flashlight up from below,

“That can’t be. There’s definitely a lid there. Give it a good push.”

“Ah! Just as I thought!” “I’ll open it.”

It was a heavy lid made of iron plate. When he pushed it up with all his strength, a dazzling light suddenly streamed down from above. The opening of the old well lay hidden among the grass atop the cliff. From the iron plate to the ground was only about five meters. Kobayashi Leader and the others set their feet on the uneven stone wall along the inner side and easily managed to get outside. “Hmm, cleverly done,” Kurokawa remarked. “It’s a secret entrance disguised as an old well. Even if you peer in from outside, since the iron plate is now shut, it appears just like the bottom of a well. No one would ever notice there’s a passage like that beneath it, after all.”

Reporter Kurokawa muttered admiringly.

The Mysterious Old Man had undoubtedly escaped from there. The Transparent Monsters had also escaped from there. If Transparent Monster No. 1 climbed that iron ladder while carrying Daisuke, he must possess extraordinary strength.

Inspector Nakamura searched the area for any footprints left by the Mysterious Old Man or Transparent Monster, but with weeds covering the ground, he found nothing. They had absolutely no clue which direction they had fled. The search party had no choice but to retreat empty-handed, having merely discovered the monster’s hideout without being able to capture them or rescue Daisuke.

Inspector Nakamura decided to temporarily return to the Metropolitan Police Department’s investigation headquarters after leaving officers on guard at the cave entrance and near the old well, but during the car ride back, Reporter Kurokawa whispered the following into the inspector’s ear. “Mr. Nakamura, this is the biggest case since the establishment of the Metropolitan Police Department.” “It’s a terrifying foe that even all of Japan’s police officers combined wouldn’t be enough to handle.” “Speaking of which, I’m reminded of a certain person.” “If that person were to assist the police and work with us, we might just be able to take down that guy.”

“Who might that be?” “Akechi Kogorō.” “It’s finally time for Detective Akechi to take the stage.” “When I asked Kobayashi, he said Mr. Akechi was tied up with another case and couldn’t get involved, but this is no time for such excuses.” “He should drop other cases and help the police.” “Mr. Nakamura, aren’t you close friends with Detective Akechi? You’ll call him immediately when we return to headquarters, won’t you?”

“Hmm, I’ve been thinking about that for a while.” “Alright! In that case, I’ll enlist Mr. Akechi’s help.” Inspector Nakamura declared forcefully, as if he had made up his mind.

Akechi Kogorō

This was the Director’s Office of the Akechi Detective Agency. The walls were lined with bookshelves packed tightly with gold-lettered volumes. Before them sat the famous detective Akechi Kogorō at his large desk. The desk’s mirror-smooth surface reflected his face. A black suit, a light brown tie, his trademark tousled hair, and features as sharply defined as a Westerner’s.

Akechi Kogorō was now holding the receiver of the desk telephone to his ear, speaking into it.

“Hmm, I thought you’d be contacting me around now.” “I’ve also done some research on the Transparent Monster.” “Of course I’ll lend a hand.” “Very well.” “In that case, I’ll come to you now.”

The call had been from Inspector Nakamura requesting him to come to the investigation headquarters. Akechi had finished the conversation and begun preparing to go out when—after what felt like only three minutes—the desk telephone rang out shrilly once more. When he put the receiver to his ear again，it was an unfamiliar，strangely hoarse voice from a public telephone. “This is the Akechi Detective Agency? Is Detective Acheli there?” “I am Acheli．And you are?”

“I’m the man you’re about to face. You catch my meaning, don’t you?” “Well, well—quick to issue a challenge. You must be the Mysterious Old Man of the Cave.”

“Hmph, you catch on quick.” “Exactly as you’ve deduced.” “By the way, don’t you value your life?” “Ha ha ha ha, is that a threat?” “That won’t work on me.” “So you insist on fighting to the bitter end.” “I don’t fight.” “I’ll expose your secrets.” “And it won’t be long now.”

“Ha ha ha ha—your breathing’s ragged.” “But Mr. Akechi, I’m not saying this to scare you.” “I mean it.” “You might end up a cripple.” “You might be killed.” “No—you might face something far more terrible…” “A superior person like you disappearing from this world is truly a waste, so I’m giving you this warning.” “How about it?” “Mr. Akechi—why not withdraw for a while and see how things unfold?”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha! No matter how much you say such things, it’s useless.” “I’m a busy man.” “Then we’ll meet again somewhere before long.” Just as he was about to put down the receiver, the other man’s terrifying curse erupted through it.

“You fool—don’t you dare regret this.” “I’ll show you hell’s torments!” “I’ll make sure you face a fate worse than death….” Akechi Kogorō listened with a faint smile and hung up the receiver.

Secret Room

After hanging up the phone, Akechi Kogorō thought for a while, then pressed the bell button on his desk and called for the maid. And then,

“Have Fumiyo come here for a moment.”

he commanded. Fumiyo was the name of Detective Akechi's young and beautiful wife. Fumiyo had formerly served as a famous detective's assistant; during an incident called *The Vampire*, she distinguished herself in various ways and married Akechi when the case was resolved. Even in *The Tiger’s Fang* incident, she was such a resolute person that she did not lose when pitting her wits against Kaijin Nijū Mensō. “Did you need something?”

Fumiyo opened the door, entered, and approached Akechi. A sky-blue Western-style dress suited her well—thick eyebrows framing large eyes made her a beautiful woman. “I’ve finally decided to take on the Transparent Monster case.” “So I’m about to head to Inspector Nakamura’s office at Metropolitan Police Headquarters when—just as I was leaving—the Transparent Monster’s leader called.” “It’s that Mysterious Old Man with square glasses Kobayashi told us about.”

“Well, and what did he say?”

“Back off.” “Otherwise your life’s in danger...” “Just his usual threat.” As the famous detective’s wife, Fumiyo didn’t startle at such frightening talk. “But since the enemy has invisible henchmen, you must be careful.” “Yeah, I was just thinking that myself.” “This one seems particularly formidable.” “In fact, even as we speak now, Transparent Humans might have sneaked into this room to eavesdrop.” “Since they’re invisible, you can’t relax your guard for an instant.” “That’s why I can’t talk to you in a normal voice.” “Bring your ear here.”

Fumiyo brought her face close to Akechi's mouth. Akechi whispered something in a hushed voice into her ear.

As Fumiyo listened to the secret conversation while nodding, her expression gradually grew serious. It appeared to be a discussion about something critically important.

When the conversation ended, Akechi took the lead and left the room. Fumiyo also followed behind him. When they descended the stairs and entered a secluded room, Akechi stood with his back tightly against one of the walls. “Okay? Come in right after me.” “If you do that, even a Transparent Human won’t be able to follow.”

Detective Akechi remained standing in front of the wall, extended his right hand, and pressed firmly on a specific spot of the pillar beside him.

Then, something strange happened immediately. There was a fluttering sensation like something flickering, and in that instant, Akechi's figure vanished as if erased. However, even after seeing this, Fumiyo showed no surprise whatsoever. She too stood with her back against the wall in the same manner, then pressed firmly on some part of the pillar again. Then, with another flutter, Fumiyo's figure also disappeared from sight.

Had Detective Akechi, not to be outdone by the Mysterious Old Man, invented a way to make human bodies transparent? No—that was not the case. That wall contained a "revolving panel" mechanism. When someone pressed the hidden button on the pillar, an electrical system made it flip over with a swift turn, hiding anyone pressed against the wall on the opposite side. And within that space lay a secret room known to no one.

Detective Akechi and Fumiyo entered the secret room, but what they did there remains unknown. As for that, I shall keep it a secret from you, dear readers, for quite some time to come.

It remained unclear what they had done, but after about twenty minutes, the two reappeared from within the wall. The wall spun around twice, and out came Akechi and Fumiyo. “Well then, I’ll be going to the Metropolitan Police Department.”

Detective Akechi said this and exited the room. Ms. Fumiyo escorted him to the entrance.

The Famous Detective’s Peril When Detective Akechi exited the entrance, the automobile he always summoned was waiting out front. The driver too was a man with a familiar face. When Akechi settled into the passenger seat and commanded, "Metropolitan Police Department," the car promptly began moving.

After turning three street corners, they came upon a lonely residential district with walls continuing on both sides. When they had passed about halfway through the residential district, suddenly, from an alley right in front of them, a single bicycle came darting out. Strangely, the bicycle had no one riding it. Only the bicycle came darting out with tremendous force. The driver frantically slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. Akechi’s automobile made a terrible noise and collided with the bicycle’s side. The bicycle that had been sent flying suddenly leaped into the air, and when it landed on the ground, both its frame and wheels were twisted and bent out of shape.

The front of the automobile also sustained severe damage, and with some part of its machinery apparently impaired, it came to a complete stop right there. Akechi lurched forward and nearly hit his face when the automobile came to a sudden stop. He wasn’t injured.

The driver got out of the automobile and peered into the alley from which the bicycle had darted out. He simply couldn't fathom how a bicycle with no one on it had come racing down the street all by itself.

However, even more strangely, there was no one in that alley who appeared to be the bicycle's owner. The only thing visible was a man around thirty years old—dressed in tattered clothes like a beggar—staggering unsteadily toward them from the far end.

"Hey, were you riding this bicycle?" The driver waited for the vagrant to approach and then barked. “Ain’t me.” The vagrant answered with a puzzled look. "That's weird. “There’s no one else here but you.” “Didn’t you see this bicycle moving?”

“I saw it. From over there, I was watching.” “Then where’d the guy ridin’ the bicycle go? Did he run off that way?”

“Nope. “He didn’t run off.” “There was never anyone there to begin with.” The vagrant said something peculiar. “Wasn’t there? “Then how’d that bicycle move?” “No one was ridin’ it, but that bicycle was movin’ all by its lonesome.” “Strange world we live in—I just stood there watchin’, wonderin’ my damn self.”

Upon hearing this, the driver shuddered. When he turned around involuntarily, there stood Detective Akechi, who had gotten out of the automobile. The two of them exchanged glances and nodded at each other. This driver, of course, knew about the Transparent Monster. Moreover, the driver had surmised that Akechi’s trip to the Metropolitan Police Department was related to the case.

“So the Transparent Monster was riding that bicycle just now,” said the driver. “Then he jumped off in this alley and made your car collide on purpose, didn’t he?” The driver stared at Akechi with a terrified expression. The famous detective gave a slight nod in response but remained silent. Though inwardly astonished by how quickly the Mysterious Old Man—who had just called moments earlier—had already begun such mischief, he betrayed no sign of it.

If the Transparent Monster had been riding it, then since he was an invisible being, they could neither pursue nor capture him. The driver, having no other choice, had the vagrant help move the broken bicycle to the roadside and was examining the automobile’s front machinery. Clicking his tongue with a “tsk,” he said, “I’ll go and call a replacement car. It doesn’t look like it’ll be fixed quickly.”

the driver said in a resigned manner.

Just then, an automobile came slowly approaching from the opposite direction. It seemed to have just dropped off a passenger somewhere, as its "Vacant" sign was displayed. “Detective, perfect timing—a vacant car has arrived here. Let’s take that one.” Since the driver had hailed that automobile for him, Akechi boarded it without a second thought. Even the famous detective had never dreamed that such a thing could possibly occur.

The automobile seemed a bit too splendid for a taxi. From the outside, it didn’t appear so, but the seats inside were newly upholstered with fresh fabric, and their shape somehow differed from ordinary automobiles. When he stated their destination, the automobile started moving at a terrifying speed. As they turned several street corners, the surroundings gradually grew desolate, and before they knew it, they had come upon a wide open field.

“Hey driver, isn’t this the wrong route? We shouldn’t be passing through such a field on the way to the Metropolitan Police Department.” When Akechi called out, the driver—still facing forward—let out a strange laugh. “Heh heh heh… Only noticing now, huh? For a famous detective, you’re rather slow on the uptake.”

And no sooner had the automobile come to a stop than the driver suddenly turned around, and the muzzle of a black pistol was aimed at Akechi's chest. But there was something even more terrifying than that glaring fixedly in this direction. Even Akechi could not help shuddering when he caught sight of it. The driver's face was that of a wax doll. The two eyes were hollow and black—a wax mask with a pale, translucent face resembling a Westerner.

This automobile, disguised as a taxi, was in fact the Mysterious Old Man’s car. They caused a bicycle to collide with Akechi’s automobile and immobilize it, then had an empty taxi pass by while he was stranded—naturally inducing him to board this vehicle. The famous detective had completely fallen into the Mysterious Old Man’s trap. However, Akechi showed no sign of panic and continued leaning against the cushion, staring fixedly at the wax mask. It must have been his plan to seize the opponent instead if there was even the slightest opening.

However, at that moment, yet another strange thing occurred.

The back of the cushion Akechi was leaning against creaked forward. Startled, he turned around—and through the gap created by the moving cushion, a human face suddenly popped out like a jack-in-the-box doll. Moreover, that face was none other than that eerie wax mask. Along with the wax mask, a hand slid out, gripping a pistol. Then, the muzzle of the pistol was pressed against Akechi’s back.

The enemies numbered two. Moreover, both were Transparent Monsters wearing wax masks. One pressed a pistol from the front driver’s seat; the other pressed one from behind the cushion—each poised to strike. These two wax-masked figures were likely Transparent Human No. 1 and No. 2 created by the Mysterious Old Man. Even the famous detective could do nothing now. Should he scream, there were no human shadows in this vast open field. Should he resist, bullets would fly from both front and back. Under these circumstances, he had no choice but to stay still and surrender to his enemies’ whims.

“Heh heh heh heh… Detective, our leader kindly warned you over the phone, but you didn’t listen—this is divine punishment. Even the great detective couldn’t match our leader’s cunning, huh? Poor you—can’t move a muscle anymore. Heh heh heh heh heh…”

The wax mask in the driver’s seat let out another unpleasant laugh. However, only the voice was laughing; the wax face maintained a blank expression, not smiling in the slightest. That made it feel all the more eerie. The guy behind remained still, keeping the pistol pressed against Akechi’s back, while the one disguised as the driver eventually stepped over the partition between the driver’s seat and entered this side. And the pale wax mask drew suddenly close before Akechi’s eyes.

“We’re going to put you in a tight spot for a bit.” “Ah, it’s nothing—just something you’ll have to endure for a little while.”

No sooner had he said that than everything before Detective Akechi's eyes went completely dark. He had been blindfolded with a black cloth. Then, he felt something like a thin cord being coiled around his body. And then, as the thin cord gradually tightened more and more, his hands and feet became completely unable to move. Ah, the famous detective Akechi Kogorō had finally fallen into the enemy's hands.

Transparent Monster No. 5

Since he had been blindfolded, everything that followed could only be perceived through physical sensation as the automobile started moving again, ran for twenty minutes, and came to a stop at an unknown location. Then Detective Akechi Kogorō was carried out of the vehicle by two Transparent Monsters, taken into a spacious building, led through a long corridor, and thrown into a large armchair in some room.

The two Transparent Monsters seemed to leave the room just like that, and for a while, there was complete silence. But then, just as it felt like someone was approaching, the black blindfold was swiftly removed.

“Ohoho… Akechi, you’ve found yourself in quite the predicament.” “I have been wanting to meet you for some time.” “But I must say, it was a bit unexpected that we’d meet so soon.”

That was none other than the Mysterious Old Man. A snow-white head, a white beard reaching down to his chest, a hawk-like nose, piercing eyes—over which glinted the square rimless glasses mentioned in stories. The figure stood slightly hunched forward, clad in a loose black gown that hung like a robe with both hands behind his back—an aged sorcerer radiating an aura of unfathomable secrets. The room was a spacious Western-style chamber that must have been grand in its day, now reduced to utter ruin—an eerie space resembling an abandoned house. Apart from a table and chairs, there were no furnishings save for an old-fashioned large fireplace adorning one wall.

The Mysterious Old Man continued pacing back and forth in front of the armchair where Akechi had collapsed, still talking incessantly.

“I don’t lie. I gave you a proper warning over the phone. You dismissed that as foolish and tried to go to the Metropolitan Police Department, so you immediately ended up in this situation. Now you’ve finally realized my power, haven’t you? Well, Mr. Akechi, why don’t you say something?”

Akechi remained silent, glaring at the old man. His hands and feet were tightly bound in coils, leaving him unfortunately unable to move a muscle. No matter what was said to him, he had no choice but to endure it. "Akechi, you know my grand ambition, don't you?" "It's about turning humans transparent one by one." "I intend to create a massive organization of Transparent Humans—a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand strong." "Just imagine it." "A great horde of completely invisible humans running wild across Japan—no, the entire world." "An invincible Transparent Army!" "Ah, merely contemplating it makes me so delighted it sends shivers down my spine."

The Mysterious Old Man, as if fever-maddened, kept ranting absurdities while pacing before Akechi.

“But I must hurry—if I’m careless, nuisances like you will appear.” “I’ve only created four Transparent Humans so far.” “No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4—this No. 4, as you know, is a child.” “I turned that cheeky brat Daisuke into a Transparent Human.” “Now then, who do you suppose will be the next No.5?” “Ohoho… Akechi, do you know who that is? It’s none other than you.” “The famous detective Akechi Kogorō will become Transparent Human No.5.” “The transparent version of the illustrious detective will be complete.” “And you will be reduced to my underling.” “Do you understand?” “Ah, it’s not just you.” “Who do you think will become Transparent Human No.6?” “Who do you think will be No.7?” “Inspector Nakamura, Kurokawa the journalist, even that Kobayashi boy you dote on—anyone who opposes me will be turned transparent, one after another.”

“Bwahahaha… Delightful, delightful! I never realized until this very moment that my invention could be so delightful. Hey, Mr. Akechi, aren’t you scared? You’ll soon lose your form. You’ll become transparent like air. Air Detective! Transparent Detective! Bwahahaha… Even the great Akechi-sensei can’t do a thing now, can he? Bwahaha…”

The Mysterious Old Man kept laughing with a madman-like cackle, as if declaring he found it unbearably absurd.

Ah, had our famous detective truly been defeated by the Mysterious Old Man? Was it his fate to fall into the old man's clutches and be turned transparent? Even as the Mysterious Old Man laughed at him relentlessly, Akechi remained composed and maintained his silence. Didn't he seem a bit too unperturbed? Did he mean to say he had the confidence to defeat the old man when the critical moment came?

Our Akechi Kogorō must possess unfathomable depths of wisdom. There might be a tremendous strategy of ours that we remain completely unaware of. He might have prepared a gasp-inducing final trump card.

Red Clown

Shifting scenes, at the Metropolitan Police Department’s investigation headquarters, Inspector Nakamura, Kurokawa the journalist, Kobayashi Leader, and others waited for Detective Akechi to arrive any moment now, but no matter how long they waited, the detective’s figure did not appear.

Since something seemed off, Inspector Nakamura called Akechi’s office, only to be told that the detective had left by car an hour earlier. When Inspector Nakamura relayed that, Kurokawa the journalist and Kobayashi Leader involuntarily exchanged glances. “From the detective’s office to here, he should be able to get here easily in fifteen minutes by car.” “This is strange—maybe something happened along the way. Could it be that the Transparent Monster did something to Mr. Akechi?”

When he heard Kurokawa the journalist say that, Kobayashi Leader grew so worried about Mr. Akechi that he could no longer sit still. “I’ll go to the office and investigate the driver of the car that took Mr. Akechi,” he declared, suddenly trying to bolt out of the room.

“Wait. It’s too dangerous for you to go alone. I’ll go too. Inspector Nakamura, why don’t you come along as well?”

When Kurokawa the journalist looked at Inspector Nakamura’s face, the inspector also nodded and stood up.

Then, Inspector Nakamura, Journalist Kurokawa, and Kobayashi Leader got into a car and hurried to the Akechi Detective Agency, also located in Chiyoda Ward, but by that time, night had already fallen completely.

“Alright, stop here. Turn off the headlights and wait here for a while.” Inspector Nakamura commanded the driver. Without going all the way to the office, he intentionally had the car stopped at a distant location. This was always Inspector Nakamura’s habit. Through this method, he had often managed to obtain valuable clues in the past. The three of them walked quietly through the pitch-dark town—dotted here and there with vacant lots like missing teeth—taking care not to let their footsteps make a sound.

At that moment, something strange occurred. From the darkness ahead, something red glowed faintly into view. The three involuntarily stopped and stared in that direction, and as they did so, the red thing gradually drew closer. As it drew closer and its form became clearer, it turned out to be a garishly dressed clown-costumed sandwich man.

A baggy clown suit with red and white stripes, a pointed hat of the same striped pattern, his face painted pure white with makeup, and bright red circles drawn on both cheeks. On his chest and back hung large advertisement boards from some store. In this deserted, lonely residential district with no passersby—and on top of that, a pitch-black night—the sight of a sandwich man walking about was truly strange. However, what was even more bizarre was that no sooner had the red clown unsteadily approached Inspector Nakamura than he suddenly thrust an advertisement flyer right before the inspector’s eyes.

Inspector Nakamura was taken aback and stared at the clown, but after a moment's reconsideration, he accepted the flyer thrust at him. Then, the clown simply left for somewhere. The red clown costume disappeared into the darkness as though melting away.

Inspector Nakamura went to a nearby streetlight and tried reading the advertisement flyer. It was not a printed advertisement, but something like a handwritten letter. Akechi Kogorō is currently being turned into a transparent human somewhere. The famous detective’s body is steadily, bit by bit, becoming transparent like glass. Anyone who interferes will all be turned into transparent humans! You all had better be careful.

“Go after him! We’re catching that clown right now!”

Inspector Nakamura shouted like a madman and started running back the way they had come. Though they didn’t understand why, Kurokawa the journalist and Kobayashi Leader followed after him. As they ran, Inspector Nakamura informed them of the flyer’s message. "So, after all, the teacher was taken somewhere by the Transparent Monster, wasn’t he?"

Kobayashi Leader shouted while running. “That's right! And what’s more—that clown just now might have been the Transparent Monster! Inspector Nakamura, did you see that guy’s face? The eyes were black holes, right? The face didn’t move at all, right? That’s a wax mask! They applied makeup to the wax mask.”

Journalist Kurokawa also shouted breathlessly while running. When they returned to the automobile with its headlights turned off and peered inside, the driver’s figure was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gone? The three of them stopped and looked around.

Strange Swift Maneuver

Then they noticed the driver standing at the street corner ahead. He was beckoning in their direction. Even though he was a driver, he was still a police officer—perhaps he had seen the strange clown pass by and had followed after him. When the three arrived there, the driver pointed to a public telephone booth beyond the street corner and whispered.

“He went inside there. Look. Even from here, you can see his figure.” A streetlight stood beside the public telephone booth, making the glass enclosure dimly visible through its illumination. There, a figure resembling a clown was squirming about.

“Surround him from all sides without letting him notice.” Under Inspector Nakamura’s instructions, Kurokawa the journalist, Kobayashi Leader, and the driver spread out and approached the public telephone booth from all directions, moving stealthily along shadows. Kobayashi Leader, being as quick as a squirrel, was first to dash up to the telephone booth and stealthily peered inside through its glass window. Just as suspected—inside the booth was the red clown from earlier. Still wearing his striped pointed hat, he stood slightly hunched and facing their direction. That pure white face pressed against the glass stared fixedly toward them.

It was indeed a wax mask. The two eyes were dark hollows. The eyebrows and mouth did not move even slightly. It was not the face of a living human. By that time, the other three had already surrounded the public telephone booth from three sides. Standing in front of the entrance door was Inspector Nakamura. The red clown completely became a cornered rat. No matter what happened now, there was no chance of him escaping.

Inspector Nakamura grabbed the door handle and tried to open it, but for some reason, it wouldn't budge. There was no reason for a public telephone booth door to be locked. The clown, in desperation, might have rigged the door so it wouldn't open. “Hey! Open up here! There's no way you're escaping now!” “If you don't open up, we'll smash our way in!” Inspector Nakamura shouted loudly into the glass so he could be heard inside.

Then, the clown's face swayed unsteadily toward them as if staggering, and two black hole-like eyes stared fixedly at Inspector Nakamura through the glass. "Heh heh heh... I can escape." "I'll show you how I escape." "Go ahead and try to smash your way in." A faint voice seeped through from inside the glass enclosure. The clown's mouth—being part of the wax mask—remained utterly still. Only the disembodied voice kept leaking out.

Being challenged by a cornered rat was more than he could endure. Inspector Nakamura suddenly body-slammed the door. With a crash came the sound of shattering glass. The door, never very sturdy to begin with, had its hinges break instantly.

Then, Inspector Nakamura and the driver pulled out the broken door, but even during that time, the clown remained standing in his original spot, letting out a faintly unsettling laugh: “Heh heh heh….”

He made no move to escape. It was the driver police officer who suddenly grappled with the clown. He lunged forward with terrifying force, but the moment he did so, he let out a cry of “Ah!” and collapsed into the back of the telephone booth. The clown was nothing but clothes—there was no body. The driver struck empty air and collapsed. “What’s wrong?!”

“Th-this… it’s nothing but clothes!” The driver finally got up and tugged at the red clown costume to show them. Beneath the pointed hat was the wax mask; beneath the wax mask were attached the clown suit and signboard. The pointed hat itself had been suspended by a string from the ceiling of the public telephone booth. The one who had been talking and laughing until just moments ago became nothing but clothes in an instant.

What an astonishingly swift trick! In the brief moment they were pulling out the broken door, the Transparent Monster had slipped away, leaving behind only his hat, mask, and clothes. If he removes his clothes and becomes naked—since he’s the invisible Transparent Monster—no amount of commotion would let them catch him. Even if they were right beside him, they couldn’t capture him.

“Ah! There he goes!” “He went that way!”

Reporter Kurokawa started running into the darkness while shouting. The other three, startled, followed suit.

“Heh heh heh… Slip in, slip in…” From the darkness twenty meters ahead, the Transparent Monster’s voice reverberated. Then, word by word, the voice grew fainter, fading away as if dissolving into nothingness.

“It’s no use chasing him anymore. Mr. Kurokawa, let’s give up.” Having said that, Inspector Nakamura returned to the public telephone booth. This was to take back the clown costume and other items as evidence. Inspector Nakamura cut the hanging string, rolled up the pointed hat, mask, and clown costume, and tucked them under his arm—but just then, he suddenly noticed a single scrap of paper lying on the floor of the public telephone booth. It wasn’t just an ordinary scrap of paper. Something seemed to be written on it. Inspector Nakamura hurriedly picked it up, held it up to the streetlight, and tried to read it.

Beware of Mrs. Akechi. Transparent Human No. 6 is that beautiful Mrs. Fumiyo.

Kobayashi Leader, who had keenly noticed Inspector Nakamura’s unusual demeanor, drew near his side and peered at the scrap of paper. And when he read those terrifying words, overwhelmed with worry, he suddenly clung to Inspector Nakamura’s arm.

“Hurry, hurry! Mrs. Akechi is in danger.” “Hurry to the office…”

The Shadow of the Curse

A short while later, in the spacious reception room of the Akechi Detective Agency, Inspector Nakamura, Reporter Kurokawa, and Kobayashi Leader sat around Mrs. Fumiyo Akechi, each in their own chairs. The reception room faced the road on the first floor, so they had drawn the curtains and kept only a large floor lamp lit, deliberately keeping the room dimly lit. Mrs. Fumiyo leaned against the round table as she spoke about something.

“After receiving that phone call earlier, I called the driver of the car that took Akechi here and heard his account. There’s no longer any doubt—Akechi has been abducted.” “The taxi that passed by at that time was the villain’s car.” And Mrs. Fumiyo explained the circumstances at that time in detail. “What was the license plate number of that suspicious taxi?”

Inspector Nakamura cut in.

“Unfortunately, the driver says he was so preoccupied with repairing his own car that he didn’t notice the number.” “I see.” “In any case, I’ll report the taxi’s color and model to headquarters and have all precincts put on alert.” Inspector Nakamura immediately picked up the desk phone and, while listening to Mrs. Fumiyo describe the taxi’s model and color, briskly completed the arrangements. And when he put down the receiver, as if lying in wait, the telephone began to ring.

Kobayashi Leader quickly picked up the receiver and held it to his ear, but the moment he heard the voice on the other end, his complexion changed abruptly. “It’s a strange voice,” he said. “Listen to this,” he added, handing the receiver to Inspector Nakamura. “Hey! What’s taking so long?” barked a voice through the phone. “Isn’t Mrs. Fumiyo there? I need to speak with Mrs. Fumiyo.” A strange, hoarse voice was shouting rudely.

“Who in the world are you?”

Inspector Nakamura inquired calmly.

“It doesn’t matter who I am—if Mrs. Fumiyo comes out, she’ll understand. Hurry up and let Mrs. Fumiyo come out.” “If you don’t give your name, I can’t pass on your message. State your name.” “The one asking that should be you—who are you? There shouldn’t be any men at the Akechi Detective Agency right now.” “I am Nakamura of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting your clown-costumed Sandwich-Board Man earlier. I’ve indeed seen that threatening letter.” “Bwahaha… So you’re Inspector Nakamura, the Demon Inspector. You’re having quite the trouble with that Transparent Monster, aren’t you? I’m the one who created that Transparent Monster! Even the great detective Akechi isn’t any better than a child when he’s up against me. He’s in surgery right now. By tomorrow, he should be completely transparent. Now then, as for the next target—I’ve decided on Mrs. Fumiyo. It’d be too cruel to leave the wife all alone after only making her husband transparent. Understood now? I’ll come to take Mrs. Fumiyo tonight. No matter how hard you try, Mr. Demon Inspector, we’re using invisible humans you can’t see.”

“You can’t possibly put up a fight.” “Well then, give my regards to Mrs. Fumiyo.” “See ya.” “Whoa, hold on!” “So you don’t have to rush investigating—I’ll tell you this call’s from a Shibuya public phone.” “I came all the way from my hideout to the exact opposite side of town just to make this call.” “Well then, Mr. Demon Inspector—later.” The caller spoke alone and hung up without another word. Needless to say, it was the square-spectacled mysterious old man. Even the formidable Inspector Nakamura, having been talked down at will, bit his lip in frustration and set down the receiver.

It had finally become clear that Mrs. Fumiyo was being targeted, so they began discussing methods to protect her. They finalized the arrangements: Kobayashi Leader would stay constantly by Mrs. Fumiyo’s side; both Inspector Nakamura and Kurokawa Katsuichi would remain at the Akechi Detective Agency overnight; three skilled detectives from headquarters would be summoned by phone to stand guard inside the house; and several patrol officers would be requested via police hotline to patrol around the detective office. Each of these calls was made in turn.

“Madam, there’s no need for you to worry.” “With all these arrangements in place, there should be no problem.” “Moreover, the three of us will stay by your side without leaving and will protect you without fail.” When Inspector Nakamura said this, the gallant Mrs. Fumiyo answered resolutely without changing her complexion.

“Thank you very much. With this, I too feel reassured. But I must save Akechi. It’s that I’m more worried about that than my own safety.”

“I understand that too. At the investigation headquarters, besides me, there are many section chiefs. There are skilled detectives. Moreover, police stations across Tokyo are joining forces. We’ll surely rescue him.” Inspector Nakamura declared strongly as if to encourage Mrs. Fumiyo.

At that very moment. The window with tightly drawn curtains suddenly lit up as if struck by lightning. The window faced the main road, so when passing cars turned corners or such, their headlights would hit it and brighten it in that manner. Both Mrs. Fumiyo and Kobayashi had assumed it was just headlights and paid no mind, but for some reason, the pure white light kept illuminating the window without moving an inch.

As they wondered at the strangeness, a faint, blurry shadow began to appear on the curtain that had turned white.

Oh—there it was again—the shadow of that terrifying monster. Tangled wild hair; a hawk-like nose; a large mouth gaping crescent-shaped—it was the Transparent Monster's profile. The monster's naked upper torso, three times an ordinary human's size, writhed darkly across the curtain.

“Heh heh heh heh….” From beyond the glass came a thin, eerie, mocking laugh. “Damn it!” With the clatter of a chair, Kurokawa Katsuichi, the reporter, stood up. Then he lunged toward the curtain where the shadow was cast, swift as a bullet.

The Second Jester

Even when he opened the window, as expected, the shadow’s owner was nowhere to be seen. Reporter Kurokawa had no choice but to return to his seat, clicking his tongue in frustration. When it became around ten o’clock that night, Mrs. Fumiyo got into bed in her bedroom, Kobayashi Leader went to his own bedroom on the left side, and Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa retired to the guest bedroom on the right side of Mrs. Fumiyo’s room. The three detectives, prepared to stay up all night, were holding their ground—two in the backyard and one at the entrance.

It was an already lonely mansion district. As the night deepened, the sounds from afar ceased, and the entire area fell into complete silence, as if swallowed by a vast forest.

After midnight passed and approached one o'clock, a somewhat inexplicable strange incident occurred outside the detective agency's backyard. The detective agency also served as Akechi's residence, with a backyard of approximately one hundred square meters where various trees were beautifully planted. The two detectives had brought out chairs to sit in the shade of a thick cedar, keeping watch in all directions through gaps in the tree branches. But they were not merely sitting there. Occasionally one of them would stand up from his chair and go out to check the road beyond the fence.

Between the backyard and the road stood a low concrete wall, with an entrance containing a small door built into it. Outside the wall stood a streetlight, its faint illumination reaching even into the garden.

Now, one detective stood up from his chair, crossed the garden, opened the small door and stepped out into the road outside—but the moment he emerged, he froze in shock. Given that it was a lonely back alley, he had convinced himself no one would pass through so late at night. Yet when he looked, there stood a strange figure right beside the streetlight pole across the way. It was a large, doll-like figure clad in a bright red robe.

The detective and the doll-like figure continued glaring at each other from about twenty meters apart for some time. As he kept staring, it became clear that it was not a doll but a living human—a man clad in a red and white checkered clown costume.

“Ah! It’s him,” the detective exclaimed. “It must be that clown who disappeared from the public telephone booth this evening.” Realizing this in an instant, the detective suddenly lunged at the clown—but the clown had already broken into a full sprint. The man was absurdly fast.

The detective ran while pulling out his whistle and blew a shrill, piercing sound. The other detective who had been in the backyard heard it and rushed out, but there was already a fifty-meter gap between him and the first detective. There was no catching up now. The first detective couldn't bear the thought of letting him escape again. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself to a life-or-death speed. Yet his opponent ran even faster. Then, just as they passed their third street corner— The fleeing clown suddenly came to an abrupt stop.

When he looked, a flashlight resembling the monster's eyeball glowed in the darkness ahead. They were two uniformed police officers. The officers who had been patrolling the area heard the whistle and blocked the clown's path. "Got him!" The detective roared inwardly as he lunged at the clown. With a flawless judo throw, he slammed his opponent to the ground in one swift motion, then straddled him like a rider mounting a horse.

“You’re the Transparent Monster! This time I won’t let you escape!” He tried peeling off what he thought was the clown’s wax mask by grabbing at his face—only to discover it wasn’t a mask at all but real flesh and bone.

“Oh! So you weren’t the Transparent Monster after all?” “I’m not that thing! I’m Benimaru, a street performer. You’ve got the wrong person! I haven’t done anything wrong. Let me go…” The pinned-down clown wailed tearfully. “Then why were you standing there at this late hour?” “I was asked to.” “Asked to? Who asked you, and what did they ask you to do?”

“I don’t know who. Three hours ago, a gentleman I met on the street. He gave me a 5,000 yen bill. And he told me to stand outside the wall of that house earlier. He said that even if a police officer came there, once someone came out from inside the wall, I should run away immediately. So with 5,000 yen being such a sweet offer, I agreed.”

When they shone the flashlight on him for a better look, this street performer indeed had an utterly foolish face. Blinded by the 5,000 yen, his claim of having taken on such a trivial role did not seem entirely fabricated. However, if what this man said was true, then for what purpose had that gentleman asked him to do such a thing? The detective tilted his head. "Anyway, let's take him to Inspector Nakamura." "There seems to be some reason behind this."

The other detective, who had arrived later, whispered into the ear of the detective straddling the clown like a rider on horseback.

Thereupon, the first detective finally stood up, pulled the street performer to his feet, and with a firm grip on his wrists, briskly turned back the way they had come. The other detective and two police officers also followed behind them.

When they had backtracked over three hundred meters and approached the detective agency’s back entrance, Reporter Kurokawa was waiting there.

“What’s going on? I woke up because of all the commotion and came out here to check.” “Ah, Mr. Kurokawa. This guy’s a real troublemaker. He said someone asked him to, so he was standing there. Since we’d heard about the clown from this evening, we were certain it was the Transparent Monster and gave chase. This guy—what a fast idiot he was! He really made us sweat buckets.”

The detective, after explaining the recent events in full, "After all, we thought we should have Inspector Nakamura examine him once, so we decided to bring him here."

“Hmm, Inspector Nakamura must’ve been thoroughly exhausted—he’s sleeping soundly.” “That’s why I came out alone without waking him, but now I suppose we should rouse Inspector Nakamura and have him come here.”

Reporter Kurokawa said that and vanished into the depths of the back garden. However, when Reporter Kurokawa entered the house to investigate, there had occurred a truly astonishing incident. The Mysterious Old Man had once again used his terrifying magic.

Black Issun-bōshi

Now shifting focus—we turn to Mrs.Akechi Fumiyo.

She retired to her bedroom after parting ways with everyone else, but the thought that tonight of all nights the Transparent Monster would come to take her away made it impossible to sleep. Still in her daytime clothes, she lay down on the bed, staring fixedly. Since Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa were in the room on the right and Kobayashi Leader was in the room on the left, she was reassured that even if something suspicious happened, raising her voice would bring immediate help. Yet somehow, a vague unease kept sleep at bay.

At that moment, a piercing... whistle sounded from somewhere in the back. It resembled the whistles carried by police officers. This was the same whistle one of the detectives had blown while chasing the clown-suited man, though Mrs. Fumiyo didn't realize it. But suddenly her heart began to race—had something happened? Was the Transparent Monster trying to sneak in? Mrs. Fumiyo instinctively sat upright on the bed and strained her ears.

Then, as if the whistle's sound had been a signal, the entrance door opened soundlessly. Startled, when she looked, outside the opened door stood Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa in an imposing manner.

As Mrs. Fumiyo, startled, tried to say something, both men raised fingers to their mouths in a "Be quiet" gesture. With their other hands, they kept urgently beckoning her over.

Mrs. Fumiyo felt as if she were dreaming. Being urgently beckoned, she got off the bed and—fortunately still wearing her daytime clothes—approached the two at the entrance just as she was. “It’s dangerous for you to stay here,” “I’ll take you to a safe place.” “We need to hurry!” “I’ll explain everything in detail later.” Inspector Nakamura pressed his mouth to Mrs. Fumiyo’s ear and whispered hurriedly. Before she could even gather her thoughts, they seized both her hands and hurried her toward the backyard.

At that very moment, yet another bizarre occurrence was unfolding outside the back concrete wall. The two detectives had left the small back door wide open after chasing the clown, but through that very door, a small black shadow slipped out with lightning speed and scurried nimbly along the shadow of the wall, darting in the opposite direction to the clown's escape route.

When he had run about a hundred meters, there was an automobile stopped at the street corner there. Inside was only a single driver. The headlights were turned off, and as the interior light wasn’t on either, the driver’s figure was nearly indistinguishable. The tiny black shadow was holding something like a square tin can in its hand. Then, as it approached the rear of the automobile, the black shadow appeared to slip beneath the vehicle’s body—but only for a brief moment—before swiftly leaving the automobile and concealing itself in the shadow of a nearby utility pole. Strangely, at that moment, the tin can had disappeared from the black shadow’s hand.

No sooner had the dwarf-like shadow hidden behind the utility pole than three adult shadows came hurrying over from the direction of the detective agency. The one in the middle appeared to be a woman. The two men flanked her from both sides as they walked. When they reached the automobile, they abruptly opened the door and filed inside one after another. Then the automobile revved its engine, slid smoothly forward, and vanished into the darkness almost instantly. The headlights remained unlit throughout.

As if seeing it off, from the shadow of the utility pole emerged the black shadow resembling the dwarf-like figure from earlier, which immediately started running toward the detective agency. With imperceptible swiftness, he scurried along and soon slipped back into the detective agency’s garden through the small gate in the concrete wall. At that moment, the streetlight’s glare vividly illuminated his face as he abruptly turned around. That was Kobayashi Leader. Nimble as a squirrel, it was Kobayashi Leader of the Boy Detectives.

Kobayashi Leader had crawled under that automobile—what could he have been doing there? And what on earth was that tin can-like object Kobayashi Leader had been carrying? In fact, it was Kobayashi Leader’s mysterious actions that would become the foundation for the Boy Detectives Club’s grand exploits, but that story comes much later.

The scene shifted—now to the interior of the mysterious automobile that had vanished into the darkness. In that seat sat Mrs. Fumiyo Akechi, sandwiched between Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa on both sides. The three black shadows that had boarded the automobile right before Kobayashi Leader’s eyes were these very people.

No sooner had the automobile started moving than Mrs. Fumiyo let out a sharp scream—"Ah!" And then, she suddenly began to thrash about violently. It was only natural.

Because Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa—whom she had believed were there solely to protect her—had begun doing something terrifying. Kurokawa was moving his hands around from behind Mrs. Fumiyo’s neck and trying to bind the area around her mouth with something like a hand towel. It was to prevent her from making any noise. Moreover, Inspector Nakamura was tightly restraining her body to keep Mrs. Fumiyo from moving. With two grown men assailing her from both sides, the frail Mrs. Fumiyo could do nothing. In an instant, she was gagged and went completely limp.

What in the world was happening here? The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Chief Inspector and the major newspaper reporter—who had stayed at the detective agency to protect Mrs. Fumiyo—had now become terrifying enemies trying to take her away somewhere. Had these two been put under the Mysterious Old Man’s spell? And had they suddenly become underlings of the Mysterious Old Man?

After gagging Mrs. Fumiyo, Reporter Kurokawa rose from the seat and reached for the automobile door.

“Alright then.” “I’m counting on you.” Leaving those words with Inspector Nakamura, he flung the door open. Then, sensing the situation, the driver abruptly slowed the automobile. Waiting for that moment, Reporter Kurokawa nimbly jumped down into the darkness.

Thus, Mrs. Fumiyo was taken away to some unknown location. Where on earth was that destination? And why on earth did Inspector Nakamura and Reporter Kurokawa commit such a wicked deed? Moreover, what could it mean that Kobayashi Leader, despite being aware of this, did not rescue Mrs. Fumiyo and instead attached a mysterious tin can-like object beneath the automobile’s body?

Those secrets remained sealed in darkness. However, the time would soon come when everything became clear. Nor was it a very distant matter.

Now then, the story shifted once more to another mysterious incident that occurred that night in a different location.

The Gutter-Climber

At the very moment Mrs. Fumiyo was being loaded into the mysterious automobile and taken away to an unknown location, two police officers on patrol were making their rounds through a desolate area surrounded by burned ruins in the southern part of Minato Ward. "There’s not a single house around here, huh?" "Yeah, even in our jurisdiction, this has got to be the most unpleasant place." "Especially that burned-out building over there—it’s such an unfathomable structure." "The occupants are constantly changing." "In fact, there are even rumors of a haunted house around here."

“Hmm, a haunted house, eh? It’s precisely those kinds of places villains take advantage of.” “That’s right. That’s why I always keep a special eye on that building… Hey, something’s moving over there! Look—at the corner of that burned-out building. A black thing is slowly coming down, you see?”

The two of them started in surprise and came to an abrupt halt right there. It was a three-story burned-out building that loomed like a black specter over the scorched wasteland. The exterior remained grimy with its decorative bricks peeling away, but the interior seemed maintained as some company’s office, where the caretaker’s family apparently stayed overnight. When they looked up, the third-floor window had opened—likely someone’s exit point. A man was gradually descending along a long gutter. A figure crawling down a burned building’s gutter at midnight—truly an uncanny sight. Since no legitimate occupant would use a gutter this way, one could only conclude this man was a burglar.

The two police officers stealthily approached the building to avoid alerting their target. The man sliding down the gutter descended as smoothly as if he were an acrobat. He showed no awareness of the officers lying in wait below. When about two meters from the ground, the man suddenly released his grip and dropped onto a clump of grass. Just as he staggered from the impact, an officer lunged forward and seized him from behind.

“Who the hell are you? What did you do here?”

The police officer put the suspicious man in a stranglehold and yelled at him.

“Shh! Keep your voice down.” The man remained completely unperturbed and, using a tone like a superior reprimanding a subordinate, silenced the police officer; even while being held in a stranglehold, he hastily moved away from the building.

And after walking about a hundred meters and reaching the shadow of a barrack-style house, the suspicious man said in an ordinary voice, “Well now,”. “Oh, my apologies, officers. I’m sorry for causing a disturbance.” “By the way, do you know who I am?” “You have a flashlight, don’t you?” “So go ahead and shine your light on my face.”

The police officer, as instructed, turned on his flashlight and shone it on the man’s face. And after staring for a while, as if remembering something, he took a step back and said in a polite tone.

“Could it be... you are Detective Akechi? I believe I met you once at the Metropolitan Police Headquarters.” “That’s correct. I am Akechi Kogorō.” “But why would Detective Akechi be in a place like this at this hour...?” “There are various reasons. I assume you’ve already heard that I was kidnapped by the Transparent Monster’s leader. In fact, that building is a den of villains.” “Ah, so it was true after all. So that means there’s a group of Transparent Monsters inside that building, then.”

"That's correct," Akechi replied. "I barely managed to sneak out through the window, but if they realize that, they'll escape. We must hurry. However, you two alone can't handle this. Could you urgently contact Inspector Nakamura at the Metropolitan Police Headquarters? After meeting with him, I want to finalize our arrangements." "Understood," the officer responded. "In that case, please come with us to the station for now. From there, we'll call Inspector Nakamura's home. As for me, I must also report this to the police chief."

So, the three of them hurried through the deserted late-night streets as if running toward the nearby police station.

The Mystery of the Vacant House When they phoned from the police station to inquire with the Metropolitan Police Department, they discovered that Inspector Nakamura, in charge of the Transparent Monster case, was staying at Akechi’s office. They then called there, and arrangements were made for Inspector Nakamura to come at once. Soon, Inspector Nakamura arrived by car at the location where the police chief and Detective Akechi were waiting, accompanied by two detectives.

“Oh, Mr. Akechi, you’re safe! Thank goodness.” “Thank goodness.” “So that guy’s in that burned-out building, right?”

Inspector Nakamura gripped the famous detective's hand and spoke joyfully. "If they've noticed my escape, it's likely already too late." "But surround that building immediately." "Naturally, I'll guide you there." Akechi gripped the inspector's hand in return and responded.

“Let’s go. But you didn’t meet my wife in that burned-out building, did you?” “Huh? You mean Fumiyo when you say ‘your wife’?”

Akechi looked surprised and stared at the inspector. "Yeah, I've done something truly inexcusable." "Ms. Fumiyo has been taken away." "I'll explain the details later, but Mr. Kurokawa, Kobayashi Leader, and I had been protecting Ms. Fumiyo when someone made me drink coffee laced with a sleeping drug." "So while I was sound asleep, Ms. Fumiyo had vanished." "Not only that." "Mr. Kurokawa and Kobayashi Leader are nowhere to be seen." "They might have gone after Ms. Fumiyo, but they hadn't returned by the time I left." "Right then, the patrol detectives had been lured away from the back door of your house by some strange clown." "It was then that they took Ms. Fumiyo away."

Inspector Nakamura still did not know that the fake Inspector Nakamura and Kurokawa had taken Ms. Fumiyo away by car or that Kobayashi Leader had attached a tin can beneath that automobile.

“I had no idea at all.” “However, they might have confined her somewhere in that building to avoid meeting me.” “Hurry.” “We must rescue Fumiyo.”

Akechi took the lead and dashed toward the police station entrance. Within less than ten minutes, the police force led by the police chief and Inspector Nakamura entered the burned-out building. Detective Akechi was advancing at the very front as their guide. The beams from the flashlights that the police officers waved around in their hands brightly illuminated every corner of the pitch-dark Western-style mansion like small searchlights. However, there were no human figures, of course, nor any tools that seemed like tools. They were all rooms like those in vacant houses.

They thoroughly searched from the first to the third floor, but found nothing. There was no one there. The large three-story building stood completely empty. The swift Mysterious Old Man and his accomplices had abandoned this hideout and vanished without a trace. With nowhere left to search, the police force descended to the first floor. Akechi remained at the forefront, walking down the pitch-black corridor when he abruptly halted. He stared fixedly into the darkness ahead—then suddenly broke into a run toward it.

When they turned one corner of the corridor, there was already complete darkness. In that darkness, something black could be sensed fluttering about. Akechi leapt toward it.

A voice went "Yikes!" and there was a terrible thud.

Following Akechi, the police officers who had rushed there saw several flashlight beams suddenly illuminate the spot. Akechi was on top, pinning down something black—a human wearing a black baggy overcoat-like garment. The man tried to throw Akechi off as he raised his face with a grunt. Oh! Square glasses and a white beard—it was the Mysterious Old Man! He was the demon leader. Akechi brilliantly captured and subdued this formidable enemy.

Here on this side, there were many police officers. There was no escaping now. The Mysterious Old Man was immediately handcuffed and taken away. Why did the Mysterious Old Man make such a blunder? He had plenty of time to escape, so why did he linger inside the building? And even if his opponent was a renowned detective, wasn’t there something strange about him being captured this easily?

However, in their excitement over capturing the Transparent Monster's leader, no one noticed that detail. Immediately under Inspector Nakamura’s orders, the Mysterious Old Man was placed into a car and transported to Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters.

And now, finally, indescribably strange things would begin to occur one after another.

The Boy Detective

The following day, in the afternoon.

In the interrogation room of Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters, Inspector Nakamura, his superior Chief Inspector Shino, and Akechi Kogorō sat around one side of a desk in chairs, while before them, the handcuffed Mysterious Old Man likewise sat on a chair with his head hung low. They had been interrogating him since morning, but as the Mysterious Old Man refused to answer anything, it turned into a battle of wills—their standoff continued well past noon.

“You said you’re waiting for something, but what exactly are you waiting for?” “Enough is enough. Why don’t you start talking?”

Chief Inspector Shino repeated his repeated urging once more.

“I have something to say to Mr. Akechi.” “That is what I’m waiting for.” The Mysterious Old Man answered in a low voice, his eyes still closed. “But Mr. Akechi has been right here all along. What exactly are you—” “What on earth are you—” “No—it’s not Mr. Akechi I’m waiting for.” “I’m waiting for another person.” “However, I’ll never confess to anyone but Mr. Akechi.” “That’s why I want you to stay seated here until the end, Mr. Akechi.” “If Mr. Akechi leaves his seat, I intend to say nothing.”

When Chief Inspector Shino heard that, he fell silent in exasperation. Detective Akechi, too, could not leave the room after being addressed in such terms. Once again, a silent glaring match continued.

And then, about thirty minutes later, the entrance door opened, and a police officer entered. The police officer saluted Chief Inspector Shino and Inspector Nakamura, then approached Akechi. “Mr. Akechi, there’s a boy named Kobayashi here who says he wants to see you. Would you like to meet him over there?” he inquired. Then, before Akechi could answer, the Mysterious Old Man suddenly opened his mouth and—

“Please send Kobayashi in here,” he shouted. “The one I was waiting for is that boy.” “No, that won’t do,” said Akechi. “I have a confidential matter to discuss with Kobayashi. I’ll excuse myself for a moment.” As Akechi tried to stand up, Inspector Nakamura stopped him. “Mr. Akechi, do not leave your seat,” he ordered. “Otherwise, the investigation won’t go well. You—bring the Kobayashi boy here immediately. Hurry up.”

The police officer bowed and left. Soon after, numerous footsteps echoed outside the door, and there—as if a flower had suddenly bloomed—an unexpected figure appeared. "Ah! Mrs. Akechi!" "You're unharmed..." "Rejoice, Akechi!" "It appears Kobayashi has rescued your wife."

Inspector Nakamura tapped Akechi’s shoulder. At the entrance to the room stood the beautiful Mrs. Fumiyo Akechi. Kobayashi Leader and four or five middle school students were lined up on either side of her as if protecting Mrs. Fumiyo.

Akechi and Mrs. Fumiyo exchanged glances, then he nodded lightly. “Kobayashi, come here and give your report,” said Inspector Nakamura. “How did you find Mrs. Akechi?” In response to Inspector Nakamura’s words, Kobayashi Leader answered “Yes,” and stepped two or three paces forward. He then began recounting the events from last night in a concise manner. “Last night, I was sleeping next to Mrs. Akechi’s bedroom when around midnight, I suddenly noticed muffled voices in front of her room. I cracked the door open a sliver and peeked out to find Inspector Nakamura and Mr. Kurokawa the journalist trying to take her away somewhere.”

Since I thought something was strange, I went down to the back garden via a different corridor, and when I looked outside the gate, there was an automobile parked across the way. The two of them must have been planning to take Mrs. Akechi somewhere in that automobile. At that moment, I quickly thought: The fact that Inspector Nakamura and Mr. Kurokawa hadn't said a single word to me about such a major incident as taking Mrs. Akechi away was suspicious. I wondered if these two might be impostors in clever disguises. But if I caused a commotion then, something dangerous might happen to Mrs. Akechi. Rather than that, it would be better to quietly track where that automobile was headed. That was what I decided.

“For that, there was a clever method Mr. Akechi and I had devised long ago. In a great hurry, I took out a small tin can from the storage shed and fastened it beneath the automobile’s chassis. The tin can contained chalk powder, with a small hole drilled through its bottom using a gimlet. When you pulled out the plug fitted into the hole, chalk powder would spill out like a thread, trailing endlessly behind as the automobile moved forward. A thin line that you wouldn’t notice at first glance remained on the ground.”

“This morning, I gathered five members of the Boy Detectives Club from nearby. Then I brought out Mr. Akechi’s shepherd dog Shire—who’d been left at the kennel—let him smell the chalk powder, and had him track the trail on the ground. And we found the house where Mrs. Akechi was confined. While these members here kept watch on the house, I reported this matter to Inspector Nakamura through a public phone.”

When Kobayashi Leader had spoken that far, Inspector Nakamura interrupted.

“This morning, I left the room once, right? That’s when I heard Kobayashi’s phone call. And then I ordered my subordinates to assist Kobayashi and his team. That’s how we successfully carried it out.”

“Wahahaha… Delightful! How delightful! I must truly be growing senile,” sneered the Mysterious Old Man, his voice dripping with mockery. “To think I’d fall victim to some two-bit punk…”

The Mysterious Old Man suddenly burst into laughter, startling everyone into staring in his direction. “Kobayashi, you truly live up to being Detective Akechi’s protégé. Well done. I’ll give you my praise too, but your achievement isn’t just that. You should have found something even more significant. Don’t hide it. Bring that here as well.” The Mysterious Old Man, unusually energized, was saying such strange things that Kobayashi Leader blinked his eyes rapidly and looked toward Detective Akechi.

“Mr. Akechi, is it all right to bring them?”

However, Akechi did not answer. He was just glaring at Kobayashi Leader with a strange expression.

“Fine, fine, Kobayashi. Hurry up and bring them here.” “Mr. Akechi must be quite surprised as well.” “Wahahaha… Delightful, delightful!”

The Mysterious Old Man was growing more and more energetic.

What in the world was happening here? The Mysterious Old Man seemed to know various secrets more than Detective Akechi did. Wasn't this all rather strange? Kobayashi Leader consulted Inspector Nakamura with his eyes. Then Inspector Nakamura nodded in response and left the room without another word. Kobayashi Leader was going to bring someone. Who could it be? And now, what kind of strange thing would occur next?

Three Akechi Kogorōs

Everyone in the room exclaimed "Ah!" and rose to their feet. At that moment, the person who entered the room with Kobayashi Leader was someone so utterly unexpected. That was the famous detective Akechi Kogorō. Akechi had become two. The Akechi who had been sitting in the investigation room since morning and the Akechi who had just entered were completely identical in both face and clothing. They were as alike as twins.

“Wahahaha… Well gentlemen, were you surprised? Inspector Nakamura, bind these two Akechi Kogorōs. Tie them with rope. One must be an impostor. But it’s still unclear which one. Restrain both of them. If they escape, it’ll be disastrous.” The Mysterious Old Man stood up from his chair still handcuffed and bellowed. He arrogantly addressed Inspector Nakamura as “Nakamura-kun,” behaving as though he were the most important person in the room.

What was even more strange was Inspector Nakamura’s attitude. Not only did he refrain from scolding the Mysterious Old Man, but he pressed the bell as instructed by the old man, summoned his subordinate detectives, and had them bind the two Akechi Kogorōs—who were glaring at each other—with restraining ropes. They made the two sit in separate chairs, bound their hands behind their backs, and fastened the ropes to the backs of the chairs. Though it remained unclear which was genuine and which was fake, the two Akechi Kogorōs were swiftly bound while still dumbfounded, leaving them no chance to resist.

“Wahahaha… It’s getting more and more interesting. By the way, everyone—there’s one thing I must confess: that this old man here is also a fake. I am not the old man who creates Transparent Humans. That’s the decoy. That old man asked me to do it—I received an enormous reward, briefly acted as a decoy, and then intentionally allowed myself to be captured. The real Mysterious Old Man wouldn’t be captured so easily, you see.”

“The leader of the Transparent Monsters used me as a decoy, had me captured, and while everyone was distracted by that, he completely disguised himself as something entirely different and vanished without a trace.” “No—just because he vanished doesn’t mean he fled far away.” “He might be hiding right before our very eyes.” “And that too will become clear any moment now.” “Wahahaha… This is truly delightful!”

“I shall now reveal my true identity.” “To remove this disguise, these handcuffs are in my way.” “Inspector Nakamura, remove these for me.”

The Mysterious Old Man said that and extended both hands in front of Inspector Nakamura. By saying such things and getting the handcuffs removed, wasn't he planning to suddenly make a run for it? Danger! Danger! However, Inspector Nakamura remained unperturbed. He took a key from his pocket and removed the old man's handcuffs with a click.

Had the old man run away?

No, he did not run away. He merely went to the corner of the room, faced away, and squatted down.

As they watched, the old man's white-haired head slipped off cleanly, as though peeling away skin, revealing a mass of tangled black hair beneath. He had been wearing a wig. Next, the long white beard and two white eyebrows fluttered down to the floor. These too were a fake beard and fake eyebrows. Then, after fidgeting restlessly for a while, he stripped off the baggy black gown with a flourish, whirled around to face this direction, and stood up—oh, here was yet another Akechi Kogorō. The Mysterious Old Man had transformed into the famous detective.

Indistinguishable from head to toe were three Akechi Kogorōs—two sat bound with their hands behind their backs on chairs; one stood in the corner of the room; all three famous detectives stared at one another. Ah, what in the world was this? Was everyone dreaming? No—this was no dream. There stood Shino Chief Inspector and Inspector Nakamura alongside them—the two detectives who had bound Akechi earlier; Kobayashi Leader; Fumiyo; and five middle school students. So many people gathered together couldn’t possibly share the same dream.

The third Akechi detective—who had shed the Mysterious Old Man’s disguise—now stood with a dignified bearing utterly unlike the previous elderly figure and advanced with purposeful strides to the center of the room.

“Leader Kobayashi, you’ve performed an extraordinary service. As expected of my assistant. Now, I have something to tell everyone here, starting with Chief Inspector Shino.”

"I stated earlier that I had received gratitude from the old man and become his decoy—but of course, this wasn't done as Akechi," he explained. "The old man would never ask his enemy Detective Akechi to act as a decoy. I had infiltrated his hideout posing as a cook—a dim-witted, slow-witted cook." "As his true identity became endangered," the narration continued, "the old man erased himself and resolved to transform into someone entirely new. This required using a decoy to deceive the police. That dim-witted cook proved perfect for the role." The speaker gestured emphatically. "Thus he made me spend his money to disguise myself as him, intentionally left me in that burned-out building, and had Detective Akechi capture me."

“Everyone, isn’t this truly mysterious? It was Detective Akechi who captured Detective Akechi. Is the Detective Akechi who did the capturing the real one? Is the Detective Akechi who was captured the real one? No—that’s not all. There is another Akechi. The Akechi that Leader Kobayashi rescued from the villains’ hideout is bound there. Just who among these three is the real Akechi Kogorō?”

“If the one rescued by Kobayashi Leader is the real Akechi, then both I and the two Akechis who captured me must be impostors. Furthermore, if the Akechi who escaped through the gutter from the burned building and later captured me—disguised as an old man—alongside Inspector Nakamura is genuine, then both I and that bound Akechi over there must be fakes. This has become an extraordinarily complicated matter. Why would three Akechi Kogorōs appear in the first place?”

"That’s how it works," he explained. "Among these three are the real Akechi; a decoy he prepared beforehand; and the leader of the Transparent Monster disguised as Akechi. One is Akechi himself, one his decoy, and one the master thief. Which of these three is truly Akechi Kogorō? Who among them leads this criminal enterprise? The answers will soon become clear. I shall now unravel this mystery myself." He paused dramatically before concluding: "Doing so will lay bare every secret of the Transparent Monster."

The third Akechi Kogorō stopped speaking at that point and sharply surveyed his surroundings. The dumbfounded crowd stared fixedly at this third Akechi's form as if they'd forgotten to breathe. Despite the multitude present, the room fell deathly silent, steeped in an almost dreadful stillness.

View from behind the scenes

The third Akechi stood in the center of the room and began explaining the Transparent Monster incident to Chief Inspector Shino and Inspector Nakamura. With a smiling face and resonant voice—gesturing occasionally with both hands—he unraveled the mystery of the case with crystalline clarity.

“The fake Inspector Nakamura and Kurokawa the journalist deceived Fumiyo last night and took her away, correct? Then what became of the real Kurokawa? If Inspector Nakamura was drugged with sleeping pills, it would make sense for Mr. Kurokawa—who was in the same room—to have fallen fast asleep alongside him. Yet only the inspector was drugged, and Mr. Kurokawa still hasn’t shown himself or revealed his whereabouts. What in the world explains this? Where has Kurokawa the journalist vanished to?”

Akechi stopped speaking there and quickly scanned the room. Everyone fell silent, their eyes fixed on Akechi's face. "When you view a stage from the audience seats versus backstage, there's an enormous difference." "That beautiful stage backdrop? From behind, it's just cloth stretched over a wooden frame." "In exactly the same way, every criminal case has both a front and a back." "All of you have only been seeing the front until today." "To put it plainly—you've been watching this play from the audience seats."

“However, detectives never watch from the audience seats. They always observe from backstage. In this Transparent Monster case too, I’ve been examining matters from behind the scenes from the very beginning. That’s why I’d already deduced most of the trick’s mechanisms—unlike all of you.” “When you view this case from backstage, what immediately stands out is Kurokawa the journalist’s suspicious behavior. The fact that only Inspector Nakamura was drugged while Kurokawa vanished completely confirms this suspicion. Everyone—Kurokawa the journalist was none other than the devilish mastermind. When they took Fumiyo away, Inspector Nakamura was an impostor...but Kurokawa was genuine.”

“Once you realize that Kurokawa is the leader of the Transparent Monster, everything changes completely. Just as viewing magic tricks from behind the scenes reveals all sorts of secrets.”

“Everyone, you mustn’t be alarmed. The Transparent Monster is nothing but a sheer fabrication. That entity which threw society into such an uproar was merely a counterfeit crafted through Kurokawa’s conjuring tricks.”

Akechi once again briefly cut off his words there. The people stared wide-eyed in astonishment. It was because they simply couldn’t believe the Transparent Monster had been a lie all along.

“Kurokawa had spent a long time preparing to make it appear as though the Transparent Monster had truly manifested. About a year ago, he became a reporter for Tōyō Newspaper, demonstrated his exceptional skills, and quickly gained the trust of the social affairs department chief. And he used his position as a social affairs reporter for this major newspaper to its full potential.”

“Everyone, please consider carefully. A significant portion of the Transparent Monster incidents were things Kurokawa spoke about or wrote in the newspaper. Even events witnessed by nobody but Kurokawa would be accepted as truth once printed as news articles. Of course, there were genuine incidents too, but over half were Kurokawa’s fabrications. He skillfully mixed them together to deceive the public.” “For instance: the story of crowds on Ginza Street colliding with an invisible human; the tale of a delinquent who stole a shoeshine boy’s money being punished by an invisible entity; and the account of a human shadow appearing on a concrete wall to attack Kurokawa as he approached Shimada-kun’s father’s house—despite there being no actual person present—all were lies crafted by Kurokawa. These were so artfully blended with real occurrences that nobody suspected deception.”

Kurokawa employed four or five assistants to convincingly portray the Transparent Monster as real. During the incidents, stories from the mouths of such assistants were blended in. For example, when the necklace was stolen from Daihōdō’s store, Kurokawa had previously stationed his assistant there as a store employee, and that strange incident occurred when only that employee was present in the store. Therefore, the store employee had only to convincingly fabricate the story. The owner and the manager were completely deceived by it. And thus, Kurokawa wrote these assistants' fabricated stories in bold headlines in the newspaper.

“Another example occurred on the night the Pearl Tower was stolen from Shimada-kun’s house—a vagrant youth convincingly testified that he had seen an invisible human donning a wax mask and clothing in a corner of the garden. That vagrant youth too was one of Kurokawa’s assistants.”

Grand Illusion

When Akechi had cut off his words, Inspector Nakamura called out, as if he had been waiting.

"But Akechi, there were many incidents that couldn't be explained by mere fabrications." "I simply can’t make sense of that part, but first—regarding the very beginning of this case—the wax-masked man that the two boys Shimada and Kinoshita tailed from the antique shop." "That man took off his clothes right before their eyes." "Then he became completely invisible." "How do you explain that?" "Surely those two boys couldn’t be Kurokawa’s assistants."

“That was all a puppet mechanism.”

The wax-masked man entered the burnt-out, crumbling brick structure. The two boys hesitated outside the building for a while. The man used that moment to slip out sideways from the building, leaving behind an identical mask and suit of clothes that had been prepared in advance—suspended from gaps in the second-floor ceiling with numerous black silk threads. On the second floor, an assistant manipulated those silk threads to remove the mask and clothes, roll up the garments, and make them appear to float through the air toward the building's side exit. Because it was already evening—the dim light obscuring details—the boys couldn't see the devices: thin silk threads or wires bent into human shoulder shapes.

Kurokawa pretended to tail the wax-masked man together with the two boys, chase after the one who had taken off his clothes, and grapple with him—but of course, this was nothing but an act. "Next is the incident where the wax-masked monster was discovered by Kinoshita boy standing inside the department store’s mannequin display," continued Akechi. "The wax-masked monster fled into the department store’s basement warehouse. In that warehouse sat a large empty cargo box. The villain discarded his clothes, hid inside that cargo box, then threw off the wax mask—just as the door was opened, letting people witness the wonder of a wax mask flying through midair."

At this moment, Inspector Nakamura questioned again. "But at that time, didn't the Transparent Monster escape from the warehouse, collide with the clerk in the hallway and the laborer coming down the stairs, and knock them both over?" "Those two were Kurokawa's assistants after all." "Ha ha ha ha ha ha, that was a clever scheme." "One disguised himself as a store clerk, the other as a laborer, making it appear as though they'd been knocked down by the Transparent Monster."

"Another similar example would be when Shimada-kun saw roller skates moving by themselves in his family's garden—that was also done by attaching thin silk threads to the skates and having Kurokawa's assistant pull them from the bushes in the garden." “And then, the monster’s semi-transparent shadow kept appearing on the window, didn’t it?” And then came an eerie laugh. "Then, that too…" “A slide projector and ventriloquism,” Akechi explained. An assistant would hide in bushes outside houses to project slides of the monster’s profile onto windows, while Kurokawa performed ventriloquism inside. Whenever these shadows appeared, Kurokawa was always present in that room. “Ventriloquism lets you speak without moving your lips.” “The voice becomes untraceable.” “If you expect it from outside the window, that’s exactly where it seems to originate.”

“Since I became a cook and infiltrated the Mysterious Old Man’s hideout, I discovered various other things as well. The Mysterious Old Man is none other than Kurokawa, you see. Kurokawa is a strange fellow who can transform into anything. The tricks he used include puppetry, magic lanterns, and ventriloquism, along with black magic and mirror tricks. To create the Transparent Monster, all sorts of magic tricks were necessary. This whole case is just like a magic trick exhibition, you see.”

When Daisuke, riding atop a suspicious car's roof, sneaked into the Mysterious Old Man's hideout within an air-raid shelter, he peered through a door gap into the Transparent Monster's bedroom. There, a figure wearing only pajamas—lacking both face and hands—held a cup and drank water. That constituted the black magic. The bedroom walls had been draped with black curtains. Before that pitch-black backdrop, Kurokawa's assistant—face wrapped in black velvet and hands sheathed in black gloves—performed such feats. This made it appear as though a faceless, handless human was drinking water.

Then, Daisuke was turned into a Transparent Human by the Mysterious Old Man. Daisuke himself had felt that way too. I quietly helped Daisuke escape from the villains' hideout, and at that time heard his story in detail.

The Mysterious Old Man injected Daisuke with a sedative, tied him to a chair, and confined him in a cramped room about two tatami mats in size. In that room, on one wall, there was a small mirror embedded, about thirty centimeters square. When Daisuke woke up, his upper body from the chest up was reflected in that mirror. That was indeed his school uniform, but strangely, there was no face. In the place where his face should have been, only the concrete wall behind him was reflected.

Because his hands were tied behind the chair, he couldn't touch his own face. Daisuke, having no other choice, tried moving his shoulders while still bound. Then, the school uniform in the mirror moved its shoulders in exactly the same way. Thus he realized what was reflected must indeed be himself. Daisuke completely lost his nerve and finally became convinced he too had been turned into a transparent human.

There was a trick with this mirror. What was embedded in the wall was transparent ordinary glass, with a real mirror placed diagonally behind it. Beside this setup sat a person wearing the same school uniform as Daisuke, positioned so only their upper torso showed—their face concealed by a board matching the concrete wall’s color. When this arrangement reflected in the angled mirror, Daisuke saw what appeared to be his own headless figure. If Daisuke moved his shoulders, the mirrored figure mimicked the motion identically. “A basic mirror illusion anyone would recognize,” Akechi concluded.

Daisuke, convinced he had been turned into a transparent human, was confined in a pitch-black room. “After that, Inspector Nakamura, you entered the air-raid shelter with Kurokawa and Kobayashi Leader and heard Daisuke’s voice from the cage—but that cage was completely empty. As usual, Kurokawa used ventriloquism to imitate Daisuke’s voice. Then another Transparent Monster arrived there, entered the cage, grappled with Daisuke, and finally escaped somewhere with him—or so it seemed—but that too was Kurokawa’s ventriloquism. He skillfully used ventriloquism to make them hear the two people’s intense breathing. And Kurokawa himself opened the cage door to make it appear as though the Transparent Monster had opened it, then deliberately fell down pretending he’d been knocked over by the Transparent Monster. It was all Kurokawa’s one-man show, you see.”

“Inspector Nakamura, I believe I’ve mostly finished explaining the tricks, but is there anything else you don’t understand?” Akechi asked with a smile, in the tone of a teacher standing before a blackboard questioning his students.

“Looking at things from behind the scenes is truly terrifying, isn’t it? Once you realize Kurokawa is the culprit, everything falls into place. Even so, I can’t help but admire your sharp insight as always. That Kurokawa fellow really plotted some terrifying things, didn’t he? But it seems there are a couple of points your explanation missed. One is the incident where the Pearl Tower was stolen from the safe in the Shimada family’s basement. The other is an incident you probably haven’t heard about yet—last night, a clown wearing a wax mask vanished inside a public telephone booth.”

Inspector Nakamura then briefly explained the clown incident. Then, Akechi immediately proceeded to solve that mystery.

“You’ve likely already inferred most of this from what I’ve explained about those two incidents you mentioned, but for thoroughness—the Pearl Tower was naturally stolen by Kurokawa. A threatening letter declaring ‘I will steal the Pearl Tower’ came fluttering down through the air. That too was simply Kurokawa tossing those letter scraps himself and catching them again—the Pearl Tower theft followed exactly the same approach.”

After seeing the threatening letter, Shimada’s father investigated the basement storage room together with Kurokawa. “At that time, Kurokawa used a magician’s sleight of hand to extract the Pearl Tower from the glass case.” “So when everyone was working hard to wait for the thief in front of the safe late at night, the safe had already been emptied.”

At that time, what made them feel as though the monster had sneaked in was indeed Kurokawa’s ventriloquism. “In every case, ventriloquism—that convenient tool—created wonders beyond human capability,” he explained. “As for the other incident where the clown vanished from the public telephone booth—I’ve only just heard about it and haven’t verified it yet—the sequence was likely this: The driver who witnessed the clown entering the booth left to inform you all. Seizing that moment, the clown had prepared another wax mask and costume, hung them from the ceiling, exited outside, rigged the door to stay shut, then melted into the darkness.”

“You all had convinced yourselves that the mask and clown costume hanging inside the phone booth were the clown from earlier, so when you realized there was nothing inside, you were terribly shocked.” “The rest was, as usual, ventriloquism.” “Since Kurokawa was with you all at that time too, he could perform any trick through ventriloquism, you see.”

When Akechi’s explanation concluded, the Chief Inspector, who had remained silent until then, finally spoke up.

“Mr. Akechi, that was truly an astonishing insight.” “With your wisdom, any mystery—no matter how strange—melts away effortlessly, as if you’re untangling the rings of a puzzle.” “With your explanation now, there’s nothing left unclear.”

“But Mr. Akechi, while we’ve uncovered how the tricks were done, there still remains one thing that completely defies comprehension—why did Kurokawa need to stage such elaborate magic tricks to make people believe in this Transparent Monster? This too must be something you’ve already figured out, I suppose.”

“I know. That is precisely the most intriguing aspect of this case.”

Akechi, still smiling cheerfully, began his explanation.

**The True Culprit**

Akechi’s explanation continued. “For what purpose did he make it appear as though there was a Transparent Monster that does not actually exist? That was, for one thing, to steal jewels and various other valuable items. If he made people believe that a ghost-like Transparent Monster was the culprit, the real culprit could avoid suspicion.” “However, that’s not all. This criminal wanted to startle the people of the world. It’s like amplifying that feeling of a child hiding behind a sliding screen and shouting ‘Boo!’ to startle someone approaching from the opposite side. He wanted to startle everyone in Tokyo—no, all of Japan—with a ‘Boo!’ The Transparent Monster had truly appeared in this world,” he continued, “and he delighted in making everyone tremble with fear by claiming that it would gradually multiply into dozens, then hundreds of entities.”

And then, another reason was that he wanted to make me—Akechi Kogorō—say 'Ah!' in surprise. “He threatened to turn even me, Fumiyo, and Kobayashi into transparent humans, and beyond that, he wanted to truly kidnap us and make the people of the world believe that even the great detective had finally been turned into a transparent human.” When the Mysterious Old Man called my office, I discerned that guy’s terrifying resolve. Therefore, I used my secret move. "It was a method to have decoys of me and Fumiyo stay at the detective agency while hiding the real me and Fumiyo from society."

“Inspector Nakamura knows this well, but I once used a decoy of myself in a previous case. From that time onward, I had people who looked exactly like me searched out and kept residing in a secret location. This time too, I used those same people. At the time of the previous case, there had been no decoy for Fumiyo yet, but afterward, I kept searching persistently and finally found someone who looked exactly like Fumiyo. This woman too had been maintained in a secret location.”

In the innermost room of my detective agency, there was a secret passageway. Part of the wall formed an electrically operated revolving panel. After hearing the threatening call from the Mysterious Old Man, Fumiyo and I escaped through that secret passageway and switched places with our two decoys. Therefore, the Akechi who had been kidnapped by car was that decoy. Also, the Fumiyo taken away last night by Kurokawa and the fake Inspector Nakamura was a decoy. "The Fumiyo rescued by Kobayashi Leader and present here now isn’t the real one. My wife Fumiyo is hiding in a safe location unknown to anyone."

The more they listened to Akechi's story, the more nothing but unexpected revelations emerged, leaving the people in the room no time to catch their breath. At the sheer absurdity of it all, they sat utterly dumbfounded, mouths hanging open, doing nothing but stare at Akechi's face.

“After doing so, the real me found the Mysterious Old Man’s hideout, disguised myself as a cook, and settled in there. By taking away the decoy and feeling reassured, the criminal had made a grave miscalculation there. The criminal, of all people, ordered me to become his own decoy.”

The criminal is quite something. He had thought of the same thing as I did and tried to deceive the police using decoys. He made me disguise myself as the Mysterious Old Man, deliberately got captured to put the police at ease, and then finally plotted to carry out something terrifying. Then, what became of the real Mysterious Old Man who had switched places with my decoy? Had he reverted to being Kurokawa the journalist? No—that’s not what happened. "The person least suspected in the world—in other words, he disguised himself as a detective." "The criminal, believing he had captured Akechi, disguised himself as Akechi and tried to throw the police into a panic." "In other words, the Akechi who was deliberately discovered by patrolling officers last night after descending via the gutter of a burned-out building was none other than the criminal in disguise."

Upon hearing that, everyone's eyes simultaneously glared at Akechi bound to one of the chairs. The fake Akechi—condemned as the culprit by the real Akechi Kogorō—turned deathly pale and hung his head. That he was the true criminal became evident just from observing him. The real Akechi continued speaking while gazing contemptuously at the fake Akechi's wilted appearance.

“He became Kurokawa the journalist, transformed into the Mysterious Old Man, and now has disguised himself as Akechi—and what’s more, he’s done it so skillfully that no one, not even I, can tell us apart. Isn’t this criminal truly a master of disguise?” “The criminal who delights in making Akechi gasp in surprise and capturing him—this man harboring such deep resentment toward me—is a master of disguise, so skilled that people wonder just how many faces he possesses. Ladies and gentlemen, from these two points, might you recall who this person is?”

Akechi swiftly looked around at the people’s faces. Everyone's eyes were wide open, bulging as if about to pop out. Everyone was as if they had turned to stone; there was not a single person who moved.

“You’ve understood now, haven’t you? That’s right. The journalist Kurokawa, who disguised himself as the Mysterious Old Man and as myself—even that Kurokawa was not his true identity. I do not know his real name. Over a year ago, in the 'Tiger's Fang' incident, the individual captured as Dr. Magic—that is, Fiend Twenty Faces. Ladies and gentlemen, the one bound to that chair is none other than that fearsome demon, Fiend Twenty Faces.”

A few days after being captured in the 'Tiger's Fang' incident, he had already vanished through his signature jailbreak. And having become Kurokawa the journalist of the Toyo Newspaper, he had been planning an elaborate revenge against me.

“Chief Inspector Shino, I hereby hand over Fiend Twenty Faces once again. This time, please take thorough measures to ensure he doesn’t escape.” As Akechi’s words were still hanging in the air, a collective shout reverberated through the room. Ten people—the chief inspector, inspector, detectives, Kobayashi Leader, and Boy Detectives Club members—swarmed around the fake Akechi bound to the chair. The momentum overturned the criminal’s restrained chair, sending Fiend Twenty Faces tumbling to the floor in an undignified heap. Even the master illusionist found himself powerless now. With a deathly pale face glistening with greasy sweat and lips clenched tight, he lay sprawled like a corpse.

Thus, the major incident of the Transparent Monster that had thrown society into such an uproar finally drew to a close.

Henceforth, it went without saying that the reputations of the great detective Akechi Kogorō and his renowned assistant Kobayashi Leader grew even higher. For a time, wherever one went, there was nothing but talk of the two and their exploits.