Pathway to Japanese Literature

One

There were times when I found myself thinking: detective novelists fall into two categories—what one might call the criminal type, writers obsessed solely with crime who can't be satisfied unless they fully depict a criminal's cruel psychology even when crafting deductive mysteries; and what could be termed the detective type, perfectly sound authors interested exclusively in a detective's rational methodology, utterly indifferent to criminal psychology. The detective novelist Ōe Haruneido—of whom I now intend to write—belonged to the former category, while I myself likely fell into the latter. Thus though my trade dealt with crime, I was no villain—merely someone fascinated by detectives' scientific reasoning. No, I dare say few could match my moral sensitivity. That a man so kind-hearted and upright as myself became entangled in this case through mere happenstance was an error from the very foundation. Had I been slightly less morally acute—had I possessed even a grain of villainous disposition—I might have been spared such profound regrets. I might never have sunk into this terrifying abyss of suspicion. No—more than that—under different circumstances, I might now be blessed with a beautiful wife and wealth beyond measure, living in blissful comfort.

A considerable amount of time had passed since the incident concluded, and though a certain terrifying suspicion remained unresolved, I had distanced myself from the raw reality and grown somewhat retrospective. And so I found myself inclined to write this record-like account—and I do think that were this turned into a novel, it would make for quite an intriguing story—but even if I were to write it through to the end, I lacked the courage to publish it immediately. The reason was that Mr. Oyamada’s bizarre death—which formed the crucial part of this account—still lingered vividly in public memory. No matter how many pseudonyms I might employ or embellishments I might add, no one would accept it as mere fiction. Moreover, there might well be people in the wider world who would be troubled by this novel, and I myself—knowing this—would feel both ashamed and uncomfortable. Or rather, to tell the truth, I was terrified. Not only had the incident itself been a strangely eerie affair—elusive in nature like a daytime dream—but the delusions I had conjured about it were so terrifying that even I found them unsettling. I still find that when I think of it, the clear blue sky becomes filled with storm clouds, and a drum-like droning begins to reverberate deep within my ears. In that way, my field of vision darkens, and the world begins to seem strange.

For that reason, I had no intention of publishing this record immediately, but someday I wanted to try writing a detective novel based on it in my professional capacity. This was, so to speak, nothing more than that notebook. It was nothing more than a somewhat detailed memorandum. Therefore, I proceeded to write this down only in the section designated for New Year in this old diary with blank pages thereafter, as if keeping a lengthy diary.

Before recounting the incident, I thought it would be prudent to provide a detailed explanation of the detective novelist Ōe Haruneido—this case’s central figure—his character, his literary style, and his rather peculiar lifestyle; however, the truth was that prior to this incident, while I had known him through his writings and even debated him in magazines, I had no personal acquaintance with him and knew little of his private life. The reason I came to know these details somewhat thoroughly was through a man named Honda, a friend of mine, after the incident occurred; therefore, as for Haruneido, I would document the facts I gathered by questioning Honda when the time came to write about them. Following the chronological order of events, I believed it most natural to begin my account from the initial trigger that led to my entanglement in this bizarre case.

It was in the middle of October last autumn. I had wanted to see old Buddhist statues and found myself wandering through the dimly lit, desolate rooms of Ueno’s Imperial Museum, muffling my footsteps as I walked. Because the rooms were spacious and deserted, even the slightest sound would create an echo so eerie that I felt not only my footsteps but even a cough would be too loud. The museum was so devoid of visitors that one might wonder why such places remained so unpopular. The large glass panes of the display cases shone coldly, and not even a speck of dust had settled on the linoleum. The high-ceilinged building, resembling the hall of a temple, was as silent as if submerged in the depths of water, steeped in profound stillness.

When I was standing before a display case in one of the rooms, absorbed in the dreamlike eroticism of an antiquated wooden Bodhisattva statue, I sensed someone approaching me from behind—muffled footsteps accompanied by the faint rustle of silk. I shuddered for some reason and looked at the figure reflected in the glass ahead. There, overlapping with the shadow of the Bodhisattva statue from earlier, stood a woman of refined appearance wearing a lined kimono with a yellow-hachijō-like pattern, her hair arranged in a marumage coiffure. The woman soon came to stand beside me, shoulder to shoulder, and fixed her gaze intently upon the same Buddhist statue I had been viewing.

Shameful as it was, I couldn’t help stealing furtive glances toward the woman while feigning interest in the Buddha statue. So deeply had she captivated my heart. Her face was pale, but I had never before seen such a pleasing paleness. If mermaids exist in this world, they must surely possess skin as exquisitely alluring as that woman’s. Her face was an old-fashioned oval reminiscent of a melon seed, with every line—her brows, nose, lips, neck, shoulders—exquisitely delicate and pliant, bearing an air so ethereal one might fear she would vanish at the slightest touch, much like the fragile beauties described by novelists of yore. I still cannot forget her long-lashed, dreamlike gaze from that time.

Which of us first broke the silence, I now strangely cannot recall, though it was likely I who provided some opening. She and I exchanged a few words about the exhibits displayed there, which became the catalyst for us to tour the museum together. After leaving, we spent a long time walking through Ueno’s parklands down to the base of the hill, companions conversing here and there about various matters. As we conversed in this manner, her beauty took on an even greater elegance. Above all, when she smiled with that bashful, fragile beauty, I could not help but be struck by a peculiar sensation—as though I were gazing at the image of a saint in some antiquated oil painting or recalling the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa. Her canines were brilliantly white and large, and when she smiled, the corners of her lips caught on those teeth to form a mysterious curve—yet the large mole upon her right cheek’s pale skin mirrored that arc, shaping an expression of indescribable tenderness and nostalgia.

But had I not discovered that peculiar thing upon her nape, she would not have captivated my heart so intensely—beyond being merely a refined, gentle, fragile beauty who might vanish at a touch. She had skillfully adjusted her collar to conceal it without any trace of affectation, but as we walked through Ueno’s parklands, I caught a fleeting glimpse of it. On her nape, there was a thick, swollen, earthworm-like protrusion resembling a red birthmark, extending deeply toward her back. It looked like a congenital birthmark, yet at the same time, it also seemed like a recently formed scar. Upon her pale, smooth skin—upon that elegantly slender, gracefully pliant neck—the earthworm-like swelling, resembling crimson-black thread crawling across her flesh, its very cruelty, strangely enough, exuded an erotic aura. Upon seeing it, her beauty—which until then had seemed like a dream—suddenly took on a raw sense of reality and came pressing in upon me.

As we spoke, it became clear that she was Oyamada Shizuko—wife of Mr. Oyamada Rokurō, an industrialist and one of the investors in the limited partnership Rokuroku Shōkai—but fortunately, she was a reader of detective novels and particularly fond of my own works (I will never forget how that revelation thrilled me to the core). In short, our relationship as author and reader allowed us to grow close without the slightest awkwardness, sparing me the regret of parting ways with this beautiful woman after that single encounter. Taking that as our opportunity, we became such close acquaintances that we frequently exchanged letters thereafter.

I admired Shizuko’s refined taste—unexpected in a young woman—for visiting deserted places like museums, and I found her preference for my detective novels, which were considered the most cerebral of their kind, dear to me. So utterly smitten had I become that I frequently sent her letters devoid of any real purpose; in return, she always provided thoughtful, feminine replies. As a single man prone to loneliness, how deeply I rejoiced at having gained such a refined female friend.

II

The correspondence between Oyamada Shizuko and myself continued in this manner for several months. As our correspondence deepened, I cannot deny that I—tremulously, apprehensively—had begun embedding subtle implications within my letters; yet whether imagined or not, Shizuko’s replies too, though always demure in tone, gradually came to carry a warmth exceeding the bounds of mere superficial acquaintance. To speak frankly—though it shames me to admit—I had gone to great lengths to uncover that Shizuko’s husband, Mr. Oyamada Rokurō, was not only considerably older than her but also appeared even more aged than his years, with a head that had gone completely bald.

Then, around February of this year, peculiarities began to surface in Shizuko’s letters. She gave the impression of being terribly frightened by something. “Something terribly worrying has occurred recently, and I often find myself waking at night.”

She wrote the following in one of her letters. Though the wording was simple, behind those words—throughout the entire letter—the figure of her battling terror seemed vividly visible. “Mr. Samukawa—might you by any chance be acquainted with a fellow detective novelist named Ōe Haruneido?” “If you happen to know that gentleman’s residence, might you be so kind as to inform me of it?” In one of her letters, the following was written. Of course, I was well acquainted with Ōe Haruneido’s works, but as Haruneido himself was intensely reclusive and had never once attended gatherings of writers, there had been no personal interaction between us. Moreover, I had heard rumors that he had abruptly stopped writing around mid-last year and that no one even knew where he had moved. I had answered Shizuko truthfully, but when I considered that her recent terror might be connected to that Ōe Haruneido, I felt an unpleasant sensation for reasons I will explain later.

Not long after that, a postcard arrived from Shizuko: “There is something I would like to consult you about; might I trouble you with a visit?” I had vaguely sensed the nature of this “consultation” but never imagined it would concern such a dreadful matter. Foolishly giddy with excitement, I had even spun elaborate daydreams about the pleasure of meeting Shizuko again—but when she called upon me that very day after receiving my reply (“I shall await you”), she appeared so utterly drained that her demeanor alone dashed my hopes the moment I greeted her at my boarding house entrance. And her “consultation” proved so bizarre that it scattered all my prior fantasies like smoke.

“I have truly come here out of desperation,” she said. “Since I thought that if it were you, you might listen to me… But might it be rude to bring such a blunt consultation to you as you are these days?” At that moment, Shizuko smiled her fragile smile—her distinctive canines and mole accentuated—and quietly lifted her gaze to meet mine. It being winter, I had placed a rosewood long brazier beside my work desk; she sat primly across from it, her fingers resting on the brazier’s edge. Those fingers—as though embodying her entire being—were supple yet slender, fragile yet not gaunt; pale in hue yet not sickly; appearing ethereal enough to vanish if grasped, yet retaining a subtle resilience. Not merely her fingers—her whole presence exuded precisely this quality.

Seeing her intent demeanor, I too grew serious. When I replied, “If there’s anything I can do,” she prefaced her words with “It’s truly something dreadful,” and blending in stories from her childhood, proceeded to tell me of the following bizarre fact. To briefly recount the personal history Shizuko related at that time: her hometown was Shizuoka, and there she had been raised in utmost happiness until just before her graduation from girls’ school. The sole misfortune one might speak of was that when she was a fourth-year student at girls’ school, she had succumbed to the cunning seduction of a young man named Hirata Ichirō and become romantically involved with him for but a brief period. The reason this constituted misfortune was that, out of a momentary whim as an eighteen-year-old girl, she had merely dabbled in a pretense of love—for she had never truly cared for the young Hirata. And the reason was that while her feelings had been no more than a passing fancy, his had been deadly serious. She tried and tried to avoid Hirata Ichirō, who pestered her relentlessly, but the more she did so, the deeper the young man’s obsession grew. Eventually, a dark figure began prowling outside her house’s fence late at night, and eerie threatening letters started arriving in the mailbox. The eighteen-year-old girl shuddered at the frightful consequences of her momentary fancy. Her parents, too, noticed their daughter’s unusual state and were pained at heart.

At that very moment—though for Shizuko it could rather be called a blessing—a great misfortune befell her family. Due to the great upheaval in the economic world at the time, her father was left with an irreparable mountain of debt, forced to shutter his business and flee under cover of night to seek refuge with a slight acquaintance in Hikone, where he had no choice but to go into hiding. Due to this unforeseen change in circumstances, Shizuko was compelled to withdraw from girls’ school just shy of graduation; yet on the other hand, the sudden relocation allowed her to escape the unnerving persistence of Hirata Ichirō, leaving her with a sense of relieved respite.

Her father fell ill because of that and soon passed away, and after that, a wretched life continued for some time for her mother and Shizuko, now reduced to just the two of them. But that misfortune did not last very long. Before long, Mr. Oyamada—an industrialist from the same village where they had been living in obscurity—appeared before them. That was a helping hand. Mr. Oyamada had glimpsed Shizuko and fallen deeply in love; he sought an intermediary to propose marriage. Shizuko did not dislike Mr. Oyamada either. Though there was an age difference of over ten years, she felt a certain admiration for Mr. Oyamada’s dashing gentlemanly demeanor. The marriage negotiations proceeded smoothly. Mr. Oyamada returned to his Tokyo residence with his mother, bringing along his bride, Shizuko.

Seven years flowed by. Three years into their marriage, Shizuko’s mother passed away; then, some time later, Mr. Oyamada was entrusted with crucial company duties and embarked on a two-year overseas trip (he returned at the end of the year before last—during those two years, Shizuko eased her solitude by daily visits to instructors of tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and music, as she later recounted). Beyond these events, their household experienced no major incidents, and their marital relationship remained supremely harmonious, with happy days continuing uninterrupted. Mr. Oyamada, her husband, was a man of formidable enterprise, and over those seven years, he remarkably increased his wealth. And now, he established an unshakable position among his peers.

“Although it is truly shameful to admit, I told a lie to Oyamada at the time of our marriage.” “I ended up hiding the matter of Hirata Ichirō.” Shizuko, overcome with shame and sorrow, lowered those long-lashed eyes of hers, filled them to the brim with tears, and spoke in a small, thin voice. “Oyamada seemed to have heard Hirata Ichirō’s name somewhere and harbored some suspicions, but I insisted that I knew no man other than Oyamada and utterly concealed my connection with Hirata.” “And I am still continuing that lie to this day.” “The more Oyamada doubted, the more I had to conceal it.” “Where on earth does people’s misfortune lie hidden? I find it truly terrifying.” “That lie from seven years ago—though it was never told with malice—has now taken on such a terrifying form, becoming the seed that torments me.” “I had truly forgotten all about Hirata.” “Even when such a letter suddenly arrived from Hirata—even upon seeing the sender’s name as Hirata Ichirō—for a while I could not recall who it was. I had completely forgotten.”

Shizuko said that and showed several letters that had come from Hirata. Afterward, I was entrusted with keeping those letters and still have them here with me. Since the first one that arrived would serve well to advance the story’s progression, I have decided to transcribe it here.

Ms. Shizuko. I have finally found you. You were completely unaware, but I shadowed you from the place we met and discovered your residence. I also discovered your current surname—Oyamada. You couldn’t possibly have forgotten Hirata Ichirō. Do you remember how utterly detestable I was? How I writhed in torment after you cast me aside—you, heartless as you are, could never comprehend. How many countless times did I writhe in torment and wander around your mansion late at night? But the more my passion blazed, the colder you grew. You avoided me, feared me, and in the end came to hate me.

Can you fathom the anguish of a man hated by his beloved? Was it so unnatural that my agony became grief, my grief turned to resentment, and that congealed resentment transformed into vengeful intent? When you exploited your family circumstances to vanish from my sight without even a farewell—fleeing like a criminal—I remained in my study for days without eating. And thus I vowed revenge. Being young then, I knew no means to track your whereabouts. Your father—burdened by creditors—disappeared without revealing his destination to anyone. I knew not when I might see you again. Yet I contemplated my long life. I simply could not resign myself to living out my days without meeting you.

I was poor—a man who had to work just to eat. This alone persistently hindered me from searching for your whereabouts. Years passed like arrows in flight, yet I remained locked in ceaseless battle with poverty. That very exhaustion—without conscious intent—made me abandon my resentment toward you. My obsession became mere survival. But three years ago, unexpected fortune smiled upon me. Having failed at every profession and sunk to despair’s lowest depths, I wrote a novel to vent my frustration. This became my salvation—a means to earn my bread through fiction. Since you still read novels, you must know of the detective writer Ōe Haruneido? Though he’s written nothing this past year, the world hasn’t forgotten his name. That Ōe Haruneido is myself—the very man who pens these words! Do you imagine I grew drunk on hollow fame and forgot my hatred? No! Those blood-drenched tales sprang from the deep-seated rancor in my heart! Had readers known every suspicion, every cruelty flowed from my relentless thirst for vengeance—they’d have shuddered at the malice coiled within those pages.

Ms. Shizuko. Having gained stability in life, I endeavored to find you to the fullest extent that money and time permitted. Of course, I did not harbor the impossible hope of trying to regain your love. I already have a wife. I have a wife in name only, taken to eliminate life’s inconveniences. But for me, a lover and a wife are entirely separate things. In other words, just because I took a wife does not mean I am one to forget my resentment toward my lover.

Ms. Shizuko. Now at last I have found you. I am trembling with joy. The time has come to fulfill my years-long wish. For a long time now, with the same joy I take in constructing a novel’s plot, I have been devising means of revenge against you. I have been devising the method that would cause you the most suffering and terror. At last, the time has come to put it into action. Perceive my delight, I beseech you. You cannot seek protection from the police or others and thereby obstruct my plans. I have made every preparation. For about the past year, my disappearance has been circulating among newspaper and magazine reporters. This was by no means done for the sake of revenge against you, but rather a concealment born of my misanthropic tendencies and fondness for secrecy—yet it has unwittingly proven useful. I will conceal my presence from the world with even greater meticulousness. And I will steadily advance my plan for revenge against you.

You undoubtedly want to know my plans. But I cannot reveal its entirety now. Because fear is most effective when it creeps closer bit by bit. However, if you insist on wanting to hear, I do not hesitate to reveal a fragment of my revenge enterprise. For example, I can recount to you, without the slightest error, every trivial event that occurred around you in your home three days ago—that is, on the night of January 31st.

From seven until half past seven in the evening, you leaned against the small desk in the room designated as your bedroom and read a novel. The novel was Hirotsu Ryūrō’s short story collection *“Henmetsuden”*. You finished reading only *“Henmetsuden”* from among them. From seven thirty until seven forty, you ordered the maid to prepare tea and sweets, then consumed two Fūgetsu monaka and three bowls of tea. From seven forty, after approximately five minutes in the toilet, you returned to your room. From then until around 9:10, you were lost in thought while knitting. At 9:10, your husband returned home. From around 9:20 until just past 10, you kept your husband company during his evening drink and chatted. At that time, urged by your husband, you drank about half a glass of wine. The wine had just been opened, and you used your fingers to pluck out the small cork fragment that had fallen into the glass. After finishing their evening drink, you immediately ordered the maid to spread out two futons, and then both of you used the toilet before going to bed. After that, neither of you slept until eleven o’clock. When you lay down on your bed again, the lagging pendulum clock in your house struck eleven o’clock.

Can you read this record as faithful as a train timetable and remain unafraid?

From the Avenger, late night of February 3rd

To the woman who stole love from my life

“I had known of the name Ōe Haruneido for quite some time, but I hadn’t the faintest notion it was Hirata Ichirō’s pen name.”

Shizuko explained with a shudder. In fact, even among us writer colleagues, those who knew Ōe Haruneido’s real name had been few in number. As for myself, had I not seen the colophon of his books or heard Honda—who often visited me—speak of him by his real name, I might never have learned of the name Hirata. To such an extent was he a man who disliked people and never showed his face in society. Hirata’s threatening letters numbered three or so more besides that one, but all followed the same pattern: after curses of revenge (the postmarks were all from different offices), Shizuko’s actions on a certain night were recorded down to the smallest detail, with precise times noted—there had been no deviation in this regard. In particular, the secrets of her bedroom—down to the most hidden details—were brazenly and vividly laid bare. Even certain gestures and words that would make one blush were coldly described.

It was all too easy to imagine how shameful and painful it must have been for Shizuko to show such letters to another person, but that she had chosen me as her confidant despite enduring this was nothing short of remarkable. This demonstrated not only how profoundly she feared her husband Mr. Rokurō learning the secret from her past—the fact that she had not been a virgin prior to marriage—but also attested to the depth of her trust in me.

“I have no family besides my husband’s relatives, nor any close friends with whom I could discuss such matters. Though I knew it was terribly presumptuous, I thought… if I turned to Sensei, you would surely tell me what I ought to do.”

When she spoke to me in that way, and when I realized how profoundly this beautiful woman was relying on me, I felt such joy that my heart raced. That I was a detective novelist like Ōe Haruneido—that within my novels at least, I demonstrated considerable deductive skill—must have partly motivated her choice to confide in me. Yet even so, had she not possessed such deep trust and goodwill toward me, she could never have brought herself to make this consultation.

Needless to say, I accepted Shizuko’s request and agreed to provide as much assistance as I could. To account for Ōe Haruneido’s knowledge of Shizuko’s actions down to the smallest detail, I could only conclude that he had either bribed a servant of the Oyamada household, infiltrated the mansion himself to lurk near her, or that some similarly nefarious scheme had been set into motion. From his writing style alone, I could infer that Haruneido was precisely the sort of man who would perpetrate such an outlandish stunt. I inquired with Shizuko about this matter, but strangely enough, it turned out there was not the slightest trace of such a thing. The servants were all long-term live-in staff well-acquainted with the household; the mansion’s gates and walls, given that the master was an exceptionally neurotic man, were quite securely constructed; and even if someone were to infiltrate the mansion, approaching Shizuko’s vicinity in her inner room without being noticed by the servants would be nearly impossible.

But to tell the truth, I despised Ōe Haruneido’s capacity for execution. What could he—a mere detective novelist—possibly achieve? At best, he might frighten Shizuko with the verbiage of his charlatan letters; there was no conceivable way he could execute any scheme more nefarious than that. I complacently dismissed him. Though it struck me as somewhat mysterious how he had uncovered Shizuko’s minute actions, I airily assumed this too must be another of his mountebank’s tricks—some conjurer’s sleight through which he’d effortlessly extracted information from someone without exertion. And so I comforted Shizuko with these thoughts, firmly pledging that since it aligned with my own interests too, I would track down Ōe Haruneido’s whereabouts and—if possible—compel him to abandon these ludicrous antics, before sending her home. I devoted more effort to consoling Shizuko with tender words than to scrutinizing Ōe Haruneido’s threatening letters. Of course, this delighted me. As we parted, I said something like: “You’d best not speak of this to your husband at all. It hardly warrants sacrificing your secret.” Foolish I longed to prolong—for as long as possible—the pleasure of discussing with her alone that secret unknown even to her husband.

However, I truly intended to carry out the task of locating Ōe Haruneido alone. I had long found Haruneido—a man of tendencies diametrically opposed to my own—utterly repulsive. The way he reveled in making perverse readers cheer with his rotten, womanly suspicions and endless harping grated on my nerves beyond measure. So, given the chance, I even found myself thinking that I wanted to expose his underhanded misconduct and make him grovel. I had not expected in the slightest that searching for Ōe Haruneido’s whereabouts would prove to be so difficult.

III Ōe Haruneido was, as mentioned in his letters, a detective novelist who had suddenly emerged from an entirely different professional field about four years prior. When he published his debut work, the literary world—where Japanese-authored detective novels were nearly nonexistent at the time—responded with tremendous acclaim, captivated by its novelty. To put it grandly, he suddenly became the darling of the literary world. He was remarkably unproductive, yet he continued to publish new novels one after another in various newspapers and magazines. Each one was a gruesomely bloody, sinister, and wicked work—so unsettling that they made readers’ flesh creep upon first reading—yet this very quality became their perverse allure, and his popularity showed no signs of waning.

I too had switched from writing juvenile fiction to detective novels around the same time as he had, and though I had become quite well-known within the small world of detective novelists, Ōe Haruneido and I differed so starkly in our styles that one could say they were diametrically opposed. In contrast to his dark, morbid, and obsessively detailed style, mine was bright and sensible. As a natural consequence, we had come to vie with each other in production in a strangely competitive manner. And we even went so far as to disparage each other’s works. Irritating as it was to admit, the disparagement came mostly from me; though Haruneido would occasionally rebut my arguments, he generally maintained an aloof silence. And he continued to publish one terrifying work after another. While I disparaged him, I could not help but be struck by the eerie aura that pervaded his works. He possessed a passion akin to a smoldering shadowy flame—one that burned without visible fire. (If it were due to his deep-seated grudge toward Shizuko as described in his letters, one might somewhat concede the point,) yet it was an inexplicable charm that captivated his readers. To tell the truth, every time his works were met with acclaim, I could not help but feel an inexplicable jealousy. I even harbored a childish enmity. The desire to somehow defeat that bastard had constantly coiled in a corner of my heart. But about a year ago, he abruptly stopped writing novels and even vanished without a trace. It wasn’t that his popularity had waned—magazine reporters had gone so far as to search high and low for him—yet for some reason, he had completely vanished. Though I found him repulsive, now that he was gone, I felt a certain loneliness. If I were to put it in a childish way, a sense of dissatisfaction from losing a rival remained. It was Oyamada Shizuko who brought news—and news of an extremely bizarre nature at that—concerning this Ōe Haruneido’s recent activities. Though it shames me to admit, under such bizarre circumstances, I could not help but secretly rejoice at this reunion with my old rival.

But when I considered it, perhaps it had been an inevitable progression that Ōe Haruneido pushed the fantasies he poured into structuring his detective tales into reality. This was something the public largely knew already, but as someone once said, he was a “fantastical criminal lifestylist.” Just as a murderer kills people with fascination and exhilaration, he conducted his blood-soaked criminal life upon manuscript pages with the same morbid interest and fervor. His readers would surely remember the peculiar, sinister aura that pervaded his novels. They would remember that his works were always filled with extraordinary suspicion, obsession with secrecy, and cruelty. In one of his novels, he had even let slip the following eerie words.

“Would the time not come when he could no longer be satisfied with mere novels? He had grown weary of the world’s dreariness and banality, taking pleasure in at least giving form to his grotesque fantasies upon paper. That was the motive that led him to begin writing novels. But now, he had grown utterly weary even of those very novels. Now that things had come to this, where in the world should he seek stimulation? Crime—ahh, only crime had been left. After he had exhausted all things, only the sweetest thrill of crime remained before him in this world.”

Moreover, even in his daily life as a writer, he was exceedingly eccentric. His misanthropy and obsession with secrecy were well-known among his fellow writers and magazine journalists. Visitors were rarely admitted into his study. He unflinchingly turned away even senior colleagues at his doorstep. Moreover, he moved residences frequently and, claiming near-perpetual illness, never attended writers’ gatherings or similar events. According to rumors, he lay sprawled day and night in his perpetually unmade futon, conducting all activities—whether eating or writing—while prone. And it was said that even during daylight hours, he kept the storm shutters tightly closed, deliberately illuminating the room with a five-candlepower lamp as he writhed about in the dimness, crafting his signature eerie delusions.

When I heard that he had stopped writing novels and gone missing, I secretly imagined that perhaps—just as he had often declared in his stories—he had nested in some cluttered back alley of Asakusa and begun putting his delusions into practice. And indeed, within less than half a year, he appeared before me precisely as an executor of delusions.

I concluded that contacting newspaper literary departments or magazine correspondents would be the fastest way to track down Haruneido’s whereabouts. That said, given Haruneido’s profoundly eccentric daily life—so reclusive he scarcely met visitors—and considering magazine companies had already attempted tracing him without success, I needed to find a journalist exceptionally familiar with him. Fortunately, precisely such an individual existed among my trusted magazine contacts: Honda of Hakubunkan, a correspondent renowned in his field who had once practically served as Haruneido’s handler responsible for extracting manuscripts from him, and who moreover possessed considerable detective-like acumen befitting his role as an investigative journalist.

So, I called Honda and had him come over, first inquiring about aspects of Haruneido’s life unknown to me. But then, Honda—speaking in a tone as casual as one might use with a playmate— “Oh, Haruneido?” “That bastard’s a despicable fellow.”

With a face like Daikoku-sama’s, grinning slyly, he obligingly answered my questions. According to Honda, when Haruneido first began writing novels, he had lived in a small rented house in suburban Ikebukuro; but as his literary reputation rose and his income increased accordingly, he had moved from place to place, gradually relocating to more spacious homes—though most were still row houses. Ushigome’s Kikui-chō, Negishi, Yanaka Hatsune-chō, Nippori Kanasugi—Honda listed roughly seven places where Haruneido had relocated over approximately two years. Around the time he moved to Negishi, Haruneido had finally become a rising star, and magazine journalists flocked to him in droves; however, his misanthropy was already evident back then—he always kept the front door shut, forcing his wife and others to use the back entrance. Even when they went to the trouble of visiting, he would refuse to meet them, pretending to be out before later sending a letter of apology stating, “I am a misanthrope; please communicate any matters by letter.” As a result, most reporters grew disheartened, and those who actually met Haruneido and spoke with him could be counted on one’s fingers. Even magazine journalists accustomed to novelists’ eccentricities found Haruneido’s misanthropy excessive.

Fortunately, however, Haruneido’s wife was quite the capable woman, and Honda often handled manuscript negotiations and reminders through her. However, even meeting his wife was quite a hassle; not only was the front door kept shut, but at times there would be signs like “No Visitors Due to Illness,” “Away Traveling,” or “To All Magazine Journalists...” “All manuscript requests must be made by letter.” Even signs with harsh warnings like “No visitors allowed” were hung up, so even Honda, for all his persistence, found himself exasperated and returning empty-handed more than once. Given this state of affairs, whenever he moved, he did not send out individual notices; instead, the journalists had to track down his new address themselves by tracing his postal mail and such.

“Even among the many magazine journalists out there, I’d wager there’s hardly anyone besides me who’s actually talked with Haruneido or exchanged jokes with his wife.”

Honda said boastfully.

“Haruneido’s quite a handsome man in photos, but the real thing’s like that, huh?”

As my curiosity gradually swelled, I ventured to ask this question.

“No, that photo doesn’t seem genuine at all.” “He claimed it was a photo from his youth, but something doesn’t seem right about it.” “Haruneido isn’t such a handsome man.” “He’s disgustingly bloated—probably from never exercising.” “(Since he’s always lying down,) his facial skin sags horribly despite the fat, expressionless like a stone statue, with eyes dull and murky; to put it bluntly, he looks like a drowned corpse.” “And he’s terribly awkward in conversation—completely taciturn.” “It makes you wonder how a man like that could write such brilliant novels.” “In Uno Kōji’s novels, there was one called *Human Epilepsy*, you know.” “Haruneido is exactly that.” “To the point of developing bedsores—he just stays lying there, you see.” “I’ve only met him two or three times, but whenever I did, that man was lying down while talking.” “As for him eating while lying down—given how he is, that’s probably true.”

“However, it’s strange,” he said. “That recluse who’s always lying around—there are rumors he sometimes disguises himself and prowls around Asakusa. And always at midnight too! He’s like a thief or a bat, really.” “I suspect he’s pathologically bashful,” Honda continued. “He must loathe showing people that bloated body and face of his. The more famous he became as a writer, the more ashamed he grew of that unsightly flesh.” “So instead of making friends or meeting visitors,” he concluded, “he sneaks out at night to wander crowded streets—compensation of sorts. From Haruneido’s temperament and his wife’s testimony, that’s how it seems to me.”

Honda spoke with considerable eloquence, vividly conjuring Haruneido’s likeness. And then, he finally reported a truly bizarre fact. “But you know, Mr. Samukawa—just the other day, I met that missing Ōe Haruneido. He looked so different that I didn’t even greet him, but he was definitely Haruneido.”

“Where? Where?” I inadvertently asked back. “In Asakusa Park.” “Well, truth be told, I was on my way home in the morning at the time—maybe I hadn’t quite shaken off the drink, you know.” Honda grinned slyly and scratched his head. “You know that Chinese restaurant called Rairaiken, right?” “At that corner there, from the early morning when foot traffic was still sparse, a rather plump flyer distributor wearing a bright red pointed hat and clown costume was standing hunched over.” “It sounds like something out of a dream, but that was Ōe Haruneido.” “Startled, I stopped in my tracks; while I was wavering over whether to call out to him or not, he must have noticed me.” “However, with that same vacant, expressionless face, he turned sharply away and hurried into the alley across the way.” “I nearly decided to chase after him, but then I thought how odd it’d be to greet someone in that getup, so I just went home.”

As I listened to Ōe Haruneido’s bizarre lifestyle, an unpleasant feeling—as if trapped in a nightmare—began to creep over me. And when I heard that he had been standing in Asakusa Park wearing a pointed hat and clown costume, for some reason I was startled and felt a sensation that made my hair stand on end. I couldn’t grasp what connection there was between his clown costume and the threatening letters to Shizuko (Honda had encountered Haruneido in Asakusa around the time the first letter arrived), but I felt I couldn’t simply let it lie.

At that point, I did not neglect to select just one of the most incomprehensible sections from the threatening letter entrusted to me by Shizuko, show it to Honda, and verify whether it was indeed Haruneido’s handwriting. Thereupon, he not only declared this was unquestionably Haruneido’s hand but asserted that the text—right down to its idiosyncratic adjectives and kana usage—could only have been written by Haruneido himself. He once had attempted to write a novel by mimicking Haruneido’s penmanship quirks, so he recognized them well—

“That nitpicky writing—I can’t quite mimic it.” he said. I, too, agreed with his opinion. Having read through all of the letters, I sensed Haruneido’s lingering presence within them even more keenly than Honda had.

Therefore, I asked Honda—under a fabricated pretext—to somehow track down Haruneido’s whereabouts. Honda—

“Of course! Leave it to me.” He readily agreed, but I couldn’t feel reassured by that alone. I myself decided to go to 32 Ueno Sakuragi-cho—where Haruneido had last lived, according to Honda—and investigate the situation in the neighborhood.

4

The next day, leaving my unfinished manuscript as it was, I went to Sakuragi-cho and questioned maids and tradespeople in the neighborhood about the Haruneido household. But beyond confirming that Honda’s account was no lie, I could uncover nothing regarding Haruneido’s subsequent whereabouts. In that area, where there were many middle-class homes with small gates, even neighbors did not converse as they would in tenement houses; no one knew anything beyond the fact that they had moved away without disclosing their destination. Of course, Ōe Haruneido hadn’t displayed a nameplate, so no one knew he was a famous novelist. Even the moving company that had come with a truck to collect the belongings didn’t know which shop they were from, so I had no choice but to return empty-handed.

Since there was no other way, in the intervals between writing my urgent manuscript, I called Honda every day to inquire about the progress of the investigation, but there seemed to be no leads whatsoever, and five or six days went by. And while we were occupied with such efforts, Haruneido was steadily advancing his obsessive scheme.

One day, Oyamada Shizuko called my lodgings, saying that a very worrying matter had arisen and she wished me to come at once. She had said that her husband was out and she had sent any servants who might be too attentive on errands far away, so she was waiting. She had apparently not used her home telephone but had gone out of her way to call from a public one; her voice was so faltering as she relayed this simple message that the three-minute time limit was reached midway, causing the call to disconnect once.

This suggestive arrangement—taking advantage of her husband’s absence, sending the servants away on errands, and quietly summoning me—left me with an odd feeling. Of course, that wasn’t the reason why, but I immediately agreed and visited her house on Asakusa Hill. The Oyamada residence was an old-fashioned building, nestled deep between merchant houses, reminiscent of a dormitory from some time ago. Though one couldn’t tell from the front, it seemed likely that the Ōkawa River flowed behind. Yet, what clashed with its dormitory-like appearance were a newly constructed, egregiously gaudy concrete wall encircling the estate (its top embedded with glass shards to deter thieves) and a two-storied Western-style building towering behind the main house. The two structures clashed jarringly with the old-fashioned Japanese architecture, exuding a vulgar, gold-obsessed crassness.

After my card was received by a young maid who seemed like a country girl, I was guided to the parlor in the Western-style building, where Shizuko waited with an air of grave urgency. After apologizing repeatedly—and somewhat awkwardly—for summoning me so abruptly, she inexplicably lowered her voice and said, “Please look at this first,” handing me a sealed letter. And then, as if fearing something, she approached me while glancing over her shoulder. It was indeed another letter from Ōe Haruneido, but since its contents differed somewhat from previous ones, I have decided to transcribe its full text below.

Shizuko. I can see how you’re suffering. I know full well you’re keeping this secret from your husband and straining to track me down. But stop this futile effort. Even if you found the courage to confess my threats to him and dragged the police into it, you’d never uncover where I am. Shouldn’t it be clear from my past works just how meticulous a man I am?

Well, it is about time to conclude my trial runs here. My revenge enterprise appears to have reached the stage where it must advance to its second phase. Regarding this development, I must impart some preparatory knowledge unto you. How have I been able to ascertain your nightly activities with such exactitude? You must have largely surmised the truth by now. To put it plainly: ever since discovering you, I have clung to your every movement like a shadow. Though imperceptible from your vantage, I ceaselessly observe you from mine—whether you keep to your house or venture abroad—without respite. I have become your very shadow. Even now, as you tremble reading this missive, I—your own shadow—may be watching intently from some crevice, eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

As you know, while observing your nightly conduct, I have unavoidably been subjected to displays of your marital harmony. I could not help but feel violent jealousy. This was something I had not factored into my initial revenge scheme, but far from impeding my plans in any way, this jealousy instead became fuel to stoke the flames of my vengeance. And I came to understand that making slight modifications to my schedule would prove even more advantageous for achieving my aims. The reason is none other than this: In my original design, I intended to torment you relentlessly, reduce you to utter terror, and then gradually claim your life—yet after being forced to witness your conjugal intimacy these past days, I have concluded it would be far more impactful to first snatch away the life of your beloved husband before your eyes, let you steep thoroughly in that anguish, and then attend to your turn. And I have resolved upon this course. But there is no need for haste. I never act precipitously. First and foremost, it would be sheer wastefulness to execute my next stratagem before you—having read this missive—have been thoroughly steeped in suffering.

March 16th, Late Night — From the Avenger

Madam Shizuko

Reading these words of utmost cruelty and mercilessness, even I couldn’t help but shudder. And I felt my hatred for that inhuman monster Ōe Haruneido grow severalfold. But if I showed fear now, who would comfort poor Shizuko in her pitifully crushed state? Forcing myself to feign composure, I could only repeat that this threatening letter was nothing more than the novelist’s delusion. “Please, Sensei—you must speak more quietly.”

Without even listening to my earnest pleas, Shizuko seemed preoccupied with something else, occasionally staring fixedly at one spot and gesturing as though listening intently. Then, as if someone were eavesdropping, she lowered her voice. Her lips were so pale they blended into her ashen complexion.

“Sensei, I think there may be something amiss with my mind.” “But could such a thing truly be real?”

Shizuko muttered incomprehensible things in a whisper, her manner so altered that one might suspect her mind had gone awry.

“Did something happen?” I, too, was drawn in and ended up adopting an overly grave whisper. “Mr. Hirata is inside this house.” “Where is he?” I couldn’t grasp her meaning and remained dazed.

Then, Shizuko stood up resolutely, turned deathly pale, and beckoned to me. Seeing this, I felt a thrill of anticipation and followed her. Midway, when she noticed my wristwatch, for some reason she had me remove it and returned to place it on the table. Then, muffling even our footsteps, we passed through a short corridor and entered what was said to be Shizuko’s sitting room in the Japanese-style wing. But when she slid open the fusuma door there, she showed terror—as though a villain were lurking just beyond.

“This is strange.” “That man sneaking into your house in broad daylight—couldn’t this be some misunderstanding?” When I began saying this, she gasped as if startled, silenced me with a hand gesture, took my hand, led me to a corner of the room, and—her eyes fixed on the ceiling above—gestured as if to say, “Be quiet and listen.” We stood there for a good ten minutes, gazing fixedly into each other’s eyes and straining our ears in silence. Though it was daytime, being a room deep within the sprawling mansion, there was not a sound—so deathly quiet you could hear the blood pulsing in your ears.

“Can’t you hear the ticking of the clock?” After a short while, Shizuko asked me in a whisper so faint it was nearly inaudible. “No—where *is* this clock?” Then Shizuko fell silent again and listened intently for a while. Perhaps finally reassured, she said, “It’s gone now, hasn’t it?” Then, beckoning me to follow, she led us back to the original room in the Western-style wing. There, with labored breathing, she began to recount the following strange tale.

At that time, she was doing some sewing in the parlor when the maid brought Haruneido’s letter that had been delivered earlier. By now, she could recognize it at a mere glance from the envelope alone, and as she received it, an indescribable sense of dread washed over her. Yet not opening it would only heighten her anxiety, so with trembling hands, she sliced open the seal and read its contents. And when she learned that the matter had reached her husband, she could no longer remain still. She stood up for no particular reason and walked to the corner of the room. And just as she came to a stop before the chest of drawers, she felt a sound—so faint it might have been the rustling of insects in the soil—reach her ears from above.

“At first I thought it might be tinnitus,” she whispered, “but when I steeled myself and listened carefully, I distinctly heard a sound—not ringing at all, but something like metal brushing against metal: tick, tick.” It meant someone was lurking above those ceiling boards. She could think of nothing else but that the pocket watch in that person’s chest was marking the seconds. Perhaps due to her ear’s chance proximity to the ceiling and the room’s profound silence, those faint metallic whispers from the attic had reached her—her nerves honed to a razor’s edge. She had scoured every corner of the room, wondering if some trick of acoustics—like light reflecting off surfaces—might have made a clock’s sound elsewhere seem to come from the attic. But there was no clock nearby.

She suddenly recalled a line from the letter: “Even now, as you read this and tremble, I—your shadow—may be watching intently from some corner, my eyes narrowed.” Then, she noticed the ceiling board there had warped slightly, forming a gap that caught her attention. In the pitch-black depths beyond that fissure, it began to seem as though Haruneido’s eyes were gleaming thinly through narrowed slits. “Isn’t that you there, Mr. Hirata?” At that moment, Shizuko was suddenly seized by an uncanny excitement. Resolutely—with the resolve of one casting herself before the enemy—she spoke through fluttering tears to the figure in the attic.

“I don’t care what becomes of me. “I will do anything—anything at all—to satisfy your wishes. “Even if you were to kill me, I would not hold the slightest grudge. “But please, spare my husband. “I lied to him. “And if he were to die because of me… I would be utterly terrified. “Please help. “Please help.” Her voice was small, but she pleaded with all her heart. But from above, there came no response. She emerged from her momentary excitement and stood there listlessly for a long time. However, in the attic, there was still only the faint ticking of a clock, and from outside, not a single sound could be heard. The Beast in the Shadows was in the darkness, holding its breath, silently returning her silence like a mute. In that uncanny silence, she suddenly felt an intense terror. She abruptly fled the living room and, unable to endure staying inside the house, dashed out to the front—though what impulse drove her, she couldn’t say. And then, when she suddenly thought of me, unable to endure, she entered the public telephone booth that was there.

As I listened to Shizuko’s account, I couldn’t help but recall Ōe Haruneido’s eerie novel *The Attic Game*. If the ticking clock Shizuko had heard was no illusion—if Haruneido had indeed been lurking there—then he had taken the very conceit of that novel and brought it to life, a method so unmistakably Haruneido’s that I had to concede its perverse logic. Precisely because I had read *The Attic Game*, not only could I not dismiss Shizuko’s seemingly outlandish tale with a laugh, but I myself was overcome with intense terror. In the pitch-black darkness of the attic, I even felt the hallucination of a stout Ōe Haruneido—wearing a bright red pointed hat and clown costume—grinning slyly at me.

V After much discussion, we ultimately decided that I would climb into the attic above Shizuko’s parlor—like the amateur detective in *The Attic Game*—to confirm whether there were any traces of someone having been there and, if so, determine exactly how they had entered and exited. Shizuko kept trying to stop me, saying, “That’s too creepy,” but I shook her off and, just as I’d learned from Haruneido’s novel, pried open the ceiling panel of the closet and crawled into the hole like an electrician. At that moment, aside from the girl who had answered the door earlier, there was no one else in the mansion, and since that girl was working in the kitchen area, I had no fear of being noticed by anyone.

The attic was by no means as beautiful as Haruneido’s novel had made it out to be. Though it was an old house, during the year-end soot cleaning they had hired a lye-washing service to remove the ceiling boards and scrub them thoroughly, so it wasn’t terribly filthy—but even so, three months’ worth of dust had settled and spiderwebs clung here and there. First, since it was pitch dark and I couldn’t do anything about it, I borrowed a handheld flashlight from Shizuko’s house and, with great effort, moved along the beams as I approached the area in question. There was a gap in the ceiling boards there—likely warped so severely due to the lye washing—and since a faint light shone up from below, it served as a marker. But before I had advanced even half a ken, I discovered something startling. Even as I climbed into the attic, I had been thinking *Surely not… Surely not…*—but Shizuko’s assumption had not been mistaken in the least. There, on both the beams and the ceiling boards, unmistakable traces remained—traces that suggested someone had passed through recently. I felt a chill run down my spine. The mere fact that I knew his novels—that venomous spider-like Ōe Haruneido, whom I had never met—might have been crawling through that attic in the same manner as I was filled me with an indescribable sort of dread. I stiffened and followed the traces—whether from hands or feet—left in the dust atop the beams. The spot where the clock’s sound had been heard—sure enough—was marked by severely disturbed dust, bearing traces of someone having lingered there for a long time.

I became utterly engrossed and began trailing the person I believed to be Haruneido. He seemed to have walked through nearly every attic space in the house; no matter how far I followed, the trails of dust on the beams showed no sign of ending. And in the ceilings of Shizuko’s parlor and her bedroom, there were warped sections of board where the dust had been disturbed more than elsewhere. I imitated the attic game player and peered into the room below from there, but it was by no means unreasonable that Haruneido had become entranced by it. The strangeness of the scene of “the world below” observed through the gap in the ceiling boards truly exceeded all imagination. But above all, when I gazed down at Shizuko’s figure—bowed directly beneath my eyes—I was shocked to realize how bizarre a human being could appear when viewed from such an angle. We are always accustomed to being viewed from the side, so no matter how conscious one may be of their own appearance, they never consider how they look when seen from directly above. There must be a significant gap there. A human being, in their raw, unadorned state precisely because there are gaps, is somewhat awkwardly exposed. In Shizuko’s glossy round chignon—already uncanny in its shape when viewed from directly above—a thin layer of dust had settled in the hollow between her bangs and the coiled hair, leaving it incomparably dirtier than the rest of her immaculate coiffure. At the nape of her neck, where the collar of her kimono and her back formed a shadowed valley visible from this vantage point, the groove of her spine lay exposed. Upon that clammy, pallid skin stretched the venomous earthworm-like swelling, its grotesque trail continuing into the darkened depths beyond sight. Viewed from above, Shizuko had lost some of her elegance, but in its place, I felt the peculiar obscenity she possessed pressing upon me all the more vividly.

Be that as it may, I searched for any evidence that might incriminate Ōe Haruneido, holding the flashlight close as I examined the beams and ceiling boards—but the handprints and footprints were all indistinct, and naturally, no fingerprints could be identified. Haruneido had likely followed *The Attic Game* to the letter, not neglecting to prepare split-toed socks and gloves. Only one thing—a small, round, mouse-gray object had fallen in a spot slightly out of sight at the base of a support beam suspending the ceiling from a roof beam directly above Shizuko’s parlor. It was a button-like object made of matte metal, hollow and bowl-shaped, with the letters R·K·BROS·CO· embossed on its surface. When I picked it up, I immediately recalled the shirt button that appears in *The Attic Game*, but the item was somewhat odd for a button. I wondered if it might be a hat ornament or something of the sort, but I could not determine anything for certain. Even after I showed it to Shizuko later, she could only tilt her head in puzzlement.

Naturally, I meticulously examined where exactly Haruneido had infiltrated the attic from. Following the trail of disturbed dust led me to the storage shed beside the entrance. When I lifted the crude ceiling board of the shed, it came away effortlessly. Using a broken chair discarded there as a foothold, I climbed down and opened the shed door from within—it lacked a lock and yielded without resistance. Just outside stood a concrete wall slightly taller than a man’s height. Likely Haruneido had timed his move for when the streets emptied, scaled this wall—(though glass shards were embedded atop it as mentioned earlier, such deterrents meant nothing to a systematic intruder)—and slipped into the attic through this now-unlocked shed.

Once I had completely figured out the secret, I felt somewhat anticlimactic. It seemed like the kind of prank even a delinquent would pull—a childish mischief—and I felt an urge to scorn him for it. The strange, unfathomable fear had vanished, and in its place remained only a tangible discomfort. (But I would later realize that dismissing him with such contempt had been a grave miscalculation.) Shizuko was terrified beyond measure and proposed that involving the police—even at the cost of exposing her secrets—might be preferable to risking her husband’s life. Yet I, already beginning to scorn our adversary, restrained her: “There’s no way he could pull off something as absurd as dripping poison from the ceiling like in *The Attic Game*. Just because someone sneaks into an attic doesn’t mean they can kill a person.” This kind of scare tactic reeked of Ōe Haruneido’s trademark childishness—wasn’t this precisely his method, to make it seem as though he were plotting some grand crime? With an air of dismissing his capabilities, I reassured her that a mere novelist like him couldn’t possibly muster any real follow-through beyond such antics. And because Shizuko was so terrified, as a sop to her fears, I promised to enlist a friend of mine—someone who relished such tasks—to keep watch outside the storage shed’s wall every night. Shizuko, taking advantage of the fact that there happened to be a guest bedroom on the second floor of the Western-style house, had said she would devise some pretext and temporarily move their bedroom there. Since it was a Western-style house, there were no ceiling gaps through which one could peep.

And so, these two defensive measures were put into practice starting the very next day. However, Ōe Haruneido, the Beast in the Shadows, paid no heed to such stopgap precautions. True to his ominous warning, on the late night of March 19th—just two days later—he finally slaughtered his first victim. [He] had snuffed out the life of Mr. Oyamada Rokurō.

Six

In Haruneido’s letter—alongside the threat of murdering Mr. Rokurō—lay the declaration: “But there’s no need to panic. I never rush.” Yet why had he rushed so frantically to carry out this atrocity after a mere two-day interval? It might have been a stratagem—lulling them into complacency with his letter before striking unexpectedly—but I suddenly suspected another motive altogether. When I learned that Shizuko, upon hearing the pocket watch’s ticking, had tearfully pleaded for her husband’s life while believing Haruneido lurked in the attic, I had already anticipated this outcome. Yet Haruneido, upon witnessing Shizuko’s earnest devotion, must have been consumed by even fiercer jealousy while simultaneously recognizing his own peril. “Very well—if you love your husband this much,” he likely resolved, “I shan’t prolong your wait. I’ll dispose of him for you at once.” Be that as it may, Mr. Oyamada Rokurō’s mysterious death would be discovered under circumstances of utmost grotesquerie.

I received word from Shizuko and rushed to the Oyamada residence that evening, where I first learned all the details. However, Mr. Rokurō had shown no particular signs of change the previous day; he returned home from work a bit earlier than usual, finished his evening drink, and then—as it was a warm night—announced he was going across the river to a friend’s place in Kogame to play Go. Dressed in an Oshima crepe undergarment and shioze silk jacket without an overcoat, he strolled out. That was around 7:00 PM. Since it wasn’t far, he walked along Mukōjima’s embankment as usual, detouring via Azuma Bridge while taking a stroll. And it was clearly established that he had been at the friend’s house in Kogame until around midnight and had left there on foot as well. But everything beyond that point remained entirely unknown.

Even after waiting all night for his return in vain—and given that this coincided with the terrifying threats from Ōe Haruneido—Shizuko was deeply distressed. Unable to wait for morning, she made inquiries by phone and messenger to every place she could think of, but there was no trace of him having visited anywhere. Of course, she had also called my lodgings, but since I had been away since the previous night and only returned around evening, I was completely unaware of this commotion. Even when the usual hour for leaving for work arrived, Mr. Rokurō did not appear at his company. The company personnel tried every means at their disposal to search for him, but they simply could not ascertain his whereabouts. While they were occupied with such efforts, it had already drawn near noon.

Just then, a call came from Kisakata Police informing them of Mr. Rokurō’s unnatural death.

At the western end of Azumabashi Bridge, slightly north of Kaminarimon’s tram stop where one descends the embankment, there was a ferry terminal for the steamboats that plied between Azumabashi and Senju Ōhashi. A famous attraction along the Sumida River since the days of the one-sen steamboat, I would often ride that motor launch for no particular reason, making round trips to places like Kototoi and Shirahige just to see. Steamboat vendors would bring picture books and toys into the boat and, synchronized with the churning of the screw, explain their wares in a hoarse voice reminiscent of silent film narrators. It was because I found that rustic, old-fashioned charm utterly irresistible. The steamboat terminal was a square, boat-like structure floating on the Sumida’s waters, with both waiting benches and passenger restrooms installed upon that buoyantly bobbing vessel. I had even used that restroom myself and knew it well—though to call it a restroom was generous; it was more like a single box designated for women, its wooden floor cut with a rectangular hole through which the Ōkawa’s waters flowed in a thick gurgle just a foot below. Like a train or ship’s restroom, there was no accumulation of filth—clean enough by technical standards—but when staring down through that rectangular opening, one saw bottomless bluish-black water stagnating below. Occasionally debris would appear at one edge like microorganisms under a microscope, drifting languidly to vanish at the other end. That had an oddly eerie quality to it.

Around 8:00 AM on March 20th, a young shopkeeper from Asakusa Nakamise came to the Azumabashi steamboat terminal while heading to Senju on an errand. As she waited for the boat, she entered the restroom I described earlier. The moment she stepped inside, she let out a piercing shriek and came bolting back out. When the old ticket collector asked what happened, she explained that a man’s face had been staring up at her from beneath the restroom’s rectangular hole, floating in the bluish water below. The ticket collector initially assumed it was a prank by a boatman—such aquatic mischief wasn’t uncommon—but when he went to inspect the restroom himself, there it was: a human face bobbing barely a foot beneath the opening, its features alternately obscured by ripples before abruptly resurfacing again. The old man later described it as utterly terrifying, like some grotesque wind-up toy.

When he realized it was a human corpse, the old man suddenly panicked and called out loudly to the young men at the landing. Among the passengers waiting for the boat was a dashing fishmonger who worked with them to haul up the body. Yet lifting it from inside the restroom proved impossible, so they used poles from outside to push the corpse out onto open water. Strangely, it wore nothing but a loincloth—utterly naked otherwise. He appeared to be a distinguished man around forty; unthinkable that he’d been swimming in the Sumida River on such a mild day. Finding this odd, they looked closer and noticed what seemed a stab wound on his back—his body showed none of waterlogged swelling typical of drowning victims. When they realized this was no accident but murder, the commotion intensified. But as they began lifting him from the water, yet another bizarre discovery emerged.

Under the direction of the Hanakawado police officer who had rushed to the scene upon receiving word, when the young man from the landing grabbed the corpse’s tangled hair to pull it up, that hair began slipping from its scalp with a viscous slowness. The young man, overwhelmed by the horror of it all, let out a choked cry and released his grip. Though little time had passed since the body entered the water, he found it unnatural that the hair peeled away so readily. Staring closer, he realized—the hair he’d taken for real was actually a wig, exposing the corpse’s polished bald head beneath.

This was the gruesome demise of Mr. Oyamada Rokurō—Shizuko’s husband and a director of Rokuroku Shōkai company. In other words, Mr. Rokurō’s corpse had been stripped naked, crowned with a thick wig over his bald head, and thrown beneath Azuma Bridge. Moreover, although the corpse was discovered in the water, there were no signs of drowning—the fatal injury being a sharp-bladed stab wound to the left lung area of his back. Given several shallow stab wounds on his back alongside the fatal one, the culprit must have attempted to strike him multiple times. According to the police doctor’s examination, he had received the fatal wound around 1:00 AM the previous night. However, with neither clothing nor belongings on the corpse, the police remained at a loss until noon when someone recognized Mr. Oyamada—prompting immediate calls to both his residence and Rokuroku Shōkai.

When I visited the Oyamada residence that evening, relatives on Mr. Rokurō’s side, employees of Rokuroku Shōkai, and friends of the deceased had crowded into the house, making the interior extremely congested. Shizuko had just returned from the police, she said, and now sat surrounded by those condolence visitors in a daze. Mr. Rokurō’s body had not yet been released by the police, as it might still require an autopsy depending on circumstances. Before the Buddhist altar, only a hastily prepared mortuary tablet lay upon a stand draped in white cloth, with incense and flowers ceremoniously offered before it.

There, I was told by Shizuko and company associates the full account of the corpse’s discovery as described above. But despising Haruneido as I did—and thinking that this calamity had arisen solely because I had stopped Shizuko from reporting to the police two or three days prior—I felt such shame and regret that I could hardly bear to remain seated. I thought the culprit was none other than Ōe Haruneido. Haruneido must have intercepted Mr. Rokurō as he left his Go friend’s house in Kogame and passed by Azuma Bridge on his way home, lured him into the shadows of the steamboat landing, committed the atrocity there, and then discarded the corpse into the river. From the timing alone, from Honda’s testimony that Haruneido had been loitering around Asakusa, and indeed from the fact that he had even forewarned Mr. Rokurō’s murder, there was no room for doubt that the perpetrator was Haruneido. But even so—why had Mr. Rokurō been stripped completely naked? Why had he been made to wear such a strange wig? And if even that had been Haruneido’s doing, why would he have gone to such outrageous lengths? It was truly nothing short of bewildering.

I seized an opportune moment and, saying “Excuse me,” asked her to come to a separate room to discuss the secret known only to Shizuko and myself. As if she had been waiting for this very chance, Shizuko nodded to the assembled guests and hurried after me. Once we were out of sight, she whispered “Sensei,” suddenly clinging to me and fixing her gaze on my chest. Her long lashes glistened intensely; her eyelids swelled instantaneously before tears pooled into glistening beads that slid—slid—down her pallid cheeks. The tears kept welling up anew, swelling and flowing without cease.

“I don’t know what words to use to apologize to you. It’s entirely due to my carelessness. I truly never expected him to have such capability. It’s my fault. It’s my fault…” I, too, grew sentimental and took the hand of Shizuko, who wept silently; clutching it as if to encourage her, I apologized over and over again. (That was the first time I touched Shizuko’s body.) (Even in such a moment, I remained acutely aware of—and would long remember—the uncanny sensation of her fingertips: pale and frail, yet with a feverish elasticity that made me imagine flames smoldering deep within their core.)

“So, did you inform the police about those threatening letters?”

After finally composing myself, I waited for Shizuko to stop crying and spoke. “No, I didn’t know what to do, you see.”

“You still hadn’t told them, had you?” “No… I thought to consult you first, Sensei.”

Looking back now, it seems strange, but even then I was still holding Shizuko’s hand. Shizuko kept her grip too and stood there clinging to me.

“You also think it’s that man’s doing, don’t you?” “Yes… And something strange happened last night.”

“What do you mean, ‘something strange’?” “As per your warning, we moved the bedroom to the second floor of the Western-style house, didn’t we? I thought we could finally rest assured there’d be no more fear of being watched, but it seems that person was still peering in after all.” “From where?”

“From outside the glass window.” And then, as if recalling the terror of that moment, Shizuko opened her eyes wide and began to speak haltingly. “Last night around midnight, I did go to bed, but since my husband hadn’t returned, I was so terribly worried—and being alone in that high-ceilinged Western-style room made me grow frightened until I began to strangely notice every corner of the room.” “The window blind wasn’t fully drawn, leaving a gap of about a foot at the bottom—and seeing the pitch-black outside through it was terrifying enough. But the more I feared it, the more my eyes were drawn there… until finally, beyond the glass, I could make out the dim shape of a person’s face!”

“Wasn’t it an illusion?” “It lasted only a moment and vanished immediately, but even now I still believe it wasn’t a misperception or anything of the sort.” “The figure had tangled hair pressed flat against the glass—head slightly bowed—staring up at me with those upturned eyes... I can still see it now.” “Was it Hirata?” “Yes... But there couldn’t possibly be anyone else outside who would do such a thing.”

At that time, after exchanging this sort of conversation, we—Shizuko and I—confirmed that the murderer of Mr. Rokurō was none other than Ōe Haruneido (Hirata Ichirō), and that he was now plotting to kill Shizuko next. We resolved to go together to the police to formally submit our request for protection. The prosecutor in charge of this case was a legal scholar named Itosaki, who fortunately belonged to the Ryōki-kai—a group we detective novelists, medical professionals, and legal scholars had formed. Thus, when I appeared at the so-called investigation headquarters, Kizakura Police Station, with Shizuko, he listened to our account not in the stiff manner of a prosecutor addressing a victim’s family but with the kindness of a friend. He too seemed profoundly shocked by this bizarre case and deeply intrigued by it but nevertheless promised to spare no effort in searching for Ōe Haruneido’s whereabouts—stationing detectives at the Oyamada residence, increasing patrols by officers, and ensuring Shizuko was fully protected. Regarding Ōe Haruneido’s appearance, acting on my observation that the photographs circulating publicly bore little resemblance to him, I summoned Honda of Hakubunkan and obtained a detailed account of the features he knew.

Seven For about a month thereafter, the police conducted an all-out search for Ōe Haruneido, and I too strove to uncover any clue to his whereabouts—enlisting Honda’s help and questioning every newspaper or magazine reporter I encountered—yet Haruneido remained utterly untraceable, as though versed in some dark magic. If he had been alone, that would have been one matter—but how could he have hidden himself while burdened with his cumbersome wife? Could he truly have plotted to stow away and flee overseas as Prosecutor Itosaki had imagined?

What was strange, however, was that the threatening letters had abruptly ceased arriving ever since Mr. Rokurō’s unnatural death. Had Haruneido, frightened by the police investigation, abandoned his original objective of killing Shizuko and become solely preoccupied with hiding himself? No—a man like him could not have failed to anticipate such a development. If so, was he still lurking somewhere in Tokyo, biding his time for an opportunity to murder Shizuko?

The Kizakura Police Chief ordered his detectives to investigate the area around Ueno Sakuragi-cho 32, Haruneido’s last known residence—just as I had done before—but true to his expertise, the detective—after considerable effort—discovered the moving company that had transported Haruneido’s belongings (a small outfit in Kuromon-cho, a far-flung corner of Ueno) and traced his subsequent relocations from there. According to the findings, after vacating Sakuragi-cho, Haruneido had moved to increasingly disreputable areas—Yanagishima-cho in Honjo Ward, then Suzaki-cho in Mukojima—until his final residence in Suzaki-cho turned out to be a grimy single-household rental, shack-like and wedged between factories. He had rented it by paying several months’ rent in advance, and even when the detective arrived, the landlord still listed him as a tenant. But upon inspecting the interior, they found no furnishings—only dust—and such severe dilapidation that it was impossible to tell how long it had stood vacant. Even when making inquiries around the neighborhood—since both adjacent buildings were factories—there were no observant locals who might have noticed anything; they could glean no useful information whatsoever.

As for Honda of Hakubunkan, being inherently fond of such things, he gradually grasped the situation and grew intensely enthusiastic; drawing on his single encounter with Haruneido at Asakusa Park, he began earnestly playing detective in the spare moments of his manuscript-collecting work. He first investigated two or three advertising agencies near Asakusa—since Haruneido had once distributed flyers—to see if any had hired a man resembling him. The problem was that these agencies sometimes temporarily employed vagrants from places like Asakusa Park during busy periods, dressing them up and using them just for a day. Given that even when shown his description, they couldn’t recall him, it seemed certain that the person you were searching for must have been one of those vagrants. Such was the case.

So this time, Honda wandered through Asakusa Park late at night, peering into each dark, tree-shaded bench one by one; he even went out of his way to stay at the flophouses around Honjo where vagrants typically lodged, ingratiating himself with the lodgers and asking if they’d seen any man resembling Haruneido. He went to such great lengths, yet no matter how long he persisted, he couldn’t grasp even the slightest clue.

Honda would stop by my lodgings about once a week to recount his tales of hardship, but one day, he smirked with that Daikoku-like face of his and proceeded to tell this story.

“Mr. Samukawa.”

“Mr. Samukawa,” “The other day, I suddenly realized something about sideshows.” “And then—I came up with a brilliant idea.” “You know how lately there’ve been sideshows popping up everywhere—the Spider Woman, the Head-Only Woman with No Torso, and such?” “Similar to those, there’s another attraction—not with just a head, but the opposite: a person with only a torso.” “There’s a long horizontal box divided into three compartments. In two of them—usually women—lie a torso and legs.” “And yet, the compartment above the torso was completely empty—where the head and upper body should’ve been visible, there was absolutely nothing.” “In other words, a headless female corpse lies in a long box, and as proof it’s alive, it occasionally moves its limbs.” “It’s incredibly eerie yet erotic, I tell you.” “The trick was just tilting a mirror to make the space behind look empty—crude but effective.” “But listen—I once went to Edogawabashi in Ushigome.” “In the vacant lot past that bridge toward Gokoku-ji Temple, I saw that headless show—but the torso there wasn’t a woman like usual. It was a portly man in a grime-blackened clown costume.”

Honda spoke up to this point, made a slightly tense face with a suggestive air, and fell silent for a while; but when he confirmed that I had sufficiently stirred my curiosity, he began to speak again.

“You understand my idea, don’t you?” “This is what I thought.” “For a man to expose his body to crowds while utterly vanishing from sight—what more brilliant scheme than becoming this sideshow’s Headless Man? He need only conceal his telltale head and neck while lying there all day.” “Doesn’t this reek of Ōe Haruneido’s style—that ghostly trickery he’d devise?” “Particularly since Haruneido wrote so often about freak shows and reveled in such grotesqueries.”

“And then?” While thinking Honda seemed too composed for someone who had actually found Haruneido, I urged him to continue.

“So I immediately went to Edogawabashi, and fortunately, the sideshow was still there.” “I paid the admission fee and went inside, standing before the portly Headless Man as I pondered various ways to get a look at his face.” “And what I realized was that even this man would have to get up to go to the restroom several times a day.” “I was patiently lying in wait for him to go to the restroom.” “After a while, the few spectators all left, and I was alone.” “Still, I endured and kept standing there, you see.” “The Headless Man clapped his hands twice.” “Just as I was thinking how strange this was, the announcer came over to me and asked me to step outside as they were taking a short break.” “So I suspected this was it—after stepping outside, I stealthily circled around to the back of the tent and peered inside through a tear in the fabric. The Headless Man, helped by the announcer, emerged from the box—of course he had a head—then ran over to the earthen corner of the spectator area and started making a splashing sound.” “The clapping earlier—you’ll laugh—was the signal to urinate.” “Ha ha…”

“So that’s your punchline?” “You’re mocking me.” When I showed a flicker of irritation, Honda’s expression sobered. “No—it was a total case of mistaken identity, a failure—but…it shows my dedication.” “I was giving you one example of how exhaustively I’ve been hunting Haruneido.”

he defended.

This is a digression, but our search for Haruneido continued in that manner, and no matter how much time passed, not a glimmer of progress could be discerned.

However, I must append here that I had discovered one single, strange fact which seemed to hold the key to solving the case. To elaborate: I had focused on the aforementioned wig worn by Rokurō’s corpse, surmising its origin to be near Asakusa. After scouring wig makers in the area, I finally located a likely match at Matsui Wig Shop in Senzoku-cho. However, according to the owner’s account, while the wig itself perfectly matched the one on the corpse, the person who had ordered it—contrary to my expectations, indeed to my profound astonishment—was not Ōe Haruneido, but Oyamada Rokurō himself. Not only did his facial features match perfectly, but he had openly given the name Oyamada when placing the order, and when it was completed (around the end of last year), he had come in person to retrieve it himself—or so I was told. According to this account, Mr. Rokurō had stated that it was to conceal his baldness—but if that were true, how could it be that no one, not even his wife Shizuko, had ever seen him wearing the wig during his lifetime? No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t unravel this baffling mystery.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Shizuko—now a widow—and myself had abruptly intensified in intimacy following Mr. Rokurō’s unnatural death. On the surface, I remained her confidant and protector in an official capacity. When Rokurō’s relatives became aware of my conscientious efforts since the attic investigation, they found themselves unable to reject me outright; moreover, Prosecutor Itosaki—for whom this arrangement proved convenient—went so far as to intercede periodically, urging me during my visits to “keep watch over the widow’s welfare.” Thus I gained open access to her household.

As I have previously noted, Shizuko had held no small affection for me as an avid reader of my novels since our first meeting; moreover, given that such a complex relationship had arisen between us, it was only natural that she came to rely on me as her sole support. As we met so frequently—and especially now that she had become a widow—her pale passion and the allure of her body, which had seemed somehow distant before, delicate enough to vanish yet possessing a strange resilience, suddenly took on tangible reality and pressed in upon me. Especially since I had accidentally discovered a small foreign-made whip in her bedroom, my tormenting desires blazed up with terrifying intensity, as though oil had been poured on them.

I pointed at the whip without thinking and asked, “Did your husband ride horses?” But when she saw this, she gasped—turning deathly pale for an instant—then flushed crimson as though set aflame. Then, in an exceedingly faint voice, she answered, “No.” It was only then, foolishly, that I finally solved the mysterious enigma of that earthworm-like swelling on her neck. When I recalled it now, that scar of hers seemed to have changed position and shape slightly each time I’d seen it. At the time I’d thought it odd—but I never could have imagined that her seemingly gentle, bald-headed husband had been such a loathsome, sadistic pervert. But that wasn’t all. Now, one month after Mr. Rokurō’s death, no matter how intently I searched, that hideous earthworm-swelling was nowhere to be seen on her neck. Putting all this together, even without hearing her explicit confession, it was perfectly clear my imagination hadn’t erred. But even so—what was this unbearable torment in my heart since learning this truth? As shameful as it was to admit—could it be I too belonged to the same breed of perverts as the late Mr. Rokurō?

8

April 20th marked the anniversary of the deceased’s passing, so Shizuko performed Buddhist prayers and then hosted a memorial service that evening, inviting relatives and others close to the departed. I attended this gathering; yet two new facts that emerged that night—though entirely disparate in nature, yet bound by a strangely fateful connection I shall later explain—imprinted upon me a profound emotion I will likely carry to my grave.

At that moment, I was walking side by side with Shizuko down a dimly lit corridor. Even after all the guests had left, I spent some time discussing matters pertaining solely to us—the search for Haruneido—with Shizuko. When it grew to be around eleven o’clock, not wanting to overstay in front of the servants, I bid farewell and returned home in the automobile Shizuko had called from the entrance desk. At that moment, to see me off at the front entrance, Shizuko walked shoulder-to-shoulder with me down the corridor. The corridor had several glass windows facing the garden, but as we passed by one of them, Shizuko suddenly let out a terrifying scream and clung to me.

“What’s wrong? What did you see?”

When I asked in surprise, Shizuko, still clinging tightly to me with one hand, pointed outside the glass window with the other. For a moment, I too was startled, recalling Haruneido—but I soon realized it was nothing of consequence. Looking out, through the trees in the garden beyond the window, a white dog disappeared into the darkness, rustling the leaves as it went. “It’s just a dog. It’s just a dog. There’s no need to be afraid.”

I patted Shizuko’s shoulder and spoke comfortingly—though I hardly knew why—but even after realizing there was nothing to fear, with her hand still clinging to my back and that tepid warmth permeating my very core, ah—I finally drew her close in that moment and stole a kiss from those swollen lips with their protruding canines, those Mona Lisa lips. And whether this brought me happiness or misfortune, not only did she not push me away, but in the hands that held me, I even detected a hesitant strength.

Precisely because it was the death anniversary of the deceased, we felt our guilt all the more deeply. I remember that from then until I got into the automobile, we did not exchange a single word and averted our eyes as if avoiding each other.

Even as the automobile began to move, my mind remained entirely occupied by thoughts of Shizuko from whom I had just parted. On my heated lips, her lips could still be felt; in my throbbing chest, her body heat still seemed to linger. And in my heart, joy poised to take flight and profound self-reproach interwove like a complex tapestry. As for where or how the car was moving—the scenery outside simply didn’t register.

But the strange thing was, despite such circumstances, a certain small object had been searing itself into the back of my eyes since earlier. As the car jostled me, I sat consumed by thoughts of Shizuko, staring fixedly at the space directly before me—when there, precisely at the focal point of my gaze, an object began to twitch with such insistence that it demanded my full attention. At first, I watched it with indifference, but gradually my nerves became attuned to it.

"Why? Why am I staring at this so intently?" "Why am I staring at this so intently, I wonder?" As I vaguely pondered such things, the sequence of events gradually became clear. I found myself questioning the coincidence between two items that seemed far too perfect to be accidental.

In front of me sat a burly driver hunched over the wheel, his worn navy spring coat straining across broad shoulders. Beyond those hulking shoulders, his gloved hands fidgeted incessantly on the steering wheel—fine leather gloves grotesquely mismatched with his calloused worker’s fingers. The out-of-season winter wear alone would have drawn my eye, but it was the decorative clasp on the glove’s hook... At last, the truth struck me. That disc-shaped metal piece I’d retrieved from the Oyamada attic was unmistakably a glove clasp. I’d mentioned the object to Prosecutor Itosaki in passing, but lacking the physical evidence and with Haruneido already pinned as our man, neither of us had pursued it. The possibility that this trinket was a glove clasp had never even crossed my mind. Yet when I considered it—the criminal wearing gloves to avoid fingerprints, carelessly losing a clasp—wasn’t that exactly the kind of oversight one might expect?

But the decorative clasp on the driver’s glove held a meaning far more astonishing than simply revealing the item I had found in the attic. Whether it was the shape, color, or size—they were not just overly similar—the clasp on his right-hand glove had come off entirely, leaving only the hook’s base plate. What on earth could this mean? If the metal object I’d picked up in my attic were to match that base plate perfectly, what would that signify?

“Hey, you.” I suddenly called out to the driver. “Could you let me see your gloves for a moment?” The driver seemed taken aback by my strange request but, while slowing the car, obediently removed both gloves and handed them to me. When I looked, even the engraved R·K·BROS·CO· marking appeared on the surface of the intact clasp of one glove with perfect accuracy. I grew increasingly astonished and even began to feel a kind of bizarre terror.

The driver handed me the gloves and continued driving without even a glance. As I gazed at his corpulent back, I was suddenly seized by a delusion.

“Ōe Haruneido…”

I said in a voice loud enough for the driver to hear, as if talking to myself. And I stared fixedly at his face reflected in the small mirror atop the driver’s seat. But needless to say, that was nothing more than my own foolish delusion. The driver’s expression reflected in the mirror remained completely unchanged, and above all, Ōe Haruneido was not the sort of man to engage in such cheap trickster-like antics. But when the car arrived at my inn, I had the driver hold some extra fare and began asking these questions.

“Do you remember when the clasp came off this glove?”

“It had been off from the beginning.” The driver answered with a puzzled expression. “They were a hand-me-down, you see. The clasp had come off and made them unusable, but even though they were still new, the late Mr. Oyamada passed them on to me.” “Mr. Oyamada did?” I jolted in surprise and pressed urgently. “The same Mr. Oyamada I just left?”

“Yes, that’s right. Back when that master was alive, I was usually the one handling the pick-up and drop-off to the company—he took a particular liking to me.” “Since when have you been wearing those?” “I received these during the cold season, but they were too fine to use right away—it felt wasteful—so I kept them stored away. But when my old ones tore apart, today was the first time I took them out for driving.” “You see, if I don’t wear these, the steering wheel slips.” “Why would you ask about such a thing?”

“No, I have a bit of a reason.” “Couldn’t you let me have those?” In such a manner, I ultimately acquired those gloves for a considerable price. Upon entering my room, I took out the metal object I had retrieved from the attic and compared it—there was no difference whatsoever, and indeed, that metal piece fit perfectly into the base plate of the glove’s hook. As I had mentioned before, wasn’t this matching of two items far too coincidental to be mere chance? Is it conceivable that Ōe Haruneido and Mr. Oyamada Rokurō had worn gloves identical down to the decorative clasps—and furthermore, that the detached metal piece and the hook’s base plate would fit perfectly together? This was something I would later confirm: after taking those gloves to be appraised at Ginza’s Senzai Western Goods Store—one of the finest establishments in the city—the results showed they were of a make rarely seen domestically, likely British in origin. It was discovered that there wasn’t a single company called R·K·BROS·CO· anywhere in Japan. When I put together the words of this Western goods store owner and the fact that Mr. Rokurō had been overseas until September of the year before last, it became clear that Mr. Rokurō himself was the owner of those gloves—and consequently, did that detached decorative clasp not mean that Mr. Rokurō had been the one to drop it? It was simply unthinkable that Ōe Haruneido could have owned gloves identical to Mr. Rokurō’s—gloves that were unobtainable domestically—by mere coincidence.

"Then what does that mean?"

I clutched my head, leaned against the desk, and continued muttering "So... so..."—a strange soliloquy—as I drove my focus deeper into the core of my mind, desperately trying to extract some interpretation from it.

Before long, I suddenly came up with a strange idea. The point was this: Yama no Yado was a long, narrow town along the Sumida River, and since the Oyamada residence there stood near its banks, it naturally had to adjoin Ōkawa’s current. Needless to say, I had often gazed at the Ōkawa from the window of the Oyamada family’s Western mansion—yet for some reason, at that moment, it struck me with new meaning, as though discovering it for the first time.

In the haze of my mind, a large U-shape materialized. At the upper left end of the U-shape was Yama no Yado. At the upper right end was Koume-cho—the location of Mr. Rokurō’s Go friend’s house. And the area corresponding to the bottom of the U-shape exactly coincided with Azumabashi Bridge. Until this very moment, we had believed that on that night, Mr. Rokurō had departed from the upper right end of the U-shape, come all the way to the left side of the U’s base, and there been murdered by Haruneido. But had we not overlooked the river’s flow? The Ōkawa River flowed from the upper to the lower part of the U-shape. Would it not be more natural to consider that the discarded corpse had not been at the murder scene but had instead drifted downstream from above, struck the steamship dock beneath Azumabashi Bridge, and stagnated in its backwater? The corpse had drifted here. The corpse had drifted here. Then where had it drifted from? Where was the crime committed? ……And so, deeper and deeper I sank into the quagmire of delusion.

Nine

Night after night, I did nothing but think about that. Even Shizuko’s allure could not withstand this bizarre suspicion; as though I had somehow forgotten her entirely, I sank ever deeper into strange delusions. During that time, I did visit Shizuko twice to confirm something, but after finishing my business, I would bid her farewell quite abruptly and hurry back home—she must have found it rather strange. Her face as she saw me off at the entrance looked so lonely and sorrowful.

And within about five days, I had constructed a truly monstrous delusion. To spare myself the tedium of narrating it here—since the written opinion I had prepared at the time for Prosecutor Itosaki still remains—I shall make a few additions and transcribe it below. However, this reasoning was of such a nature that it likely could not have been constructed without the imaginative faculties peculiar to us detective novelists. And it later became clear that there had been a profound meaning in that.

In this way, when I came to know there was no alternative but to conclude that the metal piece I had retrieved from the attic above Shizuko’s parlor in the Oyamada residence had fallen from the hook of Mr. Oyamada Rokurō’s glove, the various facts that had lingered as knots in the corners of my mind began flooding back one after another—as if to corroborate my discovery. The fact that Mr. Rokurō’s corpse had been wearing a wig. The fact that the wig had been one Mr. Rokurō himself had ordered and commissioned. (The corpse’s nakedness posed little issue for me, for reasons I shall later explain.) These facts—that Hirata’s threatening letters ceased abruptly coinciding with Mr. Rokurō’s unnatural death; that Mr. Rokurō was, contrary to appearances—as is often the case—a terrifyingly cruel sadist—might seem like a mere convergence of coincidental anomalies. Yet upon deeper reflection, one realizes they all point unerringly to a single underlying truth.

When I noticed this, to further solidify my reasoning, I set about gathering as much material as I could. First, I visited the Oyamada residence, obtained Ms. Shizuko’s permission, and was allowed to investigate the late Mr. Rokurō’s study. For there is nothing like a study to so vividly tell of its owner’s character and secrets. Despite Ms. Shizuko’s evident suspicion, I spent nearly half a day combing through every last bookshelf and drawer, only to soon discover—among the many shelves—a single section secured by an extraordinarily sturdy lock. When I inquired about the key, I learned that during his lifetime, Mr. Rokurō had kept it attached to his watch chain and carried it at all times, and that on the day of his unnatural death, he had left home with it still wrapped in his heko obi [informal sash]. Since there was no other way, I persuaded Ms. Shizuko and finally obtained permission to destroy the door of that bookshelf.

When I opened it, inside were Mr. Rokurō’s diaries spanning several years, documents in envelopes, bundles of letters, and numerous books packed tightly together. However, after meticulously examining each item one by one, I discovered three volumes related to this case.

The first was a diary from the year of Mr. Rokurō and Ms. Shizuko’s marriage, where—on the margin of an entry dated three days before their wedding—a phrase demanding attention had been inscribed in red ink.

"[Earlier text omitted...] I had learned of the relationship between Shizuko and a young man named Hirata Ichirō. However, Shizuko began to take a dislike to him midway through their relationship, and no matter what measures he took, she would not yield to his wishes. In the end, seizing upon her father's bankruptcy as an opportunity, she vanished from his presence. That settled it. 'I have no intention of investigating past matters...' In other words, from the very beginning of their marriage, Mr. Rokurō had been fully aware of his wife's secret due to certain circumstances. And he had not breathed a word of it to her."

The second was a short story collection titled Attic Games by Ōe Haruneido. What a shock it was to discover such a book in the study of Mr. Oyamada Rokurō, a businessman. Until I heard from Mrs. Shizuko that Mr. Rokurō had been quite a novel enthusiast during his lifetime, I could hardly believe my eyes. Now, it is worth noting that this short story collection featured a collotype portrait of Haruneido at its frontispiece, while the colophon bore the author’s real name: Hirata Ichirō.

The third was Hakubunkan’s magazine *Shin Seinen*. It was Volume 6, Issue 12. This issue did not contain any works by Haruneido; however, instead, the frontispiece featured a photographic reproduction of his manuscript at actual size—enlarged to cover about half a sheet of manuscript paper—with an explanatory note in the margin reading, "Manuscript in the hand of Mr. Ōe Haruneido." The strange thing was that when I held the photographic plate up to the light and examined it closely, there were marks resembling claw scratches crisscrossing the thick art paper. This could only mean that someone had placed thin paper over the photograph and traced Haruneido’s handwriting with a pencil, over and over again. It frightened me how my deductions kept proving correct one after another.

That same day, I asked Ms. Shizuko to search for the foreign-made gloves Mr. Rokurō had brought back from abroad. It took considerable effort to find them, but finally a single pair emerged—identical in every detail to those I had purchased from the driver. When Ms. Shizuko handed them to me, she wore a puzzled expression, as if there should have been another pair of the same gloves. These pieces of evidence—the diary, short story collection, magazine, gloves, and metal clasp retrieved from the attic—can be submitted at any time upon your instruction.

Now, while the facts I have ascertained extend beyond these points, even if we were to consider only the aforementioned details alone, it is evident that Mr. Oyamada Rokurō was a man of singularly sinister character—one who, beneath a mask of gentleness and integrity, vigorously pursued monstrous schemes steeped in spectral malice. Had we not fixated too much on the name Ōe Haruneido? Could it not be that his blood-drenched works and our knowledge of his aberrant daily life led us—from the very outset—to single-mindedly fixate on the conclusion that none but Haruneido could have perpetrated such a crime? How could he have vanished so completely? If he were the culprit, would this not seem rather peculiar? Precisely because he was innocent—precisely because he had cloaked himself from society due to his inherent misanthropy (a misanthropy that would only intensify as his notoriety grew)—is this not why he proved so elusive? He may have fled overseas, as you yourself once suggested. He might even now be lurking in some corner of Shanghai’s Chinese quarter, disguised as a local and puffing on a water pipe. But if we suppose Haruneido to be the culprit—how then do we explain that his revenge scheme, so meticulously plotted and doggedly pursued over years, ceased abruptly after merely killing Mr. Rokurō—an act that for him would have been but a detour—as though he had forgotten his true objective? To those acquainted with his novels and his ways, this appears utterly unnatural—a thing inconceivable.

But no—there exists an even more obvious fact. How could he possibly have dropped the clasp from Mr. Oyamada Rokurō’s gloves into that attic? Considering these gloves were foreign-made—unobtainable domestically—and that the decorative clasp had come loose from the very pair Mr. Rokurō gave his driver, could anyone reasonably entertain such absurdity as to conclude Ōe Haruneido rather than Mr. Oyamada Rokurō himself had been lurking in that attic? (Now, were it indeed Mr. Rokurō, one might counter: why would he carelessly give such crucial evidence to his driver? But as I shall later elaborate, this was because he had committed no legal crime whatsoever. He had merely been indulging in a perverse sort of game. Thus, even if the clasp had come off and remained in the attic, it meant nothing to him. Would a criminal fret—“Might this clasp have fallen while I walked through the attic? Could this become evidence?”—such concerns held no relevance for him.)

The evidence to negate Haruneido’s criminality was not limited to that alone. The aforementioned evidence—the diary, Haruneido’s short story collection, *Shin Seinen*, and others—being present in the locked bookshelf of Mr. Rokurō’s study; the fact that there existed only one key to said lock, which Mr. Rokurō had carried on his person at all times—this not only substantiated Mr. Rokurō’s insidious machinations but rendered it entirely impossible to even entertain the notion that Haruneido might have forged these items and placed them in Mr. Rokurō’s bookshelf to cast suspicion upon him. First, forging something like the diary would have been impossible, and as for that bookshelf—was it not impossible to open or close unless one was Mr. Rokurō?

Upon examining these points, we had no choice but to conclude that Ōe Haruneido—also known as Hirata Ichirō—whom we had until now firmly believed to be the culprit, had in fact never existed within this case from the very beginning. What compelled us to believe thus could only be attributed to Mr. Oyamada Rokurō’s astonishing deception. That Mr. Oyamada Rokurō—a man of wealth and refinement—possessed such meticulous yet sinister childishness; that while maintaining a facade of gentleness and integrity in public, he transformed into a demon of unparalleled dread within his bedroom, relentlessly beating the pitiable Ms. Shizuko with a foreign-made riding crop—these facts struck us as profoundly astonishing. Yet history shows no scarcity of examples where a benevolent gentleman and malevolent demon have coexisted within a single soul. Might we not say that the more gentle and good-natured a person appears, the more susceptible they become to apprenticing themselves to the devil?

Now, I have come to think thus. Mr. Oyamada Rokurō had traveled to Europe on company business approximately four years prior, staying primarily in London and a few other cities for two years; his perverse proclivities likely took root and developed in one of those cities. (I have heard rumors from employees of Rokuroku Shōkai regarding his amorous affairs in London.) Then, upon his return to Japan in September two years prior, his incurable perverse proclivities likely began to unleash their full fury, targeting his beloved Ms. Shizuko. I had already noticed that eerie scar on Ms. Shizuko’s neck when I first met her in October of last year, after all.

This type of vice—much like morphine addiction—not only becomes impossible to quit once it takes hold, persisting for a lifetime, but escalates its malignant course with terrifying momentum day by day and month by month. It ceaselessly pursues ever more intense and novel stimulation. Today’s methods could no longer satisfy yesterday’s cravings; tomorrow would render today’s gestures inadequate. Mr. Oyamada too—could he any longer find fulfillment merely in beating Ms. Shizuko? Is this not perfectly imaginable? Thus he found himself compelled to frantically seek fresh stimuli.

At that very moment, perhaps through some trigger, he learned of the existence of Ōe Haruneido’s novel *Attic Games* and, upon hearing of its bizarre contents, felt compelled to read it. Be that as it may, he discovered there a strange kindred spirit—an uncanny counterpart to his own nature. Can we not imagine how fervently he must have studied Haruneido’s short story collection, evident even from the book’s worn edges? In that collection, Ōe Haruneido repeatedly extols the pleasure—so peculiar it defies mortal comprehension—of secretly observing solitary individuals (particularly women) without ever being noticed. Yet it requires little imagination to suppose Mr. Rokurō embraced this newfound fascination, a revelatory pursuit for one such as himself. At last, emulating the protagonist of Haruneido’s novel, he transformed into an attic prowler who schemed to infiltrate his own home’s ceiling space and spy upon Ms. Shizuko’s private hours.

Given the considerable distance from the gate to the entrance of the Oyamada residence, slipping unnoticed into the storage room beside the entrance upon returning from outings—then moving along the ceiling to reach above Shizuko’s parlor—was indeed a trivial matter. I even harbored dark suspicions that Mr. Rokurō’s frequent evening outings to play go at Koume’s friend’s residence were nothing but a means to conceal the time spent on these attic games.

On the other hand, was it not an entirely natural progression that Mr. Oyamada Rokurō—who so avidly read *Attic Games*—would discover the author’s real name in the colophon and begin to suspect it was none other than Hirata Ichirō, Shizuko’s former lover who had once betrayed her and who must have been harboring profound resentment toward her? Thereupon, he must have hunted down every article and scrap of gossip concerning Ōe Haruneido, ultimately coming to know thoroughly that Haruneido was indeed Shizuko’s former lover, and that his daily life was profoundly misanthropic—having already ceased writing and vanished from public view by that time. In short, through a single volume of *Attic Games*, Mr. Oyamada Rokurō had simultaneously discovered two things: on one hand, an unrivaled confidant for his morbid proclivities; on the other, a loathsome romantic rival from her past whom he now felt compelled to despise. And based on this knowledge, he devised a truly astonishing scheme.

The act of spying on Shizuko’s solitary moments undoubtedly greatly piqued his curiosity, but he—a man of such sadistic proclivities—could never have been satisfied with such tepid interest alone. He must have exercised the abnormally acute imaginative faculties of his twisted mind, pondering whether there might not exist some newer, more cruel method to replace the whip’s lashings. And thus, he ultimately conceived the unprecedented theatrical scheme of Hirata Ichirō’s threatening letters. To this end, he had already obtained the photogravure frontispiece from Volume 6, Issue 12 of *Shin Seinen* as his model. To make his performance all the more engrossing and convincing, he meticulously began practicing Haruneido’s penmanship using that photogravure. The pencil traces on that photogravure tell the tale.

Mr. Oyamada Rokurō created the threatening letters under Hirata Ichirō’s name and, after allowing an appropriate number of days to pass, mailed each one from a different post office. While driving for business purposes, having them dropped into the nearest postbox along his route was a trivial matter. As for the contents of the threatening letters, he had acquired a general knowledge of Haruneido’s background through newspaper and magazine articles. Moreover, regarding Shizuko’s subtle gestures—what he could not glean from spying through the ceiling—he could effortlessly write about them due to being her husband himself. In other words, he would lie side by side with Shizuko, committing her words and gestures to memory during their pillow talk, then write them down as though Haruneido had observed them himself. What a devil he was! In this way, he was able to combine the criminal-like thrill of forging threatening letters under another’s name and sending them to his own wife with the devilish pleasure of secretly watching from the attic, his heart pounding as he observed her trembling in terror upon reading them. Moreover, there is reason to believe that during those intervals, he continued administering beatings with that very riding crop. For the scar on Shizuko’s neck only began to fade after Mr. Rokurō’s death. Needless to say, while he tormented his wife Shizuko in this manner, it was not out of hatred for her; rather, it was precisely because he doted on her so excessively that he committed this cruelty. Of course, I have no doubt you are fully aware of the psychology of this type of sexual deviant.

Now, I have fully laid out my reasoning that Mr. Oyamada Rokurō was the creator of those threatening letters—but how could what began as mere deviant mischief escalate into such a murder case? Moreover, why was it Mr. Rokurō himself who ended up killed, found naked beneath Azumabashi Bridge wearing that strange wig? Whose hand inflicted the stab wound on his back? If Ōe Haruneido played no role in this case, does that mean another criminal existed? These questions demand resolution. To address them, I must now present further observations and deductions.

To put it simply, Mr. Oyamada Rokurō—whether it was that his excessively demonic deeds had provoked divine wrath—met with divine retribution. There existed neither crime nor perpetrator—there was only Mr. Rokurō’s accidental death. Now, you may inquire about the fatal wound upon his back. However, I must defer that explanation and first recount in due order the line of reasoning that led me to form such a conclusion.

The starting point of my reasoning was none other than his wig. You likely recall that from March 17th—the day after my attic exploration—Shizuko moved her bedroom to the second floor of the Western-style mansion to avoid being spied upon. It remains unclear how skillfully Shizuko persuaded her husband or why Mr. Rokurō came to acquiesce to her suggestion, but be that as it may, from that day onward, Mr. Rokurō could no longer conduct his attic surveillance. However, if we allow our imagination to run wild, Mr. Rokurō may have already grown somewhat weary of his attic surveillance by that time. And taking advantage of the bedroom being moved to the Western-style mansion, it cannot be said that he did not devise another prank. For you see, there was a wig here. There existed the luxuriant wig that he himself had ordered. Since he had ordered that wig at the end of last year, he had certainly not intended it for this purpose from the outset—it must have had some other use—but now, quite unexpectedly, it had come in handy.

He had seen Haruneido’s photograph in the frontispiece of *Attic Games*. Since the photograph was said to be from Haruneido’s younger days, he naturally did not have a bald head like Mr. Rokurō but instead sported thick, luxuriant black hair. Therefore, if Mr. Rokurō had advanced beyond terrifying Shizuko through letters and attic concealment—conceiving the idea to disguise himself as Ōe Haruneido, wait for her presence, then reveal his face in a fleeting glimpse from outside the Western-style mansion’s window to savor an uncanny thrill—he would have been compelled above all else to conceal his most distinguishing feature: his bald head. And precisely for this purpose, there existed that wig. As long as he wore the wig, his face—merely glimpsed fleetingly through the dark glass from outside (and indeed, this made it all the more effective)—posed no risk of being recognized by Shizuko, who would be trembling in terror.

That night (March 19th), Mr. Rokurō returned from Komatsu’s go friend’s residence and, finding the gate still open, stealthily circled around the garden to avoid detection by the servants, entered the study on the first floor of the Western-style mansion (this I learned from Shizuko—he kept its key on the same chain as the bookshelf key), donned the wig in darkness to avoid alerting Shizuko, who had already retired to her upstairs bedroom, then went outside, climbed a tree to reach the mansion’s eaves, circled around to her bedroom window, and peered inside through a gap in the blinds. Later, when Shizuko told me she had seen someone’s face outside the window, it was referring to this very incident.

Now then, before I recount how Mr. Oyamada Rokurō came to meet his death, I must first describe my observations from when I visited the Oyamada residence for the second time after beginning to suspect him—specifically, what I saw upon peering out from the Western-style mansion’s window in question. As you would readily understand were you to see it for yourself, I shall spare you tedious descriptions—but know that this window faced the Sumida River, with scarcely a foot of space beneath its eaves before meeting the same concrete wall that enclosed the front grounds, a wall that immediately gave way to a precipitous stone cliff. In order to economize on ground space, the wall was erected at the very edge of the stone cliff. From the water’s surface to the top of the wall measured approximately 3.6 meters, while from the wall’s top to the second-floor window was about 1.8 meters. If we suppose that Mr. Rokurō lost his footing on the eaves gutter (which was exceedingly narrow) and fell, it would not have been entirely impossible—granted extraordinary luck—for him to land inside the wall’s perimeter (a cramped space barely wide enough for a single person). Otherwise, his body would inevitably have collided with the wall’s upper edge and plunged directly into the great river beyond. And in Mr. Rokurō’s case, it was of course the latter.

From the moment I first considered the Sumida River's current, I had recognized it was more natural to interpret the corpse as having drifted downstream from upstream rather than assuming it remained at the site where it was discarded. Moreover, I knew the Western-style mansion of the Oyamada residence stood directly beside the Sumida River, upstream from Azumabashi Bridge. Thus, while I did entertain the possibility that Mr. Rokurō had fallen from that window, his cause of death being not drowning but a stab wound to the back left me confounded for a prolonged period.

However, one day, I suddenly recalled a case example similar to this incident from Mr. Nanba Mokuzaburō’s *The Latest Methods of Criminal Investigation*, a book I had once read. As I often refer to this book when devising detective novels, I had remembered the articles within it. The case example in question is as follows.

“Around mid-May of Taisho 6 (1917), a male drowned body was found washed up near the breakwater of the Lake Biwa Steamship Company in Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture.” The corpse’s head bore an incised wound resembling one inflicted by a sharp instrument. The medical examiner concluded that this pre-mortem incised wound constituted the cause of death and that traces of water in the abdomen indicated the body had been disposed of in water at the time of killing—thus launching full-scale investigative activities as a major case. When all efforts to identify the victim had failed, several days later the Otsu Police Station—having received a mailed missing person report from Saitō, a gold-leaf artisan on Jōfukuji-dōri in Kamigyō-ku, Kyoto City, regarding his employee Kobayashi Shigesaburō (23)—noted coincidences between the missing man’s appearance and clothing and those of the victim’s spouse. They immediately notified Mr. Saitō and had him view the corpse, conclusively confirming not only that it was his employee but also that the death was ruled a suicide rather than homicide. For it emerged that the drowned man had embezzled a large sum of gold coins from his employer’s household before absconding with a suicide note. It became clear that his head wound had been sustained when he jumped into the lake from the stern of a moving steamship and struck its rotating propeller—an injury mimicking an incised wound.

Had I not recalled this case example, I might never have conceived such an outlandish idea. However, in many cases, reality surpasses a novelist’s imagination. And yet, the most preposterous things—utterly inconceivable—are in fact carried out with ease. That being said, I am not suggesting that Mr. Rokurō was injured by a propeller. In this case, however, it differs slightly from the aforementioned example: the corpse had not ingested any water at all, and furthermore, steamships rarely pass through the Sumida River around one o’clock in the morning.

Then, what caused the severe stab wound on Mr. Rokurō’s back that reached his lungs? What could possibly have inflicted a wound so akin to that of a blade? It was none other than fragments of beer bottles embedded along the top of the concrete wall surrounding the Oyamada residence. Since identical fragments were embedded on the front gate side as well, you have likely observed them yourself. Those anti-burglar glass shards included exceptionally large pieces in certain areas—under such circumstances, they could indeed create a stab wound sufficiently deep to penetrate the lungs. Mr. Rokurō collided with them due to the momentum from his fall off the eaves gutter. The severity of his injuries comes as no surprise. Moreover, this interpretation accounts for the numerous shallow stab wounds surrounding that fatal injury.

Thus, Mr. Rokurō—through his own doing, owing to his vile compulsion—lost his footing on the eaves gutter, collided with the wall, sustained a fatal wound, then plunged into the Sumida River, where he drifted with the current to end up beneath the restroom of Azumabashi Steamship Terminal, thereby exposing his death in such an absurd and disgraceful manner. With this, I have outlined my new interpretation of this case in broad strokes. To append a few remaining points regarding why Mr. Rokurō’s corpse was found naked: The vicinity of Azumabashi is a den of vagrants, beggars, and ex-convicts. Had a drowned body been clad in expensive garments (that night, Mr. Rokurō wore an Oshima crepe underrobe layered with a Shiose silk haori and carried a platinum pocket watch), it suffices to say that reckless individuals—lurking all over the area—would strip them off upon finding no one present late at night. (Note: This conjecture of mine later proved factual when a vagrant was apprehended.) Furthermore, regarding why Shizuko, in her bedroom, failed to notice the sound of Mr. Rokurō’s fall—I humbly request your consideration of the following: her mind was in such turmoil from extreme terror; the glass windows of the concrete Western-style mansion were tightly sealed; the distance from the windows to the water’s surface was considerable; and even had she heard splashing sounds, they might have been mistaken for the noise of poling from mud boats that occasionally traverse the Sumida River overnight. It should be noted that this incident contained no criminal intent whatsoever and, though it did precipitate an unfortunate case of unnatural death, remained entirely within the realm of a prank. For had this not been so, there would be no way to explain such preposterous negligence on Mr. Rokurō’s part—giving evidentiary gloves to his driver, ordering a wig under his real name, or placing crucial evidence in a locked bookshelf within his own home. (The rest is omitted.)

I have now transcribed my written opinion at excessive length; I have inserted it here because, unless I first clarify my aforementioned deductions, my subsequent articles will become exceedingly difficult to comprehend. In this written opinion, I stated that Ōe Haruneido had never existed from the very beginning. But was that truly the case? If that were indeed so, then my having gone into such exhaustive detail about his character and background in the earlier sections of this account would be rendered utterly meaningless—and yet.

Ten

I completed my written opinion for submission to Prosecutor Itosaki on April 28th—as dated within—but first visited the Oyamada residence the following day to show it to Shizuko and assure her she need no longer fear Ōe Haruneido’s phantom. Even after beginning to suspect Mr．Rokurō，I had called on Shizuko twice for what amounted to covert house searches，yet still withheld all revelations from her．

At that time, relatives swarmed around Shizuko daily regarding Mr. Rokurō’s estate settlement, stirring up all manner of troublesome disputes; yet Shizuko, nearly isolated, relied on me all the more, and whenever I visited, she would go out of her way to welcome me with great fuss. As usual, when I was shown into Shizuko’s parlor, quite abruptly— “Ms. Shizuko.” “You don’t have to worry anymore.” “Ōe Haruneido—he never existed from the very beginning.”

I declared, startling Shizuko. Of course, she had no idea what any of this meant. So, in the same spirit as when I would finish writing a detective story and read it aloud to my friends, I recited the draft of my written opinion for Shizuko’s benefit. This was partly to inform Shizuko of the details of the matter and reassure her, and partly because I wanted to hear her opinion on it, find any deficiencies in the draft myself, and make thorough revisions.

The section detailing Mr. Rokurō’s cruel perversions was excruciatingly brutal. Shizuko flushed crimson, her expression that of one wishing to vanish into thin air. When I reached the passage about the gloves, she interjected, “I too found it strange—so very strange—for I was certain there had been another pair.” At the description of Mr. Rokurō’s accidental death, she turned deathly pale, rendered speechless by shock. Yet when I finished reading, she merely uttered “Oh…” and sat blank-faced for a time, until a faint shadow of relief gradually surfaced in her features. She must have felt profound reassurance upon learning that Ōe Haruneido’s threatening letters were fabrications, and that all danger to her had dissolved into air. If you will indulge my presumptuous speculation, I believe she also found some measure of absolution from the guilt she harbored over our illicit liaison through hearing of Mr. Rokurō’s grotesque demise—a fitting end wrought by his own vile machinations. She must have rejoiced at discovering this thread of justification: “Since he tormented me so cruelly, surely even I…”

Since it was exactly dinner time—perhaps owing to her mood—she bustled about bringing out Western-style liquor to entertain me. As for myself, delighted that she had approved of the written opinion and yielding to her urging, I inadvertently drank too much. Being weak to alcohol, I soon turned crimson; yet as always when intoxicated, I paradoxically grew melancholy—speaking little while doing nothing but gaze at Shizuko’s face. Though her features had grown quite haggard, that pallor was her natural complexion; her entire body retained its supple elasticity, and that mysterious charm—like smoldering embers at her core—remained undiminished. Rather, now that it was woolen garment season, the lines of her figure clad in old-fashioned flannel appeared even more alluring than ever before. I gazed at the curves of her limbs writhing beneath the quivering woolen fabric while tormentingly envisioning in my mind those portions of her flesh still concealed by garments unknown to me.

As we continued talking for some time, the intoxication from the wine inspired me with a remarkable plan. It was to rent a house in some inconspicuous location, designate it as a place for Shizuko and me to conduct our liaisons, and enjoy secret rendezvous—meant solely for the two of us—so that no one would discover us. At that moment—I must confess this shameful act—after confirming the maid had left, I abruptly pulled Shizuko close, exchanged a second kiss with her, and while my hands reveled in the feel of her flannel-clad back, I whispered this idea into her ear. Not only did she not refuse my abrupt gesture, but she even nodded her head slightly and accepted my proposal.

How should I record those over twenty days of our frequent liaisons—those festering, nightmarish days—that followed? I rented an old-fashioned house with a storehouse near the pine trees of Negishi Goyō, entrusted its caretaking to an old woman from a nearby candy store, and having arranged with Shizuko, we would often meet there during the daytime. I had perhaps, for the first time, truly tasted the intensity—the sheer ferocity—of a woman’s passion. At times, Shizuko and I would revert to being like children, dashing about entwined through the vast, ramshackle haunted-house-like home, tongues lolling like hunting dogs as we panted and gasped for breath. When I tried to grab her, she would writhe like a dolphin, slipping through my hands with uncanny agility before darting away. Until we collapsed in a limp, lifeless heap, we ran ourselves breathless. At times, we would shut ourselves inside a dimly lit storehouse and remain completely silent for one or even two hours. Had someone been there pressing an ear to the storehouse entrance, they would have heard—intermingled with a woman’s sorrowful sobs in duet-like fashion—the unchecked weeping of a thick-voiced man continuing for a long while.

But one day, when Shizuko brought that foreign-made riding crop—the one Mr. Rokurō had always used—hidden within a large bouquet of peonies, I even felt a sort of fear. She pressed it into my hand and urged me to strike her naked body as Mr. Rokurō had done. It was likely that Mr. Rokurō’s prolonged cruelty had finally imprinted his perversion upon her, reducing her to a masochist tormented by unbearable desires. And I, too, would surely have been afflicted with the same illness as Mr. Rokurō had my rendezvous with her continued like this for half a year. Why, you ask? Because when I, unable to refuse her entreaties, brought that riding crop down upon her delicate flesh, and when I saw those venomous, earthworm-like swellings suddenly rise across her pallid skin—what chilled me most was that I felt an inexplicable pleasure.

However, I did not begin writing this account to chronicle such amorous affairs between a man and woman. I shall reserve those details for when I eventually novelize this case, limiting myself here to appending one fact I learned from Shizuko during our liaison. This concerned that wig of Mr. Rokurō’s—indeed specially commissioned by Mr. Rokurō himself. Being excessively fastidious about such matters, he had ordered it with childish earnestness to conceal his unsightly baldness during bedroom play with Shizuko, despite her laughing attempts to dissuade him. "Why did you conceal this until now?" I asked. Shizuko replied, "Because... it was too shameful to mention."

Now, when about twenty days of such circumstances had passed, and it began to seem odd for me to show my face so infrequently, I put on a composed front and visited the Oyamada residence. After meeting Shizuko and exchanging stiff formalities for roughly an hour, I was sent home in the family’s regular car—but the fact that its driver happened to be Aoki Tamazō, the very man from whom I had previously acquired the gloves, became the catalyst that once again drew me into that bizarre waking dream.

The gloves were different, but everything else—the shape of his hands gripping the steering wheel, his old-fashioned navy spring coat (worn directly over his white shirt), those taut shoulders, the windshield in front, even the small mirror above it—all remained exactly as they had been about a month prior. That left me with an increasingly peculiar state of mind. I recalled how I had tried calling out “Ōe Haruneido” to this driver back then. Then, to my bewilderment, my mind overflowed with memories of Haruneido’s face from photographs, the bizarre plots of his works, and the enigma of his peculiar lifestyle. By the end, I felt him so near that I imagined Haruneido might be sitting on the cushion right beside me. And then—for an instant—I grew dazed and blurted out something strange.

“You—you there, Aoki! About those gloves from before—when exactly did you get them from Mr. Oyamada?” “Huh?” The driver turned his face just as he had a month prior, wearing a dumbfounded expression. “Well… that was last year, of course. November… I remember it being the day I received my wages from the accounts office—a day when I often got gifts, I thought—so it was November 28th.” “There’s no mistake about it.”

“Huh… November 28th, you say?” Still dazed, I repeated his response like a delirious murmur. “But sir, why are you so fixated on those gloves? Was there something about them?” The driver had been saying such things with a sly grin, but I didn’t respond, staring fixedly at the tiny speck of dust clinging to the windshield. I remained in that state while the car drove four or five blocks. But suddenly, I stood up in the car, abruptly grabbed the driver’s shoulder, and bellowed.

“You’re certain about that November 28th date, aren’t you? Can you swear to that even before a judge?” As the car staggered unsteadily, the driver adjusted the steering wheel while replying: “Before a judge? You can’t be serious. But there’s no mistake about November 28th. There are witnesses, you know. Because my assistant saw it too.”

Aoki, taken aback by my excessive seriousness, nevertheless answered earnestly. “Then you’re turning back again.” “Turn back to Ms. Oyamada’s.” The driver grew increasingly flustered and appeared somewhat frightened, but even so, he turned the car around as I instructed and arrived at the gate of the Oyamada residence.

I leapt out of the car, rushed to the entrance, seized the maid who was there, and abruptly demanded— “During last year’s year-end soot cleaning, this house had all the ceiling boards in the Japanese-style rooms removed and washed with lye solution, correct? That’s true, right?” As I mentioned earlier, I had learned about that when I once climbed into the attic and heard it from Shizuko. The maid might have thought I had gone mad. For a while, she stared fixedly at my face,

“Yes, that is correct. It wasn’t a lye wash—we only had them washed with water—but the lye washers did come. That was on the 25th of December.” “All the ceilings in every room?” “Yes, all of them.” Hearing this, Shizuko emerged from the inner rooms as well, but she gazed at my face with a worried expression. “What is the matter?” she inquired. I repeated my earlier question once more, and upon hearing the same response from Shizuko as from the maid, I offered only a perfunctory farewell before leaping back into the automobile. Ordering the driver to take me to my lodgings, I sank deeply into the cushions and surrendered myself to my innate, mud-like delusions.

The ceiling boards of the Japanese-style rooms in the Oyamada residence had been completely removed and washed with water on December 25th of last year. In that case, the decorative clasp must have fallen into the attic after that date. Yet on November 28th—as established earlier—the gloves had already been given to the driver. That the clasp found in the attic had detached from those very gloves was an undeniable fact, as I had often stated before. This meant the clasp from the gloves in question had vanished before it could ever have fallen. This bizarre phenomenon, akin to Einsteinian physics—what exactly did it signify? It was then that I grasped its meaning. To confirm matters, I visited Aoki Tamazō at the garage and questioned both him and his assistant—there was no error about November 28th. I also sought out the contractor responsible for washing the Oyamada ceilings, who confirmed December 25th without discrepancy. He guaranteed that with all ceiling boards removed, not even the smallest object could have remained behind.

Even so, if one were to stubbornly insist that Mr. Rokurō had dropped that clasp, there was no other choice but to consider it in this manner. In other words, the clasp that had come off the glove remained in Mr. Rokurō’s pocket. Mr. Rokurō, unaware of this, had given the gloves to the driver because they were unusable without their clasps. Then, at least one month later—possibly three months later (the threatening letters had begun arriving around February)—when he went up into the attic, it was by sheer coincidence that the clasp fell from his pocket, resulting in this convoluted sequence of events. Moreover, it’s strange that the glove clasp remained in a clothing pocket rather than a coat (gloves are typically stored in coat pockets). And it is unthinkable that Mr. Rokurō would have gone up to the attic wearing an overcoat. No, even considering that he went up wearing a suit is quite unnatural.) Moreover, it’s unthinkable that a wealthy gentleman like Mr. Rokurō would have remained in the same clothes he wore at year’s end all through spring.

This became the trigger, and once again, the shadow of the beast Ōe Haruneido cast itself over my heart. Could it be that the material—straight out of a modern detective novel—about Mr. Rokurō being a sadistic pervert had caused me to fall into an outrageous delusion? (That he had beaten Shizuko with a foreign-made riding crop was an undeniable fact,) but then again—could it be that he had actually been murdered by someone after all? Ōe Haruneido—ah, the shadow of the monster Ōe Haruneido—clung tenaciously to my heart.

Once such a thought took root, all things began to seem suspiciously strange. That I, a mere mystery novelist, could have constructed the sort of reasoning laid out in my report so effortlessly now struck me as absurd upon reflection. In truth, because I sensed some outrageous error lurking within that document of mine—partly owing to being consumed by my liaison with Shizuko—I had left it as a rough draft, never producing a fair copy. Indeed, I found myself strangely disinclined to proceed. And now, I had even come to regard this reluctance as having been for the best.

When I thought about it, the evidence in this case was too perfectly aligned. Everywhere I went, perfectly suited pieces of evidence lay scattered about as if lying in wait. As Ōe Haruneido himself had written in his works, a detective must be most vigilant precisely when they encounter too much evidence. First and foremost, is it not highly implausible that the authentic-seeming handwriting of those threatening letters was a forgery by Mr. Rokurō, as I had deluded myself into believing? As Honda had once pointed out, even if one could imitate Haruneido’s handwriting, how could Mr. Rokurō—a businessman from a completely different field—have replicated that distinctive prose? I had completely forgotten until then, but in Haruneido’s story titled *A Single Stamp*, there is a tale about the hysterical wife of a medical doctor who, out of hatred for her husband, fabricated evidence—as if the doctor had practiced imitating her handwriting to create a forged suicide note—in an attempt to frame him for murder. Could it be that Haruneido, in this case as well, employed that same method in an attempt to frame Mr. Rokurō?

Depending on one’s perspective, this case was like a collection of Ōe Haruneido’s greatest works. For instance, the spying from the attic mirrored “The Attic Game,” the clasp used as evidence derived from that novel’s premise, practicing to imitate Haruneido’s handwriting echoed “A Single Stamp,” and the fresh wounds on the nape of Shizuko’s neck—hinting at a sadistic pervert—followed the method of “The Murder on B Slope.” From the glass shards that created the puncture wound to the naked corpse drifting beneath the privy—the entire case reeked of Ōe Haruneido’s distinctive aura. Wasn’t this too bizarre a coincidence to be mere chance? Hadn’t Haruneido’s immense shadow loomed over this case from beginning to end? I felt as though I had been constructing deductions exactly as Ōe Haruneido directed, bending to his every whim. It even seemed to me that Haruneido had possessed me.

Haruneido was out there somewhere. Undoubtedly, snake-like eyes had been gleaming from the depths of this case. It was not through reason—I could not help but feel this. But where was he? I lay on the futon in my boarding house room pondering this, but even someone as robust as myself had grown weary of these endless delusions. As I thought myself into exhaustion, I drifted into a fitful sleep. Then, when I awoke with a start from a strange dream, a peculiar realization floated into my mind.

Though late at night, I called his boarding house and had Honda summoned. "You said Ōe Haruneido's wife had a round face, didn't you?" When Honda came to the phone, I startled him by abruptly asking this question without preamble. "Yes, that's right."

After a moment—perhaps realizing it was me—Honda answered in a sleep-thickened voice. "She always wore her hair in a Western style, didn’t she?" “Yes, that’s correct.” “She wore near-sighted glasses, didn’t she?” “Yes, that’s correct.” “She had gold teeth, didn’t she?” “Yes, that’s correct.” “Her teeth were bad, weren’t they? And didn’t you say she often had toothache plasters stuck to her cheek?” “You’re quite well-informed. Have you met Haruneido’s wife?” “No, I heard it from people in the neighborhood of Sakuramachi. But when you met her, was she still suffering from a toothache?”

“Yes, always.” “She must’ve had dreadful teeth.” “Was it on the right cheek?” “I don’t recall clearly, but I believe it was the right side.” “Still, it’s rather odd for a young woman with Western-style hair to use such an antiquated toothache plaster.” “Nobody uses those anymore these days.” “True.” “But what’s this about?” “Have you uncovered some lead in that case?”

“Well, that’s right.” “I’ll tell you the details in due time.”

Thus, I had questioned Honda once again about matters I already knew from prior inquiries, purely for confirmation’s sake.

Then, upon the manuscript paper atop my desk, I wrote and erased, wrote and erased—various shapes, characters, and formula-like notations—as though solving a geometrical problem, until nearly dawn.

Eleven With matters standing thus—and since the letters I usually sent to arrange our assignations had lapsed for about three days—Shizuko, unable to endure waiting any longer, sent an express letter urging me to come to our usual hideaway tomorrow around three in the afternoon. It lamented: “Now that you’ve learned this woman’s shameless true nature—haven’t you become disgusted with me? Haven’t you grown afraid of me?”

Even after receiving this letter, I felt strangely reluctant. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her face. But despite that, at the time she had specified, I made my way to that monster house beneath Ogyō no Matsu.

It was already June, but the sky hung oppressively low overhead like the gloom preceding the rainy season, making it a day of maddeningly sweltering heat. After getting off the train, during the three or four blocks I walked, my underarms and back broke out in clammy sweat; when I touched it, my Fuji silk shirt clung damply to my skin. Shizuko had arrived a step ahead of me and sat waiting on the bed inside the cool storehouse. On the second floor of the storehouse, we had laid out carpets, placed beds and chaise longues, arranged several large mirrors—decorating our stage for play as elaborately as possible—but Shizuko, ignoring my attempts to dissuade her, purchased preposterously expensive items without hesitation, whether carpets or beds, though they were merely ready-made.

Shizuko sat perched on the pure white bedsheet, her glossy marumage chignon carefully covered as usual. She wore a showy hitoe kimono of Yūki tsumugi silk fastened with a black satin obi embroidered with fallen paulownia leaves. Yet the Western furnishings and her Edo-style figure—framed by the dimly lit storehouse’s second floor—created a grotesquely discordant tableau. Whenever I saw how she stubbornly retained her beloved marumage chignon—its alluringly glossy sheen undimmed even after losing her husband—I could not help envisioning that grotesquely disheveled sight: the chignon sagging limply, her bangs crushed into disarray, greasy stray locks clinging to her nape. For it was her custom, whenever returning from that hideaway, to spend thirty minutes before the mirror tidying her disheveled hair.

“The other day—what was the reason you went out of your way to come back and ask about the lye washer?” “You were so flustered, weren’t you?” “I tried to figure out why, but I simply couldn’t understand it.”

When I entered, Shizuko immediately asked me that. “Don’t you understand? You of all people—” I answered as I took off my suit jacket. “It’s a serious matter.” “I’d made a grave mistake.” “The attic was cleaned at the end of December, but the clasp from Mr. Oyamada’s glove had come off over a month before that.” “Because that driver said he was given the gloves on November 28th—the clasp must have detached before then.” “The entire sequence is backwards!”

“Oh!” Shizuko looked utterly astonished, though she still didn’t seem to fully grasp the situation. “But the clasp fell into the attic after it came off, didn’t it?” “The sequence may be after the fact—but the intervening time is what matters.” “In other words, unless the clasp came off when Mr. Oyamada went up into the attic, it makes no sense.” “To be precise—yes, it was after—but because it fell into the attic the very moment it came off and remained there, you see.” “For it to take over a month between coming loose and falling—that defies all laws of physics!”

“I suppose so.” She had turned slightly pale and was still deep in thought. “If the detached clasp had been in Mr. Oyamada’s coat pocket and then accidentally fallen into the attic a month later, that would explain things—but even so, are you saying Mr. Oyamada wore the same clothes from last November all through spring?” “No.” “No. He was quite the fashionable one, you know—by year’s end, he had long since switched to thick winter clothes.”

“There, you see?” “That’s why it’s strange, don’t you think?”

“Then—” She drew a sharp breath. “So it was Hirata after all…” she began, then fell silent.

“That’s right. “There’s far too much of Ōe Haruneido’s stench permeating this case, you see. “So I’ve had to completely revise my previous report.” I then explained to her—as noted in the previous chapter—how this case resembled a collection of Haruneido’s masterpieces, how the evidence aligned too perfectly, and how the forgeries had been crafted with such excessive realism.

“You probably aren’t aware of this, but Haruneido’s lifestyle was truly bizarre. Why did he refuse to meet visitors? Why did he go to such lengths—moving house so frequently, taking trips, feigning illness—to avoid callers? And why, in the end, did he waste money keeping that house in Mukōjima Suzaki-chō rented yet vacant? However reclusive a novelist might be—isn’t this all too peculiar? If it wasn’t preparatory acts for committing murder, then isn’t that too strange?”

I had been sitting beside Shizuko on the bed as we spoke, but when she realized it truly was Haruneido’s doing, she suddenly seemed overcome with fear. Pressing her body tightly against mine, she gripped my left wrist with a tingling irritation.

“When I think about it, I’ve been turned into his puppet through and through.” “It’s exactly as if I’ve been made to rehearse his prearranged false evidence by using his own deductions as a model.” “Hahaha—” I laughed self-derisively. “He’s a terrifying man.” “He had thoroughly grasped my way of thinking and fabricated the evidence exactly as such.” “Ordinary detectives or the like wouldn’t have sufficed.” “It’s precisely because I’m a detective novelist with a penchant for deduction that I could conjure such convoluted and outlandish imaginings.” “But if we suppose the culprit is Haruneido, various inconsistencies arise.” “The emergence of these inconsistencies is the very reason this case is so inscrutable—it’s precisely what marks Haruneido as a villain of unfathomable depths, you see.” “The inconsistencies boil down to two points, you see. First, those threatening letters stopped abruptly after Mr. Oyamada’s death. Second, how did items like the diary, Haruneido’s works, and *Shin Seinen* end up in Mr. Oyamada’s bookshelf?” “These two points alone—if we suppose Haruneido is the culprit—simply don’t add up, you see.” “Even supposing that man could have imitated Mr. Oyamada’s handwriting to write those marginal notes in the diary, and even if he had fabricated things like the pencil marks on *Shin Seinen*’s frontispiece to prepare false evidence—the truly impossible thing is how Haruneido obtained the key to that bookshelf, which only Mr. Oyamada possessed.” “And how he managed to infiltrate that study.” “For these past three days, I’ve thought about that point until my head ached—” “As a result, I think I’ve found just one solution—”

“As I mentioned earlier, since this case is permeated with the essence of Haruneido’s works, I thought studying his novels more thoroughly might yield some key to solving it—so I retrieved his books and read them.” “Now, there’s something I hadn’t yet told you—according to a man named Honda from Hakubunkan, Haruneido had been spotted loitering around Asakusa Park dressed in an absurd outfit: a pointed hat and clown costume.” “Moreover, when we checked with the advertising agency, they concluded that figure could only have been one of the park’s vagrants.” “The notion of Haruneido hiding among Asakusa Park’s vagrants—isn’t that precisely like Stevenson’s *Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde*?” “When I realized this, I combed through Haruneido’s works for similar patterns—as you may recall, there were two: the full-length novel *Panorama Island* he wrote just before vanishing, and an earlier short story titled *One Actor, Two Roles*.” “Reading them makes abundantly clear how profoundly he was captivated by that *Jekyll*-esque approach.” “In essence—being one person while masquerading as two distinct individuals.”

“I’m scared.” Shizuko tightly gripped my hand and said, “The way you’re talking gives me chills. Let’s stop this talk. I can’t bear being in this dim storehouse. Save that discussion for later—let’s enjoy ourselves today. When I’m with you like this, I don’t even remember Hirata’s existence.” “Now listen well,” I insisted. “This concerns your very life. If Haruneido still has you in his sights—”

I was in no state for romantic games. “I have discovered only two strange coincidences within this case.” “To put it in scholarly terms—one is a spatial coincidence and the other a temporal one—but here’s a map of Tokyo.” I took out a simple Tokyo map I had prepared from my pocket and, pointing with my finger, said, “I’ve memorized Ōe Haruneido’s various addresses from Honda and the chief of Koshigaya Police Station—they were roughly as follows: Ikebukuro, Ushigome-Kikui-chō, Negishi, Yanaka-Hatsune-chō, Nippori-Kanesugi, Kanda-Suehiro-chō, Ueno-Sakuragi-chō, Honjo-Yanagishima-chō, and Mukōjima-Suzaki-chō.” “Of these, only Ikebukuro and Ushigome-Kikui-chō are quite far apart, but when you look at the remaining seven locations on the map like this, they cluster within a narrow area in the northeastern corner of Tokyo.” “This was a grave blunder on Haruneido’s part.” “The reason Ikebukuro and Ushigome are far apart becomes clear when you consider that Haruneido’s literary fame rose and journalists began swarming to him starting from his Negishi period.” “In other words, up until his Kikui-chō period, he had handled all manuscript matters solely through letters.” “Now, if we connect the seven locations starting from Negishi with lines like this”—I traced imaginary connections on the map—“they form an irregular circumference. The key to solving this case lies at the center of that circle.” “Let me explain why this must be so—”

At that moment—what thoughts crossed Shizuko’s mind?—she released my hand, suddenly wrapped both arms around my neck, and with those Mona Lisa lips of hers baring white double teeth, screamed “I’m scared!” as she pressed her cheek to mine, her lips firmly against my lips. We lingered like that for a short while, but when her lips parted, she now skillfully tickled my ear with her index finger, brought her mouth close to it, and whispered in a hushed murmur—sweet and lulling, like a nursery rhyme.

“I can’t bear to waste our precious time with such frightening talk. You—can’t you feel these lips of mine burning like fire? Can’t you hear this pounding in my chest? Now, hold me. Come—hold me.”

“Just a little more.” “Just a little longer—please bear with me and listen to what I have to say.” “On top of that，I came here today because I wanted to discuss things thoroughly with you.” I continued speaking without regard： “Now，regarding the temporal coincidence—you see， “The sudden disappearance of Haruneido’s name from magazines—I remember it well—dates back to the end of the year before last.” “And then，regarding the time when Mr．Oyamada returned from abroad—you did say that was also at the end of the year before last，didn’t you？” “How on earth do these two things match up so perfectly？” “Could this be a coincidence？” “What do you think？”

Before I could finish speaking, Shizuko brought that foreign-made riding crop from the corner of the room, forced it into my right hand, then suddenly stripped off her kimono and collapsed facedown onto the bed. From beneath her exposed, smooth shoulders, she turned just her face toward me— “What does that matter? Such things, such things—” she babbled incoherently like a madwoman, but then screamed, “Now, hit me! Hit me!” as she undulated her upper body like a wave.

From the small storehouse window, a mouse-gray sky was visible. Was it the rumble of a train? From far away, something like thunder—mingling with the ringing in my own ears—came rumbling in ominously. It seemed exactly like the war drums of a demonic horde descending from the heavens—a sound so unsettling it chilled the blood. Wasn’t it that weather and the strange atmosphere inside the storehouse that had driven the two of us to madness? Both Shizuko and I, when we later reflected on it, realized it had been no act of sanity. I gazed at her sweat-drenched, pallid body writhing where she lay, yet doggedly continued my deductions.

“On one hand, it’s as clear as day that Ōe Haruneido is involved in this case,” I said. “But on the other hand, despite the Japanese police force spending a full two months trying to locate that famous novelist, that bastard had vanished completely like smoke.” My voice trembled slightly. “Ah, even the thought of it terrifies me.” It felt almost strange that this wasn’t a nightmare. Why didn’t he try to kill Oyamada Shizuko? He had abruptly ceased writing threatening letters. What kind of ninja trick had that bastard used to infiltrate Mr. Oyamada’s study? And how had he managed to open that locked bookshelf? I couldn’t help recalling a certain person—none other than the female detective novelist Hirayama Hideko. The world believed her to be a woman. Even among fellow writers and journalists, many clung to that assumption. Love letters from young male admirers reportedly flooded Hirayama Hideko’s home nearly every day. Yet the truth was, he was a man—a respected government official, no less. Detective novelists—all of us, whether me, Haruneido, or Hirayama Hideko—were monsters. Men dressing as women, women dressing as men—when one’s taste for the grotesque intensified, that’s where it led. A certain writer had wandered Asakusa at night in women’s clothing. “And even pretended to be in love with a man,” I muttered.

I had become so consumed that I kept talking like a madman. Sweat beaded across my entire face, then crawled revoltingly into my mouth.

“Now, Ms. Shizuko. “Please listen carefully. “Is my reasoning mistaken or not? “Where is the center of the circle formed by connecting Haruneido’s addresses? “Please look at this map. “Your house. “Asakusa Mountain Inn. “All of them are within ten minutes by car from your house… Why did Haruneido vanish just as Mr. Oyamada returned to Japan? “Because you could no longer attend your tea ceremony and music lessons. “Do you understand? “During Mr. Oyamada’s absence, you attended tea ceremony and music lessons every day from afternoon until night. “…Who was it that set everything up perfectly and made me come up with that reasoning? “It was you—you who captured me at the museum and then manipulated me at will… And being you, you could freely add arbitrary phrases to the diary, plant other evidence in Mr. Oyamada’s bookshelf, even drop a clasp in the attic—all of it within your power. “This is where my deductions have led me. “Is there any other possible explanation? “Now, give me your answer. “Now, answer me.”

“This is too cruel.” “Too cruel.”

Shizuko, now naked, let out a wail and clung to me. And then, pressing her face against my shirt, she wept so bitterly that I could feel her hot tears through my skin.

“Why are you crying? Why have you been trying to stop my deductions from the start? If this were truly a matter of life and death for you—as it should be—wouldn’t you be desperate to hear me out? Even this much makes me unable to doubt you any longer. Listen—my reasoning isn’t finished yet. Why would Haruneido’s wife wear glasses? Why insert gold teeth? Apply a toothache patch? Style her hair Western-style to make her round-faced? Isn’t that identical to the disguise methods in Haruneido’s *Panorama Island*? In that novel, he expounds on the essence of Japanese disguise—changing hairstyles, wearing glasses, stuffing cotton in cheeks. And in *The One-Sen Copper Coin*, he describes capping healthy teeth with gold-plated ones from night stalls. You have conspicuous double teeth—so you capped them with gold. A large beauty mark on your right cheek—hidden under that toothache patch. Styling your traditional marumage chignon into Western hair to round your oval face? Child’s play. Thus you became Haruneido’s wife. Two days ago, I had Honda observe you covertly—to confirm the resemblance. Didn’t he say that with Western hair, glasses, and gold teeth, you’d mirror her exactly? Now—out with it! I’ve unraveled everything.”

“Even now, are you still trying to deceive me?”

I pushed Shizuko away. She collapsed limply onto the bed and wept violently, showing no sign of answering no matter how long I waited. I had become completely worked up and, without thinking, swung the riding crop I was holding, striking her bare back with a sharp crack. I became completely absorbed, striking her again and again as if to say, "Take this! And this!" Before my eyes, her pale skin flushed red, and soon bright red blood seeped out in the shape of earthworm tracks. Beneath my whip, she writhed her limbs and twisted her body in the same indecent posture she always assumed. And then, from beneath her faltering breath, she muttered in a thin voice, “Hirata… Hirata…”

“Hirata? Ah, you’re still trying to deceive me, aren’t you? If you were disguised as Haruneido’s wife, are you suggesting Haruneido exists separately? There’s no such person as Haruneido! He’s entirely fictional. To maintain this deception, you posed as his wife to meet magazine reporters and others. And you kept changing addresses so frequently. But some people couldn’t be fooled by a mere fictional character—so you hired a vagrant from Asakusa Park and installed him in your parlor. It wasn’t Haruneido disguising himself as the clown-suited man—it was the clown-suited man disguising himself as Haruneido!”

Shizuko lay on the bed like a corpse, remaining silent. Only the earthworm-like welts on her back squirmed as though alive with each breath she took. As she fell silent, my excitement too began to cool.

“Ms. Shizuko. I didn’t intend to go this far. I could have discussed it more calmly. But you kept trying so desperately to evade my words—and then tried to deceive me with those coquettish acts—so I lost control, you see. Please forgive me. Well then, you needn’t speak. I will now lay out everything you’ve done in proper order. If I’m mistaken, just say so.”

And then, I laid out my reasoning in a way that was easy to understand. “You were blessed with intellect and literary talent rare for a woman. “That much becomes abundantly clear just from reading the letters you gave me. “That you chose to write detective novels anonymously under a male pseudonym was not at all unreasonable. “But that novel was unexpectedly well-received. “And then, just when you were on the verge of becoming famous, Mr. Oyamada ended up going abroad for two whole years. “To ease that loneliness, and to satisfy your penchant for the grotesque, you suddenly conceived a terrifying trick of one person playing three roles. “You’ve written a novel called *One Person, Two Roles*, but you went beyond that to conceive the brilliant idea of one person playing three roles. “You rented a house in Negishi under the name Hirata Ichirō. “The previous addresses in Ikebukuro and Ushigome were merely places you set up to receive letters. “And by using misanthropy and trips as excuses to keep the man Hirata hidden from public view, you disguised yourself as Mrs. Hirata and took care of all manuscript negotiations in his stead. “In other words, when writing manuscripts, you became Hirata of Ōe Haruneido; when meeting magazine reporters or renting houses, you became Mrs. Hirata; and at the mountain villa’s Oyamada residence, you impersonated Mrs. Oyamada. “In other words, you were performing three roles. “For that purpose, you had to leave home nearly every day for the entire afternoon under the pretense of attending tea ceremony and music lessons. “Half a day as Mrs. Oyamada, half a day as Mrs. Hirata—you skillfully divided your single body between these roles. “For that, you needed to restyle your hair and required time to change kimonos and disguise yourself, so being too far away would have been inconvenient. “So that’s why, when changing addresses, you chose locations all within about ten minutes by car from the mountain villa as your base. “Since I am a fellow enthusiast of the grotesque, I understand your feelings perfectly. “It must have been quite a laborious task, but in this world, there’s likely no other game as alluring as this one. “I’ve just thought of something, you know.”

“Once, a critic evaluated Haruneido’s works as brimming with an unpleasant degree of suspicion only a woman could possess,” “I recall someone said it was like a beast writhing in the shadows of darkness.” “That critic spoke the truth, didn’t he?” Before long, those brief two years had passed, and Mr. Oyamada returned home. “You could no longer maintain your dual roles as before.” “That’s how Ōe Haruneido came to be considered missing.” “But society—knowing Haruneido was an extreme misanthrope—hardly questioned his unnatural disappearance.” “As for why you resolved to commit such a terrible crime—though as a man I can’t fully grasp your psychology—books on abnormal psychology state that hysterical women often send threatening letters to themselves.” “Japan and foreign lands alike teem with such cases.” “In essence, you wished both to terrify yourself and elicit others’ pity—that’s the psychological state described.” “I’m certain that’s precisely what you are.” “Receiving threats from the very famous male novelist you’d been impersonating—” “What exquisite allure.”

“At the same time, you had grown dissatisfied with your aging husband. And you came to harbor an irresistible longing for that life of perverse freedom you experienced during his absence. No—to put it more plainly, just as you once wrote in Haruneido’s novels, you felt an unspeakable allure toward crime itself—toward murder itself. For that purpose, there existed the perfect fictional character: Haruneido, who had vanished completely. By pinning suspicion on him, you could have remained safe forever—rid of your detestable husband, inheriting his vast fortune, and living out your days as you pleased.”

“But you weren’t satisfied with that alone. To ensure perfection, you devised a double safeguard—and I became your chosen instrument. You cleverly manipulated me, your perpetual critic of Haruneido’s works, into serving as your puppet to turn us against each other, didn’t you? How absurd it must have seemed when I showed you that analysis! Deceiving me required no effort at all—the glove clasp, the diary, *Shin Seinen*, ‘The Attic Game.’ That sufficed entirely. Yet as you so often write in your novels, criminals invariably leave some trifling blunder behind. You seized that clasp from Mr. Oyamada’s glove as vital evidence without verifying when it detached—never realizing those gloves had been given to the driver long before. What a pitiful oversight! Mr. Oyamada’s mortal injury aligns precisely with my prior deduction—save that he wasn’t spying through the window from outside. No, during your erotic games—hence that wig—you pushed him out from within.”

“Now, Ms. Shizuko.” “Was my reasoning mistaken?” “Please give me some kind of response.” “If you can, refute my reasoning.” “Come on, Ms. Shizuko.”

I placed my hand on Shizuko’s slumped shoulder and gave it a light shake. But whether it was due to shame and regret that she couldn’t lift her face, she remained motionless, not uttering a single word.

Once I had said all I wanted to say, I felt deflated and stood there in a daze.

Before me lay the woman who until yesterday had been my one and only lover, collapsed and revealing the true form of the wounded beast in the shadows. As I stared fixedly at her, my eyes grew hot.

“Well then, I’ll take my leave now.”

I regained my composure and said. “You must think this through carefully later.” “And choose the right path.” “Over this past month, thanks to you, I was able to glimpse a world of erotic obsession I had never before experienced.” “And when I think of that, even now, I find it hard to part from you.” “But my conscience will not permit continuing this relationship with you as it is.” “I am a man of exceptional moral sensitivity.” “……Well then—farewell.”

I left a heartfelt kiss upon the earthworm-like scar on Shizuko’s back, then departed our haunted house—the stage of our erotic obsession for some time—leaving it behind. The sky seemed to hang even lower, and the temperature felt as though it had risen yet further. While my entire body was drenched in an eerie sweat, clattering my real and false teeth together, I staggered along like a madman.

12

And it was in the evening paper the following day that I learned of Shizuko’s suicide. She had likely thrown herself from the second floor of that Western-style mansion into the same Sumida River as Mr. Oyamada Rokurō, meeting her resolute death by drowning. The terror of fate may have arisen from the Sumida River’s unvarying currents, yet her corpse still drifted near that steamboat dock beneath Azumabashi Bridge, where morning passersby discovered it. The uninformed newspaper reporter appended to his article: “Mrs. Oyamada likely met her tragic end at the hands of the same culprit as her husband Rokurō.”

When I read this article, I pitied my former lover’s pitiful death and felt a profound sorrow; yet even so, I believed Shizuko’s death was as good as a confession of her terrible crime—a perfectly natural outcome. For about a month, I clung to that belief without question.

However, as the feverish intensity of my delusions gradually cooled over time, terrifying doubts began to surface in my mind. I had never once heard a direct confession from Shizuko herself. Though various pieces of evidence had been assembled, their interpretation had been entirely born of my own imagination. This wasn't some immutable truth like two plus two equaling four. In fact, hadn't I used nothing but the driver's testimony and the lye washer's account to reinterpret those very same pieces of evidence - which had once formed such a convincing deduction - in a completely opposite light? How could I possibly claim this same reversal couldn't occur with my other line of reasoning? The truth was, even when confronting Shizuko in that storehouse's second floor, I'd never initially intended to go so far. I'd meant to calmly explain my reasoning and hear her defense. But midway through our conversation, her strange demeanor had inflamed my baseless suspicions, driving me to speak with such harsh finality. And when she stubbornly refused to answer despite my repeated demands, I'd convinced myself this silence constituted an admission of guilt. But was this not ultimately nothing more than self-deception?

Indeed, she had committed suicide. (But was it truly suicide?) Murder! If it was murder, who was the perpetrator? (What a horrifying thought.) Just because she committed suicide, does that truly prove her guilt? Could there not have been some other reason entirely? For example—if she, a woman of narrow temperament, found herself accused and hounded by me, whom she had trusted, and realized there was no way to clear her name—might she not have been driven by a momentary impulse to abandon this world? In that case, though my hands did not strike the blow, was it not clearly I who killed her? Though I had earlier declared it wasn’t murder, what else could this be but murder?

But if it were only the suspicion that I might have killed a single woman, I could still have endured it. However, my unfortunate delusional tendencies drove me to consider even more terrifying possibilities. She had clearly been in love with me. I had to imagine the heart of a woman suspected by her beloved and tormented as a vile criminal. Was it not precisely because she loved me—precisely because she agonized under her lover’s unbearable suspicions—that she ultimately resolved to take her own life? Even supposing my dreadful reasoning had been correct—why would she decide to kill the husband she had spent so many years with? Could freedom or property—could such things truly hold power enough to drive a woman to murder? Could it not have been love? And was that lover anyone but myself?

Ah—what am I to do with this most dreadful suspicion in all the world? Whether Shizuko was a murderer or not, I had killed that pitiable woman who had loved me so deeply. I could not help but curse my petty moralistic sensibilities. Is there anything in this world as strong and beautiful as love? Could it be that I, with a moralist’s obstinate heart, had mercilessly crushed that pure and beautiful love?

But if she had indeed been Ōe Haruneido himself as I imagined—if she had committed that terrible murder—then I might still find some measure of peace. Yet now that matters had reached this stage, how could such a thing ever be confirmed? Mr. Oyamada Rokurō was dead. Oyamada Shizuko too was dead. And one could only conclude that Ōe Haruneido had vanished from this world forever. Honda had remarked that Shizuko resembled Haruneido’s wife—but what proof lay in mere resemblance? I visited Prosecutor Itosaki repeatedly to inquire about developments, but he would only give vague replies each time, with no apparent progress in locating Haruneido. I also commissioned someone to investigate Hirata Ichirō’s hometown of Shizuoka—though my desperate hope that he might prove entirely fictional came to naught when they reported that a man by that name had indeed existed and was now missing. But even if this Hirata had truly existed, even if he had indeed been Shizuko’s former lover, how could I possibly conclude that he was both Ōe Haruneido and Rokurō’s murderer? The man was nowhere to be found now, and one couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Shizuko had simply borrowed an old lover’s name for one of her assumed identities in this triple role. Furthermore, with her relatives’ permission, I had all of Shizuko’s belongings—her letters and other effects—thoroughly examined. I then attempted to extract some concrete fact from them. Yet this effort too yielded nothing of value.

I regretted my deductive mania, my delusional tendencies—regretted them with a depth that no amount of remorse could ever suffice. And if possible—to search for Hirata Ichirō’s Ōe Haruneido’s whereabouts—even knowing full well it would be futile, I had come to feel such resolve that I could wander all across Japan, no, to the very ends of the earth, on a lifelong pilgrimage. (But even if Haruneido were found—whether he proved to be the perpetrator or not—in either case, my anguish would only deepen in its own way.)

It had already been half a year since Shizuko met her tragic end. But Hirata Ichirō never appeared. And my irrevocable, terrible suspicion only deepened with each passing day and month.