Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

In the blink of an eye, the opponent collapsed onto the desk in front of him as if a clay doll had crumbled, lying flat with a heavy thud.
His face was pressed flush against the desk with such force that one might fear the bridge of his nose would shatter.
And from between the yellow skin of his face and the blue fabric of the desk cover, a vivid red liquid, like camellia blossoms, was gushing out in thick pulses.

In the commotion, the iron kettle had overturned, and from the large paulownia-wood brazier, a volcanic plume of ash Kagura billowed up like an erupting volcano. Together with the gun smoke, it sealed off the room as if in a thick fog.

Like a peep show’s picture board clattering down, the world completely transformed in an instant.
Shōtarō felt rather strange.

"What on earth happened?"

In his heart, he uttered those words with feigned nonchalance.

However, a few seconds later, he became aware that his right hand felt heavy.
When he looked, there before him glinted Okumura Ichirō’s small pistol.
“I killed him.”
He felt his throat constrict with a gulp.
His chest became a hollow cavern, his heart floating unnaturally high.
Then his jaw muscles tingled numbly, until finally his teeth began chattering at their roots.

When he regained consciousness, the first thing he thought of was, needless to say, the "gunshot." He himself had heard nothing but the strange recoil; yet since the pistol had been fired, there should have been an echoing gunshot—and now he worried that someone might come here upon hearing it.

He suddenly stood up and began pacing around the room.
Every now and then he would stop and strain his ears.

In the adjacent room was the top of the staircase.
But Shōtarō did not have the courage to approach it.
He felt as though a person’s head would pop up there at any moment.
He started toward the staircase only to turn back.

However, even after he continued doing so for a while, there was no sign that anyone was coming.
On one hand, as time passed, Shōtarō’s memory began to return. “What am I afraid of?”
"There shouldn’t have been anyone downstairs."
Okumura’s wife had returned to her hometown, and the old maid had been sent on an errand to a rather distant place before he arrived—wasn’t that the case?
“But wait—what if the neighbors…”
Having finally regained his composure, Shōtarō quietly stuck out half his face from the paper sliding door left wide open right in front of the corpse and peered outside.
On either side across the wide garden, he could see the second floors of the neighboring houses.
One side seemed unoccupied, its storm shutters closed, and the other had its sliding doors wide open to an empty tatami room devoid of any human presence.
Through the front, past a thick grove of trees, there was an open space beyond the wall where several youths playing a ball game could be glimpsed intermittently.
They seemed completely unaware, engrossed in their game.
In the autumn sky, the sharp crack of a bat striking a baseball resounded clearly.

He found it unbearable how the world remained utterly silent and oblivious to such a major event.
Maybe I’m dreaming.
He even tried entertaining such thoughts.
However, when he turned around, there lay the blood-soaked corpse, silent like an eerie doll.
That scene was clearly not a dream.

Eventually, he suddenly noticed something.
It was the height of the rice harvest season, and blank guns used to scare birds echoed here and there across the nearby fields.
During his earlier heated argument with Okumura, even amidst such intensity, he had occasionally heard that sound.
The gunshot with which he had now struck down Okumura must have been indistinguishable from those bird-scaring gunshots to people in the distance.

There was no one in the house, and the gunshot had not been suspected.
In that case, if things went well, he might just survive.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

Deep in his ears, something like a temple bell began clanging violently.

He threw the pistol he was still holding beside the corpse and started slowly heading toward the staircase.
And just as he took a step—
A terrible crash came from the garden, tree branches rustling noisily.

“Someone!”

He felt a wave of nausea and turned toward the sound.
But there was no figure such as he had expected there.
What on earth could that noise have been?
Unable to reach a judgment—or rather making no attempt to—he stood frozen for an instant.

“It’s in the garden.”

Then he heard such a voice coming from outside in the open space.

“Inside?”
“Then I’ll go get it.”

That was the familiar voice of Okumura’s younger brother, a middle school student. He remembered that when he had peered toward the open space earlier, he had subconsciously registered Okumura Jirō swinging a bat there. Soon came the lively patter of footsteps and the bang of the back gate opening; then followed such vivid rustling through the bushes—even Jirō’s labored breathing felt close enough to touch. Whether Shōtarō imagined this intensity or not, the ball search dragged on interminably. Jirō kept whistling carefree all the while, never ceasing his fumbling noises in the undergrowth.

“Looks like I found it.”

Just as he managed to compose himself, Jirō’s sudden shout sent Shōtarō leaping into the air.
Then, without so much as glancing toward the second floor, he dashed out toward the open space.

"He must know.
He knows that something happened in this room.
He’s deliberately pretending not to know—putting on an act of searching for the ball—but really came to check upstairs."

Shōtarō suddenly came up with such a thought.

"But even if he did suspect the gunshot, there's no way he could know I'd come to this house."
"He'd been playing there since before I arrived."
"From the open space, the view of this room gets blocked by the cedar grove—you can't see anything clearly. And even if you could glimpse something, it's too far away to make out my face."

On the other hand, he considered it from that angle too.
To confirm his suspicion, he pressed half his face against the paper sliding door and peered toward the open space.
Through a gap in the trees, he could see Jirō's retreating figure running while swinging his bat.
As soon as Jirō returned to his original spot, he started playing ball again like nothing had happened.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. That guy doesn’t know a thing.”

Shōtarō was in no state to laugh off his earlier foolish suspicions; instead, forcing himself into reassurance, he repeated *It’s fine, it’s fine* over and over.

However, he could no longer afford to dawdle.
The second ordeal awaited.
How could he possibly assert that before safely exiting the gate, the old woman sent on an errand wouldn’t return or he wouldn’t collide with other visitors?
As if only now noticing this, he frantically rushed down the stairs.
Midway, his legs stopped obeying and he slipped and fell with a terrible crash, though he remained barely aware of it.
Then, almost deliberately rattling the entrance lattice, he finally managed to reach the gate.

But as he tried to exit the gate, he stopped short.
He had noticed a critical omission.
He would often wonder afterward how he had managed to think through everything so thoroughly in such a moment.

He had learned about the crucial importance of fingerprints through the crime columns in newspapers during his daily life.
If anything, he had been overestimating their significance beyond reality.
The pistol he had gripped until now undoubtedly still bore his fingerprints.
Even if every other detail went perfectly, that single fingerprint alone would expose the crime.
At that thought, he found himself utterly unable to leave as he was.
Returning to the second floor was nearly impossible for him in that state, but mustering every ounce of desperate resolve, he turned back into the house.
Both legs had gone numb as if they were artificial limbs, his knees clunking and creaking like snapping wood with each step.

How he had gone upstairs, how he had wiped the pistol clean, and then how he had come out to the front gate—when he thought back later, none of it remained in his memory. Fortunately, there was no one passing by outside the gate. This area was suburban, with only a few spacious single-family homes sparsely scattered across large gardens—even during daylight hours, foot traffic tended to be scarce.

Shōtarō, his mind nearly devoid of thought, staggered along the country path.
A voice—*hurry, hurry, hurry*—reached his ears ceaselessly, like the second hand of a clock.
Despite this, his pace did not quicken at all.
In appearance, he would have looked like a carefree suburban stroller.
In reality, he walked almost unconsciously, like a sleepwalker.

II

How it had come to firing the pistol—even if called a spur of the moment—was an utterly unexpected event.
To Shōtarō, the notion that he himself was a terrifying murderer felt so much like a lie that he could scarcely believe it.

It was an undeniable fact that Shōtarō and Okumura Ichirō harbored intense mutual resentment centered around a single woman.
It was also an undeniable fact that those emotions, repelling each other, were escalating with increasing intensity.
And, at every turn, trivial external arguments caused the two to become abnormally agitated.
They both steadfastly avoided touching upon the core of the issue.
Instead, extremely trivial matters outside the issue always became the subject of their arguments, and they would quarrel almost to the point of madness.

To make matters worse, Ichirō had been a sort of patron to Shōtarō.
The poor painter Shōtarō could not have survived without Ichirō’s assistance.
He suppressed an indescribable discomfort and was repeatedly forced to pass through his romantic rival’s gate.

This incident, too, had its origins in that very cause.
At that moment, Ichirō refused Shōtarō’s loan request more firmly than ever.
Faced with this blatant hostility, Shōtarō flushed bright red.
Bowing his head before his romantic rival, he found himself reduced to begging—a sight more wretched than any other.
At the same time, the opponent—who fully knew that state of mind yet exploited his own advantageous position to display hostility where none was warranted—grated on his nerves to an unbearable degree.
For his part, Ichirō insisted he had no obligation whatsoever to comply with the loan request.
Shōtarō, for his part, argued that it was unacceptable to now be told money couldn’t be lent, given that he had been acting like a patron all along and had led others to expect material assistance implicitly.

The dispute grew increasingly intense.
The fact that their quarrel had strayed from its core issue—coupled with their shared awareness of being reduced to snarling over such vulgar financial matters—made the two men all the more insufferable to one another.
Yet had that pistol not been on Ichirō’s desk at that moment, such an outcome would surely never have occurred. The complication lay in Ichirō’s longstanding fascination with firearms; frequent robberies in the area at the time had prompted him to keep the weapon there—loaded with a bullet—for self-defense.
Shōtarō picked it up and ended up shooting the other man dead.

Even so, why he had taken that pistol and why he had placed his finger on the trigger—Shōtarō couldn’t recall the impetus for any of it. Had it been the usual Shōtarō, no matter how heated the argument became, he would not have even considered shooting the other man dead. Whether you call it a twist of time or a moment of madness, it was an incident that defied all common sense.

But the fact that Shōtarō was a murderer had already become an irrevocable reality. From this point on, there were only two options: either cleanly turn myself in or persist in feigning ignorance to the end. And as for which path Shōtarō took—needless to say, he chose the latter, as the reader has likely already surmised. If there had been even the slightest evidence remaining that could reveal him as the culprit, he surely would never have entertained such an ambition. But there was no evidence there at all. Not even a fingerprint remained. After returning to his lodging, he spent the entire night doing nothing but thinking about that very matter, over and over again. And, in the end, I resolved to steadfastly feign ignorance.

If things went well, Ichirō might be judged to have committed suicide.
Even if one were to concede a step and murder came to be suspected, what evidence could possibly conclusively prove Shōtarō was the culprit?
No evidence remained at the scene.
Not only that, but no one even knew that Shōtarō had been in Ichirō’s room at the time.

"Nah, there’s nothing to worry about.
I am always lucky.
Haven’t I often committed near-criminal misdeeds before? And hasn’t none of it ever been discovered?"

Eventually, he had reached a state where he could entertain such easy reassurances.
Once he felt somewhat relieved, there arose before him a vivid life entirely divorced from murder.
When he thought about it, he had—through that murder—unintentionally come to monopolize the lover they had both been fighting over.
She had leaned somewhat toward Ichirō due to his social status and material wealth, but now she lost that very object.

“Oh, what a fortunate man I am!”

At night, in bed, Shōtarō became optimistic—a complete reversal from daytime.
He lay wrapped in a thin quilt, gazing at the knot holes in the ceiling while thinking of his beloved.
Indescribable vivid colors, a pleasant fragrance, and soft sounds filled his mind.

III

But this peace of mind of his was, after all, confined to his bed.

The next morning, before him who had barely slept a wink came first a newspaper carrying a dreadful article. The contents of that article immediately lightened his heart. There, in a double-decker headline, Okumura Ichirō’s gruesome death was reported. The autopsy findings had been briefly outlined.

"...Given both the bullet wound at the center of the forehead and the pistol’s position where it fell, suicide cannot be considered. Based on this, authorities have already launched a manhunt on murder charges."

A few lines of this meaning glared into Shōtarō’s eyes.

Those few lines seared into Shōtarō's eyes with glaring intensity.
When he read them, he suddenly bolted upright from his futon as if struck by urgent business.
But what would he do now that he was up?
He reconsidered and burrowed back beneath the futon.
Then, as if something monstrous lurked nearby, he yanked the futon completely over his head, curled into a ball, and lay frozen.

After about an hour—what kind of hell he had endured during that time is left to the reader’s imagination—he hurriedly got up, changed into a fresh kimono, and went out.
When passing through the tearoom, the landlady of the lodging called out to him, but he gave no reply, as if he hadn’t heard.

As if drawn by some unseen force, he hurried to his lover’s residence.
If I don’t meet her now, I feel as though I’ll never get another chance to see her face again.
However, what had been the result of him traveling a distance of one *ri* by train to visit her?
There too, once again, the terrifying eyes of suspicion were waiting for him.
She, of course, knew about the incident.
And, inferring from their usual circumstances, she naturally harbored a kind of suspicion toward Shōtarō.
In reality, that may not have actually been the case, but to Shōtarō—who had a guilty conscience—it could only be thought of that way.
First, Shōtarō’s demeanor—like that of a cornered beast—startled the other person.
When she saw that, she too turned pale.

Despite having managed to meet, the two could not properly exchange words.
When Shōtarō detected suspicion in her eyes, he could no longer remain still.
No sooner had he been shown into the sitting room than he was already taking his leave.
And this time, without any particular destination, he wandered aimlessly from town to town.
No matter how far he fled, there was nowhere to hide his mere five-foot body.

When evening approached, Shōtarō, utterly exhausted, had no choice but to return to his own lodging.
The landlady of the lodging stared at him with a look of bewilderment, as if he were a gravely ill patient who had wasted away in the span of a single day.
And then, timidly under his madman-like gaze, she held out a business card.
The owner of that business card had come to visit during his absence, she said.
Printed there were the words: "○○ Police Station Detective ○○○○."

“Ah, a detective! A detective coming to see me—this is hilarious, ha ha…”

Such meaningless words inadvertently escaped his lips.
He burst into raucous laughter.
But even as he laughed like a fool, his expression showed not the slightest hint of mirth.
That bizarre manner of his further startled the landlady.

Late into the night, he remained in a near-catatonic state.
It was a kind of bizarre feeling—as if there was nothing to think about even if he tried, or conversely, as if there was too much, leaving him unable to decide what to focus on.
But eventually, the usual "nocturnal optimism" came upon him.
And he was able to regain some capacity for thought.

"What on earth had I been afraid of?"

When I thought about it, my daytime agitation had been meaningless. Even if Okumura Ichirō’s death were conclusively ruled a murder, even if his lover cast suspicious eyes upon me, or even if detectives came calling—none of it meant I had been definitively proven guilty. Did they have a single piece of evidence? That was merely suspicion. No—it might indeed be my own paranoia.

But I could never feel safe. Indeed, since there’s probably no one who would commit suicide by shooting themselves in the center of the forehead, it wasn’t unreasonable that the police concluded it was murder. In that case, there needed to be a culprit. If there was no evidence at the scene, then the police would undoubtedly search for someone who stood to gain from the victim’s death. Okumura Ichirō was a man who had no enemies in his daily life. Excluding myself, would such a person even exist? To make matters worse, Okumura Jirō, the younger brother, was well aware of the romantic conflict between us. How could I possibly claim that Jirō wouldn’t let it slip to the police? In fact, even today’s detective might have come here with ample suspicion after hearing Jirō’s account.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt there was no way to escape.
But was I truly cornered? Was there really no way to overcome this crisis?
Then, for the entire night, Shōtarō strained every ounce of his intellect and pondered.
Abnormal excitement rendered his brain unprecedentedly sharp.
Every conceivable scenario appeared and vanished before his eyes.

In an instant, he visualized the murder scene.
There lay Okumura Ichirō, collapsed with blood and pus oozing from a hole in his forehead.
There was a glittering pistol.
There was smoke.
On the trivet of the paulownia brazier sat an iron kettle, half its water spilled.
There was thickly billowing ash filling the air.

Ash Kagura, Ash Kagura...

He repeated these words in his mind.
He felt as though there was some kind of hint contained within it.

Ash Kagura... the paulownia brazier... ash within the brazier.

And then, he suddenly thought of something.
In the impenetrable gloom, a flicker of light began to burn.
That might have been one of those absurd delusions criminals often succumb to.
To any outsider, it might have seemed a foolhardy act not worth considering.
But to Shōtarō in that moment, the idea felt as precious as divine providence.
And after turning it over endlessly in his mind, he finally steeled himself to attempt the plan.

Once the matter was settled, the insomnia spanning two days and nights lured him into a terrifyingly deep slumber.
Unaware of anything, he slept like a log until around noon the next day.

IV

Now, when the next day arrived and it came time to finally act, he found himself hesitating yet again.
The vigorous cries of brown rice bread vendors from the main street, automobile horns, bicycle bells, and the blinding daylight pouring through the paper sliding door—compared to his bleak scheme, how healthily vibrant it all seemed.
In this lively, wide-open world—could such a grotesque plan truly succeed?

"But I must not falter.
Wasn't this the plan I resolutely, resolutely resolved upon last night after thinking so hard?
What other method could there possibly be?
This was no time to hesitate.
If I don't carry this out, all that awaits you is the gallows.
Even if I fail, it's not like I'm worse off than before.
It's time to act, time to act!"

He resolutely stood up.
After leisurely washing his hands and finishing his meal, he deliberately feigned nonchalance—glancing through the newspaper once, then left the inn whistling and sauntering in the same manner as his usual strolls.

As for where he went and what he did during the next hour or so—since that would naturally become clear to the reader later—the explanation was omitted here, and it was expedient to proceed with the story from his visit to Okumura Jirō.

Now, in the same room of Okumura Jirō’s house where the murder had been committed, Shōtarō and the deceased’s younger brother Jirō were facing each other.

“So, do the police have any leads on the culprit?”

After a round of condolences had been exchanged, Shōtarō began like this:

“Well, who knows?”
Jirō, a middle school upperclassman, answered while staring intently at him with naked hostility: “I think it’s probably hopeless.”
“There’s not a single piece of evidence.”
“Even if there were someone suspicious, nothing could be done.”

“They say there’s no doubt it was murder.”

“The police say so.”

“They say there’s no evidence left, but has this room been thoroughly investigated?”

“Of course we have.”

“I read in someone’s book that evidence should always remain in any situation. The only question is whether human eyes can detect it or not. For instance, suppose a man enters this room and leaves without moving a single object. Even then, there should be some change in the dust on the tatami mats. That’s why,” he continued, “the author claims that through meticulous scientific examination, any crime—no matter how ingenious—can be uncovered.”

…………

“And then, there’s also this kind of thing. When people search for something, they tend to focus on inconspicuous places—room corners or the shadows of objects—and often overlook large items lying right under their noses. This is an interesting quirk of psychology. That’s why the best hiding spot is sometimes to leave things exposed in the most conspicuous place, you know.”

“So what are you getting at?”
“From our standpoint, this isn’t the time for such nonchalant theorizing...”

“So take this, for instance—”
Shōtarō continued pensively, “This very brazier.
"It sits right in the most conspicuous spot at the room’s center.
Did anyone examine this brazier?
Specifically, did they pay attention to the ash inside?”

“No one seems to have checked something like that.”

“Exactly.”
“Something like ash in a brazier is something anyone might easily overlook.”
“By the way, you mentioned earlier that when your brother was killed, there was ash scattered all around this brazier. That must have been from the iron kettle hanging here tipping over and causing the ash to swirl up, right?”
“The problem lies in what caused that iron kettle to tip over.”
“Actually, I discovered something strange earlier, before you came here.”
“Look, take a look at this!”

Having said that, Shōtarō took the fire tongs and stirred through the ash, eventually plucking out a single dirty ball.

“This is it.”
“How did this ball end up hidden in the ashes?”
“Don’t you think that’s strange?”

When he saw that, Jirō’s eyes widened in surprise.
And on his forehead, a faint hint of unease surfaced.

“Strange.”
“Why would a ball end up there?”

“Strange, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been trying to piece together one theory since earlier.”
“When your brother died, was the shoji here completely closed?”

“No—right here in front of this desk, one panel was open.”

“Well then, could we not say this—assuming there was a culprit who killed your brother—one could consider that the culprit’s hand touched the iron kettle and spilled its water, but another possibility is that something flew in from outside that shoji and struck this iron kettle. And doesn’t the latter case somehow seem more natural?”

“So, are you saying this ball came flying in from outside?”

“That’s right.”
“Given that a ball was found in the ashes, isn’t it only natural to think that way?”
“By the way, you often play ball games in the back open space, don’t you?”
“How about that day?”
“On the day your older brother died—”

“I was.”
Jirō answered with growing unease, “But I couldn’t have hit a ball this far.”
“Though I did hit one over that fence once—it struck a cedar tree and fell down.”
“Since I definitely picked it up, there’s no mistake—not a single ball is missing.”

“Oh, is that so?
“Have you ever cleared the fence?”
“You used a bat, I assume?”
“But you’re mistaken thinking it fell there then. It might’ve grazed the cedar and flown here instead. Aren’t you misremembering something?”

“No way that’s true.”
“I definitely picked up the ball right at the base of that biggest cedar tree there.”
“Other than that one time, I’ve never hit a ball over the fence.”

“Then did that ball have any marks on it?”

“No, there’s nothing like that—but since it went over the fence and I found it lying in the garden when I looked, there’s no mistake.”

“But you know, another possibility comes to mind.”
“The ball you picked up might not have been the one you hit that time—it could’ve been lying there all along from before.”

“Well, maybe so... but that’s strange.”

“But there’s no other way to look at it, is there? Given that there’s a ball in this brazier. And given that there’s also the coincidence of the iron kettle having tipped over exactly at that time. Don’t you sometimes hit balls into this garden? And by any chance, when you searched for it then, couldn’t it have been that the plantings were too thick and it just remained lost without you realizing?”

“I don’t know about that…”

“Now, this is the most crucial point—the time when that ball crossed the fence. Doesn’t that coincide exactly with the time your brother died?”

At that moment, Jirō’s face abruptly paled, as if startled.
And after hesitating to speak for a while, he finally answered as follows.

“When you think about it, they do coincidentally line up.”
“Strange… strange.”

And then, he suddenly began to fidget restlessly, showing no signs of settling down.

“It’s not a coincidence.”
“There’s no way that many coincidences could pile up like that.”
Shōtarō declared triumphantly, “First—the Ash Kagura.”
“The ball in the ashes.”
“Then there’s the time when the ball you all hit cleared the fence.”
“Don’t all of those coincide precisely with the time of your brother’s death?”
“For a coincidence, they’re far too perfectly aligned.”

Jirō was staring fixedly at one spot, lost in thought about something.
His face was pale, and beads of sweat like millet grains had formed on the tip of his nose.
Shōtarō rejoiced to me at the success of his plan.
He knew that the batter of the ball in question was none other than Jirō himself.

“You’ve probably already guessed what I’m about to say.”
“At that moment, the ball passed through the cedar tree, came through the paper sliding door here, and flew right in front of your older brother.”
“And at that very moment—as you know, your older brother, who loved fiddling with pistols—was toying with the loaded one right in front of his face.”
“His finger had accidentally caught on the trigger, you see.”
“The moment the ball struck your older brother’s hand, the pistol discharged.”
“And your older brother struck his own forehead with his own hand.”
“I’ve read about a similar case in a foreign magazine.”
“Then, the ball that had bounced there once—carried by its momentum—overturned the iron kettle and fell into the ashes.”
“Because it had momentum, the ball naturally burrowed into the ashes.”
“This is all just a hypothesis.”
“But isn’t this a hypothesis with a very high probability?”
“As I mentioned earlier, aren’t the various coincidences—too perfectly aligned to be mere chance—backing this interpretation?”
“If, as the police say, a culprit emerges from now on, that’s one thing—but if it remains unclear indefinitely, then there’s no choice but to regard my hypothesis as fact.”
“Right? Don’t you think so?”

Jirō did not even attempt to reply.
Without altering his posture in the slightest from before, he kept staring fixedly at a single spot.
A look of terrible anguish had appeared on his face.

“By the way, Jirō.”
Shōtarō seized the moment and posed his premeditated question: “Who on earth was it that hit the ball over the fence at that time?”
“Is it your friend?”
“That man—when you consider it—has committed a gravely culpable act.”

Jirō still did not answer.
Looking, glistening tears welled up from the corners of his wide-staring eyes.

"But you, there’s no need to worry so much."
Shōtarō thought this was now sufficient. "Even if my assumption is correct, it’s merely an accident.
"Even if it turns out that you yourself were the one who hit that ball, there’s simply nothing to be done about it.
"It isn’t as though that person killed your older brother.
"Ah—I’ve brought up something trivial, haven’t I.
"You mustn’t take this badly now.
"Well then, I’ll go downstairs now to offer my condolences to your sister, so you should stop thinking about anything else."

And he triumphantly descended those very ladder steps he had once slipped and fallen from in such an undignified manner.

Five

Shōtarō’s outlandish plan succeeded without a hitch.
If things continued at that rate, Jirō would soon be unable to endure and would undoubtedly report to the police the matters he believed to be true.
Even if Shōtarō were to be detained as a suspect before then, as long as Jirō came forward with his account, he could easily clear himself of suspicion.
His fabricated reasoning carried more than enough verisimilitude to exonerate a suspect based on mere circumstantial conjecture.
Not only that, but when it was recounted by Jirō—who believed he had killed his older brother through his own negligence—it gained an added layer of realism.

Shōtarō was now fully able to feel reassured.
And though the detective from yesterday would surely come again, when he did arrive, Shōtarō would flawlessly execute his scheme, handling every detail just so.

The next day around noon, as expected, Detective X from XX Police Station visited Shōtarō’s lodgings.
The lodgings’ landlady said in a whisper,

“That person from before has come again.”

Even when she said this and placed the business card on his desk, he did not stir in the slightest.

"Is that so? Well, that's fine. Please show him in here."

Then came the sound of the detective’s footsteps ascending the stairs. But strangely, these didn’t seem like a single person’s footfalls—they felt more like two or three people approaching. “This is odd,” he thought as he waited—when abruptly, the face of a detective-like man appeared before him, and from behind it, quite unexpectedly, Okumura Jirō’s face peered out.

“So you’ve already informed the police about that matter... sir?”

Shōtarō had inadvertently begun to form a smile but managed to suppress it.

But who on earth was that?
Next after Jirō appeared a man of merchant appearance.
Shōtarō felt like he had seen the man somewhere before.
However, no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t recall at all who this acquaintance might be.

“Are you Kawai Shōtarō?”
The detective said in a domineering tone, “Hey, shopkeeper—it’s this person, right?”

Then, the merchant-like man who had been called “shopkeeper” immediately nodded and

“Yes, there’s no mistake.”

he stated.

When he heard that, Shōtarō started and involuntarily stood up.
In an instant, he understood everything.
His luck had already run out.
Even so, why had his plan collapsed so swiftly?
No matter how he considered it, he couldn’t believe Jirō had seen through it.
He was the one who had struck the ball.
Not only did the timing align perfectly, but the paper sliding door had been left conveniently open—even the iron kettle lay overturned.
How could he have detected this lifelike trick?
There must have been some miscalculation on Shōtarō’s own part.
But what manner of miscalculation could that have been?

“You really are a terrible man.”
“I nearly let myself be fooled.”
Jirō shouted angrily, “But it’s a pity—precisely because you pulled off that intricate knife-work, you’ve ended up creating irrefutable evidence against yourself.”
“At the time, I didn’t notice either, but that brazier over there was a different one from what had been placed in the same spot when my brother was killed.”
“You made such a fuss about the Ash Kagura, yet why didn’t you notice that detail?”
“This is what you call divine punishment!”
“Because the ash had completely hardened from the Ash Kagura and became unusable, the maid replaced it with a brand new brazier.”
“Since it’s one that’s never been used after being filled with ash, there’s no way a ball could have fallen into it.”
“Did you think there was only one paulownia brazier in my house?”
“It was only last night that I finally realized this.”
“I was utterly amazed by your wicked plot.”
“You actually managed to concoct such an elaborate fiction.”
“I thought it was strange that a ball was in a brazier that hadn’t been there at the time, and when I thought it through properly, parts of your story just didn’t make sense.”
“Anyway, I decided to tell the detective first thing this morning.”

“Since there aren’t many shops in this town that sell sporting goods, we found out right away.”
“Don’t you remember this Mr. Shopkeeper?”
“Didn’t you buy one ball from this man around noon yesterday?”
“And then you soiled it with mud to make it look like an old item and put it into the brazier at Okumura’s place—isn’t that right?”
The detective spat out the words.

“You put it there yourself and then went and found it yourself. Must’ve been a piece of cake!”
Jirō laughed out loud.

There was no doubt that Shōtarō had indeed performed precisely the meticulously crafted "Foolish Act of a Criminal."