Contents:

Part 1: Kozue
Part 2: The Pinehouse Dead
Part 3: Resolution and “◯N◯N”
Part 4: Ark
Annex – Character Pages
Part 1: Kozue
 1

Born in an English-speaking country that at present couldn’t be referred

to by terms such as ‘now’ or ‘here,’ I am Disco Wednesdayyy. Having ‘Dis’
and ‘co’ lined up one after the other for a first name is already crazy, but the
Wednesday in my last name has three ys, so my friends pronounced it like the
“Yeeeehaw!” of a cowboy, laughing their hearts out while screaming
“Wednesdayeeeh!” So...due to various circumstances butterflying out of
control, I was now a detective specialized in searching for missing kids. On
my Cadillac, I wrote my name, my office address, phone number, and, above
all of that, ‘Baby, in the end, you’re only searching for yourself.’
Everyone I meet always tells me “Stop acting like a living joke” at first,
but ultimately, what’s the difference between my lifestyle and you guys’ life-
style? I, too, pay my taxes; I, too, arrange my CDs neatly in order; and when I
talk to the person next to me in the stands and see a fly ball that’ll obviously
be a foul, I, too, shut up. That’s normal. No one can escape from that reality.
So if I’m a living joke, then so are you guys, don’t you think so? After living
through car chases in the opposite lane, freakish calls from wrong numbers
in the middle of the night, clients trying to scam me, twists, more twists, and
all kinds of clichés you can find in worthless American movies, well, I just
kinda realized that stuff would happen when it was due to happen. In the real
world, things derail in ways that those movies couldn’t possibly depict. Be-
cause of one such event, I was currently living in Tokyo, Japan, together with
the adorable Kozue. The six-year-old Yamagishi Kozue had been kidnapped
by Oda Kenji last autumn, so I took custody of her after finding them living in
Oda’s mansion in the middle of Setagaya. However, two months after retriev-
ing Kozue, Yamagishi Kazuo and Kanoko gave me a call and asked me to give
Kozue back to Oda. Kanoko added, “Though only if that person still loves Ko-
zue and wants her,” so I enquired, “But Kozue-chan wasn’t raped or touched
in a sexual way,” but she didn’t falter. “That’s not why. We simply cannot
think of her as our child anymore. It’s not like anything about her is different
from before she was kidnapped, so we were probably the ones who changed.”
After two more months of homestay at her house, counseling, and attempts
at persuasion, I went to consult Oda. But he apparently had earnestly re-
flected, grieved, and had a change of heart; he told me that, even given the
opportunity of becoming her official parent, he didn’t want to commit the
same mistake twice. He then proposed something thoroughly absurd, that
he’d pay me to express his gratitude for that experience.
“I’m not trying to deal with the situation by using money. But, you know,
even if it’s not much of a help, money can get you somewhere at times, right?”
Even though I hadn’t received any additional payments since the initial
fee I’d charged the Yamagishi parents with, I hadn’t tried to adopt Kozue my-
self and still didn’t like the idea of giving her to an orphanage; so I told him,
“You’re the one who stole her, Oda, so you should take the responsibility for
it,” but Oda Kenji kept annoyingly suggesting unloading Kozue onto his sister
and her husband. After two weeks of not living in either the Yamagishi or the
Oda residence, experiencing the hotel life, Kozue and I kinda came to the
agreement that we should just live together, just the two of us. Like most con-
clusions that emerge when feelings get entangled in such affairs, it was nei-
ther logical nor realistic, no matter how temporary it would be. But even then,
I thought why not. The Snake in the Sun of San Diego, Sharon Styron, would
probably say, “How honest, aren’t you just projecting your orphan self onto
that kid?” trying to ridicule me, but all the blah blah blah I’d told Sharon
about me being an orphan was a lie; the Wednesdayyys are living near Detroit
and my big brother and little sister should still be alive around there. I bet
Sharon sensed it was a lie but still continued, pretending to be fooled. Sharon
had ten billion times the time and a hundred billion times the money that Oda
had. She had no interest in me, but her free time and resources would surely
push her to investigate me.
In reality, I was endlessly prolonging nonsensical false pretenses. I’m an
abandoned child found in the middle of a disco house’s dance floor on a cer-
tain Wednesday morning in 1971...though that’s what I make people think,
when in reality, I’m just a normal orphan. I was found in the middle court of
the Saint Paul Cathedral on a Wednesday night. My real name is William
Eady...but that’s just another false identity Disco Alexander Wednesdayyy is
trying to imitate. My whole life was just one trick. My dad was a manufacturer
of agricultural machinery and the leader of his sector, Charles Thomas
Wednesdayyy; he was a kind, decent father to me. So to answer the question
of why I felt the need to make myself false identities at any given occasion;
regardless of whether my name was a fake one or not, I was still Disco. And
since I was born with the given name Disco, it’s inevitable, I gotta have some
twists.
William Eady really existed. He was a friend of mine, a lawyer, and a des-
picable man with almost nothing good going for him. However, it was only
when I got angry at that dude did I truly realize what’s important in life. Stuff
like I need to choose only one girl and be thoroughly kind to her and not give
a single look at other women nor get close to them and solely breathe the
same air as her, or the people calling me an idiot aren’t my enemies but just
idiots, so because he brought me all that enlightenment, he was important to
me. Thinking about how I’d taken up the name William Eady myself, that
showed just how much he grew rooted to my heart.
Kozue and I were residing in the third building of Villa Hapira Kojimacho
in room 303, provided by Oda Kenji’s little brother and reserved under the
name Yamagishi Kozue. It was a three-floor maisonette-style condo with
three bedrooms, a living room, a dining kitchen, a bath, toilets, a garage,
stairs, corridors, and halls connecting all of them like a block puzzle. Just be-
ing inside it made me feel extremely intellectual. I’m Mister Tetris. While I
was busy spending all my time thinking about how to efficiently use the space,
the rainy season eventually ended and the hot, stuffy Japanese summer
started.

2
 “Kozue, wanna go see some fireworks?” I asked, and to my question, Ko-
zue raised her face from The Robber Hotzenplotz and said “Chaan.” She mis-
used an expression from Ikura-chan. 1 I grabbed Kozue by the hand and went
to buy a yukata from a Tokyu Store, then got out on the Tama River’s terrace
area; with her now wearing purple clothing in the same style as what the
adults were wearing, as well as wooden sandals. Just walking tired her out, so
I carried her with my left arm up the bank, sat on the grass there, and watched
the fireworks while eating grilled squid together. Kozue imitated the fire-
works’ sound with her mouth: “Ryuryuryuryuryuryuryu... Baoom!” “Un-
yunyunyunyunyu... Mdooom!” but she got sleepy halfway through and fell
asleep with her head in her knees.
I put the sleeping Kozue on my shoulder, returned to the condo, put her to
bed, and got to watching the remake of Charade in the living room’s home
theater while drinking a beer, but then, my phone rang. I answered the call. It
was William Eady. “What are ya doing that keeps you in Japan for so long?”
William said. “If you’re seriously thinking about adopting her, then staying
as a lone detective in Japan with no jobs or prospects won’t get ya anywhere.
Come back to America. You’ll be able to see the big picture more clearly, ’kay?”
He then laughed like a small delinquent. “I mean, are you serious about tak-
ing a daughter in? You? Really?”
The orphan detective Disco Wednesdayyy, that pretended to be the orphan
William Eady I’d made up, had impregnated the production chief of a cos-
tume maker in Hollywood about five years ago and stayed with her through
it, but the real me had been stuck on Norma Braun, an old high school class-
mate, for the past three years; so I hadn’t indulged in women much. Norma
Braun...uwaaa, sounds too backwater-ish. So, to explain why I was attracted
to a woman with a name like ‘Nwormah Brawn’: to be totally honest, I’d liked
her ever since high school, but Norma wasn’t too popular. Like, she was a

1
Namino Ikura from the long running manga/anime Sazae-san. Being only about 18
months old, he can only speak with the three sounds ‘chaan’ ‘haai’ and ‘babu’.
geek, and I was extremely popular, so we kinda lived in different worlds and
I missed the chance to talk to her. Then, three years ago, we met at a class
reunion... There, I got to confirm the divineness of Norma Braun that only I
could understand. Norma Braun was a kind, honest, and daring girl who
doesn’t discriminate, who I’m definitely sure is lewd, and is the reason for
why this world was right; that had been the case three years ago, obviously
was the case now, and it would be in the future, too.
“Norma Braun.” “Goddamn Disco, shit. You finally talked to me.” “Fi-
nally, yeah.” “How have ya been living?” “I’m having some fun.” “Fun, eh.
Everything going well?” “I wish.” “It’s not unthinkable.” “I wonder.” “You
see, I had decided that if you took three steps towards me, I would move in
your direction too, you know?” “Hm.” “But you kept to the eye-contact game
and didn’t move an inch from the position you persuaded yourself to be in.
You put on childish airs and continuously stepped on the love between you
and I and you. And this is your reward.” Me, the diamond on the ring finger
of Norma’s left hand, and the cooked duck on the round table. “You could’ve
been the one to make a move, couldn’t you?” “What’s up with that? You set
your eyes on me first, no?” She tilted her head slightly and laughed. Norma
Braun had lost about 10 kg since our high school days and had become so
much prettier I had a hard time recognizing her at first; she looked like a bru-
nette Cameron Diaz.
Kozue should have been sleeping, but she woke up, got out of her room
down to where I was, and started to fall asleep sitting with her head in her
knees next to me. “Kozue, go sleep on the second floor.” “No!” “Are you
scared of being alone?” “It’s cold.” “Then I’ll turn the cooler down for you.”
“No!” “It’s even colder here, no?” “Cooold.” I went to grab a towel blanket
from the second floor and enveloped the seated Kozue in it, but she said,
“Hooot.” “What is? The towel blanket?” “Disco.” “Is that so?” “I lied. You’re
not, Disco.” I resumed the movie while wondering what meaning there could
be behind those kinds of lies, and since it hurt me nevertheless, it took me
more time than expected before I could focus on the movie again. Both
Thandiwe Newton and Mark Wahlberg looked like hairless monkeys. The
story progressed without any suspense or anything. They put on a CD of
Charles Aznavour causing the real one to appear in a corner of the room, and
Newton and Wahlberg continued to sing and dance. Who in hell created this
movie, seriously...I thought, jokingly, but then Kozue, who was silently
sleeping, rolled up in the towel blanket by my side, said, “Ouchiiiie,” and
raised her face, so I looked at her and saw that Kozue’s body had grown larger.
...Not just that, she’d also become older.
Like a teenager wearing child-wear way too small for her. She looked at
me, still sitting in the same pose, said, “Wow, many things sprung out just
now,” and smiled. She then closed her eyes and umumummumon, her body
shrunk and returned to its original size.
I stared at Kozue, but she kept her face buried between her knees with only
her shoulders slowly moving up and down as she breathed, so I could tell she
didn’t notice anything that happened and just continued to sleep. Even
though Kozue was the one sleeping, apparently I was the one dreaming.
Since it had been so brief, started and ended so abruptly, had visibly left
no traces of it ever happening, and Kozue had seemingly no memories of the
event, I attempted to pin it on the beer. Nothing happened for two whole days
after, but on the third day at about half-past six in the morning, as we were
eating breakfast, “Woah, it seriously happened again. Oh crap, my panties
and everything’s about to burst. Hello? Hey!” I watched Kozue say those
words with a smile as her body grew up to a high-schooler’s size. I readily put
down my coffee cup and asked the girl, “Who are you?” but there was no
doubt she was Kozue. I’d found kids that went missing for three, five, ten, or
even 30 years. I could identify people regardless of their age. However, by the
time I’d finished mouthing my question, the small Kozue was there with her
mouth gaping open. “What~?” Kozue asked. “Do you understand what hap-
pened just now?” I asked back, but she replied with, “What happened~?” so
it didn’t seem like she’d noticed her body’s transformation. “At Nakamura-
san’s house...the coffee...and tree...with a big cat, you see, and she sleeps,
Mew-chan,” Kozue voiced this terrible mess of a sentence while chewing on
another bite of her anpan. Nakamura-san was the landlord of Villa Hapira
Kojimacho, who lived in room 101. Nakamura Itsuwo, a grannie. And Mew-
chan was just a result of Kozue being unable to pronounce Meru-chan due to
the anpan in her mouth; must be an abbreviation for Merkmal, that grannie’s
cat. Even if I could pick up the proper nouns, I couldn’t make sense of the rest.
“Kozue, no going to see Nakamura-san today,” I said. “Eh~ no way.” “Kozue,
do you feel anything off with your body?” “Eh?” “Does anything hurt?”
“Nothing~.” “But I still feel like there’s something off, so you can’t go out-
side today.” “But I have no fever.” “Even if you don’t.” “Please~.” “Nope.
Stay still here today.” “Dad won’t coffee at Nakamura-san’s place? Even
then?” “I have no idea what you’re saying, Kozue.” She then laughed her
heart out, so maybe Kozue was enjoying her inaptitude to speak. Or maybe
it’s not that she couldn’t say it, but simply didn’t. “You see, so the coffee, you
see, when it becomes long and big like whooo, the sun, you see, says you can
take it easy.” “I see,” I said before laughing a bit myself. “Anyway, you stay
here for today.” When I said that, Kozue once again let out an “Eh~,” but after
that, she kept silent and focused on finishing eating her anpan. I then recalled
that Nakamura-san has a coffee plant growing in her greenhouse. Kozue
probably wanted to tell me that the tree had grown a lot, that she’d seen the
state of it, that grannie had been told by someone to take it easy, and some-
thing else, like that she’d been told to take a nap. I didn’t care about what that
other thing was. This time I managed to understand a bit of what Kozue was
saying by chance, but in normal situations when I can’t understand anything
she says, not even 1%, I didn’t let it bother me. There was no end to it.
Not letting her visit the Nakamura grannie was the right choice. That day,
in the evening, as Kozue was drawing original zoo animals on her sketchbook,
she suddenly let go of her crayons, became big, and stood up, saying, “Wowah.
Hold on, why are my panties so tight for the third time, geez, it mega hurts.”
She looked around and found me. “Ah, that foreigner again. Hello? He-” But
before I could say hello back, Kozue became small again. She fell on her bot-
tom with a plop, was surprised, then laughed. “I was asleep~,” Kozue said, to
which I asked, “Kozue. How much do you remember about before you fell
asleep?” “What~?” “You were drawing, weren’t you?” “Yes.” “Do you re-
member why you stood up?” “I was asleep~.” “You don’t remember?” “Not
really. Disco saw me. Embarrassing~,” Kozue hid her visage. “What was?” “I
was asleep.” “What was embarrassing?” “That you saw me sleeping.” “You
weren’t, though,” I said. Saying that meant I had to tell Kozue about why she
didn’t remember something even though she wasn’t sleeping. I screwed up,
I thought, but Kozue didn’t ask; she went back to drawing her turtle-like
creature with seven legs while chanting stuff like “Kangaroo~.”
I went to the convenience store to buy orange juice and ice cream, bought
female underwear for adults and tried making Kozue wear them, but she re-
sisted. “Please no! Please! No! Please! No! Please! No!” followed by an ultra-
sonic “Kyaaaa!” Kozue found making me run away fun, so she chased me
around while ripping apart the air with her scream.
I entered Kozue’s bedroom at night to check on her sleeping state. She was
sleeping with her body straight like the spare lead of a mechanical pencil and
with both arms tightly packed against her body. The towel blanket was cov-
ering up to her chin. Kozue’s slumber was always profound, so she stayed that
way until morning. Though when she was awake, she would play all day, run
around the house screaming choo choo like a train, roll around, draw, play at
being a cook, etc. I bet she was playing with all her might, going full throttle
all day, so much so that she didn’t have the strength to turn around in her
sleep at night. It’s like she was taking a break in a pool; on land too, it’s some-
times better to steady your breathing, no? As I was half-asleep on the sofa
but still somewhat on guard, I heard a voice saying “Mister foreigner! Where
are you?” which fully woke me up and made me open my eyes. I raised my
body while calling, “Kozue!” The lamp on her bedside table lit the room in an
orange light; Kozue found me on the other side of the sofa’s back, then said
“Here you are. Who are you?” I answered “Disco,” to which she replied with
“Pardon?” before returning to the small Kozue with a smuuul-pon, and back
to sleeping again. Due probably to her body moving when she shrank, her
sleeping position was somewhat disturbed, which was unusual for Kozue. I
stood up from the sofa and went to Kozue’s side, lifted her head while I set up
the pillow under it, then straightened her arms and legs; looking at her small
figure on the double bed, she seemed as if she was afraid of something, so I
internally swore to myself to protect her from any kinds of danger. However,
she had a peaceful expression, as if to say there was nothing to fear anywhere,
which, in the moment, I found to be reliable. After pulling up the towel blan-
ket up to Kozue’s chin, I opened the door and was about to leave her bedroom,
but I still wanted to be there for her when she would grow big again and
search for me, the ‘foreigner,’ so I instead decided to grab the futon from my
room and sleep on the sofa.
I laid my head on the armrest, closed my eyes, and started wondering
whether Kozue was traveling through time internally. No time machine, no
paradox where you risk encountering yourself, just going back from the pe-
riod where you are to another one. Earlier, Kozue said ‘mister foreigner’
when seeing me; that was proof she still had in memory the other times we
met, so these time frames were arranged chronologically for the older Kozue.
She even said “Pardon?” in English earlier. When talking to the Yamagishi
couple and Oda, they kept repeating “Pardon?” on our first encounter. Maybe
even the small Kozue could use that level of English, but it was more likely
that when the older Kozue, who was around high-school age and had learned
some English, came to this era and asked for my name, she got confused and
that’s why she said “Pardon?”
After that, I started thinking that the Yamagishi couple got scared seeing
the older Kozue and tried to push the eerie girl onto Oda or me while keeping
that a secret, but in fact, we’d now been living together for over three weeks
and there had been no sign of this phenomenon happening up until recently.
Kozue didn’t seem any different from normal. Of course, there was still the
possibility those timeslips had already happened and ended in the past, and
were only resuming now. For that, I had to confirm with the Yamagishis and
Oda.
Furthermore, I considered the possibility that Oda’s kidnapping emotion-
ally scarred Kozue, which made her develop a personality disorder. An addi-
tional personality to Kozue. I heard that in cases of multiple personality dis-
order, the facial features and stature could change depending on the person-
ality. Jekyll and Hyde. Could a human skeleton grow and shrink between an
adult and a child’s stature in a matter of a few seconds?
But if I asked myself these kinds of questions and expected to solve them
in order, I would go crazy long before that happened. I felt like I was having
hallucinations. Was Japan the problem, was this lifestyle the problem, or was
my life itself the problem... Well, all of them could be said to be bad and not
bad anyway. And the same could be said for anyone’s lifestyle and life. Not
everyone starts going crazy and hallucinating a kid growing and shrinking in
both age and size whenever they have a problem.
I was sure staying still in this small house for all this time had made me
use my brain weirdly; that’s the conclusion I reached: I’d do some work. I’d
move my body to make some money. Humans weren’t made to sit still. They
must either play or work.

Both in Japan and America, I could make more money and faster by find-
ing lone children and searching for their parents than by getting asked by
parents to search for their children. I don’t know what’s separating them, but
there are a lot of parents searching for their children. Not like all of them are
involved in some crime; there’s simply a lot who don’t know where their chil-
dren are and are willing to pay a large sum to anyone capable of getting them
in touch. I sat on a bench near the fountain of South Chofu Station, waited
there, found a bicycle with a number registered in the crime prevention ser-
vice of Saitama Prefecture’s Saitama City, and observed the kid with worn-
out jeans and a disheveled T-shirt riding it. I was used to Japanese people so
I could tell he wasn’t a grade-schooler, but a middle-schooler. Maybe even a
high-schooler at most, but that was unlikely, in my opinion. I took a picture
of him with my digital camera, got closer, and listened in on a conversation
he was having with his friends. That group had a few people seemingly under
the orders of the others; I confirmed that the lower-hierarchy group talked
about having to go collect the money they made by stealing, prostitution, il-
legal sumo wrestling, and other stuff while laughing. The kid I was marking
was called Hoshino. I’d say he was the Number 3 of that six-person group.
Staring at Hoshino’s bicycle, I could discern ‘Saitama Prefecture, Saitama
City, Murakami, 4-5-24, Hoshino Masato’ written on the front wheel’s tire
with a silver pen, which was a letdown...I mean, a surprise. His personal in-
formation was written in plain sight. Do virtuous people deliver forgotten bi-
cycles to their owners in Japan? Heeh, nice to know. I got away from the foun-
tain plaza and these six, headed to the Chofu library hall situated in the five-
story-tall city hall, and looked up Hoshino Masato’s phone number in a tel-
ephone book there. It was registered as Hoshino Keisuke. I returned to the
plaza. Those six were still there. The Number 4 boy was sitting on a bench
with the Number 6 boy made to sit on his knees in front of him. On this noon
of a weekday, in front of a station, many took notice of this traditional Japa-
nese dogeza, but I was surely the only one who noticed the true hierarchical
nature of what was happening there. I stood up from my bench and ap-
proached the six. I was pondering over what the best way to take Hoshino into
custody from this group could be. Either help Number 4, aim for Number 2,
persuade Number 1, take Hoshino with me and run, or beat all six of them to
a pulp right there. I got fed up at every one of these choices, so I just ap-
proached the kids straight on, passed slowly right through the six who were
tense at the idea of coming in contact with me, and, all while impregnating
my senses with the smell of the toxic familial violence happening there, I put
a foot on the bench next to where Number 2 was sitting, with constant eye
contact with the closely-shaved-head Number 1, stepped over it, headed to-
wards the hedge behind it, passed through the branches which made them
shake, came out on the other side, flew over a bunch of bicycles parked there
to finally land on the pathway in front of the bank. I could hear the bluffing
laughter of the relieved kids.
I arrived back at Villa Hapira Kojimacho after buying the groceries for
lunch and dinner; Kozue, who was watching anime, rushed up to me.
“Disco~!” “Hi Kozue.” “Babuu! Chaan!” she exclaimed as she jumped to-
wards me, so I caught her in the air with a hug. Then, I finally realized that
Kozue imitated Ikura-chan because his only lines were ‘babuu’ ‘chaan’ and
‘haai,’ the last one being reminiscent of my ‘hi.’ Then ‘babuu’ and ‘chaan’
might have similar reasoning.
Having finished eating the roasted pork seasoned with shishito pepper,
Kozue was about to immediately go back to playing by herself, when I told
her, “Kozue, let’s take a nap.” “Eeh?” she laughed it off. “I’m not sleepy.”
“If you lie down you’ll soon be.” “Cat pretending?” “Yeah. Eat. Nap. Play. Eat.
Nap. Play.” “In a play?” “Oh.” “Where do I sleep? My room?” “Wherever you
want.” “The garden!” “It’s hot, you know.” “Garden~.” I pulled the living
room’s couch through the patio door up to the rear garden and laid it in the
shadow of a ginkgo tree. It should stay in the shadow for some time, but soon
the sun would shine its light on it and then we’d have to stay patient until we
get the next ginkgo tree’s shadow. I also set up an electrical fan and plugged
it using an extension cord. Finally, I sprayed insecticide on our limbs before
lying down alongside Kozue with a hand towel on each of our faces. Seeing
that, Kozue became even more in high spirits now that she was blindfolded. I
patted her head and fell asleep before her, while sweating a little. The grass
diffused the voices of the cicadas, making me feel like I was sleeping on top
of a rug composed of a million bells. Shawawawawawanwanwanwaaaaaaah.
When I woke up and removed the towel from my eyes, I saw Kozue still
sleeping with her head resting on my shoulders, so I put her towel that had
fallen on my chest back onto her face. That movement made Kozue half-open
her eyes, but they soon closed again. I, too, was still half-asleep and my mind
was dizzy, but I was now convinced: there was only one Kozue inside Kozue.
There was no way she’d have a multiple identity disorder. And the big Kozue
I had only met for a few seconds yet was Kozue all the same. I didn’t know
what’d caused this to happen, but Kozue was greatly shaken, as if the shock-
wave of the fireworks we saw four days ago got transmitted through the air
and shook Kozue. I’d witnessed it happening four times since the fireworks.
It still hadn’t occurred today. Maybe because some time has passed since the
fireworks, the tempest inside Kozue has started to die down.
After that, I took another nap, then got woken up by Kozue scratching her
legs. She put a leg on my stomach, her eyes still closed, and scratched her an-
kle with her fingernails. “Did a bug sting you?” “Bite me.” “Then let’s go
back inside.” “I’m sleepy~.” “I gotta prepare dinner.” The sun had come
down; the clouds right above us were still white, but, closer to the horizon,
they turned into a gradient of orange to bright red. The cicadas had calmed
down, too. “What do you want to eat, Kozue?” “Hot spring egg.” “With?”
“I’ll take you on, damn bite! Graah!” Kozue kicked the back of the couch then
bent her knees and went scratch scratch scratch scratch on her ankles... “Ko-
zue, let’s go inside. I’ll put some medicine on it.” “No need. I will ask God.”
“Just suck up the stinging.” “What time is it now?” “Already evening.” “The
time?” “About half-past six.” “On the news, you see, a UFO came down and
Paris and Greece and stuff went booom and broke, you know.” “Really.”
I thought that might have been mystical precognition or a sort of sixth
sense kids might have, so I turned on the TV to see if anything had fallen in
Europe, but obviously there was no such news. It was probably just something
Kozue had cooked up to distract me and avoid getting the Kinkan spray.2 Of
course, I used the Kinkan regardless, which caused Kozue to once again let
out a supersonic ‘Kyaa,’ making me flinch; she didn’t miss that opening and

2
The name of a medicine sold in Japan useful to ease up bite scratches.
used it to run full speed to the bathroom and wash down the Kinkan with wa-
ter. I closed the Kinkan, brought the couch back to the living room, picked up
the crayons scattered on the ground, looked at the weird animals Kozue had
drawn inside her sketchbook, and found an adult’s writing mixed among
those.
“Disco Wednesdayyy. What a weird name. I’m the seventeen-year-old
Kozue. Is this the past? I’m so confused. I’m investigating various things. I
found Disco, but nothing else fo-”
This was written in red, what comes after switches to green.
“-r now. Hold on, this is three days later for me. But here, it’s the same
day. Doesn’t it feel like only a few hours have passed? I’ll write all sorts of
stuff down. It’s kinda sad that this’ll end as I’m writing this. DISCO-san,
please write whatever you want me to read here. Then, see you soon! -Kozue”
After that, dates of eleven years in the future were written. July 20th and
July 23rd. Here, it was the 13th of July, so it was apparently a time loop of al-
most eleven whole years.
I took the blue crayon and thought. For starters:
“Yo, I’m Disco Wednesdayyy. I got a weird name.”
After writing that, I realized it wasn’t the time to be talking about worth-
less stuff. The future Kozue could only stay here for a short moment. I had to
convey as much information as possible as succinctly as possible. I ripped and
threw away the drawing paper on which I’d started writing, thought a bit,
went to the kitchen and picked a silver-colored fork and knife decorated with
pink cherry blossom petals among my Uno Chiyo dining set, wrapped them
in plastic wrap, went to bury them near the roots of the ginkgo in the garden,
went back once to fetch a knife from the kitchen, and when I had engraved up
to the ‘DISC’ of ‘DISCO’ on the ginkgo’s trunk in big letters,
“Disco-san.”
I heard a voice. I turned back to see the six-year-old Kozue’s dress worn
like a T-shirt, with a bath towel around her hips; it was the big Kozue, smiling.
She was looking at the ‘DISC’ engraved on the ginkgo tree, then said: “I
checked that. The silver-colored knife and fork with pink cherry blossom
petals. After looking at your letters, I immediately headed to Chofu. This
ginkgo was still there. Have you already buried them?” “I have. But I still ha-
ven’t written any letter.” Was I going to write the letters she had already read,
now? “I probably read most of your letters. I have them in my closet at home.
I had a letter my future self wrote in the past for me inside my album, and this
year...I’m talking about this year for me, by the way; I was told to not open it
until June 31st this year, and although I did wonder what the deal with it was
for a while, I had forgotten. But with what happened recently, I went to look
for it yesterday, read it, and it mentioned the letters inside the closet so...I
read them all. It was written that it might be better to not read them but...
Disco-san, this world’s even—”
Having said that much, shushushushu, Kozue shrank. The bath towel fell
to the ground, leaving a six-year-old Kozue standing with her mouth gaping
wide. “Pineapple Tunnel,” she muttered before screaming “Kyaa!” with both
arms raised above her head to stretch, then made a barefoot dash through the
garden up to me. “Disco!” She grabbed onto my legs so I held her from the
back and lifted her upside down, making her laugh greatly. I then flipped her
and put her on my shoulder. “Once more!” “Nope.” “Once more!” “Kozue,
what’s Pineapple Tunnel?” “Eh?” Up till then, Kozue was frolicking on my
shoulders, paddling her legs in the air, but she stopped when I said that and
wrapped her whole body around my head. “You see, in the dark, you see, there
was a yellow hole, you see, it was so smooth and warm.” “Did you see that
just now?” “Yes.” “Did it look like a pineapple?” “Eh?” “Was it like a pine-
apple?” “Yes. Very sour.” “You licked it?” “Yes. Very hard.” “Did ya bite it
too?” “Did ya beat it too~!?” “Don’t try to eat everything you see.” “Ehh?”
“Don’t eat strange stuff.” “But it was yummy...” “Still a no~.” “I lied. It was
not yummy. I go inside the pineapple hole, okay?” “Don’t do it, Kozue.”
“Ehh?” “Don’t ‘ehh’ me,” having said that, I took Kozue off my shoulders
down to around my chest’s height, looked her in the eyes, and repeated my-
self: “Don’t go in the pineapple hole, Kozue. Got it?” “Got it.” “Swear it.” “I
swear~.” “And not just the pineapple, don’t go into strange holes, Kozue.
Ever.” “Are there monsters?”
I wondered. There probably weren’t. But I felt like the one going inside the
hole would become a monster themselves. But it wouldn’t do any good to tell
Kozue about this half-assed twisted fiction of mine.
“In the hole, there is Lord Whiplash.” “Bored Carwash?” “Nah. Unlabeled
danceable.” “Untabled chance label.” “Duwa~.” “Juwa~.” “Haha. Kozue,
even if there’s no monster inside the Pineapple Tunnel, you still can’t go in
there. If I say no, it’s a no. Can you follow my directions, Kozue?” “I can. Juu-
waah! Pyooh!”
In the moment, I thought of using this made-up character I invented on
the spot, Lord Whiplash, ruthlessly whipping the kids he captures, to keep
Kozue away from that incomprehensible abyss, but on second thought, I
stopped. I didn’t want to scare Kozue meaninglessly. With the same logic as
the one opposed to fishing with bait, I didn’t want to use an electric shock to
keep her away from the fence.
I stepped inside, still carrying Kozue, picked up the bath towel, and
brought Kozue back to the bathroom to wash her dirty soles. She greatly en-
joyed flapping her feet in the running cold water. How likely was it for that
Pineapple Tunnel to be the rumored light leading to the world beyond death
that people with near-death experiences frequently witness? I pondered for
some time, but discarded that idea. Why did I think of near-death in the first
place? The first thing that should come to mind here was the spacetime tun-
nel that Kozue was going back and forth through. When the future Kozue
comes and steals the body of the small Kozue, she gets driven away; that
could be the yellow-ish tunnel.
But...a soul being driven away by another soul still leads to the world be-
yond, doesn’t it? When the future Kozue came, was the six-year-old Kozue
on the brink of death?
 This question revealed a paradox. If Kozue were to die here, the future one
wouldn’t exist, so the future Kozue wouldn’t have come from then to now,
and the small Kozue wouldn’t have died in the Pineapple Tunnel.
Anyway, if Kozue was standing near a door of light while on the brink of
death but unable to fully die, my duty was to get her away from that danger-
ous place. I had to seal away the path the future Kozue was using.
The letters. The future Kozue said ‘all the letters.’ For the moment, I only
had the unfinished draft of one, but apparently there was gonna be many
more in the future. I was sure Kozue and I would write them. Kozue was going
to keep coming here. The small Kozue would once again go near the Pineapple
Tunnel. Was there anything I could do? I was currently holding Kozue’s
hand—that was for sure—but as I was doing that, would the small Kozue let
go of mine, leaving me to find myself holding the big Kozue’s hand? If the
fireworks did shake Kozue, then I should hold her tight to calm the vibrations.
But my hands were weak and my arms frail and small; I couldn’t hold her
down.

As we were eating roasted, locally-raised chicken with a hot spring egg

and an arugula salad, I recalled the Uno Chiyo knife and fork decorated with
cherry blossom petals. The future Kozue’d said she had received them, but
what would happen if I took them out of there? What would happen if I left
the unfinished engraving as ‘DISC’? Also, right, what would happen if I didn’t
tell her about the knife and fork buried under the ginkgo?
This was a great experiment that would shake everything to its core, truly.
I had the power to decide over the survival of this timeline. I could change the
future. If I didn’t write any letter, unburied the knife and fork from the soil,
cleaned them and put them away, and left the writing on the ginkgo as is, as
time passed, a paradox would emerge. We would diverge from the future
where Kozue received the knife and fork, and the small Kozue and I would
eventually arrive in another future. Was that fine by me? It was. The seven-
teen-year-old Kozue was cute, but I’d get to meet her again in eleven
years...wait, I wouldn’t?
The future Kozue didn’t know who I was. She investigated me because she
didn’t. I wouldn’t be at Kozue’s side in eleven years. Having realized that, I
put my chopsticks down. I was in shock. I rounded my back, making myself
look smaller, as if melting away, while letting out groans of pain. What was
gonna happen to me? Wait, I was just going back to America, wasn’t I? Leav-
ing Kozue in someone’s care. My visa expires, I go back, and never return.
I bet the Kozue who had read the letters knew much more about the future
than I did. I wondered how she was feeling. Would unburying the knife and
fork and not writing any further than ‘DISC’ save both Kozue, me, and the
other Kozue?
I sent Kozue to take a bath, put away the tableware, went to take a bath
myself after putting Kozue to sleep, then went to Kozue’s room after getting
out of the bath, and found her sketchbook left open. Ring. You got mail.
“This world’s events are all decided by the interactions between destiny
and wills, they say. Did you know?”
That was written in big, red letters. What came after switched to a lead
pencil.
“I was about to say that last time but came back before I could. This time
it’s four days later. The interval is growing larger and larger. But the time I
can spend here is getting longer, too. Is it because my body is getting used to
the timeslip? Don’t worry about the future. Everything will fall in order
thanks to destiny and wills. Oh, I’m still here. I was searching for you earlier,
Disco-san, but you were in the bath. Here, my bath is fully regulated with
electronics and I can change the temperature by will at any time. I can dry out
the room, and the place where I clean my body comes with a heater. ← ex-
tremely useless information. More like, wasn’t this kind of technology kinda
common in your era too? Wait, no no, that’s not what I was going for; I meant
to write about how amazing this is. Another ultra crazy part is how everything
I’m writing here ends up being the same as what I read in the letters. Mega
scary! But it feels like my memory gets rewritten as I write to end up being
the same as what I say here. Am I imagining it? Am I doubting too much? Now,
here’s the home stretch. Next time, my two-weeks-into-the-future self will
continue this letter, okay? How confusing. My head is fuming from how much
I have to think about! So I haven’t been to school recently. It’s not an excuse.
Though I guess it’s kinda meaningless to justify myself to the past Disco-san,
huh. Kyaah… Huh? I can still write. Crap, what does this mean? I have no
memory of what I’ve been writing here. Shit, shit. I gotta stop screwing
around or the future might change. I’ll need to check the letters when I go
back. And here I thought I had them perfectly memorized after reading them
so many times. Anything can be dangerous. I need to think about things more
thoroughly. Here ends the rope crossing. Still, I was trying to imitate the con-
tents of the letters at first. I’ve no idea what’s happening anymore. I gott—”
Having read everything written, I looked at the small Kozue sleeping
straight in the dim room. The afternoon nap had no effect, she was sleeping
as profoundly as ever without a movement in her sleep.
After having thought that, I picked up the lead pencil which rolled a little
away from the sketchbook, most likely the one Kozue used, and wrote my re-
ply to her letter.
“To the Kozue two weeks from now. You wrote that earlier part with a lead
pencil, so can’t I just erase the useless parts? If you tell me about the contents
of the letters, I can replicate them to be identical to that. I’m a detective; cop-
ying handwriting is my forte. If needed, I can prepare another sketchbook or
notebook and have conversations there that you won’t have read.”
Having written that much, I realized.
“Oh, maybe what you wrote earlier ended up being the exact same thing
that you read? Your writing made it feel like you were flustered, but didn’t
you in fact copy everything with a calm mind? Didn’t you, in reality, not write
anything superfluous?”
 I halted the letter there for the moment and started thinking as I went to
put my room in order, dried my hair, brushed my teeth, picked up my copy of
Tim O’brien’s The Nuclear Age, went back to Kozue’s room, sat on the sofa
set, and continued my reading under the light of the floor lamp. In chapter
six, the cheerleader began growing into a terrorist, reminding me of when
Norma Braun slapped Dana ‘Chanel Chanel’ Strummers’ cheek in the hallway
back in high school. At half-past ten in the night, Kozue came to Kozue.
“Woah! It’s happening! What the hell, it hasn’t been two weeks!” Seeing
the Kozue with tight clothes saying that, I thought about how the small Kozue
must have been pushed away again. The Pineapple Tunnel. I wonder, would
she keep her promise of not entering that strange hole? “Hahaha. I see, so I
won’t necessarily be writing a letter every time.” I found the laughing big Ko-
zue a little unsympathetic. Maybe it wasn’t the fireworks, maybe something
had happened to the future Kozue causing her to travel to the past. Maybe she
did something to end up in this period, and we were unrelated to it. “Disco-
san? Is there anything bothering you?” “You’re coming here from eleven
years in the future, right?” “Yes.” “And how?” “Eh? I don’t know.” “Did you
do anything unusual on your side, in the future where you come from?” “Not
really...I just lead my life like a normal person.” “Nothing comes to mind, re-
ally?” “No, nothing.” “I see. Do you know what the Pineapple Tunnel is?”
“Eh?” “The Pineapple Tunnel.” “What is that?” “I don’t really know either.
Then, let me see...just checking, do you really have the sketchbook letters?”
“I do. Ah, right. The letters...” Kozue got off the bed with her panties com-
pletely showing, opened the sketchbook, read what I had written, then re-
peated herself. “I do have the letters.”
But she couldn’t confirm whether these were exactly the same object.
“You can’t bring anything from the future, after all.” “Looks like it.
Thanks to that, I’m braless now.” “You haven’t had a pacemaker installed on
you?” “What? Is that a question? Is a pacemaker the thing for the heart? I
don’t have one. I’m in good health.” “Isn’t your memory situated in your fu-
ture self’s brain? Then how is it that you bring them to this brain?” “Don’t
they just come along with me? Not like I know how it works. Humans are such
a mystery, aren’t they?” “Is that even possible for humans?” “I’m a human,
too, you know. Are you suspecting me or something?” “I’m pondering over
whether I should suspect you.” “Bwah, so honest. But at least I get to talk to
you, so it’s fun. Then...I agree with you, Disco-san.” “On what?” “I remem-
ber the contents of the original letters, so we can copy them here and, if we
ever miss each other, we can write on another note. Can I write my own part?”
“Sure.” “...” After that, Kozue silently looked up at the ceiling vaguely lit by
the floor lamp, then said, after letting out a little laugh, “How free. It’s won-
derful. People’s futures guarantee their freedom.” Hearing that, I noted that
Kozue had grown into a girl skillful at summarizing things that way. She was
clever. Got things done. And most importantly, she was very perceptive. “You
know, I was persuaded that everything I wrote in that book was predefined
and I couldn’t escape from it. I got crazy stressed about how hard it would be
to not disrupt them. I lost my head over it. But you removed what had been
weighing on me in no time. I was like ‘woooow! He’s so smart. I see. The writ-
ings only need to match.’”
But you can’t control other people’s memories.
“Do you remember me?” “I don’t~. Sorry,” she said, nonchalantly. “The
thing is, I don’t remember anything about when I was around six. Though I
do have fragments of memories.” “What about when you were seven?” “Not
much either. I’m joining the Saint Richard Kindergarten in the winter of when
I’m six, you see.” “Saint Richard? Where’s that?” “In Suitengu.” “Pretty far.
That’s on the other side of Tokyo.” “Exactly. And I’m becoming Inoue Kozue
then.” “Inoue? Who?” “Eh? My mom and dad? Inoue Shingo and Hiromi.”
“Heeh, never heard of them. I’ll check their backgrounds another time, then.
When did you get adopted?” “I was their kid before I knew it. My name was
already Inoue when I entered Saint Richard Kindergarten, you see.” “And I
wasn’t there by the time you started attending that kindergarten?” “Yeah,
probably.” “Probably.” “Probably. I don’t remember much, but...” “I wonder
what causes you to go to the Inoues.” “That’s something from the future, so
it’s better if I don’t tell you, no? It feels like just talking about that would
change a lot of things.” “Got it.” “Well, you’ll know soon enough. Probably.”
“Probably, probably, probably. Let’s set the future aside for now. So I’m go-
ing to be separated from you no matter what.” “Yeah, I wonder how I’ll go
back. I mean, I’ll go back and that’ll be it at some point, right?” “No no, I was
talking about the small you. I wonder why I’ll get separated from the small
Kozue.” “I don’t know about that, genuinely.” “I see.”
Kozue then said, as if trying to cheer me up because I went silent, “Hehehe.
But I find it reeeeal sketchy. Don’t you think so too? I guess only I know. You
don’t know what I’m talking about, huh? According to the letters in the
sketchbook, you see, you and I are going to become quiiite close, you know?
Eheheh.”
I was startled. That was too freaky, I thought at the moment.
“I’m telling the truth, you know?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You’ll get it once we finish copying the letters anyway. Ah! But the letters
are pretty long... Oh, right, the time I’ll get to spend in this world will appar-
ently get longer and longer.”
“...You wrote that in your letter, yeah.”
“Then, the small me and the current me will get more and more half-and-
half, then I’ll be the one who stays longer, and eventually it’ll be mostly me.
I’m talking about the current me by the way. The seventeen-year-old, big me.”
“...”
“So of course both of us are panicking. Because, in other words, if the
small Kozue disappears, then this me will also disappear. ’Cause that’s a par-
adox. But I properly lived these last eleven years. So something will happen
and I won’t be coming here anymore. And, since you and I are pretty much in
love, we’ll both be sad about getting separated.”
“And you don’t know what’ll happen that will make you not go back again,
right?”
 “Ehh? No idea. The letters seem to cut right before something happened.
But since I exist eleven years in the future, I’m guessing the small me won’t
disappear in the end.”
I’d thought that too.
“So we’re gonna have a tragic love, you and I.”
Heh, I laughed.
“Laugh at me while you still can.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Yeah sure, yeah sure, you’re so...aaaah!”
“That’s just what happens inside the letters we’re about to write, no?”
“Yes, but why...”
“Then...well, I guess it might have truly happened the first time they were
written.”
“Things that happen once, viewed another way, are things that are liable
to happen. With a pretty high probability.”
“...If life is like a straight road you can only take once, I wonder how a
tragic love that’s only meant to be copied came into existence. Maybe it’s
completely made up.”
“Hey! Romance isn’t something made up. At the very least, ours isn’t.”
“Ours... It doesn’t exist yet, you know.”
“Well, true.”
Maybe these letters truly existed in her world and Kozue read them care-
fully multiple times. Maybe she got infatuated with me then. That might be
why she was irritated at my theory of it being made up.
“Anyway,” I said, “it’s better to not know anything rather than knowing
what’ll happen. If that romance will have a bad end then isn’t it better for it
not to exist?”
“People keep pets even though they know they’ll get sad when they die
before them,” Kozue argued. “But we can stop talking about that for now. I’m
the type who doesn’t need pets, too.”
 We both went silent after that. Now in a worse mood, Kozue said “Ugh, it’s
kinda awkward” before standing up, pulling the towel blanket off Kozue’s
bed, and wearing it like a manteau to hide her kiddy panties. She then left the
room and descended the stairs with quick steps. I thought about Norma Braun.
At the cafeteria, my friends and I called Norma and her friends the ‘Astron-
omy Club’ and laughed at them, but they weren’t carrying thick books about
constellations talking about the black hole in the center of the Ursa Major,
white dwarves, or Planet X—or whatever it was called. I’m not even sure you
could call them typical otaku. They were just edge puzzle pieces without a
pattern. Like all blue, all black, or all yellow; a piece with nothing but that. We
had no idea where they went. I wasn’t a top-star QB either, but even then, I
was still somewhere on the map. I find this kind of stuff to be too high school-
like, but I was really engrossed with Norma Braun, so I always end up blaming
the mood we were trapped in at the time. That’s so childish. I should’ve
worked at a bank or something. But my name is Disco...
I got up from the sofa, left Kozue’s bedroom, and descended the stairs,
heading for the living room. The patio door hidden by the curtains was open,
the wind making them flutter. Kozue was standing on the other side, around
the roots of the ginkgo in the garden. She was staring at the unfinished ‘DISC’
with a knife in her hand. “Kozue,” I called out to her, to which she answered
with her eyes still set on the ginkgo, “I wonder what will happen if we make
this say DISCOVER. We can’t just replace the ginkgo, can we?” Kozue was
thinking about the same things as I did. “Why not try it?” “...” “I don’t think
you’ll be able to. Even if you really try.” “...Is it possible to leave it as DISC?”
“Dunno. Should be fine to leave it for a while, no?” “I wonder, will I disappear
if a paradox occurs?” “I think it’d be pretty hard to make one. There must be
a way. You can always think of some way to make things coherent.” “But I’m
scared.” “...Maybe I, too, am an existence as borderline as you, you know? I
simply don’t know about it.” “There’s a big difference between knowing and
not knowing. Because it’s a matter of being scared or not.” “I guess so. Well,
don’t mind it too much.” “...You’re talking like you’re not part of it, Disco-
san. ...Do you know about Hoshino Masato?”
“Yeah.” Saitama Prefecture, Saitama City, Murakami, 4-5-24.
“You’ll get beaten half to death by him, Disco-san. Pretty shortly.”
“...” Eh?
“Now you get what’s scary about knowing the future? Well, I guess you
don’t yet. It’s not something you can understand immediately after hearing
it. But it’ll slowly come to you. The more you think about it, the more scared
you’ll be.” “...” “Try thinking it through once.” “The things written in that
sketchbook are nothing but empty sentences meant to be copied.” “Who
knows. We’ll see. Even then, I still don’t want to go near room 202.” “Which
room 202? Of the villa?” “...Once it starts being about you, you want to con-
firm the details, huh, Disco-san. You just can’t be like ‘Ahaha everything will
turn out fine,’ can you? I don’t mind leaving the ginkgo as DISC. Let’s not
touch it until the last moment.” “...Kozue-chan.” “Am I still not going back?
It’s so long. I guess not yet, huh. Can I watch the TV? I’ve investigated the
incidents around here a bit. I might even accomplish world domination now.
I could save many people’s lives and become a hero.” “...” “...Ah, but if the
future changes, I’ll disappear, and if I disappear it won’t change, and if it
hasn’t changed then I won’t have disappeared, so maybe I’m the paradox it-
self...no? Jeez, so confusing. Should I write a letter to my small self for now?
Saying stuff like ‘this kind of stuff will happen in the future. Here is how you
can make a bunch of money without changing the future.’ Ah, or writing her
the winning lottery numbers. Haha. It must be a pain to search for them, but
it’s easy work for 2-3 hundred million. But I have no memory of receiving
such a letter, nor of winning the lottery... What if the fact of bringing my
memory from the future in itself will create a paradox? What if I disappear as
I’m saying these dumb things? If I disappear and the paradox goes away, I
will be resuscitated, and if I’m resuscitated, there’ll be a paradox causing me
to disappear, then resuscitate, repeating these disappearances and resurrec-
tions; isn’t it like my life is flickering?” “...” “I guess you don’t care. Disco-
san. Am I a bother? If so, say it.” “That’s not the case at all.” “I don’t have
friends at school, after all. Well, not many. There’s a girl I’ve been friends
with for a long time, but that’s still on the low side.” “Friends aren’t a matter
of numbers.” “You can have some expectations for Norma Braun, Disco-san.”
“Eh?” “Aah, this feeling of omnipotence again. Haha, crap. You know, I was
in the middle of watching a drama at home. And this much time passed over
here... Where is the small Kozue?” “At the Pineapple Tunnel.” “Ah, the thing
you mentioned earlier. What even is that?” “I don’t know.” “I don’t know
what that is but you’re better off not going near weird tunnels.” “Exactly.
Wait, it’s about you-” “Lord Whiplash.” “Eh?” “Huh? What was that? It
came out on its own. Haha.” “I was the one who said that.” “To me?” “Yes.”
“The kid version of me?” “Yeah.” “Eh, no way. Seriously? Come on, I’m mega
scared of Lord Whiplash. So that was your fault. Jeez, don’t teach this weird
stuff to kids. That character was recurrent in my nightmares. He wielded his
whip like whu-psh! and chased me around, you realize? I hid along with other
kids in my elementary school’s hallway, the gymnasium, the grounds, my
house, the mountains, all sorts of places, but he suddenly captured any kid
that came out and went whu-psh! on their backs. Mercilessly.” “I came up
with that today, you know? The Lord Whiplash thing. During the Pineapple
Tunnel talk.” “Today? Really? Wow. And I remember. Heeh.” “What’s
learned in the cradle lasts to the tomb.” “I mean, Disco-san, did you really
not repeat that many times? How likely am I to have remembered something
you only said once?” “I haven’t said it more than once.” “Yet, right?” “Yeah.
True. I feel like Kozue didn’t really listen to the Lord Whiplash thing today, to
begin with.” “So, Disco-san, that means you’re going to tell me that scary
story again and again. You sadist.” “I won’t.” “But if you don’t, there’ll be a
paradox, you know?” “...” “Fufu, there’s some pressure resting on your
shoulders as well, then.” “...What was that thing about Hoshino Masato ear-
lier?” “What day are we on today?” “13th of July.” “Then you’re still fine.
Probably.” “...” “Aah, I’m only giving vague hints. I’m starting to get drunk
with power. That’s no good.” “Tell me about Hoshino Masato and Norma
Braun.” “Wouldn’t it be worse if I told you?” “...” “I found it pretty harsh just
reading the letters. Curiosity is such an evil thing. I don’t know how you man-
age to be a detective.” “I’m not doing it out of curiosity.” “Hmm. So you’re
doing it because you can?” “Beats me.” “Actually, isn’t it because you’re
Disco Wednesdayyy? Since you have a weird name. People with weird names
are destined to either be actors, detectives, or authors.” “Perhaps.” “I’m tell-
ing you. Norma Brauuuu-”
Kozue shrank before she could mouth the ‘aun,’ returning to whence she
came. What happened to the future Kozue’s body while she was absent? Did
her soul (?) only leave for an instant? If we assume there is a certain blank
period, what did Kozue look like during that? It’s not a big deal if she was sit-
ting at a desk at school, but if it happened when she was running a marathon
or talking to a friend, did she simply lose consciousness and collapse on the
ground? Wasn’t that dangerous?
“Kozue.” “Disco~.” “Did you see the Pineapple Tunnel again?” “I saw it~,”
she said nonchalantly, but her face suddenly turned into a grimace as she
started crying. Wahhh. “Di~sco~.” Wihhh. I lifted her up. “Was it scary?” Ko-
zue nodded in tears to my question. As I patted her head, I said “Don’t enter
it, okay?” “Please, no more~,” she continued crying; was there anything I
could do? I embraced Kozue. If I could stop her shaking, I would readily do it.
I want to keep the Kozue who cries and says “I don’t want to go!” here with
me. The big Kozue’d said her time over here would increase. That meant Ko-
zue would spend more time inside the Pineapple Tunnel. Just thinking about
Kozue being in pure darkness near the sour and hard Pineapple Tunnel all
alone made me so worried I felt like pissing myself.

I put Kozue to sleep and spent the night on her room’s sofa again. The big
Kozue didn’t appear, but she did in my dreams and I started having sex with
her. “I have Norma Braun,” I told Kozue. She said that she knew. “I’m better,”
she laughed. We kissed. She might be right, I thought. In the first place, I
hadn’t even kissed Norma. They couldn’t be compared. “I’m willing to bet my
boobs are softer than hers. Mine might be a little smaller, but their shape is
great,” she said as she showed off her white chest; I put her pale nipples in
my mouth. Kozue raised her voice, then laughed a little. Kozue was under me.
She was twisting strongly and greatly between my arms. It was my first time
doing it with a kid, but there wasn’t any real problem, huh, I thought. Kozue
extended her hands towards my abdomen, started rubbing my hard cock with
the palm of her hand, massaged my balls, then went back up and grabbed it
from the base. She seemed used to it, so I asked her if she had any experience.
“Of course, I’m a high-schooler, you know. Everyone has sex in American
high schools too, no?” she said as she stroked my dick, enlaced her thighs
around my legs, and pushed her hips against me. I lowered her shorts and
removed my underwear. Kozue grabbed my dick again, so I warned her, “I’m
putting it in, okay?” “Is it fine?” she asked. I recalled the small Kozue, won-
dered whether I should feel uncomfortable because of that, and pondered
over why I didn’t feel that way, but Kozue said, “No no, I’m asking if it’s fine
regarding Norma-san.” I told her Norma had nothing to do with it. “I mean,
I said you could look forward to her,” she said. But Norma got married, I
thought, and went to continue. “If you don’t care then it’s fine,” Kozue said.
“But if you love me, then do so perfectly. Don’t leave me alone, love only me
for the rest of your life, forget about Norma-san, collect stickers for my enor-
mous cards, gather all the backs I want to ride and make them bend, lick my
butthole, call me pretty all the time.” I penetrated her wet spot after saying
“Okay, of course” to all of it, it felt so good my hair stood on my back and my
spine got pulled downward. “It hurts!” she screamed. Aah, I see, I remem-
bered this was merely the small Kozue that had become big, so her hymen
and everything was intact. “It hurts, but don’t stop!” she said as she held onto
my shoulders. “It hurts, but I’m fine! Do it more! Harder!” she said before
biting my shoulders. I told her “I love you, baby.” Those weren’t mere words,
I truly was about to burst from my love for Kozue.
 Do dreams count as experience?
When I dreamt about having sex with Kozue, did that count as having had
sex with her for me? If that sex only existed within me and hadn’t been rec-
orded nor recognized by anyone, did that mean it was like it hadn’t hap-
pened? For example, let’s take a girl in a profound state of trance...or a girl in
a vegetative state connected to machines at the hospital. If I raped that girl,
what difference would there between that sex and the one inside my dreams?
I bet that, in terms of how good it felt and how close it was to real sex, the
lovemaking in the dream would rank better. Same for the level of accom-
plishment. Sex with an unmoving, sleeping girl would make you conscious of
the fact that you’re the only one having fun, and it would end with you real-
izing that sex really is a thing that should be done between two people. The
partner in your dream is bolder and, how to put it, more daring. When I mas-
saged Kozue’s chest, it wasn’t small at all, it was bountiful, like Tracey Wick-
edheart’s 120cm plastic boobs, but there was no trace of silicon, it had a nat-
ural bounciness.
This was the curse of words, I thought. I dreamed of this all because the
big Kozue’d said so we’re gonna have a tragic love. Kozue’d only said so we’re
gonna have a tragic love because of those letters ‘between Kozue and I’ whose
origins were unknown. Words are divine, they can create something where
there is nothing. Without words, there wouldn’t have been any sexual atmos-
phere between Kozue and I. I woke up, got off the sofa, and approached the
bed on which the six-year-old Kozue was sleeping. I considered masturbat-
ing while looking at her, but didn’t.
Of course, my pants weren’t down and my hands weren’t anywhere close
to my dick, but now I found myself pondering about the difference between
having sex inside my dreams and imagining it. I came to the conclusion that
it came down to how much realism my imagination could muster.
...What the hell was I thinking?
 I was pent up. There was a wet and sticky double-headed lion being con-
densed right before my butthole and trapped in a dark hole, and that guy be-
came hot inside my tight membrane and teased my whole body. It let out
flames as thick as blood through its nose and said fwuuh fwhuuh. Well then,
I gotta find a sex partner.
An American guy past his thirties still cherishing a weird love he had in
high school—well, being engrossed with it to a certain degree—is already
unhealthy, but to top it off, I was living with a six-year-old girl in a small
house, and that girl would sometime turn into her seventeen-year-old self
through spacetime travel for an unclear reason through unclear means, only
to awkwardly spread her pheromones; so yeah, it was pretty bad. I had to
shoot an ultra super screwdriver nut in the lapis lazuli-like pussy of some
guy’s gorgeous sister like a typical American nationalist male would scream
“Fuck, who’s daddy!?” when he unleashes a lightning-speed tackle in Amer-
ican football.
That’s why I called Muroi Shakuko while preparing breakfast. “Fuyuno
speaking,” but a guy with a hoarse voice answered instead, so I named myself
and got him to give the phone to Shakuko. “Hey Disco, don’t give out your
name so casually,” Shakuko was angry with me once again. “Sorry, but I’m
not playing around at night anymore. I’m married now.” “My bad, my bad.
You see, I’m in a phase where sex is extremely important.” “Eh!? Seriously?
Wait, where even are you?” “Tokyo.” “Don’t go to Kabukicho.” “I don’t like
pros.” “Right, and you’re not a fan of masturbation either. But I moved to
Shizuoka after getting married, okay? I was in Nagoya before then, though.”
“Where even are those places?” I was only somewhat knowledgeable about
the Kanto region. “Well, fine. I’ll take the bullet train once my husband goes
out to work.” “So when will you be lying in my bed exactly?” “I’ll be there in
three hours for sure, baby. Aw shit. That lit a fire to my lower half. I’ve got a
wet pussy headed for you in a green car.3” “Let’s meet halfway. I’m at my

3
The name for first-class wagons in Japan.
limit.” “Ahaha. So horny that you can’t wait? Okay. Then around Atami. Re-
serve a random hotel there. Do you have a mobile phone?” “I do. Atami, got
it.” We exchanged our phone numbers then hung up. After that, I got in the
bath, thought of Shakuko’s wet pussy, and, as I was daydreaming about de-
licious memories under the shower’s warmth, my right hand naturally
drifted down; I stroked myself and climaxed. The highlight of my day. I was
like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. Sexual fantasies about young girls. A
routine of ennui. A distant adventure.
That said, I thought to myself. I’d had sex with Shakuko dozens, even
hundred of times during our honeymoon period at San Fransisco, but what
was the difference for me between those vivid memories, the pleasure I had
alone just now, and real sex?
Well, this wasn’t the time to be thinking about stupid stuff again. I was so
pent up I could only think through my dick. My mind was fuzzy after cum-
ming, so it might not be all that different from my dick, but regardless of all
that, there was no way I could leave Kozue alone in this house. Usually I would
entrust her to grannie Nakamura, but there was no telling when the future
Kozue would come to the tiny one. I didn't think that was explainable to other
people, and more importantly, I wanted to collect some more information
from the future Kozue. Also, if Kozue came from the future when I wasn’t
home, she would be surprised and lonely. I called Shakuko again from inside
the bath. “Hey, it’s still early,“ she complained. “Ah, sorry. Um, can’t you in
fact come to Tokyo instead? I can’t really get away right now.” “Huh? Geez.
Got it. See you then. I’ll call you when I arrive.” “I’m really sorry.” “No prob-
lem. Till then.” I’d calmed down through masturbation so I didn’t really need
Shakuko to come anymore, but I guess I still wanted to have sex, huh. Did I
need to fap more? I ended the call, stopped the shower, put on a bathrobe, left
the bath, climbed the stairs, entered Kozue’s bedroom, and found out the big
Kozue was already there, writing the letters in the sketchbook with all her
might on top of the bed.
 “Kozue.” “Hold on a minute. I’m writing what I’ve memorized.” “Okay.”
I stood by the door and carefully looked at the body line of Kozue, who still
wore her negligee like a T-shirt with her kiddy panties completely show-
ing...shit, I shouldn’t. It wasn’t the moment to be having my eyes glued onto
her fresh, long, and thin white legs slightly twisted on the bed or her soft and
round ass like a pudding that has been dropped on a plate. I went to my room,
took a sweatshirt and sweatpants, recalled of the adult panties I’d bought two
days ago for Kozue which ended up being thrown into the closet after a refusal
from the small one, and threw them near the big one who was still moving
her pencil at a fierce pace with her butt on full display. “Wear that from now
on. I’ll leave them near this bed,” I told her. “Yaahn!” she moaned and
glanced at me with a laugh. Her eyes then turned to the tracksuit and under-
wear that fell near her; she exclaimed “My first ever underwear bought by a
man,” then went back to reproducing the letters. I got back to my room, dried
my hair, changed clothes, and went to peep into Kozue’s room once more.
She, too, had changed into her new outfit with the sleeves and hems pulled
back, and was now seated. She grabbed the sketchbook from her knees and
extended it towards me, saying “I’m done writing. Your part hasn’t been
written yet, Disco-san, so I left some space open for that. I already have them
memorized, so please write them now. It’d be a drag if I forgot.” I received it
along with a blue ballpoint pen, sat next to Kozue, and wrote what she recited.
“What happens if I shift my writing?” “You’re not able to, Disco-san. It’s re-
ally amazing.” I incorporated the drawings too. I wrote them half-randomly
after receiving an explanation, and since apparently there was nothing wrong
or out-of-place, Kozue said, “Woah, scary!”

To the future Kozue. I’m writing on the fourteenth of July at 07:15 in the
morning. You came and departed earlier today. First, looking at you, I
thought of something I had to check. It’s in my nature to not be satisfied until
I can see things with my very eyes. Being a detective.
 So, I’m not a scholar in physics or anything and have never held an inter-
est in stuff like that in the past, so I don’t know anything about time. What
I’m about to speculate here is purely the thinking of an amateur. But still, you
know, I can only understand what I think with my own head, so I’ll still try
thinking a little. If in the science of the era you live in, eleven years in the
future, there has been a new discovery about time, please tell me during your
next visit.
Now, what is the flow of time exactly?
What comes to my mind first is something diverging in the shape of a
broom. What has happened in the past and what is happening at this very
moment are singular, but there are many possibilities for how the events
about to happen can take shape...

Possibilities? I represented the possibilities by dotted lines to differentiate

them from reality, but isn’t the future real? At the present point, the future
has yet to happen, but obviously it already happened in the future. For in-
stance, the seventeen-year-old you happened. Then you turned seventeen.
Fulfilling the prophecy. So when representing concretely the flow of time, the
future is as much of a reality as the present and the past. There are firm truths
in the future. Then the drawing needs to be corrected thusly.
 Wait, I should think in the same way regarding facts and possibilities for
the past and the present. States that might have happened in the past. A vir-
tual present that could have happened then. Then, further future possibilities
spreading from that.

Are ramifications the only thing that can happen? Does time only diverge
and events never converge?
Since there are infinite possibilities, even syzygies or things extremely
unlikely to happen will happen. A reality isn’t about what has happened, it’s
a momentaneous representation of what is happening. Maybe various mes,
who all have different pasts and act on different reasons, at this very moment
in time, are all writing the exact same letters as me without a molecule left
out of place. Right. The possibilities don’t only spread time, they also make it
come together. Then it’s not that the virtual pasts, presents, and future are
getting further and further away from reality by branching off; they endlessly
intersect each other.
 Looking at my drawing, where infinite virtual futures and presents and
pasts are connected through possibilities, I find myself dubious. Is there re-
ally only one reality? I’ve merely heard the words ‘multiverse theory’ and
‘possible worlds’ randomly before, but if there are an infinite number of uni-
verses and an infinite number of spacetimes, then didn’t all the possibilities
that branch off from reality, those pasts and presents and future that I drew
differently, happen in some other spacetime, in some other universe, and ex-
ist with the same level of realism as our reality? Is that way of thinking too
SF-like? And aren’t all of those connected in some complex ways by what as-
trophysics calls wormholes?
If they are, then all of those possibilities aren’t virtual but undeniably re-
alities, and they exist in substantial ways somewhere.
So thinking about possibilities essentially means reaching what is a reality
in another universe inside your head. All the possibilities we can imagine, and
even the ones we can’t, exist. And you can reach them by passing through a
wormhole.
 Of course, in order to go through a wormhole, exceedingly strict condi-
tions must be met, and that road is so minute it’s basically impossible to take.
But these paths scientifically...or rather, theoretically, exist.
These drawings need a last correction.
Wormholes don’t simply connect spacetimes, they also connect multiple
spots in the same spacetime. I think... This is completely smattering
knowledge and I’m really not confident in my memory of it, but I think
spacetime is something that’s spirally. Because of the influence of gravity or
something...disorderly? Like at random? Or maybe they’re taking a beautiful
shape? I don’t know. For now I’ll use a fundamental form for humans, spirals,
to represent it. Is the spinny thing for our DNA a metaphor for what happens
in our body?
 Yeah. I’m fairly confident now. Here is basically what I wanted to con-
firm—what I found suspicious:
You, who come into the small Kozue’s body, who call yourself the ‘seven-
teen-year-old Kozue,’ did you really come from our universe and our time’s
future?

Put it like that and it sounds kinda stupid, but I want to be sure that you’re
not an extraterrestrial lifeform that passed through a wormhole and came
from another universe. That you are in the same complexly interweaving flow
of time as us. In short, that you are really the same individual as the small
Kozue I know.

But how can we confirm something like that?

I tried thinking of various ways to go about it, but looking at the theoret-
ical universe map I drew, I just can’t quite come to terms with it. But that’s
probably because I’m deceiving myself. Wormholes shouldn’t appear geo-
metrically like I drew it, but only rarely under very specific circumstances.
Even if they are an infinity of universes, resulting in an equal scale of worm-
holes, the probability for a wormhole to be connecting the present Kozue and
you from eleven years later multiple times is inordinately low. That’s why I’m
betting on that multiplication. On the fact that, when multiplying the fre-
quency at which you pass through wormholes and the number of wormholes
present overall, the answer is 1.
I engraved ‘DISCO’ on the ginkgo’s trunk this morning and buried a knife
and a fork under it. Please check it, and next time you come, tell me the motif
on that knife and fork. My house is situated in room 303 of Villa Hapira
Kojimacho, 4-41-5, Chofu, Tokyo. There are currently six ginkgo trees grow-
ing in the rear garden, the one in question here is the third one from the east,
the one directly facing my room.
Also, to prove that you really come from the future, please tell me some-
thing that will happen to me in the future. Anything concerning me is fine,
even something unrelated. Like the winning horse at a race?
That said, looking at the last drawing I drafted, I have a thought: If we are
in the same spacetime and you are really the Kozue eleven years from now,
both the current Kozue and you exist to the same degree of reality. You are
not an existence that has yet to happen, you already are there. The past Kozue
doesn’t exactly disappear after having existed either, I’m sure she exists in-
side her time in the past. In other words, the concept of existing is unrelated
to time. Existing is like a picture etched in a film...or maybe an infinity of films,
being lit up at the moment called ‘now.’ That’s why Kozue and you from
eleven years in the future exist separately, and me and me from the next in-
stant exist separately all the same. Each of us are in a frame cut out of a film.
But I don’t feel like myself from the previous instant and myself from the
next instant are any different from me, unlike how you feel about the small
Kozue.
What is ‘being’ for human beings?
Is existing synonymous with living? If that’s the case then both me and
past me exist and live parallelly.

What came after had already been written by Kozue.

So long! Your letter is too long. And your drawings were so confusing! Just
reading it tired me. It’s a real toil to read such a complex letter that goes on
and on when I don’t even know the duration of my stay~. I skimmed through
the middle part. We must keep our letters brief, okay? I went to Chofu and
checked! The knife and fork were properly under the tree with DISCO written
on it. Drdrdrdrdrdrdrdr dan! ← drum roll. It’s a flower pattern, right? I was
really moved by seeing them. Let’s do this more often. Give me lots of pre-
sents. I want you to bury various objects at various spots and sometimes tell
me where they are so I can unearth them myself! Receiving something from
someone after a looooong time passes feels strange. It’s funny but scary, it
makes me realize how massive time is. Let’s do it more often, okay? Ah, no, I
could just bury them myself when I come and unearth them later on here.
Wait, then I’m no longer receiving presents, so it’s no fun. In the end, I want
you to do it, please, Disco-san. ← shameless. It’s a yes, right?
Mmthen, for that past thing, yeaaah, you see, it’s too dangerous, so I’m
being careful not to touch on it. In short, the newspapers scare me. If I even
glance at one, a case will catch my eyes, and if someone were to have died in
it, that’s a big problem for me. That is, should I save them or not when com-
ing here? Is it okay to save them? Can I even save them? I think that was writ-
ten somewhere in your letter, and we’re on the same wavelength; as long as
we don’t know how the flow of time works, I’m too scared to go out of your
house, Disco-san. Should we experiment with something? But I’m scared of
the future changing and disappearing. I’ve been scared so many times already.
I’ve been imagining scenarios like: If I screw up and change the future, myself
existing in the future from before that change occurred will disappear, mean-
ing that in the end the me who should’ve come from the future won’t, in fact,
change the future, creating a paradox, turning my existence into a bomb that
will shatter this world in a big explosion. You heard it right. I’m a dangerous
girl. I might have the power to turn this world into dust. However, I might
inversely have the power to save this world.
Having no idea what to do about this all-or-nothing, I’m so scared I shut
myself in this room and can’t muster the will to go search for you.
Therefore, I apologize. I’m being careful not to investigate the past.
Thinking I could know about the death of many people, maybe dozens of
them, perhaps even tens of thousands of them just by looking at the newspa-
per of the last eleven years at the library makes me panic; so I can’t think
about the library. No shit, I really try not to even think about the library. Same
for the internet. That’s why I’m trying to focus on thinking about why I be-
came a time machine. I tell you, there’s nothing good about being a time ma-
chine. I can talk because I’ve experienced sad things, and in my opinion
there’s no more perfect answer than to not want time machines to be a reality.
Creating them is no good. Noooo good. People shouldn’t talk about stuff like
the future or the past, everyone is better off living normally in their present,
seriously.
But you know, I’m wondering ‘maybe that’s not really me,’ but I have al-
most no memory of when I was six, you see. I’ve got plenty of other disparate
images, but nothing comes to mind regarding this Villa Hapira Kojimacho.
I’m amazed at how new everything seems.
About the thing I mentioned last time we met, I wonder what’s going to
happen to me, don’t you too? How did I enter Suitengu’s Saint Richard Kin-
dergarten, I wonder. That happened when I was six, so maybe there are a few
things you can check about it, but maybe we had already parted by that time.
Did something happen to me during the summer when I was six? I wish I
could remember, but noooothing comes up. Sorry.
Ah, right, if we’re talking about events that happened that summer, I
guess this happened. This happened, and a little while later I went to Suitengu.
I will soon investigate when the Inoue at Suitengu took me in. Expect a report
by the next time.
Woah, I've been here for so long. I guess I can write quite a lot. I’ve been
at it for about an hour already. I’m now able to stay around for some time,
huh. Though, in exchange, it takes longer between the times I can come. I
have so much stuff to think about that I don’t know where to begin. I hope
your investigations are going well, Disco-san. Well then, I’m going to take a
nap. Wake me up when you come back. Good ni~ght.

After that, it was written ‘This world’s events are all decided by the inter-
actions between destiny and wills, they say. Did you know?’ in red crayon.
“This is where the fun begins,” Kozue laughed. “It’s amazing, I’m telling
you.” “You’ve been here for a while now, girl, haven’t you?” “Don’t call me
‘girl.’” “Kozue-chan.” “You call the small me, Kozue. No need for an honor-
ific.” “That’s because I can’t think of you two as the same person.” “Well, I
guess that way is better, then. Since we’re going to be in love.” “...” “Haha.
I’m seventeen, you know. You’re really kinda pure, Disco-san. Of course you
are, huh. With your dear Norma-san. In what year of high school did you meet
her?” “First year.” “So fifteen years old? Before you turned sixteen?” “Yeah.”
“How old are you right now?” “Thirty-five.” “That means it’s been twenty
years already? So you’ve been earnestly feeling for Norma-san for longer
than I’ve been alive for.” “Not exactly earnestly.” “Heeh...well, not a big deal.
But ultimately, you’ve only had eyes for Norma-san, both before and now,
right?” “Who knows.” “But in the sketchbook, you’re mine, Disco-san.
You’re such a big romanticist, geez.” “Do the letters continue their exchange
like that?” “Yes.” “I wonder why.” “Why what?” “Why do we miss each other
so much? You know, inside the sketchbook. While in reality I’m trying to stay
as close to Kozue as possible to wait for you.” “Ah, that has to do with your
‘investigation.’ Didn’t it come up in this letter too?” “It did.” “That one.”
“What am I investigating?” “I wonder, indeed.” “Do you know and aren’t
saying or do you not know?” “This isn’t reality, Disco-san. These letters are
merely made up in order for us to copy them, aren’t they?” Aren’t they, my
ass. Didn’t she believe in them? “Just look forward to what comes next. No
preview for the next episode. Isn’t that how the stories usually go? The stories
known as life. A drama without a synopsis. And that’s what makes life fun.”
“Kozue-chan, do you have a boyfriend?” “Eh? Why?” “You have someone
you like, right?” “Why is that?” “Kinda because you’re good at leading people
around by the nose.” “...Does that have anything to do with romance?” “No
idea. So? Do you?” “I do.” “Don’t toy with him too much, okay? It can make
things go off the rails when they originally shouldn’t.” “Really?” “Yeah,
since you can become addicted to the act of manipulating people in itself.”
“I’m not especially trying to manipulate anyone though.” I shrugged. “If
that’s the case then you’re cool.” “..But...” “What?” “...Nothing.” “Well,
some people are simply good at that, not just for romance.” “...” “Kozue-
chan, what happens to you while you’re here? To that girl in eleven years.” “I
told you to not call me ‘girl,’ didn’t I?” “Kozue-chan.” “The person I like is
insanely smart and is kinda like a demon.” “...Heeh.” “He comes off as kind
but in reality he isn’t. It’s not anything as tame as ‘he’s kinda cold,’ the guy
is insanely cold, a blizzard in the North Pole. He sometimes makes me feel
like humans are scary.” “Aren’t you better off not being near that guy?”
“That’s what makes people really scary, you see. There are times where I
can’t afford not to meet him.” “Hmm.” “‘Hmm,’ you say... And what about
your romantic situation?” “So-so on my side. That reminds me, you told me
to wait for Norma-san or something, no? What did you mean by that?” “Ask-
ing again? Wasn’t that yesterday or this night over here? You must be really
intrigued. Didn’t I say it was better not to tell you? Same for Hoshino Masato.”
“I want to hear it. At least for reference.” “It’ll haunt you and eat you up from
the inside. If I tell you.” “That’s fine.” “No way. I mean, it’s all going to
slowly become clear in the letters from now on. You should enjoy it while it
lasts. The letters are all made up either way so that might not really happen,
no? Who cares about some lies.” “Just for reference.” “No way.” “Hey,
please.” “The time I’m away eleven years in the future is brief. Probably five
or ten seconds, around that. It ends with me looking in a daze for a little. So
when I’m talking to friends or on the phone, they just get angry because I’m
not listening to them. Since this all started, I've been trying to be seated as
much as possible. I refuse to go to the store or run errands. I haven’t ridden
my bike, either. Disco-san, is this a dream or a hallucination I’m having?”
“...” “Did I go crazy, create a sort of world inside my head, that of being here,
and I’m merely wandering in there?” “At least I feel like I have an ego.” “But
I have no way to prove that.” “Yeah. But that idea is a delusion, Kozue-chan.”
“That’s all you can say, Disco-san. ...I wonder if there’s a way to prove this
isn’t one.” “...How about the knife and fork you dug up?” “Aah. That. That
was pretty good. It worked well. But the thing is, after that, I started wonder-
ing: didn’t I awaken precognition, clairvoyance, or these kinds of superpow-
ers to make that happen, under the same logic as the delusions? Though ask-
ing here is meaningless since I won’t be able to trust the answer.” “Yeah, I
can only say that you’re mistaken. I did bury them myself. The knife and the
fork.” “Well, if the sketchbook, the knife, and the fork are all delusions, then
I’m completely out there. Beyond saving.” “It’s better to not think that way.”
“It’s because I sought advice from that demon, I bet. Definitely. That made
me go a little crazy.” “From your boyfriend?” “We’re not going out.” “...So
isn’t it better to stay away from that boy as much as possible?” “You’re right.
And I do understand. But Disco-san too, shouldn’t you stay away from
Norma-san?” “Why?” “...But Norma-san is getting closer.” “Eh?” “I’m
talking about the made-up letters.” “Huh.” “Ah, aren’t you expecting some-
thing? They’re made up, you know? Fiction. A complete lie.” “We don’t know
whether they’re a complete lie or not. Also I told you I’m not expecting any-
thing.” “An old man’s romance is nothing but creepy, huh. Yuck. ...I’m kinda
hungry now, can I eat something? Sorry.” “Sure. I still haven’t had breakfast
either.” On that note we both got off the bed, left the sketchbook on my futon
on the sofa, left Kozue’s bedroom, and went to the dining room.

I made Kozue sit at the table, then went into the kitchen. I prepared toast,
café au lait, orange juice, and scrambled eggs with bacon. I also took out huge
jars containing jam and peanut butter. “Woah, so big. Now that’s foreign! Fi-
nally something that feels American. Do you have Japanese food, though?”
“Ah, sorry, would you have preferred rice?” “I lied. This is good too. Thanks.
Digging in~,” she said, then continued talking while munching on a toast, “I
wonder if I’m the one feeling hungry or if the small me is. Because I ate lunch
about two hours ago.”
After finishing her meal, Kozue carried the tableware to the sink in the
kitchen where I washed them. She went to watch a TV drama that was eleven
years old for her when I suddenly recalled the small Kozue and the Pineapple
Tunnel. Thinking about how she must be afraid at this very moment, I started
hoping for her to return soon, and then, my phone rang.
It was Shakuko. I’d forgotten.
“I got to Tokyo Station! Where are you now?” “Home.” “Hey, did you cool
down or something? Why are you still at home? Normally you should come
pick me up. Now I look like an idiot for coming all the way to Tokyo from Shi-
zuoka, don’t I? Did something happen? Did you do it with someone else?” “I
didn’t, but a few things came up.” “Hmm. What happened?” “Mmm. Well,
it’s complicated.” “So, what do I do? Should I go home now? No way I’m do-
ing that, though. Should I not go see you?” How long would Kozue stay big?
She’d been her seventeen-year-old self for an hour already. It was probably
fine to take her out like that, but I was scared because I didn’t know if the
small one would return then. Even if she did, she’d have spent an hour alone
next to a strange tunnel, so she’d surely be distressed and I’d have to soothe
her. As I was thinking that, Kozue called out to me from behind. “Ah, crap.
Disco-san, what does that mean?” I heard the chair squeaking against the
ground, when I turned back Kozue was standing up, hiding her crotch with
the hems of the sweatshirt I lent her. “Disco-san, do you have that?” “?” “I
guess not. You’re a man living alone after all. And I’m just six years old. Jeez,
so mega embarrassing. Don’t look this way,” she bent forward while still
pulling her hems, walked backwards, then left the dining room and ran
through the corridor. I finally realized when I saw the stain on her bottom.
She was menstruating. Was that her first time? It wouldn’t have been if her
uterus was brought from the future, but if she was borrowing the small Ko-
zue’s uterus and it was simply enlarged, then it must have been the case. “Are
you listening, Disco?” Shakuko was speaking to me through the phone, I told
her “Sorry, a client came, so I’ll be busy” then hung up. Kozue was in the
bathroom. She was half-naked on the other side of the frosted glass door,
letting out hot water from the showerhead and moving her hands. She was
probably washing the pants and panties. “Kozue-chan, are you okay?” to my
question, she mumbled an answer from the bathroom. “I’m fine. My stomach
hella hurts. I’m a burden, no? Disco-san, could you go buy me some medicine
and that? Sanpro. Sorry for that.” “What medicine?” “Aah, do they not sell
those now? You wouldn’t know, eh. Anything’s fine. Just something that
works against stomach pain. It’s usually very painful for me. What am I doing,
having my period here...will I bring it with me on the other side? What a pain.
Like, it hasn’t even been that long since the last one ended. It feels like
‘Again? Really?’,” she said from beyond the glass door. Her voice was trapped
in there along with the warmth of the water. So it must really be this side’s
Kozue menstruating. I pondered over Kozue’s uterus. Did it start menstruat-
ing by reflex because it suddenly grew and shrank in size? If I were to impreg-
nate the big Kozue, what would happen to the baby? If the big Kozue can’t
bring it with her in the future, would it die when she leaves and the uterus
return to its original size, and wouldn’t it kill the small Kozue alongside...?
“Actually, where are the toilets? Crap. I’m so sad I want to cry. Jeez, I
should’ve searched where the toilets were, at least. This is so stupid. Disco-
san, sorry, can you bring me toilet paper and a garbage bag you don’t need?”
I could see Kozue rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands on the other
side of the glass.
After leaving a brand new toilet paper roll from which I’d removed the
first square and a white vinyl bag from FamilyMart in the changing room, I
took out my wallet and ran to a drugstore along Shinagawa Street where I
bought both night-use and outing-use pads and medicine for menstruation
pain. When I came back, I could hear Kozue’s infantile wailing coming from
the bathroom. I rushed there and found the small Kozue surrounded by the
warm water from the shower that had been left on, wearing the sweatshirt
very loosely, with blood spilling out of her skin-colored slit, and panicking.
“My stomach hurts~,” she cried, with both hands pressing on her stomach.
Her sleeve was wet from the shower’s water, so I turned it off, then hugged
Kozue. “Disco~,” she continued crying. I went to pet her stomach thinking it
could ease out the pain a little, but was taken aback. Her stomach was abnor-
mally swollen and the skin was stretching hard. It looked like what had fallen
off in her endomembrane got stuck when it shrunk. “Ughhh, my
stomachhhhh,” the lamenting Kozue made me feel so bad. I wanted to do an-
ything I could for her. But I couldn’t exactly stick my fingers in there. Would
that work? “Kozue, try to force like you’re trying to poop,” at my advice, Ko-
zue stopped sobbing and tried to push, stopping her breath, “Fuuuu~,” she
strained herself and managed to squeeze out a fart but nothing came out from
the other hole. “The poop is coming out~,” Kozue started crying from em-
barrassment. “Nooo~~!” she let out a shrill scream, so I tried pushing on the
swollen ball of her stomach with my palm, little by little. That made her
vagina raise some noises, blub blub, pyuu, shlub bubup, plop, as some blood
came out, Kozue saw that, shouted “Hikyaaaah!” and flapped her legs, but I
ignored her and continued to push on her stomach, globob, druu druu, beh-
boop, pep, blurbub, blublubub, as if squeezing out the last bit of mayonnaise.
When the pink-ish liquid started to come out along with bubbles, Kozue
must’ve felt like it would be over soon, so she calmed down. She was only
saying “Ughhhh,” so I informed her, “Now most of the pain came out so you
should be fine,” but I was still worried about the state of her uterus. I really
needed to have a doctor look at her, I thought. But I had no idea how I should
explain the situation. I wiped the messy red liquid that came out with toilet
paper, washed the floor with the showerhead, washed Kozue’s crotch too,
then made her remove her sweatshirt and started showering her. She gradu-
ally stopped crying, so I asked her, “Kozue, does it still hurt?” to which she
answered “Nuh huh, it’s fine now,”and smiled a little. She was a tough girl.
And I, a weakling. I went to grab a towel and wiped her body, then took her to
the second floor where I wanted to make her change clothes, but the chime
rang downstairs. I went down and looked through the peephole to find...the
nostalgic, beautiful, and lovely face of Norma Braun from my high school
days.

...Which belonged to Shakuko, who had nearly identical features. “Hey

dude, sup?” She was fooling around, wriggling her body, “Yo yo, check me
out. I’m brand new Shak!” “...” Had she had plastic surgery? To look like
Norma Braun? Why? I felt all of my leg hair standing up.
The seventeen-year-old Kozue said Norma Braun was closing up. She also
said I could look forward to Norma Braun. Seriously? I felt like the world was
going crazy. This maddening world was vehemently messing with me.
 Muroi Shakuko was a fishy woman who used to go out with various men
like athletes or restaurant managers using names like Shak, Yuuko, or Tako
and always hung out with weird people. There were endless rumors about her,
painting her as a drug dealer or someone holding information about the stock
market, but it appeared she was actually a normal exchange student. I met
her while searching for a super rich granddaughter’s friend in San Francisco
and met up with her sporadically for six months after that, but at the time she
almost never went to university; she got a deportation order at some point,
and soon returned to Japan after that. At the time, she still wasn’t done teach-
ing me the Kamasutra. We also fought many times about the Norma Braun
inside my head. “If you wanna fuck, just do me. If your dick is to enter any-
thing, it should go in my divine pussy. Graciously, of course. Norma Braun
must be getting fucked hard by someone at the moment, too, I tell you. The
dick penetrating Norma Braun’s slimy pussy isn’t yours, but a stud’s jet black
cock, you get it?” I thought “Wow, she’s going hard,” and found myself feel-
ing down pathetically easily. “Disco, you idiot, don’t get down because of
something like that. I’m just spouting random stuff about Norma-chan. My
point is, in short, that you should love me more.” Under no circumstance.
But my dick felt cleansed when I was fucking the clean and odorless
Shakuko. Also, sex with her felt good when she didn’t bring up Norma Braun.
She shouldn’t have said anything about Norma Braun. No one should, no
matter the circumstances.
“What are you doing with that face? Last time I met you in Kyoto, you were
the normal Shakuko, no?” I said to Shakuko, standing at the entrance of mine
and Kozue’s room in Villa Hapira Kojimacho, who promptly sneered with her
nose, which was now at the same height as Norma Braun’s. “Aren’t you glad?
I worked hard to fulfill your dream.” “Shakuko, you finally went mad?”
“Wow, nice, you’re the only foreigner who can pronounce Shakuko, you
know? I told you before, didn’t I? I liked getting called Shakuko by you. You’re
better at it than the Japanese.” “Won’t you get divorced for that? Or did you
train your husband enough for him to stand your eccentricity?” “Who cares
about that. More importantly, let’s fuck. And, of course, you can call me
Norma this time,” said Shakuko with a laugh; she was a brunette Cameron
Diaz, a spitting image of Norma Braun. I bet I started lusting for Shakuko be-
cause she looked similar to Norma Braun in the first place, and she must have
noticed it herself. Even her clothes were Norma Braun-like. A cardigan prob-
ably bought in some big-ass shopping mall and a flared skirt. Very Astron-
omy Club in spirit. So I guess I was the one who brought Norma Braun to
Shakuko in the end?
“Huh, what’s that?” Shakuko noticed Kozue’s small kid sneakers in front
of the door and picked them up. “You had a kid, Disco?” “Certainly not. I’m
keeping her for now.” “Norma-chan’s kid?” “Why that?” “I guess not, huh.
I mean, of course it’s not. You found her during your job?” “Yeah.” “You’re
not giving her to her parents?” “I did and got her back.” “You wanna be her
parent?” “I’m thinking it through. More importantly, go see a psychiatrist.
Shakuko, you’re obsessed with Norma. There’s no meaning to it. Well, setting
me aside.” “I merely arranged a few features. There was no need for major
operations, you know? I’m thankful.” “So stupid. Stop it with your bad taste.”
“It’s not, really. Recently, I’ve even been feeling like I was the real Norma
Braun. Of course, not Disco’s Norma-chan, but a different Norma Braun who
looks like her.” “Why not stop?” “What’s your deal~? You’re playing with
your identity too, Disco. Same thing here. Sorry for the intrusio~n.” Shakuko
stepped in the entrance, passed by my side, and went to the living room. “Ah,
it’s kinda clean. You got a girlfriend? And maybe today’s her day off and she’s
not here?” “I don’t. If I did, I wouldn’t call a psycho like you.” “But you’re
glad you did, right? You get the Norma Braun fucking of your dream,” she
said, then added, “or does it sound weird in Japanese?” while sticking out her
ass in my direction, removing her skirt, slightly pulling down her panties
with both hands, and continued in English: “Come on, Disco. I’ve been wait-
ing forever for this. Destroy me from behind first and light my pussy on fire.”
Shakuko’s asshole was facing me. Pineapple Tunnel. I filled up the hole
with my cock. “Yahn, hey, Disco, not that one,” she protested, but she had
properly prepared it so I could insert it if I lubed it with spit. I didn’t want
Kozue to feel scared. I quickly came inside Norma Braun’s asshole before Ko-
zue could hear Shakuko’s voice and descend the stairs. I pulled up her panties
since it was soaked anyway, then Shakuko greeted Kozue, who had opened
the door to the living room with a ‘hi’ in English. Kozue was frightened at the
sight of an unknown woman suddenly entering her home, so Shakuko con-
tinued by asking her, “Hello there. What is your name?” Kozue answered
“When asking someone’s name you should give out yours first,” making
Shakuko open her eyes in amazement. She simply learned that whole phras-
ing somewhere. Shakuko said, “My bad. My name is Norma Braun.”
Stop that, geez.
Kozue spoke. “I am Shimada Kikyou.”
What now?

“I see, nice to meet you, Kikyou-chan. Is Disco-san kind to you?” Shakuko

asked her, but Kozue said, “I have no idea.” None of her phrasing, tone, aura,
or expression were that of the usual Kozue. “Where am I? A foreign country?”
the person inside Kozue asked. “We’re in Chofu, Japan. You said you were
Shimada Kikyou-chan, right? Not Yamagishi Kozue?” I asked for confirma-
tion. “Yes. Where is Chofu?” Kikyou-chan asked. “Chofu is inside Tokyo. It’s
a city, you know? And where do you come from, Kikyou-chan?” “Yakushima.”
“Yakushima...?” “It’s an island south of Kagoshima.” “...And how did you
come here?” “I don’t know. Mister, are you Panda Lover?” “...? Come again?”
“...” “Kikyou-chan...it’s kind of a weird question but...are you alive?” “...I
don’t know.” Following that, Kikyou-chan hung Kozue’s head and silently
let Kozue’s tears flow. “What’s the name of your father and mother?” I asked
her. She replied with “Shimada Yasuhiro and Shimada Tomoka.” “Can you
tell me their address?” “Yakushima main district, 27-3.” “And their phone
number?” “0997 then 555 and 13.” “Kikyou-chan, do you remember any-
thing? Anything before coming here, that is.” Kikyou-chan shook Kozue’s
head to my question. “Does anything come to mind when I say Pineapple
Tunnel?” Kikyou-chan went “Ah,” then “I don’t know. But I think I had
something like that happen.” “Before coming here?” “Yes. In the dark, there
was a yellow, round, hard, and sour...” “Exactly.” “Disco...” “What? How do
you know that name?” “Eh? Whose?” “Mine.” “Eh? Is Disco a name? Mis-
ter’s?” “Yep, it is.” “I don’t know. It just came out when I saw you.” “Kikyou-
chan, how old are you?” “Fourteen.” I could see Shakuko straightening her
back and swallowing when hearing that from the six-year-old-looking girl,
but with her being Norma Braun, I could only think about telling her, ‘Let’s
be more mindful of our hearts and bodies, okay?’ Anyway, Kikyou-chan had
entered Kozue’s body, but unlike what happened with the big Kozue, her body
didn’t transform. In other words, she was thinking with Kozue’s brain. That
must be why my name, lodged inside Kozue’s brain, came out so easily.
Kikyou-chan knew her name, address, phone number, and parents’ names.
Being able to say that without using her own brain probably meant that these
pieces of information were somehow linked to her personality, so she could
bring them out without using her brain every time. I asked her, “Kikyou-chan,
what’s 8×9?” “72.” “What’s 8÷9?” “...Crap. I don’t know. You divide 8 by 9
so...huh, is that right? It can be divided, right? Huh...” “Kikyou-chan. Where
did we buy this again?” I went to the kitchen, grabbed the rich milk ice cream
Häagen-Dazs Kozue loves from the freezer, and returned. Kikyou exclaimed
“Seiyu!” when she saw the ice cream cup, then “Huh? Why do I know this?”
“That’s because you’re not using your brain, Kikyou-chan,” I told her.
Kikyou-chan looked down at Kozue’s feet, then stared at Kozue’s hand she
had brought before her brain before hurriedly rushing to the bathroom. I
wondered if she’d noticed the abnormality of finding the washbasin imme-
diately. Kikyou-chan raised a scream in front of the mirror, but it only came
out as ultrasonic because she used Kozue’s high-pitched vocal chords. “This
looks like a lively and bizarre place,” said the Norma Braun-looking Shakuko,
and I honestly couldn’t agree more with her. But I couldn’t handle all that
bizarreness. The small Kozue had disappeared. I needed to dig deeper. I left
Kikyou-chan crying in anguish in front of the washbasin alone, took out my
phone, and typed the number she told me about. Bee-bee-bee-beep. I called.
Bee-bee-bee-bee... Bee-bee-bee-bee... Not indifferent to Kikyou-chan’s
sad-sounding cries, Shakuko left the living room to call out to her. “Yeah?”
it was an unfriendly middle-aged man’s voice. “Ah, sorry. My name is
Odoriba. 4 Is this Shimada-san’s residence?” “...Yes, it is. What for?” So it re-
ally was... “Is Kikyou-san home?” “Who?” “Kikyou-san.” “No, I mean, you.”
“I am called Odoriba.” That was the first name I started using for my jobs
when coming to Japan. “What’s your deal?” “I run an informant agency in
Tokyo.” “Informant? What’s that?” “Well, a sort of detective, basically. Ex-
cuse me, but are you Yasuhiro-sama, the father?” “Yeah I am. What’s your
business?” “I wish to know if Kikyou-san is at home.” “Why? You say you’re
a detective, so why are you calling Kikyou?” “I am investigating a matter re-
quested by someone living in Tokyo, you see. So I am calling you and asking
for your cooperation, thinking you could tell me more about Shimada
Kikyou-san.” “Man, what’s your name?” “Odoriba.” “Odoriba what.”
“Odoriba Mizutarou.” “Can you tell me your contact info?” I told him my
phone number. “And you work at?” “The Odoriba Detective Agency.” “That
phone number?” I told him my room’s phone number. “Then, your address.”
I told him Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s address. “’Kay, I’m gonna call you right
back so hold on a minute.” He ended the call. He wanted to confirm my iden-
tity. I waited a bit after the call ended, and soon enough, he called back on the
landline phone. “Yes, Odoriba speaking.” “It’s Shimada. Okay, let’s take our
time talking, then.” “Yes. Is Kikyou-san unharmed?” “Unharmed, what?
What would you think if she wasn’t?” “I’m worried about that, too.” “Say,
what do you think of pandas?” “Eh? Pandas? The animals?” Kikyou said
something about pandas earlier, too. “Yeah, the white and black ones.”

4
Odoriba 踊場 is the Japanese word for “dance floor“
“They are cute.” “...Kikyou is at home.” “Ah, I see. Good then. Could you put
her on the phone if possible?” “No can do. She’s unconscious.” “...My con-
dolences. Since when was that? What happened?” “How do you know about
Kikyou?” “What was that question about pandas?” “I’m asking the questions
here.” “And I am too.” “Who cares. How did you know about her?” “...On the
internet. I saw her mentioned on a classmate’s homepage. Though I forgot
the URL.” “Ho—” “My turn to ask. What was that question about pandas?”
“Hey, you’re talking about my daughter. Why are you acting like you’re the
leader? Why should I even obey.” “What was that question about pandas?”
“The question about pandas is about pandas.” “That’s not a real answer.”
“Who cares, I’m—” I hung up. I searched on the laptop lying atop the table
in the corner of the room. ‘Shimada Kikyou,’ ‘Yakushima,’ then, when I re-
membered I should’ve added ‘Panda,’ I saw that every result on the top page
in the news section already included the word ‘panda.’ I clicked on one.

Panda Lover: The sixth soul-stealing case in the country?

On the 3rd of July at around six in the morning, Narumi-san (13), the second daughter of
the self-employed Konno Toshiyuki (39) in Saitama Prefecture’s Saitama City, was found un-
conscious in her bedroom. Narumi-san had no apparent wounds; her eyes, ears, and nose were
painted black with magic ink, and on her stomach was the scribble ‘Pandas sure are cute.’ The
national police links this case to the Serial Middle-School Girls Comatose Cases that have been
happening since last fall, and is working in cooperation with the police of Tokyo in the head-
quarters they have set up for the case. ...

After skimming through the related articles a little, I found that Toda
Erika (14) was found on October 5th of last year at Kanazawa, Horikiri Maki
(13) on November 13th of last year in Tokyo, Kawamura Yukie (13) on January
7th of this year in Ishigakijima, Shimada Kikyou (14) on March 25th of this
year in Yakushima, Tashiro Yurie (13) on May 12th of this year in Sendai, all
with their faces decorated panda-style and in a comatose state. All in their
second year of middle school. It was pretty much always the same pattern.
Parents or siblings go to wake up the girl who’s not waking up, only to find
them in a comatose state. On each of their stomachs were written with the
same ink used to paint their faces, ‘Panda Lover,’ ‘Pandas, so nice!’ ‘I ♡

PANDA,’ ‘Yaah! Pandas are so cool,’ ‘Pa-panda Panda ♪ Panda Ron-ron ♪’

Because of that, the culprit was called ‘Panda Lover’ ever since the first case.
On the internet, names such as ‘Lolipan,’ ‘Panda Fan,’ or ‘Pandakko-chan’
were, of course, not used. They simply called him the ‘panda man’ or the
‘panda bastard.’ There were apparently nearly no hints about his identity.
Both his trespassing and escape routes were unknown. Same about his
method for putting the girls into a coma. Many middle-schoolers all over the
country, especially girls in their second year, were frightened. Apparently six
middle school boys had already been put into custody after pranking their
classmates by wearing a panda costume and paying them a visit at night. Also,
Tokyu Hands, Don Quixote, and other retailers had removed all panda cos-
tumes, obviously, but also panda plushies and toys from their shelves.
“Heeh,” I heard that voice from nearby, so I looked back and saw the
Norma Braun-ish Shakuko peeking at the screen. With the Kozue-ish Kikyou
crying diagonally behind her. “I see. So Shimada Kikyou-chan was a victim
from those panda incidents. If one of the stolen souls is right here,
then...Disco, are you the culprit?” I rebutted Shakuko with a “No way,” but
indeed, why had Kikyou-chan entered Kozue’s body? Had I done anything?
Did such a possibility even exist? Had I unknowingly gained the ability to
steal and switch around the souls of little girls? Was this something that was
really happening? Where did Kozue go? The next time the big Kozue came by,
what would happen to Kikyou-chan...I was thinking about such things, but
forcibly shut down my brain.
If, no matter how much time passed, Kikyou-chan didn’t return to her
body and stayed around inside Kozue’s, would the girl coming from the fu-
ture that I believed to be the future Kozue, really be Kozue? If Kikyou-chan
stayed in Kozue’s body and grew up, wouldn’t her personality be Kikyou-
chan’s and not Kozue’s? Or maybe, would Kikyou-chan slowly forget that she
was Kikyou-chan and eventually turn into Kozue?

“Kikyou-chan,” I said, then looked at Kikyou-chan, who should’ve been

present inside Kozue. “Kikyou-chan, you’re...” not another personality of
Kozue, right? I wanted to ask, but stopped myself. That was, firstly, because
it was impossible, and, secondly, because I had just spoken to Kikyou-chan’s
father. Shit, I didn’t need a psychotherapist but a spirit medium, I thought,
and found myself gasping at my own thoughts. Hold on a second, that remark
just now wasn’t half bad. I didn’t clearly get what made the seventeen-year-
old Kozue and the fourteen-year-old Kikyou different, but what if this wasn’t
about souls, but about spirits; what if this whole mess wasn’t about exchang-
ing the souls of living humans, but all of them except the six-year-old Kozue
were dead, and due to some coincidence they’d transcended spacetime, in-
versing their spirit with other people’s spirits, and thus end up possessing
the six-year-old Kozue? “...Kikyou-chan,” I rephrased my question, “tell me,
did someone kill you?”
“Hey,” Shakuko tried to rebuke me while Kikyou-chan shook her head
behind her. “I don’t know. I...don’t know anything,” she said, then asked me
back. “Say, does that mean I died?”
But from what I could gather from the internet and her father, Kikyou-
chan’s body back at Yakushima still had a pulse and a working brain. Her body
was alive. Then, was this a manifestation of her spirit? But throwing around
spirit-related words wouldn’t get us anywhere. Let’s keep it to souls. Kikyou-
chan was alive, but her mind was currently in Tokyo, in Kozue’s body. Unlike
the big Kozue, Kikyou-chan was simply borrowing her body. Her brain was
that of Kozue. Both her knowledge and memories were too. The conscious-
ness in this body was presently Kikyou-chan’s, living through Kozue’s brain,
but how long would she stay as Kikyou-chan? Wouldn’t her identity melt in-
side Kozue, disappear, and eventually turn into a new Kozue? If identity was
a byproduct of experiences, then I felt like that was inevitable. However,
Kikyou-chan, who’d started as herself just now, would interpret her future
experiences as Kikyou-chan’s, so wouldn’t she in fact continue to be herself
while Kozue’s memory would be the one fading away? Yeah, I felt like that
was more likely. It was a power contest between their memories and con-
sciousnesses. However, no matter who won this match, the original small
Kozue wouldn’t ever return.
“You’re not dead, Kikyou-chan,” I informed her. “But this body isn’t
yours, so you need to return where you come from.”
“How?” she asked.
“No idea.”
“...”
“That’s why we’ll have to ask the person who pulled out your soul.”
Panda Lover, huh. I guess I had to confront that insufferable idiot, I
thought.
“...But isn’t that you?” Kikyou-chan asked.
“Eh? The one who took out your soul? No way. I’m a detective, you know.
Don’t you have such memories inside your brain? I was involved with the kid-
napping of the little girl who’s your body’s original owner.”
“...”
I guess the six-year-old Kozue couldn’t quite comprehend what was hap-
pening at the time, huh. “Anyways, Kikyou-chan, let’s search for Panda
Lover.”
To my declaration,
“Haha. What? Is this the grandiose commencement of the Disco Detective
Case Files?” Shakuko laughed, “I’ll help you out then, now that I’m here.”
Shakuko said so, and reached for my cheeks with her hands. Looking at us
objectively, we were me, Norma Braun, and Kozue, and when looking at us
through our souls, we were me, Shakuko, and Kikyou. Was this a punishment
for naming myself William Eady and fooling around with my identity by pre-
tending to be an orphan found on a dance floor? Just imagining the big Kozue
barging in now made my brain hurt.
I needed to think.
The big Kozue coming from the future might, in reality, be the big Kikyou.
Where could Kozue have gone to now?
What was the Pineapple Tunnel? Was it, as I’d first suspected, the light
people often saw during near-death experiences, the Sanzu River, an en-
trance to the other world?
Or was it the entrance to a wormhole that the ‘future Kozue’ and Kikyou-
chan from Yakushima had used to get to Kozue?
Letters from the future.
Did the letters from the sketchbook I’d been copying along with the ‘fu-
ture Kozue’ mention the Panda Lover Case? If they did, then if the ‘future Ko-
zue’ was really Kikyou-chan who grew up inside Kozue, then Kikyou learned
that I was involved with her own case. And, if I’d successfully found Panda
Lover and had written about it in the letters, then Kikyou would know the
identity of the culprit who pulled out her soul. Wouldn’t Kikyou consider re-
venge, then? And if that revenge wasn’t possible, wouldn’t she try to some-
how get in touch with him?
Maybe Kikyou was trying to do that during the time she traveled back
eleven years into the past, all the while pretending to be the ‘future Kozue.’
She might be trying to pinpoint the culprit’s location through the letters in
the sketchbook, and trying to achieve something in some way.
But, I thought. The ‘future Kozue’ hadn’t shown any sign of doing that.
She’d merely laughed and sprayed her pheromones onto me. I couldn’t fore-
see her planning something.
...No, was she perhaps, in fact, planning something? Had I simply not seen
through it? If that were the case, it would be because the ‘future Kozue’ was
meticulously hiding that from me. A possible reason for that would be that
her ploy was directed at me...so I might be the target of her revenge. Perhaps,
possibly, I was Panda Lover, and I’d already unknowingly pulled out the souls
of Kikyou and five other young girls, and simply didn’t remember or hadn’t
noticed. And I simply don’t know about that because, unlike the ‘future Ko-
zue,’ I had yet to read all the letters...
Tsk, what idiocy was I thinking about. Here’s what I needed to do from
now on: not steal any more souls. I didn’t know how to steal girls’ souls. ...But
‘I don’t know’ isn’t a convincing denial, because it was still possible that I
could unknowingly take out the souls from other people and place them
somewhere else. I had no idea what the limit to my unconscious deeds was.
Then, I might as well be the one who sent the small Kozue to the Pineapple
Tunnel. And I might be the one who dragged the ‘future Kozue’ to here.
Could it all have been my doing...?
Stop it now. It’s so childish and embarrassing to blame everything on
yourself.
Especially when talking about stealing souls. There was no way I could do
that.
How was Panda Lover doing it?
I’ve never seen a panda. There were only roughly 1600 pandas around the
world, and much less in zoos. How many were there in Japan? If the culprit
loved pandas then they must go see them. Had the police dispatched an in-
vestigator to panda cages? Imagine a cop awaiting the culprit of a serial mur-
der case inside a panda cage in a zoo...and here I thought the world was only
toying with me. I was wrong; it was teasing every single person in this world.
Or maybe the world itself? Had the girls who still had a pulse and brainwaves
been killed? I wondered. What was the difference between having your soul
coming out like Kikyou and being killed? Had the other girls’ souls gone into
other girls’ bodies like Kikyou had? And were the souls of the girls they’d
barged into expelled, wandering out there somewhere...or were they still in-
side the body, but so pressured that they couldn’t do anything? Maybe, when
Kikyou came, Kozue was only squished, and is still inside that body. Maybe
she hadn’t gone to the Pineapple Tunnel...
 Kikyou sat on the living room’s couch while the Norma Braun-y Shakuko
acted like Shakuko, opening the fridge in the kitchen without permission,
taking out three people’s worth of barley tea, pouring it into cups, bringing
them here along with the teapot, sitting next to Kikyou, and starting to drink
on her own. But she suddenly stood up, walked towards me and said “I’ll bor-
row your toilet,” then lowered her voice and added, “That girl is a fourteen-
year-old inside a six-year-old body, but she’s also quite precocious for a
fourteen-year-old. Looks like she’s been sniffing your odor from my panties
for a while now. It’s pretty risky, so I’m gonna remove it in the toilet,” then
left the living room without even asking for where the toilet was. I sat where
Shakuko had previously taken place. “Thank you for the tea,” Kikyou said.
“Dig in. Drink as much as you want.” “It’s hard to do. My hands are so tiny.”
Kikyou was holding the cup using both of the six-year-old Kozue’s hands.
“That’s pretty cute. Not the situation to be making comments like that, huh.
How does it feel being inside someone else’s body?” I asked her. “It’s kind
of...weird. It’s somewhat vexing. I can’t move well. I don’t know if that’s be-
cause it’s someone else’s body, I think her being six plays a role too. It feels
like I should be doing better than that. My arms and legs are short, small, and
I guess I’m short too. Everything looks so big in my eyes, it’s crazy.” Looking
at Kikyou inside Kozue, I realized that, although words were mostly stored in
the brain, the vocabulary used in everyday conversations had become indi-
visible with our personality. How were human spirits shaped? Did they have
shapes? In movies and dramas, out-of-body experiences were represented
by the whole body coming out of the person’s body. They were likely painted
as transparent to mark the difference with their physical body. The ethereal
body was transparent because it was simultaneously there and not there.
Ghosts were painted as figures without legs in old Japan. That was probably
to show the difference with the physical body, too. They were blurry silhou-
ettes with a faint presence, kinda like a flame gushing out of a lighter. Japan
also had those round spirits. What was their deal? If that was a lump of peo-
ple’s souls, of their minds, then they were pretty far from a human shape,
being round, lit, and floating. Had Kikyou barged into Kozue in that small,
round, and compact form? Did I have a fireball of that sort loosely swaying
inside myself, too? But Kikyou’d brought words in. If her spirit looked exactly
like her human form, then it was natural that she would bring in words, which
should be stored in the brain. But if her spirit was a fireball, then words
wouldn’t only be stored inside the brain but also have their place in the burn-
ing flare that is someone’s soul, or inside people’s burning core. Was that
core representing someone’s life? Or was the flame doing that? Or both? If
people’s spirits were small fireballs, I could see how the fourteen-year-old
Kikyou would enter the six-year-old Kozue. She was launched into her and
lodged herself somewhere in the body. So had Kozue’s fireball gotten hit right
on like in billiard by Kikyou’s fireball and fell into a pocket? Where could that
pocket have sent Kozue? Or maybe the shock of the impact blew out Kozue’s
flame?
“Kozue-chan, is the owner of this body still inside?” I tried my luck and
asked. She returned the cup to the table with both hands, then said, “You’re
talking about Kozue-chan, right? Good question. You see, I was curious too,
so I tried staying still to figure it out, but it’s not clear. I’ve also been calling
out to her in my head for a while. But it’s awfully silent.” “I see.” “I’m kinda
sorry? I mean, really, I’m sorry.” “...No need to be. We still don’t know
whether you did it of your own will, do we?” “Really? But I might’ve pur-
posely entered that girl’s body, no? You know, I have no memory whatsoever
of what happened to me before coming here. ...And like, my memories of Ya-
kushima are already pretty faint. It’s getting real chaotic inside my head.
Hard to tell which memories are my own and which are Kozue’s. Some mem-
ories aren’t mine, but they feel like they are...it’s scary. Will I stay like that
forever?” Saying that, Kikyou turned Kozue’s face and stared at me. The
small Kozue’s pupils. If people’s souls were in the shape of that person, had
Kikyou’s been compressed to fit into Kozue’s small body? Or was Kikyou pro-
truding from Kozue’s body? But I could properly feel Kikyou’s feelings and
will from Kozue’s eyes directed my way, so maybe spirits really changed their
shape and size adequately to the body they were in. Had Kikyou’s spirit be-
come denser when it was compressed? “We can’t draw a conclusion yet. An-
yway, let’s talk about Panda Lover for now,” I said. “Do you remember any-
thing, Kikyou-chan?” She answered. “I’ve been thinking about that for a
while too, and I remember that affair. Many girls have been killed before me.”
“Though we don’t know if they were killed.” “Yes. But having no soul isn’t
much different from being dead, no?” “...We can’t be sure that all of them had
their souls stolen, for the moment.” “Anyways, I remember hearing about
that on the news and such. I talked about it with friends, too. But we were
convinced Panda Lover wouldn’t come for us for no real reason.” “Apparently
he attacked you during the night of March 25th. Do you remember anything
about that period?” I stood up, grabbed my laptop, and showed Kikyou the
website displayed on the screen. “...Yeah, I don’t remember anything. I feel
like it was just a normal day. But it feels like so long ago. When you wake up,
you normally vaguely remember what happened before you went to sleep,
right? You see, I was a frail girl in elementary school, the kind who would col-
lapse flat during school assembly or whenever she had to stand up for an ex-
tended amount of time. And during those times, when I woke up, it felt like I
was in the middle of the assembly but time somehow skipped ahead. Like, I
could fully remember up until the exact moment I lost consciousness. But this,
it’s totally different. It’s like I was dreaming for a long, long, long time and
finally woke up now.” A thought crossed my mind. Maybe Kikyou-chan had
been in another body before entering Kozue’s. Let’s assume Panda Lover ex-
isted as an entity; if he’d put Kikyou in another vessel to let her survive—and
of course he would’ve done the same for the five other girls—and Kikyou only
temporarily escaped into Kozue by chance... When do souls get separated
from the body? That’s, naturally, when they’re on the verge of dying. When
they die. Then the vessel Kikyou was in had died or was dying some-
where...but where? If a soul gets away from a body, how far can it go? In ghost
stories, bounded ghosts and wandering ghosts appear either in places where
many people died or in places they were strongly attached to while alive. In
the year 940, Masakado Taira who provoked the Tengyo Rebellion had his
head transported from Kyoto to Tokyo, but that was apparently in order to
later steal his separated body back and provoke another rebellion. There were
also many ghost stories where bodies roam about, searching for their severed
heads. So people harbored a soul somewhere in their bodies. In Masakado’s
case, it might’ve been his head, but whatever. And when one’s spirit had a
strong yearning for something, it could move far away...maybe.
“Kikyou-chan, is there anything you really want?” “Eh? Not really...but I
might be a little hungry.” I couldn’t sense any intensive yearning in her per-
plexed face. Kikyou and Kozue shouldn’t have any connection, so it’s not like
Kikyou’s soul had searched for Kozue’s body. So had Kikyou entered Kozue’s
body only because there was an opening at the right time? Kozue wasn’t like
every other girl. Her existence was full of holes. So had Kikyou passed through
one of them? But she should’ve been in Yakushima...could she have found Ko-
zue’s gaps from so far away? I considered the possibility that she used a
wormhole just in case, but there was no way such unlikely events could keep
happening to Kozue. So if we rule out her warping through a wormhole, then
Yakushima was decidedly too far from Tokyo’s Chofu.
Then Kikyou’s soul was near Kozue’s body. That’s how she found the
holes. In other words, if Panda Lover really existed, then he must’ve been
near Kozue, near me, in the surroundings of Chofu.
That reminded me that the second victim, Horikiri Maki, was from Tokyo.
I tapped on my computer and searched for articles talking about Horikiri
Maki.

Failed serial murders? The Panda Case. Second girl found in a coma.
On the morning of November 13th, salaryman Horikiri Tomohiko-san (39) living in Chofu-
gaoka, Chofu, Tokyo found his eldest daughter, Maki-san (13), in an unconscious state in her
bed at home. ...
 I thought:
Panda Lover had acted in Chofu once and came back nearby again. The
first time, when he’d stolen Horikiri Maki’s soul, and the second time, when
he’d moved Shimada Kikyou’s soul to Kozue. Since he’d passed through the
same place twice in about six months, Panda Lover must reside around here.
Reside? I couldn’t imagine him renting a house as a base of operations, so an
apartment? Or was he hiding in some storeroom? Whatever. It was close. And
the souls of the five other girls might even have been alongside him.
And...having thought that far, I finally realized. I’d excluded Kozue since she
was only six, but what if Panda Lover had stolen her soul? And he’d left
Kikyou’s soul in exchange...
Let’s search for Panda Lover. In Chofu. Chofu. I suddenly recalled Hoshino
Masato, whom I met at Chofu Station, then recalled further; what the ‘future
Kozue’ had told me. You’ll get beaten half to death by him, Disco-san.
‘Norma Braun,’ though in some twisted way, indeed ‘came to me’ as the ‘fu-
ture Kozue’ had said. I had ‘Norma Braun’ and ‘Kozue’ with different con-
tents in front of me. Then the ‘future Kozue’s’ prophecy of me ‘getting beaten
half to death by Hoshino Masato’ might, too, come true in some twisted way.
What was the deal with the real Hoshino Masato, that mischievous kid from
the station? I didn’t know, but there must have been something. That day, I
thought I’d approached Hoshino Masato randomly, but maybe that wasn’t
something I did of my free will. Maybe it was something inevitable, destined
to happen. It might’ve been foretold to happen in the future... Thinking that
made me think back to something the ‘future Kozue’ had said.
This world’s events are all decided by the interactions between destiny
and wills, they say. Did you know?
If that was really the case, free will didn’t exist.
When Shakuko, wearing Norma Braun’s face, returned from the toilet, my
heart fluttered in reflex. “I want to go too. Disco-san, where’s the toilet?”
Kikyou asked, but didn’t she have that info in her brain? It must’ve been there,
but one doesn’t normally search through their memory for every little thing
like that; so it made sense she couldn’t explore a stranger’s brain she had just
received. When the small Kozue’s body exited the room, Shakuko said, “I
thought we’d be fucking all day but...it’s getting quite interesting. I guess
such mysterious things can happen in this world,” but I bet she didn’t include
herself in those ‘mysterious things.’ “That said, you still haven’t put it in
down there,” she said and punched my arm. Her face still being that of Norma
Braun, I started lusting after her again. Stop it, I thought to myself, but then
Shakuko flipped her skirt and showed me her round and white ass. “What
happened to your panties?” “Fufu. It got wet so I took them off.” “Heh.”
“Wanna do it?” “Nope. I’m not a machine gun, you know.” “But can’t you do
it? With this face and outfit.” “Stop being an idiot. If you don’t mind, how
about wearing my underwear? Just for now. I’ll buy you proper ones later.”
“No need, yours suffice,” she said before leaving the living room. I sat on the
couch and wondered whether I could chase after Hoshino Masato with
Shakuko and Kikyou, but Shakuko soon came back. “You couldn’t find where
I keep my underwear?” I asked. “Hey, that girl snuck out from the bathroom
window, you know?” “Eh?” I stood up, left the living room, and headed to the
bathroom. Shakuko followed after me. “I could hear murmurs coming from
the changing room so I asked her if something was wrong, but she rushed to
the bathroom and locked it from the inside. I peeked inside through the
frosted glass and saw her opening the window and jumping out from it.” The
bathroom was locked from the inside. There was a cordless telephone on the
floor inside the changing room. I picked it up; the call was over. I pushed the
redial number which connected to the 110. I hung up right when the operator
was about to speak. I left the changing room and opened the door to the
nearby toilets. Kozue’s panties were on the floor. The part her crotch would
touch was stained with blood. “My god. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

10
 I ran to the entrance. Kikyou must’ve mistook me for a pedophile pervert.
The cops would be coming here. What could I explain about any of this?
They’d know the blood was from her uterus if they investigated it, but they
wouldn’t believe me if I told them a six-year-old had her first period. My
condolences to her uterus. A foreigner, child-searching detective, was living
together with a young Japanese girl he had no blood relation to whatsoever
during his vacation, and to top it off, that foreigner brought a cosplaying
woman home. No one would evaluate that guy to be sane. The police might
even assume that I injected the blood in her stomach as part of some per-
verted fetish. I hurriedly put my shoes on, rushed outside, and inspected all
sides of the third building, checking both Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s inner
grounds and the three roads surrounding it, but no sign of Kikyou in Kozue’s
body. Kikyou snuck out without wearing panties. What would happen if the
‘future Kozue’ entered Kozue’s body now? If she pushed Kikyou out and made
the body grow, Kozue’s dress would barely serve as a T-shirt. With her ass
out on the street and her menstruation possibly coming back at any moment,
she would surely fall into a state of panic. I had to find Kozue’s body as quickly
as possible. I should’ve had some more time left until the ‘future Kozue’ came
back, since she disappeared not long after menstruating... However, I
couldn’t predict what Kikyou’s integration might have changed. “I wonder
where she went,” said Shakuko, wearing a Norma Braun-style frilly skirt,
having finally reached Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s entrance. “Shakuko, you
wearing panties?” “I’m not. Didn’t have the time to put them on.” So both of
them were going commando, huh. “Forget about the panties, we’re leaving
right now. The police are coming.” “But what about my bag? Let me grab it at
least.” “I’ll get it.” I ran inside, grabbed the Norma Braun-style bag shaped
like the Texas state borders, then took my green bag off the chair it was hang-
ing on, fit the laptop from atop the table, my purse, and my phone inside,
then took out the vinyl bag from the bin in the corner of the living room along
with all the trash in it, went to the toilet, threw Kozue’s stained panties inside,
and tightened the opening. I locked the house behind me as I left and rushed
back to Shakuko, holding her bag, mine, and the garbage bag. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Where?” “First, a convenience store.” I threw the bag containing Kozue’s
panties into the big garbage container next to a Family Mart’s entrance while
staring at their ‘please do not throw any household garbage here’ sign. I en-
tered the store, thinking to myself about how I’d visited a drugstore not long
ago to buy menstruation-use goods, and this time to buy two adult panties
and one child panties. I made Shakuko put on a pair inside the store’s toilet.
That made one ass covered. Now, how to search for the other one. Kikyou
shouldn’t have had any money. No telephone card nor mobile phone. I felt
bad for Kikyou, getting kidnapped back in Yakushima and now having to walk
outside in a six-year-old child’s body wearing only a dress... Having thought
that, I pondered over the option of going back to Yakushima that Kikyou had.
It was impossible to just walk there, but if she got the police’s protection, she
could borrow some money... Wait, if she went back as Kozue, would it go well
if she claimed that she was the one inside? If I put myself in Kikyou’s shoes,
it certainly seemed worth a try. The abnormality of Panda Lover’s actions
might just serve as the right context to justify something as strange as find-
ing her inside another girl’s body. A mystery erases another, I thought, then
asked myself what I thought about the overall situation. Kozue, coming from
the future and making her body change size. The Pineapple Tunnel. The ‘let-
ters from the future.’ Kikyou’s intrusion. Muroi Shakuko, who had turned
into Norma Braun, coming over. Was I so used to strange things that they’d
lost their bizarreness to me? I didn’t know. I needed to stay on edge. I needed
to stay sensitive. Laziness like concluding with, “Well, I guess that’s just how
it is,” invites errors. It was possible for Kikyou to go to Yakushima. She could
hold conversations like a fourteen-year-old. She remembered a good amount
of her personal information. She could multiply too. She just probably
couldn’t think too deeply about new things. After all, she was using Kozue’s
young brain. Therefore, her actions should’ve been simple. She would flee
from any weird people, call the police, and try to find a way home. Hmm, but,
I thought. Kozue had never stepped outside of Villa Hapira Kojimacho alone.
She only ever went to the Nakamura grannie’s house. Room 101. I hadn’t con-
sidered that because I thought of Kikyou as Kikyou, but maybe, when fear and
anxiety took over after her sneaking out, her brain’s thinking pattern
switched over to Kozue’s, leading her to barge into the landlord’s room. I
waited for Shakuko to come out of the toilets then told her, “I changed my
mind, let’s go back to the house.” “Will it be alright with the police?” “Of
course not. I’m just gonna take a look from afar.” “Why not. Fufu. Thanks for
the panties.” “Whatever, let’s just hurry up.” I left the Family Mart along
with Shakuko, then went back the way we came. Two patrol cars had already
arrived and were parked in front of Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s entrance, on the
sidewalk of Shinagawa Street. “Ain’t that bad news? I’ll go see how things are
for you,” Shakuko proposed, so I took her up on that offer, “Then please
check room 101. Nakamura’s. Kikyou-chan might’ve escaped in there.”
“Disco, you didn’t do anything weird to that girl, did you?” “Of course not.”
“What was that blood then?” “Menstruation.” “...” “A lot of weird stuff has
been happening, okay? I’ll tell you the details later. I’ll need to explain eve-
rything to Kikyou-chan anyway. That way I’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
“Okay, okay. Weird stuff, huh. The situation certainly seems weird.” After
saying that, Shakuko walked along the pavement of Shinagawa Street and
headed for Villa Hapira Kojimacho, while I went into an alleyway and hid. If
Kikyou-chan came out to see the cops, she might denounce Shakuko. If that
happened, she’d be interrogated and asked about my whereabouts. Naturally,
she would play dumb... But was it even possible to recover Kikyou...no, Ko-
zue’s body?
Unable to calm down, I kept on walking. After progressing through the al-
leys of the neighborhood, I suddenly changed direction and headed for Villa
Hapira Kojimacho from behind. The back of the second building was visible
beyond a certain house’s fence. I climbed that fence and sneakily passed by
many private properties like a ninja, passed through the hedge surrounding
Villa Hapira Kojimacho, and jumped down into the rear garden of room 203.
After that, I climbed the lower hedges, ginkgo trees, and fences separating
the rear gardens, aiming for room 101’s rear garden. Beyond the garden part,
furnished with lawn and deck chairs, was a greenhouse higher than a phone
booth, and, since it was summer, the little window in the ceiling was open.
The coffee tree being cultivated inside was exhibiting its bright green leaves.
“Disco-san, stop,” I heard Kozue’s voice and stopped in my tracks. Kozue’s
face was peeking from the shadows of the greenhouse. “Kikyou-chan. Are
you okay?” “I’m not. My stomach hurts. What’s this? It’s not menstruation,
is it?” “It is,” I had to say it. “There’s no way that’s possible. This girl’s still
so tiny.” “Yeah, but she grows big.” “What are you saying? What did you do
to that girl, Disco-san?” “Nothing. You have no memory of something like
that in your brain, do you?” “...” “To tell you the truth, something else just
as bizarre as you entering Kozue’s body happened, and...” I reluctantly
started explaining how the ‘future Kozue’ would come into the small Kozue’s
body she was now inhabiting, causing the body to adapt and grow bigger, all
the while thinking to myself I’d have to spend twice the time since I’d re-
explain it to Shakuko later, but Kikyou asked “Ah, hold on. That explanation
will be quite long, no?” So I answered “Yeah? Kinda.” She then said, bursting
into tears, “Then hold on to that. I have memories of an old man I’ve never
seen licking me down there in my head. What’s that about?” I froze in place.

11

“It’s horrible. You see, my head really started hurting when I saw these
panties in the toilets, so I sat on the floor and my vision turned black for a
moment, like I was on the verge of remembering something but couldn’t
quite, like I didn’t want to remember it myself. I felt so bad I wanted to throw
up, but I wasn’t really scared myself, so I remembered anyway. And then I
saw what this girl had sealed away. An old man wearing glasses was sticking
his head in my...in this girl’s crotch and licking really fervently, and the girl’s
body was restrained with ropes or something. She wailed and cried but he
wouldn’t stop... I couldn’t go far enough to confirm, but I’m pretty sure he
put it in. I mean, it really stung and hurt inside.”
My mind was dizzy. A man wearing glasses? Oda didn’t wear any. What
was going on?
“Another thing,” Kikyou continued. “That’s the worst thing. You see, as
this girl was going through that, there were flashes all around her.”
“...”
“That was probably from pictures being taken.”
I strongly pushed against my forehead with both hands and breathed out.
Calm down. I was a detective specialized in searching for children. I’d en-
countered many fucked up cases. I’d seen dismembered kids, kids who’d died
by having strange objects stuffed inside their genitals that destroyed their
organs, and kids that were chopped up and used to feed 47 stray cats.
But those kids were all strangers. They were not Kozue.
Fuck fuck fuck FUUUUUUUCK! Okay, couldn’t be done. Appeasing my an-
ger was out of the question. This was no longer business. I could no longer say
it’s nothing personal. It was hella personal. It was insanely super fucking
personal now.
“Mm. That man isn’t Disco-san,” Kikyou said. “His face was different.
Disco-san, flip your shirt and show me your right arm, around the shoulder.”
I took my left hand off my forehead and rolled my sleeve up. “Yes, that con-
firms it. There’s no tattoo. That man had a tattoo there.” “What kind?” I let
both arms down, made two fists with my hands, and asked while doing my
best to contain myself. “I don’t know. But like, some kind of black bird.” “A
crow?” “Mmm, it might be that, but I’m not sure.” “...Hmm. Do you remem-
ber anything else?” “...No...not much. That memory is pretty brief.” “Is there
no memory of that man in your brain? Not his name or anything?” “I don’t
know. I can’t remember very well at the moment.” “I see.” “But I can recall
his face...I mean, is this someone else’s business? For me. I simply can’t feel
that way.” Kikyou started crying again. “I can’t ever forgive those guys. It’s
so awful. So lunatic, for real. I’ll kill them. I’ll rip them apart. Disco-san,
you’re going to find them, right? Of course you are, aren’t you?” “Obviously.”
“Let’s do it. Let’s slaughter them.” “Yeah.” I’d sent some of the perverts I
found to some rich people in Vancouver who had their daughter raped and
killed. They stab the perverts to death, prickling them many and many times
with sewing needles. They’re not even the worst ones, okay? I’d also sold
some to ex-nobles living in an old castle in the suburbs of Paris who own cat-
tle. They were extremely delighted to finally have fodder, since it’s so hard to
get that kind nowadays, so they go at it slowly and have fun with it. They toy
with them, insulting them again and again until right before they go crazy,
all the while injuring them, waiting for them to recover, and repeating that
cycle again and again... When they start pleading to be killed, they suddenly
become more gentle... Why hadn’t I sent all of the scum I ever found over
there? Kozue liked sleeping with her head buried in her knees. Was that pos-
sibly to protect her genitalia by using her body as a shelter?
“So, what’s the deal with this girl’s blood?” Kikyou asked, so I briefly ex-
plained, “Recently, her self from eleven years in the future started barging
into this girl’s body, and when that happens, she grows big, so she started
menstruating. Now that she’s back to the future, her body shrunk to this state,
but the blood from her period that had started was left over here.” After I said
that, Kikyou made Kozue’s face wear a flabbergasted expression, then, after
a brief silence, she asked. “That’s probably not a lie, right?” “Yeah.” “A lot of
bizarre things have been happening, but there’s no denying they’re real.”
“Yeah.” A mystery erases another. “It must be hard for you too, Disco-san.”
I smiled a little and said, “It’s only the start of it.”
I embraced the small Kozue’s body that had come near me. Kikyou didn’t
resist. The poor Kozue’s body. Did the shaking in her soul come from that
mental wound?
The tattoo of a black bird. Glasses. A horrible experience.
After that, Kikyou and I checked the situation out front, left the rear gar-
den, and went around the first building at an appropriate time when Norma-
Shakuko spotted us and hurried over to us. “Ah, what are you doing here? Plus,
you found her yourself,” she whispered, then looked at Kikyou’s face, let out
a laugh, and said, “Stop crying, girl. Are you two dating or something?” In
my eyes, she had just barely stopped crying, but I wasn’t too confident in say-
ing it. More importantly, I wondered how that would make it that we’re da-
ting, but we had no time to joke around. “Let’s settle down somewhere I’ll be
able to explain everything calmly,” I proposed. Shakuko informed me,
“There are lots of cops. It’s best not to go over there. Can’t we get out from
the back?” so we returned to behind the first building. I helped Shakuko and
Kikyou, in that order, to get over the fence beyond the ginkgo tree before
climbing it myself; we then climbed down in the inverse order. We found our-
selves in a small vacant lot littered with trash and even some growing grass.
A snake hidden in there hissed at us before fleeing into a pile of trash a bit
further ahead. “...I still don’t really get it, but what’ll happen to me if that
person from the future comes?” Kikyou asked, so I honestly told her, “I don’t
know either. Let’s think about it later.” Would any amount of thinking earn
us an answer? I asked myself as we left the vacant lot and I passed my body
through the narrow, shoulder-length space between the fences of the sur-
rounding houses, but at that point my brain was already running that train of
thought. If the ‘future Kozue’ came, stole this body, and sent Kikyou flying
away, it wouldn’t be all that bad if she only went to the Pineapple Tunnel, but
what if she returned to the former place where Panda Lover had her trapped?
And what if the small Kozue was already in Panda Lover’s possession, and
instead of exchanging places, both would find themselves in Panda Lover’s
grasp? When the ‘future Kozue’ went back to the future, Kozue’s body would
be left vacant and might remain in a vegetative state like Kikyou and the five
other girls that fell victim to Panda Lover. She might even die.
How would I save Kozue? What should I do to fix Kozue’s strange consti-
tution? Was there any way to remove Kozue’s instability that was causing
other girls like Kikyou to barge into her body, or a girl pretending to be the
‘future Kozue’ to enter it and make her body grow bigger? And if there was,
would the next time the small Kozue’s soul came back be a good time to put
it in practice? In the first place, was the future being changed in any way due
to this Panda Lover incident? If the idea that ‘this world’s events are all de-
cided by the interactions between destiny and wills’ was true, then would
everything fall into place during the next eleven years? But the ‘future Kozue’
would enter Suitengu’s Saint Richard Kindergarten this winter. As Inoue Ko-
zue... Thinking that, I recalled that I should investigate Inoue Shingo and Hi-
romi. So many things had happened this morning, I’d no time to look back on
everything. Also, Hoshino Masato. I would be involved with these three in the
future. The Inoue couple would steal Kozue from me and Hoshino Masato
would beat me up. Though that only went if I was to trust the ‘future Kozue.’
But, I once again asked myself. Was the ‘future Kozue’ really Kozue?
I returned to this question, even though I thought I was done with it after
questioning myself many times and confirming with her, because Kikyou’s
appearance forced me to look at it in another light. Her intrusion turned my
understanding of the events upside down from the core. Kozue’s face when
the ‘future Kozue’ visited was the same as Kozue’s but bigger, so obviously I
had thought it was the ‘future Kozue’s’ face, but Kozue’s face didn’t change
when Kikyou came in. In other words, having the same face as Kozue wasn’t
the same thing as being Kozue on the inside. The ‘future Kozue’ could’ve been
anyone; I would’ve had no idea. I might’ve been fooled by her ingenuity.
When Kozue first grew bigger on the night of those fireworks, the ‘future Ko-
zue’ seemed surprised at her transformation. What if that was an act to fool
me? I thought I had confirmed the ‘future Kozue’ was Kozue...the ‘future Ko-
zue’ blurted out something about the Lord Whiplash...but the Lord Whiplash
remained in Kozue’s brain, like how Kikyou could tell that the Häagen-Dazs
came from Seiyu; only the ‘future Kozue’ didn’t have Kozue’s original brain.
Then the person naming herself the ‘future Kozue’ might simply have been
crazy good at coming up with fragments of memories Kozue had. Right. I still
hadn’t properly confirmed whether the ‘future Kozue’ was Kozue. Pondering
over hypotheses like ‘the “future Kozue” might in fact be Kikyou!’, we pro-
ceeded east in the alley we came out in after crawling between the fences, and
took some field roads where we walked alongside eggplants, pumpkins, and
others. As we crossed the railroads of the Sagamihara line, I turned back and
looked at Kikyou; the body of the girl silently walking behind me was none
other than Kozue’s. I realized then that I didn’t know what Kikyou’s face was
like and noted to myself to investigate that later as well. Inoue Shingo, Inoue
Hiromi, Hoshino Masato, and Kikyou’s real face. These matters kept falling
on me one after the other, and I still hadn’t done anything. “Chofu is pretty
much the sticks, eh,” Norma-Shakuko said, walking behind Kikyou. “There’s
fields everywhere. Shizuoka and Chofu aren’t that different once we get away
from the station, after all.” “Same thing for cities like LA or New York, you
know,” saying that, I asked myself whether Shakuko, who looked exactly like
Norma Braun, wasn’t in fact someone else entirely acting like Shakuko, and
realized that it was pretty hard to clear even that suspicion. After all, at this
point, people’s minds could travel through time and space. Well, it probably
required various conditions, but even then, it’d been proven to be possible.
Someone planning something against you might’ve creeped inside another
person from another time and another place... That suspicion could be
pointed towards anybody. But no one ever suspects that. That’s because they
don’t know that’s a possibility. I knew, and therefore I doubted. It’s irritating
how knowledge only increases the doubts one has, but it’s also such a ubiq-
uitous irony. The more one knows something, the more they will doubt it...
So, for something like this, with identity as the core problem, to happen to
me, a detective specialized in searching for missing kids... Did those twists in
my life, too, come from my name being Disco? Regarding the question of
‘Why do mystery novel-like events always happen around detectives?’, the
author Jason Fourthroom said or wrote somewhere something shaky like,
“Detectives can’t make a living if cases don't happen, right? And those cases
will continue to bother the people around if they’re not solved, no? Every-
thing always goes well in the end, therefore everything exists in such a way
that it will go well. Detectives exist because cases occur, and because cases
occur, detectives are necessary. Detectives and cases aren’t like the chicken
and the egg problem, they were born at the same time. In short, the world was
made from the start so that things go well,” but the sentiment of ‘things go-
ing well’ only existed if there was the will of ‘I wish things happen that way’
prior to that. Fourthroom’s whole phrasing reeked of someone admitting
that destiny and fate exist. If what the ‘future Kozue’ had said, that this
world’s events were all decided by the interactions between destiny and wills,
was true, then why was the thing I wanted to trust the most, the existence of
the ‘future Kozue’ itself, the most doubtful thing of all... That said, my feel-
ings of wanting the ‘future Kozue’ to be Kozue might not have been as strong
as my pure feelings of wanting to know the truth. Maybe it was my fault that
Kozue’s identity was so loose. Maybe it was because I didn’t wish for the ‘fu-
ture Kozue’ to be Kozue strongly enough. But I was a detective. I couldn’t help
wanting to know the truth. And, maybe because I was a detective, I couldn’t
help getting involved in cases.
But thinking stuff like that wouldn’t make Kozue come back to me, it
wouldn’t do anything about Kikyou, who was trapped in a six-year-old’s
body carrying awful memories, and it wouldn’t change my relationship with
Shakuko; so it was meaningless. A detective doesn’t solve a case through sus-
picion, but through action. Also, a big part of why I was thinking about some-
thing so worthless was because I was still under the shock of learning about
Kozue’s memories from Kikyou earlier; so I tried to push away all the grief,
anger, erotic imagery, and such from my mind, but in the end, staying still
and thinking wouldn’t clear up any of that, so I had to act. I finally came to
that conclusion when I arrived at the roundabout of Chofu Station’s south
entrance along with the Norma-like Shakuko and the Kozue-like Kikyou.
There was the fountain plaza, as well as Hoshino Masato and his friends in a
corner. I told Kikyou and Shakuko standing behind me, “Go straight through
the fountain plaza that way and you’ll find a shortcut where you can go over
the rails, then go towards the north entrance and reserve a room at the
Princeton Hotel above the Parco with Shakuko’s name. It’s a little early for a
normal check-in, but just go into any room they finished cleaning.” I then
took out my wallet and phone from the bag containing my laptop and stuffed
them inside my back pocket, gave them the bag, parted ways with them, and
headed towards Hoshino’s group. They immediately took notice of me, and
apparently hadn’t forgotten about the straight line act I’d pulled on them the
day prior, as they seemed overjoyed. “Hi. Hello,” I called out to them with a
smile, but Number 1 told off a teammate next to him who’d replied to my
greeting on reflex with, “‘Hello’ my ass, you dumb fuck,” punched him in the
shoulder, then spoke to me: “Scram.” Number 1 was built like a pro wrestler
or a linebacker, wore a blue T-shirt, had his hair dyed blonde, and his right-
side eyebrows half shaved off. I took out my wallet from my back pocket, took
out a business card from it, and handed it to Number 1. On it was written
‘Missing Kid Detective, William Eady’ in both Japanese and English. That was
my business card for Japan. When I needed to name myself on the spot, I went
by ‘Odoriba Mizutarou,’ but I used ‘Eady’ when I needed to meet someone
face-to-face as a detective. Disco Wednesdayyy has the advantage of being
easy to remember, but that name is too wacky and unrealistic for Japanese
people. It makes them feel like they can bring up any crazy request to me,
which always ends with more trouble for me. Number 1 received my card and
asked, “What’s your deal?” I ignored that and asked, “Do you know of Panda
Lover?” causing the five around him to make a racket, “Whoa, he’s good at
Japanese! It’s like that ad for NOVA!5” which rubbed Number 1 the wrong way
since everyone was getting excited for something he wasn’t involved with.
“Shut up! Who cares, fuck off and go away,” he said and flicked my business
card off, so I swiftly hit his throat from the front, making him gasp and
crouch, then hit the back of his head even harder. “You shouldn’t throw away
business cards,” I said. “Pick it up.” “Sorry,” he apologized. I thought he was
being awfully obedient as he picked it up and stood up, but then I felt a pres-
ence behind me and avoided it. One of his comrades was gripping a knife in

5
Japan’s largest English teaching school at the time the book was written, although it
collapsed to a state of bankruptcy and barely survived it in 2007, a year before the book was
published. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(eikaiwa)
his right hand and tried to stab me in the abdomen from behind. “Ah, he
dodged it,” he muttered to himself. I stuck his right arm between my armpit
and dragged it to my hips, throwing him to the ground with a ju-jitsu tech-
nique; I then stepped on his neck to hold him in place and twisted his arm to
steal the knife. I stabbed the hems of Number 1’s shirt and stopped the tip
right before his belly button, then pulled it straight up, ripping apart the fab-
ric and exposing his muscular stomach. “No seriously, I’m sorry,” he said.
Hoshino Masato was looking at me, appearing on the verge of yawning, and
did nothing. I put away the knife in my jeans’ back pocket, made the guy on
the ground stand up, lined up all six of them before me, and started it all over.
“Do you know about Panda Lover?” “Yeah.” “You mean ‘yes, I do,’ right?
Speak formally when talking to your superiors, Japanese.” “Yes, I do.” “He’s
probably in Chofu, so I want you guys to search for him.” “Eh? Seriously?”
“I’m not completely sure, though.” “How do you want us to search for him?”
“How old are you guys?” “Ah, I’m 21, this guy’s 17, him 18, him 22, him 16,
and that one 19.” Hoshino Masato was 16. So, a high-schooler. I guess my eye
for Japanese people’s ages could’ve used more training. “You aren’t going to
school, right?” “We aren’t.” “How do you get by? Selling narco?” “Narco
means drugs, right? And drugs means medicine, right? We ain’t doing any of
that. We just can’t get a hold of it. We’re normal people, you know. We’re just
thugs for the looks.” “Ah, so everyone’s living with their parents?” “Yes.”
“Everyone?” “No, this guy’s crashing at everyone’s place,” Number 1 was
talking about Hoshino Masato. “Hmm. Okay, then you’ll live at my place
starting today,” I told Hoshino. “No way,” he replied. “I don’t wanna get
drilled.” “I’m not into that, dumbass. It’s to protect you, Hoshino.” “...”
“Saitama Prefecture, Saitama City, Murakami, 4-5-24, Hoshino Masato”
“Woah, crazy. How did you know?” The guy who got all surprised wasn’t
Hoshino, but a guy I didn’t know the name of; Hoshino, himself, said “My
bicycle?” He was quite perceptive. “How much will I get?” Hoshino asked.
“For what?” “The completion reward.” “There’s no such thing. Just be
thankful I’m not putting you in a box and sending it to your parents.” “Then
I’d just need to go away again.” “Then I’d just need to catch you again. I’m a
pro, you know.” “Who cares.” I took out the knife from my pocket and con-
tinued ripping the T-shirt of Number 1, who was blankly listening to us from
where I had stopped. His chest was now exposed. Only the part around his
throat was keeping the shirt in one piece. “Don’t worry, we’ll rough Hoshino
up later,” Number 1 said. Hoshino squinted his eyes and laughed it off. That
took me by surprise, in a good way. “Hoshino, you stay with me,” I said. “You
and the one over twenty will act. Those under twenty either go to school or
find a job.” I then asked for the name of everyone except Hoshino. Number 1
was Furutaka Masayuki, the seventeen year old was Aoyama Gen, the eight-
een year old was Abe Atsushi, the twenty-two year old was Ooga Yuusuke, and
the nineteen year old, who was bowing before Aoyama the last time, was In-
oue Toshihiko. Inoue? “Inoue-kun, what’s the name of your parents?” “...”
“Shingo-san and Hiromi-san?” “No, why?” Huh, I was disappointed, but
then Hoshino said, “That’s mine.” This guy kept giving me surprise after
surprise.
“Wasn’t your dad named Keisuke?” “Well yeah, but my mom’s Hiromi
and she has a lover, a sorta sex friend, named Shingo.” “Inoue Shingo?”
“Wrong again, Yokokawa Shingo. Inoue is my mom’s maiden name. ’Cause
Toshihiko and I are cousins.”
I once again felt like I did something uncalled for. What a downer. If I
hadn’t called out to Hoshino here, would I still have gotten a connection to
the Inoue? And what if the ‘future Kozue’ hadn’t mentioned the name Inoue?
What if she hadn’t predicted that ‘Hoshino Masato would beat me up’?
I felt like everything spread out at light speed, while other stuff on the
other hand converged too quickly, but maybe that was inevitable. Kozue
would become ‘Inoue Kozue’ by that winter. It was July right now, and ‘Kozue’
would enter the Saint Richard Kindergarten in Suitengu in winter.
“Hoshino, what’s in Suitengu?” I asked him. He first went “Huh?” but
then said “My mom comes from there.”
 I looked at Hoshino. ‘Kozue’s’ future non-blood-related brother. Was
that how it’d end up? Probably. And this guy would surely beat me half to
death...maybe. We still didn’t know. After all, Hoshino beating me up was
merely the content of the ‘letters from the future’ that the ‘future Kozue’ told
me about. They might have been lies, or they might’ve had loopholes like with
‘Norma Braun.’
But I still told him. “Masato, I’m sorry. For various things. So please, don’t
hit me. Please don’t kick me, punch me, or use violence on me.”
“Huh? Why are you using my first name all of a sudden,” Hoshino let out
a laugh. “And saying all that weird crap.”
I ignored him and continued. “I’m sorry. Please remember this. I’m truly
sorry.”
“...This guy’s done for. You going insane or something?” Hoshino said, so
I told him “Shut up, Masato.” “Ah, his attitude took a 180. Again. There’s
something wrong in his head, I’m telling you.” “Leave it at that and come
with me. You’re in charge of communication, ’kay? You know everyone’s
contact info, right?” “Yeah.” “Then, Furutaka, Ooga, you guys are off.” “Eh?”
“Use your heads. Go find anything that might lead us to Panda Lover in the
next three hours then report it to Masato.” “We can’t do it if the police can’t
either.” “You’ll find something, I’m sure.” “Eh?” Both Furutaka and Ooga
weren’t convinced, but I truly believed they would find something. Because
everything existed in such a way that they would.
I took Hoshino with me and headed towards Princeton Hotel while the
other five still looked dazed, and wondered to myself if all my actions were
uncalled for. Was I being controlled by someone? Yes & no to that. That was
the conclusion Forrest Gump reached at the end of the movie. People are sim-
ultaneously free and dominated by destiny. Also, ‘this world’s events are all
decided by the interactions between destiny and wills,’ what ‘Kozue’ had said.
Did they both mean the same thing? Anyhow, there would be no events if wills
or destiny—either of those two—were missing.
 Wills? But what did my will have to do with the complete mess that was
the chain of events happening to me currently? Was this what I wished for?
No! But detectives are met with incidents. Zero incidents mean zero detec-
tives. Was me being a detective the proof that I wished for this to occur? Was
the fact that I was named Disco the cause of all this chaos? I used William
Eady’s name once again earlier. I also had a business card with a flashy logo
for the detective “Disco ☆ Wednesdayyy.” Dialing the phone number from
that one should lead to the club Fermata in San Diego, where one of my two
friends, José or Johnson, would say, “Today Disco ☆ Wednesdayyy won’t be
working!” act like a detective’s assistant, and note the request down. What
was the logic connecting me being a detective, Kozue time slipping, and
Shakuko cosplaying? ...How much involvement did one’s will have over the
events happening to someone else? Of course, wanting to do something for
or against someone and acting on that is a common occurrence, but the mess
I was confronted with was a whole separate matter; could someone’s will
provoke events that will drag in people they don’t know, people they have no
relation with, without their awareness? Although I was half-forced to do it, I
took Kozue in. Kikyou jumped into Kozue, who was in the same house as I was.
I called Shakuko here. What in the world was I yearning for?
Was the Panda Lover Case some byproduct of my will in any way?
I once again ended up asking myself the same question. However, could it
be that all these events, which were undeniably happening to me, weren’t
happening for my sake? Someone else, with a stronger will, provoked them,
and I was simply dragged into it in the same way as Kozue, Kikyou, and
Shakuko.
What was the goal of that will?
What were its effects on its surroundings? What would happen from now
on? And would those events cause everything to end? How would this affair
conclude, and what meaning would it bestow to whom? I couldn’t know until
I got there myself. However, if many wills were at work to operate all sorts of
events, would there be any end or conclusion to any case? I thought I had led
all the cases I’d been a part of to their conclusion, watching over the results
from a detective’s perspective, but were they really over? Was it possible for
anything to truly end? Hadn’t everyone’s wills been constantly, at all times,
influencing and shaping those events, and wouldn’t that influence never dis-
appear? Don’t all events only progress through time, without a start nor an
end?
I didn’t know what my destiny was like, and no one else did either...bar-
ring the people who came from the future and had seen its conclusions and
results.
Kozue.
Could the ‘future Kozue’ become this world’s God for the upcoming eleven
years? However, what does one do when fate goes against your will? Instead
of just wishing for things to go a certain way, the ‘future Kozue’ would be able
to take concrete action. And, if that leads to things meant to happen not hap-
pening, things not meant to happen happening, or changing the way some
things happen, in the end, the butterfly effect means the future would end up
vastly different. Therefore, once she interfered with anything, its results
should’ve been unknown even to her. Thus, destiny would regain its opaque
state and the ‘future Kozue’ would lose her omniscience and omnipotence
over a single action.
Well, the ‘future Kozue’ seemed to be careful not to alter fate, rather than
acting like a God. If one doesn’t know about their destiny, then be it me, or
really anyone, they would be able to conduct their lives as they wish, like For-
rest Gump, and follow destiny in proper form like it was dictated from the
start, without having to brood over it. The ‘future Kozue’ said she was being
careful not to learn about past events. In other words, the ‘future Kozue’ was
trying to stay ignorant of the past, and bring that opaqueness over. I guess
people just can’t live their lives reading a scenario. Mmthen, for that past
thing, yeaaah, you see, it’s too dangerous, so I’m being careful not to touch
on it. In short, the newspapers scare me. If I even glance at one, a case will
catch my eyes, and if someone were to have died in it, that’s a big problem
for me. That is, should I save them or not when coming here? Is it okay to save
them? Can I even save them? Wait, that was part of the ‘letters from the fu-
ture,’ and merely something we were made to copy. So a hoax. However, even
if it was, that didn’t mean the emotional state depicted there was a lie or a
fake. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that the ‘future Kozue’ went through
the same fears as the Kozue in those letters. Yet the ‘future Kozue’ knew a few
things regarding what would happen to me; I guess that’s human nature for
you. People are naturally curious to know what will happen in the future. They
want to know what they don’t, even if that makes it harder for them to live.
That’s why detectives exist...or was that a boring and long-winded stretch to
present myself in a good light? Well, the original impetus for detectives to
exist didn’t matter here. In reality, would ‘Hoshino Masato beating me up’
and the ‘love between the future Kozue and I’ unfold in bizarre ways, in the
same vein as ‘Norma Braun appearing’ did?
So we’re gonna have a tragic love.
Hoshino Masato and I entered the Parco situated on the side of the round-
about in front of the north entrance and headed towards the reception lobby
of Princeton Hotel on the eighth floor with the elevator. As Hoshino was gaz-
ing at the window of the rising elevator, I spoke to him: “Your cousin, he was
prostrating in front of the young Aoyama the other day, no? Why didn’t you
stop him?” He turned to me and leaned his head onto the glass with a goon,
then said, “Why would I have to stop him?” but not being in the mood to go
through a boring lecture of the same type as ‘why is killing bad?’ I fell silent.
Hoshino continued, “Let him be, he’s free to do whatever. More importantly,
what should I call you, old man?” “Disco-san.” “Huh?” “It’s a nickname.
Everyone calls me Disco. Don’t you have any nicks yourself?” “Not really.
Everyone uses Masato.” Hoshino kept it at that and didn’t say anything fur-
ther than his initial ‘Huh?’ concerning ‘Disco.’ That was quite rare for a Jap-
anese person. “Masato, any name you like?” “Dance Dance Revolution.”
“...Fine, let’s go with that. Then your surname will be Chofugaoka, okay?”
“Was I sold to an old man and will I be forced to have sex now?” “Why do you
always think about that? Male prostitution isn’t awaiting you at every corner
of your life. It’s bad to think that way, you know?” The elevator reached the
eighth floor as I said that. I made Hoshino get off, pushed his back all the way
to the front desk, and reserved a room. A twin room. I wrote down ‘William
Eady’ for myself then started to write ‘Chofugaoka Dancedancerevolution’
under it in the companion section, but Hoshino said “Stop!” when I had only
written ‘Chofugaoka Dan’ so I stopped there. “Hey, you know...well, whatever,
that’s fine.” Hoshino and I received the key for room 1009... Even then, I still
don’t want to go near room 202.
I recalled that the ‘future Kozue’ had said that. What was the context
again? ...It was mentioned when we were talking about Hoshino Masato beat-
ing me half to death. I’d forgotten. 202? I asked the clerk. “Does this hotel
have a room numbered 202?” “No, we don’t. However, we have a room num-
bered 1202 at your disposal.” “...I see. Is there anyone in there right now?”
“Not at the moment. It is a family-type semi-suite. It has two bedrooms,
both furnished with two beds. If that one is more to your preference, shall I
change your reservation to it?” “No, not needed. Thanks.” I wouldn’t get
close for the time being. Especially when I was with Hoshino. Hoshino and I
boarded the hotel’s exclusive elevator. “Would Dan be the diminutive of Dan-
iel?” Hoshino asked. “It sure would.” “Chofugaoka Daniel...still sounds like
the name of an apartment. Dunhill sounds better. Chofugaoka Dunhill.”
“That’s straight up the name of Dunhill’s main store in Chofu.” “Eh? Really?
But Dan is so lame.” “Absolutely not. There’s Steely Dan and Dan Marino.”
“Who?” “A band and a pro footballer.” “Never heard of them.” “What about
John Donne? He’s a poet.” “That’s the worst. Both John and Donne sound like
first names. Like Shingo Hidenori. Dan’s no good. Too much like Dandadan.”
“What’s that?” “An enka singer.” “Oh, a person. Sounds like an onomato-
poeia.” “Chofugaoka Dandadan. So stupid. Well, fine,” Hoshino said as we
arrived in front of room 1009. “There’s really no one waiting for me inside,
right?” “Stop worrying so much,” I told him, opened the door, turned on the
lights, and pushed him inside the room. “Oh, it’s kinda clean.” “Dan, wait in
here.” “‘Dan’...still so uncool. I’m hella hungry.” “Order whatever through
room service and eat that. I have stuff to investigate, so I’m heading out.
Don’t leave this room. If you disappear, I’ll find you for sure, beat you up ap-
propriately, then send you back to Saitama, okay?” “Sure, whatever. But I left
my bike in front of the station.” “We’ll go retrieve it together later.” It’d be a
pain if it got removed and his family was contacted. “Okay, then wait for me
here, Dan.” “Again, stop with the ‘Dan.’ It’s irritating and embarrassing.”
“Being embarrassed of your name won’t do you any good,” well, not like I
could talk. “It’s still better than Disco, I guess,” Hoshino said. I laughed, but
once again was a little hurt by it. “Take care, then,” I said before leaving
Hoshino behind in the room, returning to the hall with the elevator, taking
out my phone, and calling Shakuko. “Hello?” “Are you in a room?” “Yup.”
“Number?” “Wait, isn’t Kikyou-chan menstruating? We need to give her
pads before making her wear panties. I’m going to buy some so hurry up and
join us in the room.” “Yeah so what’s the number?” “Where are you now?”
“At the hotel.” “I’m in 1201. A semi-suite.”

12

This Princeton Hotel had a Parco occupying floors one through seven;
since the rooms were numbered after their floor number + their position,
they started at 801, and there was no room 202. Many places have a room 202,
but this one didn’t.
Villa Hapira Kojimacho had a room 202 as well. Right. Shouldn’t I have
feared that right from the get-go? But I wasn’t especially afraid when I was
in Villa Hapira Kojimacho.
Due to my thoughts and perception and just the bare minimum of pro-
cessing I did towards it, in the end, my feelings towards ‘Norma Braun,’
‘Hoshino Masato,’ and ‘room 202’ might’ve been the reason for Shakuko
moving, Hoshino being pulled towards me, and me being guided to room
1202. If that was the case, then we could say that the words the ‘future Kozue’
whispered to me were the cause of all of this. Those words changed my feel-
ings and the state in which reality was in... No, we could even argue that the
mastermind wasn’t the ‘future Kozue’ but the ‘letters from the future’ left on
Kozue’s sketchbook. The ‘future Kozue’ prophesied my encounter with
‘Norma Braun’ and warned me about ‘Hoshino Masato’ and ‘room 202’ after
reading those letters.
But the letters were made up.
The ‘future Kozue’ and I weren’t really exchanging letters, we were
simply writing down letters that were exchanged. And those were the ones
that would remain in the future. That worked kinda like an ouroboros, an in-
finite loop. The ‘future Kozue’ and I were copying the ‘letters from the future,’
but those letters themselves were copied by us. How had these ‘letters’ come
to be...? That seemed like a genuine chicken and egg problem, so thinking
along that line, I guessed them being written at the beginning took priority
over them being copied...meaning that the contents of the letters had once
happened for real, but were no longer happening now. Which means the fu-
ture must’ve changed. Furthermore, if the world really had been changed,
then wouldn’t that mean the big explosion leading to the world’s collapse
that the ‘future Kozue’ feared didn’t happen?
...Or maybe, I came up with an idea. It was a mere hypothesis, more of a
thought experiment than anything, but...what if those ‘letters’ were, in fact,
‘prophecies’ that took the shape of letters, and they weren’t written by me
nor the ‘future Kozue’ but by someone else...no, an existence close to
God...not even that, they were written by no one. Those ‘letters’ simply came
to exist.
Someone’s will and destiny might’ve birthed the matter that made up
those letters.
In the same way as the world started from null, those ‘letters’ popped into
existence; maybe I’d simply never noticed that such things could pop into ex-
istence and, in reality, it happened very commonly and frequently.
 13

Was that idea merely a way to push back on the problem of the ‘letters’
and cease my thinking on the matter? I got off the elevator and walked down
the hallway with my steps softly sinking in the reddish-brown carpet; I
stopped before the first door on the left, that of room 1201, and looked at
room 1202 which, despite being the room ‘next door,’ was about 15 meters
away. The twelfth floor only had four rooms. The doors of rooms 1203 and
1204, on the other side of the hallway, were not symmetrically facing those
of this side. I covered my mouth with the hand I’d raised to knock on the door
and slowly walked further down the hallway, for about 15 meters. There was
a door. ‘Room 1202’ was written on it. I’d brought Hoshino downstairs. The
Norma-ed Shakuko was here too. Even if we assumed this was the ‘room 202’
the ‘future Kozue’ was talking about, I wouldn’t run away from here. I was
the type that would go somewhere if told not to. Would Hoshino hurt me here
and drive me to the brink of death? I was a detective, I doubted and investi-
gated these doubts. I knocked on the door. I waited for some time. No answer.
I started imagining another ‘Hoshino Masato’ waiting to butcher me on the
other side of this door. That guy might be a Hoshino who came from the fu-
ture, someone entirely different who had the same face as Hoshino, or some-
one with the same full name that might or might not resemble him. Well, not
like I cared. The ‘future Kozue’ said ‘half to death.’ ‘Half to death’ means I
wouldn’t get killed. I’d had my fair share of near-death experiences. As long
as I didn’t die, most injuries could heal, and that’s what I’d been doing up to
now. It was fine. I just didn’t want to get paralyzed, so I’d focus on protecting
my spine when ‘Hoshino Masato’ finally attacked me.
I knocked on the room 1202 door once again. I grabbed the knob, but the
door was locked and the lever got stuck about halfway pointing down. Why
was I actually seeking ‘room 202’ when I was told not to go near it? I was be-
ing totally manipulated by the ‘future Kozue’...rather, I was at the mercy of
her words. If the future stayed unchanged then it would’ve happened either
way, however, in reality, the ‘future Kozue’ was the one who led me to this
‘room 202’ by talking about it, so wouldn’t that have not occurred if she
hadn’t done it? I thought so, but it might also be an inevitable event occurring
in order to maintain this timeline’s integrity. Kozue told me to not go to
‘room 202’ because I’d been there, and therefore I would go there. It was sim-
ilar to the way the ‘letters’ functioned. ‘Kozue’ and I wrote those ‘letters,’
and therefore, by reading them, ‘Kozue’ and I were writing them. When
something occurs inevitably, randomly, or either, how much influence does
foreknowledge of its occurrence have on it happening? If knowledge pro-
voked the occurrence, then that famous saying about the spoon bending...you
don’t wish for the spoon to bend, you believe it is bending...if we turned that
into a universal law: Believing in a certain state of reality alters the actual one
to match that belief. Imagination could change the way things were. I’d be-
lieved too much in the ‘future Kozue’s’ words. I was a detective, I ought to be
more doubtful.
I returned to room 1201 and knocked on the door. It opened, and Shakuko
showed me her Norma face. “Geez, you took too long. Don’t you feel bad for
Kikyou-chan, who cannot wear panties?” Behind Shakuko, who was saying
all of that, sat Kikyou with the outward appearance of Kozue, sitting on the
bed and flapping her legs. Although this sight struck my heart, Kikyou who
occupied her insides said, “I don’t really mind. It’s not my butt that’s show-
ing, after all,” causing Shakuko to glare at me and press me for an explana-
tion, “So, what’s that about?” I took a breath before entering room 1201,
made Shakuko and Kikyou sit next to each other, then started talking. “This
might be pretty shocking to hear.” Kozue’s internal timeslip. The prophecies
of the ‘letters.’ My hypothesis that Panda Lover might be in Chofu. Kozue’s
menstruation. I didn’t talk about Hoshino. I wanted to keep Kozue away from
him as much as possible. But then, why did I bring them to the same hotel?
Wills and destinies create all events. But my destiny was toying with my will.
“The pain in my stomach is indeed similar to menstruation pain,” Kikyou
said. “But wait, didn’t this end halfway through? Is that alright? Well, I just
want pads for the moment. It’ll be a pain if it starts again.” “I’m going to buy
some,” Shakuko said, then looked at me and said, “I chose to have this face
of my own will, okay? It has nothing to do with that ‘Kozue’-chan’s proph-
ecy.” “Yeah,” I replied. “I still get that.” “So, what’s your plan for the future?”
Shakuko asked. “You’re going to search for Panda Lover, right?” “Shakuko,
don’t you need to go back to Shizuoka?” “I do, but I’m not going to. I wouldn’t
have taken a room if I planned on doing that. I’ll help you out with what I can.”
“I’m scared,” Kikyou said. “You don’t remember anything about Panda
Lover, right?” Shakuko asked. Kikyou firmly nodded Kozue’s head. “But isn’t
being able to steal people’s minds super dangerous? Wouldn’t it be better to
stay away from him?” I replied to Kikyou with, “But we can’t leave him in the
wild like that, either. We don’t even know where you’ll end up when the ‘fu-
ture Kozue’ shows up again,” to which Shakuko asked me, “How much time
do you think we have until that? Until ‘Kozue’-chan comes.” I looked at my
watch. About two hours had passed since the ‘future Kozue’ left this morning.
“She could be here any moment at this point, but we can’t know. Kikyou-
chan’s presence might’ve altered it, too.” “Then, it might be a dangerous bet,
but let’s wait for the future ‘Kozue’-chan to come. And we won’t be simply
waiting, let’s leave the future ‘Kozue’-chan a message too.” “?” “?” “‘Ko-
zue’-chan received the knife and fork under the ginkgo tree, no? And she re-
ported back on that before you even wrote your letter about having buried it,
so doesn’t that mean our future wills and actions have an impact on the fu-
ture? Then let’s have ‘Kozue’-chan investigate the truth of the Panda Lover
Case in the future right now. Yeah. You’re going to solve this case, Disco, so
just ask ‘Kozue’-chan for the answer. Haha. You’re going to start thinking
and acting in order to ask ‘Kozue’-chan to tell you the truth, aren’t you? Then
‘Kozue’-chan received that message, investigated, and will tell you the truth
in the past, right? And then you’ll arrest Panda Lover. And that record will
inform the future ‘Kozue’-chan about the truth.” “Eh? Woah, Shakko-san.
You’re so smart,” Kikyou said. I found it to be a good idea. It was pretty un-
reasonable, full of contradictions and paradoxes, but the cause and effect re-
lationship—the chicken and egg problem—could apparently be entirely
flipped on its head or have both happen simultaneously, it was kinda vague.
That went for the ‘letters from the future’ too. Then it might be fine to fabri-
cate a cause from thin air to produce whatever effect we wanted, anything as
long as we managed to achieve an ‘event.’ Perhaps that was the only way to
be in control in this uncertain world. “But what if the Panda Case wasn’t
solved even in eleven years?” I asked. “Then Kozue won’t know the truth and
I won’t be able to solve it.” “Well, for that, you know, you have your strong
will. You decided that you’ll arrest that guy yourself no matter what. Panda
Lover being in Chofu looks like a pretty astute idea to me, you know? I mean,
Kikyou-chan is in Chofu. You should maintain that spirit. After all, it’s easier
for things to go your way when you have a concrete image of them. Haha.” As
Shakuko laughed, Kikyou said, “Same goes for wishes!” Hmm, a strong will,
huh. In the way Shakuko phrased it, it looked like will could influence destiny.
Consciousness could alter reality. I thought that too. So Shakuko had that im-
age inside her as well. Kikyou too. I bet a lot of people had noticed that. Words
could create part of someone’s consciousness. The power in words. The Jap-
anese called it kotodama. Words had power and could make things obey them.
I said, “Alright, I’ll arrest that Panda Lover guy at all costs.” I was aiming for
that to begin with. I was confident. I would catch Panda Lover.
“Then let’s start,” Shakuko said as she stood up. “It’s no use waiting idly
for ‘Kozue’-chan. We need to leave records more than anything else. So, what
shall we do?” “What to do, indeed.” “That Panda Lover or whatever steals the
soul of other people, right? How does he do it? Any idea, Miss Victim?”
Shakuko asked Kikyou. “How...I don’t remember anything. Sorry. I only re-
member basic information like my name. Like that I am myself. That’s im-
portant, right?” Kikyou said. “What is your last memory?” “...I remember
blood coming out of my crotch in the bath. But, you know, that’s what hap-
pened to the owner of this body so... Ah...then I...don’t remember anything. I
didn’t bring my brain here, after all.” “I see.” “Kikyou-chan,” I then spoke
to her. “Could you once more recall Kozue’s bad memory you mentioned ear-
lier? Can you remember anything about that place? You don’t know that per-
son’s name, right? But can you remember anything other than the glasses
and the black tattoo of a bird on his right arm?” Kikyou covered Kozue’s face
with her palms and nodded. For a while only the sound of her nose breathing
against her palm, making a shhhhh echoed. “Eh? What’s that about?”
Shakuko asked. Since I didn’t answer, after some time Kikyou said, “Shakko-
san, are you acquainted with Kozue?” with her face still covered. “Not at all.
I’ve never seen nor talked to her.” “Then, since it’s pretty private, maybe I
shouldn’t talk about it, but...Disco-san, are you gonna have Shakko-san help
with Kozue-chan’s case?” “No, I’ll handle that on my own.” Shakuko then
said, “No way in hell, Disco. I don’t know what’s going on but...when you say
you’ll do something on your own with such a scary face, nothing good ever
comes out of it.”Ah crap, since she’d said that, it was going to happen that
way now, wasn’t it? I thought that to myself, elaborating on the belief of the
power in words. “An adult man did something bad to Kozue-chan, the owner
of this body. Well, not just something bad; rape. He tied the crying Kozue-
chan with a rope, made her lie down face up, and...crap, I’m remembering
various things. I’m getting pretty good at using this girl’s brain. Ah, yuck,”
Kikyou said, before standing up barefoot, walking up to near the pillows on
the bed, flipping the sheets, and crawling under it. “Yuck,” she repeated once
more, then sniffled with her nose. “Kikyou-chan, do you want to stop?”
Shakuko asked, to which Kikyou said, “It’s fine. This isn’t my experience, af-
ter all...I want to remember as much as I can, for Kozue-chan’s sake,” and
rounded her body inside the sheets. But she immediately started screaming
“Kyaah!” extending both her arms and legs, kicking away the sheets covering
her with her feet, and once her body was revealed to me and Shakuko, who
were startled, she continued to struggle with her entire body like an eel out of
water, continuously screaming kyaah! kyaah! kyaah! with a shrill voice, loud
enough to rip her throat apart, so much that I feared the windows would
break due to the vibrations in the air—even though the windows should’ve
been the least of my worries. Still agitating her face-up body on the bed,
Kikyou formed a fist with her right hand and started hitting her crotch with
all her might. “Kikyou-chan! Kikyou-chan!” Shakuko grabbed her arm, but
Kikyou only groaned “Ugggggggh!” before now screaming “A snake! A
snake! There’s a snake!” and then resumed hitting her crotch with her other
arm. “There’s no snake here!” Shakuko yelled and covered Kikyou’s body
with hers. I said, “Kikyou-chan. Kikyou-chan, that’s merely Kozue’s
memory. Nothing happened to you,” but she replied, “No, there’s really a
snake in there!” pushed Shakuko away, raised her upper body, flipped up her
negligee, showed us her genital apparel, and stretched it with both hands to
indicate to us to peek inside. “The snake went in there and is still living,”
Kikyou said. “No. Kikyou-chan, Kozue might’ve thought it was a snake, but
that was probably a man’s penis or a sex toy that looked the part,” I told her.
Kikyou swayed her body back and forth while covering Kozue’s face with
tears and snot, then said, “I don’t know,” and formed a wry smile. “After all,
Kozue-chan didn’t see yours, Disco-san.” “Of course.” I said, then Shakuko
butted in. “Really? I bathed with my dad until my second year of elementary
school, though.” Kikyou-chan then hypothesized: “The blood that came out,
maybe it wasn’t from menstruating, maybe the rape injured her somewhere...”
She inserted a finger in Kozue’s genital apparel, making some blood flow out
of her vagina. “It came out again,” she said before using her middle finger to
probe as far as she could go. “Does it hurt?” Shakuko asked from the side. “It
doesn’t... What’s that?” she used her middle finger to dig out something re-
sembling a small, blood-drenched branch from her vagina, but the caterpil-
lar-looking thing had nails; it was human, and probably a man’s. A human
finger cut at the base. There was hair growing on top of the finger near the
base. Kikyou couldn’t even scream, her mouth was wide open. Gasp, I heard
her breathe in air at a frightening pace so I looked over and saw her body
twisting to go back to the other side of the bed, but then, as I was looking at
the bloody finger she dropped near her crotch, I saw another fingertip peek-
ing out of her genitalia. “Kikyou-chan, stay still.” I leaned over and extended
a hand towards her genitalia as Kikyou rose an ass cheek in the air, went to
grab the fingertip that was showing out of her vagina, and plop, it came out
along with that sound and some blood. A second one. If there were two, I
thought, and inserted a finger inside Kozue’s genitalia. I searched around in
her blood-filled insides and eventually hit a hard object pretty far in. I
pinched it and pulled it out; it was yet again a man’s fat finger. “Aaaaah, guh,
uuuugh, aaaaaaah!” I ignored Kikyou’s cries and inserted my fingers back in-
side with the same intent as when peeling off a band-aid in a single motion,
took out another finger that was even further in, and got back to searching
once more, but there was nothing else to be found. Under Kozue’s bloody ass
were four fingers that, from the color of the skin, their texture, the way hair
grew on them, and the form of the nails, were cut off from a single person;
dying the sheets crimson red.

14

“The fuck is this...” Shakuko muttered. “Have you been with her since I
parted with you at the south gate?” I asked. Shakuko looked vacantly at me
for some time, as if my words didn’t reach her brain, then, “Eh? Yes? I’ve not
taken my eyes off her. You’re talking about Kikyou-chan, right? Yes.” I
started pondering over when it could’ve happened. Last night ‘Kozue’ had
come from the future, then left. After that, I slept in Kozue’s room, woke up,
went to the bathroom alone and masturbated, and when I got out of the bath
and came back to Kozue’s room, the ‘future Kozue’ was there again, then
menstruated, causing me to go buy pads; in the meanwhile, the ‘future Kozue’
left, leaving the small Kozue crying in the bathroom; there, I pushed on Ko-
zue’s stomach, and blood came out of her vagina. When that got sorted out,
we left the bath and Kozue climbed to the second floor to change clothes when
the Norma-lookalike Shakuko arrived to get ass-fucked by me. While we
were doing that, Shimada Kikyou arrived inside Kozue. Later, Kikyou would
notice the blood on her panties in the toilets, call the police, run away outside,
get found by me in the back garden of room 101, and stick with Shakuko until
arriving at this hotel room. So was the blood we thought had come from her
menstruating actually from these severed fingers? That would mean the four
fingers penetrated her vagina before she lost any blood. But then had the ‘fu-
ture Kozue’ inserted them into herself to fool me into thinking she was men-
struating? Why would she do that? And more importantly, what was the ‘fu-
ture Kozue’ scheming against me? Wait, no, would the real ‘future Kozue’ do
that? Thinking that way, then the ‘future Kozue’ might really not have been
Kozue, but someone else who entered Kozue’s body—similarly to Kikyou—
introduced herself as ‘Kozue,’ and read and used Kozue’s brain to pretend to
be ‘Kozue,’ all to manipulate me and achieve some goal.
That being said, what were those fingers? Whose were they? I observed the
fingers lying on the bed, but they had no ring nor traces indicating one had
been worn in the past; the cuts were clean, likely made by a blade, clump
clump clump clump. Not much time had passed since they’d been cut off. The
complexion of the fingers was still normal. It wasn't noon yet at that moment,
so the fingers must’ve entered Kozue after midnight. So today, maybe only a
few hours prior. Same for when they were cut. Who cut whose fingers, I won-
dered... If we assumed the ‘future Kozue’ had cut someone’s finger and put
them in her vagina... I inadvertently looked at my hands; all fingers were pre-
sent. Could the time-slipping ‘future Kozue’ have somehow cut my fingers?
I thought that for a moment, but it seemed like only her spirit traveled back
and forth between the future and present, and she couldn’t bring or take an-
ything with her... But I was now doubtful about the ‘future Kozue’ being Ko-
zue. I was even wondering if she wasn’t someone else claiming to be the ‘fu-
ture Kozue,’ deceiving me in order to achieve some kind of goal; then,
couldn’t I actually be way more doubtful? If her being ‘Kozue’ was a lie, then
obviously her being from ‘eleven years in the future’ and the whole ‘time
slipping’ thing, too, should be put into question, shouldn’t it? For instance,
what if Kozue’s constitution was bizarre, such that she was capable of sudden
growth and retrogression, and on top of that, she was incredibly smart. Then,
deceiving me might be a child’s play. After all...oh, right. After all, I didn’t
actually see her unbury the Uno Chiyo knife and fork I buried under the
ginkgo on that evening. And for the names of ‘Norma Braun’ and ‘Hoshino
Masato,’ she could’ve investigated that herself or asked someone to do it at
any point before or after I got involved with Yamagishi Kozue’s abduction by
Oda Kenji and blurted them out at an appropriate timing...perhaps the power
residing in Kozue’s words was extraordinarily strong at altering reality. Ko-
zue might have that sort of special constitution...like a sort of language skill.
Or it might be precognition. If we allowed the extreme change in physique
and the transcendental thinking speed to be possible, then even that kind of
supernatural ability was on the board... But if we were going that direction,
then Kozue’s vagina might’ve a special faculty. It might be able to swallow
whole some faraway guy’s finger up to the base, harden her labia majora like
a nail clipper, and clump, cut the thing off. So yeah, some sort of castration
device. So Kozue might be able to cut off and collect anyone’s phallus at any
point in time by jumping through spacetime with her vagina, and those fin-
gers she cut off this time were a warning to me that she could do that... So
Kozue might be after my penis, and her next move after those four fingers
might be to pretend to have sex with me and my precious penis only to clump
it off. And if I didn’t follow her warning...wait what? What the fuck? I ended
up only thinking about fucked up stuff.
“Whose fingers would they be,” the seated Shakuko nonchalantly asked
while massaging Kikyou’s back on top of the bed. “They’re fingers, they
should have fingerprints, no? Can’t we research if the police have them in
their database?” I rubbed my face with both hands and doubled my caution
to not start thinking about weird stuff again. “I’m guessing it wasn’t Kikyou-
chan’s doing, given her reaction,” Shakuko said. “But Kikyou-chan, did you
not notice anything when you had those down there?” Kikyou was rubbing
her face against the bed’s sheets to wipe away her tears and snot, “No, no,
those didn’t enter down there,” she said. “They were further in already. In
the...uterus? I think that’s the word.” “Impossible,” I said. “The entrance to
the uterus is really narrow. Plus, the thing’s only as big as a chicken egg. It’s
already borderline to imagine four adult fingers penetrating a kid’s vagina,
so the uterus is basically inconceivable.” Kikyou glared at me with Kozue’s
face. “Impossible? Can something really be impossible at this point? What
happened to me and what happened to Kozue both should be impossible, but
they still happened, am I wrong? I swear I’m being absolutely serious. They
didn’t enter my vagina. They were further in my vagina because that’s where
they were born.” So they weren’t cut off and inserted in there, but produced
inside the uterus? That complete reversal in thinking caught me by surprise.
With cloning technology, it was possible to only create a part of the body by
altering someone’s DNA, but uteruses were where fetuses were connected to
the belly button and fostered, not an organ to cultivate clones. “Did this look
like a snake to Kozue?” Shakuko said as she pinched a bent finger among the
four that were mostly of the same length between her fingers and raised it in
the air. “Uwah, don’t do that, Shakko-san, it’s scary,” Kikyou rolled on the
bed with her ass still fully exposed, strode over her own excretions, went to
the washroom, rinsed her mouth, brought back a towel to clean them, used
another towel to wipe herself since she’d gotten dirty, and returned to the
other side of the bed. “I don’t know. But you might be right. Inside Kozue’s
memory, there was a snake-like thing entering down there, but...” she said,
“I thought it was a...what was it called again, a sex toy?” “The man was lick-
ing Kozue down there, so yeah, it’s normal to assume it was a sex toy.” “Nor-
mal, you say...” Shakuko dropped the finger to its initial position and wiped
her hand with the sheets of the bed. “I can’t seem to see anything normal
around here, or rather, things that aren’t normal start to seem that way. Like,
they are weird, but we’re getting used to them.” I took out a picture of Oda
Kenji from my wallet. “Kikyou-chan, look at this. Is it this man?” But Kikyou
shook her head. “No, he was younger.” I showed her a picture capturing both
Yamagishi Kazuo, Kanoko, and Kozue. “Not him either,” she said. “How
young was he exactly? Like what age?” “Umm, I wonder. Between 20 and 30,
I feel. May I go to the toilets? I want to brush my teeth.” Saying that, Kikyou
stood up, walked around the bed, and disappeared into the bathroom. “Be-
tween 20 and 30, eh. That’s pretty broad,” Shakuko said. “And here I thought
I’d be having my fill of sex and quickly go back to Shizuoka. Life is compli-
cated. Aaaaah,” she stretched her body, then said “Okay, time to move,” and
stood up. “I’m gonna buy pads, so think about the fingers for the time being.
Disco, you have acquaintances among the Japanese police, no?” I did. Orikasa
Yoshitaka from the Chofu Police Station. I had him help me find Kozue too...
Taking her bag, “Then I’ll buy everything we need from the Parco, so hold on
a little,” she was about to leave. “Tell me,” I called out to stop her. “For the
timeslip stuff and the prophecies and all that, did you believe me, just from
what I said?” “...? What are you talking about?” “I mean, you didn’t see ‘Ko-
zue’ come from the future and make Kozue’s body grow bigger, did you?”
“No. I didn’t see that happen, but Kikyou-chan is inside Kozue’s body, isn’t
she?” “But it’s not like you saw Kikyou-chan enter Kozue’s body.” “No kid
this small can talk like that, I tell you. There’s for sure a fourteen-year-old
girl in there. I believe you.” “Kozue might just be incredibly smart.” “You
know, even if she was, why would she deceive you?” “She might have some
objective.” “Huh? Here you go again. Oh please. You know, you’re a detective,
so I get that it’s natural for you to think there’s a hidden truth or a twist
awaiting you, but in my eyes, that’s just doubting for the sake of doubting.
Stuff like that doesn’t happen. You’ve been doing this detective thing for too
long. But seriously. You’re suspecting things like momentous twists, unex-
pected culprits, or unexpected masterminds when it’s not necessary. Doesn’t
that make the situation complex when things follow suit? Going by your hap-
hazardous suspicions, won’t you, in the end, spout out that you’re the cul-
prit? That even though you have no memory of it and no proof, you’re prob-
ably the mastermind. But in my opinion, if there’s no memory, proof, or like-
lihood of it happening, you don’t even have to consider the possibility.”
Facts and truths were always hidden away. They were hidden. If one
wanted to know them, they had to start searching, and in order to search,
they had to doubt. Where is that? What does it look like? Why is it there and
why does it have this shape? Someone whose occupation is to doubt like this
would naturally come to learn more clearly about people’s greediness and
dark nature, but that knowledge couldn’t be applied elsewhere to know other
facts and truths. Other things were hidden in different ways and necessitated
different searching methods and doubting methods. Moreover, doubting it-
self didn’t have limits. Experiences such as discovering something one
couldn’t have imagined make one stronger and drive them towards new sus-
picions...
Was learning hidden or previously hidden truths and facts ethical?
Was doubting for the sake of correctness correct?
Up to now, I’d dodged the numerous traps set up against me, leading me
to learn how to doubt the people closest to me that were usually devoid of
suspicions. I might’ve gotten too used to unexpected culprits, so now I was
being more cautious than necessary about ‘a traitor near me whose real na-
ture I didn’t know.’ And that caution might’ve had the same sort of influence
as the power in words, altering reality, and possibly creating those ‘traitors
near me whose real nature I didn’t know.’ Maybe if I didn’t have those suspi-
cions, all the clients, lovers, and friends I’d buried would be living normally
around me by now. But I could no longer stop suspecting. I was already long
used to being betrayed and losing things. And, as someone yearning for truth,
I felt seriously satisfied as long as I had something genuine near me.
Therefore, I would doubt again.
Was there really no possibility of the ‘Kikyou’ who entered Kozue’s body
to be deceiving me?
‘Kikyou’ told me the names, address, and phone number of her parents in
Yakushima. It was probably impossible to research that with the brain of the
six-year-old Kozue, but even if we assumed for now that the person inside
Kozue currently wasn’t Kozue, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was ‘Shimada
Kikyou’ herself. Both ‘Kikyou’s’ fingerprints and DNA were Kozue’s. Since
other people could enter Kozue’s body, didn’t that mean that the same thing
could happen to anyone’s body and anyone’s spirit? Once one starts doubting
that way, it’s impossible to confirm anyone’s identity. Even if someone said
“I’m X,” if other people could enter that body and use its brain as their own,
then it’s simple to steal everything from that person and deceive the people
around. Was there any way to refute that suspicion? Thinking about the im-
possibility of that urged me to hold my head, then the ‘Panda Lover’ surged
to this very head... If Panda Lover really removed souls from people’s bodies,
then he might be the only person able to confirm anyone’s identity.
I wish he’d tell me the ropes of soul-stealing, I thought. If I knew how to
do that, I’d be able to cross off the possibility of someone being anyone else.
However, if I knew that, if multiple people knew the trick, then I would
ultimately suspect that ‘multiple people might be stealing souls at the same
time,’ so I guess it wouldn’t be all that different from the current impossibil-
ity of confirming identities... Well, enough with those hypotheses relying on
other hypotheses. Facts were, I didn’t know how to do it for now, so I had no
way to confirm that ‘Kikyou’ was Shimada Kikyou. And, to begin with, I had
no way of confirming that ‘Shimada Kikyou’ was ever Shimada Kikyou. I had
suspicions, but no way of clearing those away. The only thing I could do was
to forget about those suspicions...but I was a detective. I was too used to sus-
pecting. Okay then, I got ready to suspect my suspicions themselves.
In reality, was doubting whether ‘Kikyou’ was Kikyou and whether ‘Kozue’
was Kozue such a critical issue? If I was really being deceived by ‘Kikyou’ or
‘Kozue,’ if they were scheming something against me, if I would eventually
be trapped by them, if so, was it really necessary for me to thoroughly prevent
that from happening right now? Was it fine to prioritize doubting over trust-
ing?
I liked Kozue, I wanted to cherish ‘Kozue’ too, and I want to somehow be
of help to ‘Kikyou.’ Since I felt that way, I should do something for them.
Maybe I should even shut my trap and let myself be fooled. If my suspicions
were revealed to be true and there was a trap awaiting me, when I would see
through it, when it would be revealed, I would simply have to deal with my
feelings at the time. I would simply have to deal with the person that betrayed
me at the time.
Let’s direct my suspicions towards something else for the moment.
“Hold on a minute,” I told Shakuko that and left her behind in the room,
took the elevator to 1009 and used my phone to take a picture of Hoshino Ma-
sato, who was lying on the bed and watching TV. “Hey, what the fuck, don’t
take pictures so suddenly,” Hoshino said. I flipped up the right sleeve of his
T-shirt. No bird tattoo. I looked at his hand. All ten fingers were in place. At
least for the time being. But doubting that was endless anyway. “Anything
from your friends?” “Nope.” “Rest here a little longer, then.”
I left 1009 without saying anything, took the elevator up, and returned to
1201. “Ah, you’re back,” ‘Shakuko’ said, sitting next to ‘Kikyou.’ As I showed
‘Kikyou’ Hoshino on my phone’s screen, I tried suspecting whether ‘Shakuko’
wasn’t in fact ‘Norma Braun’ imitating Shakuko, but that suspicion had no
end either. I’d stop that now. I would act for the sake of Shakuko, Kikyou, and
Kozue. Looking at Hoshino’s face, Kikyou asked “Who is that?” “No one. No
memories about him inside Kozue’s brain?” “Aah, I’m not sure, but I guess
there’s none? I can’t tell for sure. But nothing comes up.” “I see,” the mo-
ment I said that, someone knocked on the door behind me. “Hey~, old man!
The foreigner old man,” it was Hoshino speaking behind the door. Shakuko
looked at me and asked “Who?” Kikyou looked afraid too. “Old man, you’re
there, aren’t you~? I saw you enter here~. Come out~.” It’s because I’d paid
attention to Hoshino, I thought. I was tired of my suspicions guiding this
world their way and probably making things the way they should become.
These quick developments were necessary for me to disappear and Kozue to
become Inoue Kozue between this Summer and this Winter. “Sex is over. Put
on at least your underwear and come out. One of my friends might have an
idea of where Panda Lover is hiding, you hear?” ...? I didn’t get it. I took the
hint from the current situation and what the future Kozue’d said and vaguely
deduced that things might occur around Hoshino, but now that events fol-
lowed suit so rapidly, I was wondering where in the world the ‘vague’ part
had gone. Had something filled in that spot? I was used to drawing out results
from facts. I built up knowledge by researching, then thought, and when I was
done thinking I researched once more and repeated that. There hadn’t been
one time where I got results from something so vague. I stood up. Even
though Kikyou was inside her right now, I didn’t want Hoshino anywhere
near Kozue. I felt like if Kozue and Hoshino were gathered in one place, Ko-
zue’s adoption by the Inoue Shingo/Hiromi couple would proceed extremely
quickly. Kozue would leave me forever. “Hey, answer, who is that?” Shakuko
asked again, so I told her, “It’s my assistant.” I approached the door and told
him “Go back to the room.” “I’ve got something I want to show you. Look,
even for just a second,” he said. “No can do. Later. Go back to the room,” I
said as I peeked the other side of the door through the peephole. Hoshino was
standing in the hallway. “Can’t you just open up and have a glance at it? Ap-
parently I’ll need to return it real soon,” he said with his body squirming
around. Since he was talking pretty loudly, I opened the door and told him,
“Don’t be so loud.” I stepped into the hallway, thinking I would send him
back, but then something that was hidden next to the door came flying at me;
I put up both hands to protect my temples and my flank and crouched, but I
still felt the shock passing through the right fist that was guarding my tem-
ples. Thonk! So fast. And heavy, too. Was it a coincidence that a punch came
headed for my head when I crouched? As I had such wishful observations, my
body staggered due to not being able to stay up, when I was met with a kick in
my stomach coming from the side. The ‘was that a coincidence?’ thought
from earlier vanished. Hearing Hoshino laughing maliciously, I thought it
would be bad to lie down in the hallway here, so I let the inertia of the kick get
me away from that man, but his footwork was sharp and quick. He rapidly
reached my body, twisted his hips, and threw out a cannon-like punch at
close range. I responded on the spot by making a peace sign and trying to stab
his eyes. His frame was surprisingly small under his white T-shirt and jeans,
but the muscles on his upper body were pretty big, his hips small, and his legs
thick. He was built like a judo athlete. My eye-crushing attack was dodged at
the very last moment. I could try to guard or dodge, but both would be useless
against him. I needed to set up an attack. “Oh, you’re pretty good,” Judo-kun
said. His footwork was light as he stepped back in quick jumps. Looking at his
face, he was surprisingly young. He had big round eyes, but looking closer,
his expression was sharp. His head was square-y and his hair short, his nose
was kinda bent and his ears were pretty deformed too. He had a small head
but a thick neck. Really similar to a judo athlete. I couldn’t imagine ears being
this round, swollen, and flipped unless one rubbed their ears every day
against tatami mats. “Shah!” Judo-kun rushed in with a low stance to grab
both my legs and go up from there, so I put my hands on his shoulders and
jumped, dodging right over him with my legs joint. “Oh!” he exclaimed.
However, Judo-kun quickly stopped in his tracks, turned back, and tried to
catch me in the air, but I landed an aerial punch on his face. I couldn’t put my
hips in it so it didn’t deal any real damage, but it should’ve been enough to
dizzy him a little. “Tsk,” he reached to his face with one hand, but the other
hand had properly managed to catch me. He firmly grabbed my shirt and
made it stretch. “Wooh, take that!” Judo-kun threw his square-y head for-
ward to headbutt me, so I titled mine to the side to dodge him, but he didn’t
stop and headbutted my clavicle! Boom! My clavicle exploded. I used all I
could, even the inertia of the pain, to twist my body, then instantly repelled
Judo-kun’s hammer head with an elbow blow. I heard a crack. Judo-kun’s jaw
bent, making him stagger and laugh. “Who-hoh, shah shah! It’s gotta be like
that or I can’t enjoy it.” I hoped it was simply a bluff, him trying to look like
a confident martial artist. “Okay, here I go again!” Judo-kun raised his hands
to shoulder height and took a stance. “Wait, wait. What the hell are you?” I
asked. “Oh, what, you’re good at Japanese,” Judo-kun said to make me lower
my guard, then swiftly jumped in next to my bosom, but hey, I knew judo too,
don’t underestimate me! I took one step back, brushed away Judo-kun’s hand
that had to readjust its course to reach me, then this time took a step forward
and hit him with a lariat! My elbow landed on Judo-kun’s visage, so I rubbed
it in and put more weight into it. Judo-kun’s legs left the floor, and the back
of his head soon came to hit it in their stead; though this hotel’s carpets were
really soft, so he didn’t suffer much damage. Because of that, Judo-kun was
able to get a hold of one of my legs and put it in a locking technique. “Fucking
hurts, shitty foreigner. I’m gonna shatter your leg,” he said as he used brute
force to turn my right ankle into all sorts of directions, but being unable to do
anything about it, my only choice was to beg. “Aah, no break, no break! No
break leg! Please! No break leg please!” I said with a strong foreign accent.
“‘No break leg please,’ pffft,” Judo-kun had a good laugh. He loosened his
strength as a result, so I pulled my leg out, stood up, and got away from him.
Judo-kun once again took a charge-in stance while still laughing, so I told
him “Wait, wait. Let’s talk.” I couldn’t see Hoshino anywhere in the hallway.
“Hey, Foreigner. The fuck are you saying, you kidnapped him first.” Hoshino
had entered 1201 while I was sparring with this small clump of muscles. He’d
finally met Kozue. Because of me. But things were made to turn out this way.
The combat-loving Judo-kun seemed eager to continue the fight, but I told
him, “My name is William Eady. I’m a missing kid detective. I had Hoshino-
kun come along with me in order to investigate the Panda Lover Case. I didn’t
kidnap him.” “You motherfucking liar. You beat up my friends and took him
by force, didn’t you?” I guess the imperative form of ‘why are you lying’ im-
plicitly meant ‘don’t lie.’ “It’s true. I’m not lying. I was requested to investi-
gate by the family of one of Panda Lover’s victims,” I lied. “Panda Lover?
That panda guy from the Panda Case?” Judo-kun put down his arms and
stopped taking a stance. “Exactly.” “How are you searching exactly? You
don’t know where he could be in the country, right?” “I can’t explain the rea-
son, but it’s very likely that he’s hiding somewhere in Chofu City.” “Seri-
ously?” “Yeah.” “How do you know that?” “I told you, I can’t explain the
reason.” “Heeh. Woah, but seriously? Bruh. You know, my friends know
Chofu pretty well,” Judo-kun straightened his back and said that proudly.
“Right. That’s why I had your friends give me a hand.” “Seriously? Heh, I see
how it is. Then what, you didn’t kidnap anyone after all?” “That’s what I’ve
been telling you.” “Eh, nice. What are my friends doing, concretely? Hoshino,
for example?” “Nothing special. Hoshino is in charge of communications.”
“I’ll help you too. Let me do something. Like be the head of the suicide squad
or head of the battle squadron.” “I don’t need those. We gotta move around
quietly. Making a clamor would be nothing but a bother. And having someone
like you would provoke too much of a ruckus, so no thank you.” “If you’re
gonna say that, then I’ll be bothering you. I’ll make a racket until it’s Hell out
there, you fucker.” Judo-kun’s eyes lit up in a blaze. He was desperately
searching to rampage. Would I be able to contain this idiot? For starters, I
asked him, “What’s your name?” “Eh?” “Your name.” “Names are of no im-
portance.” “No they’re not. What should I address you with?” “My name’s
weird, so I’m bashful,” as Judo-kun was being fidgety and creepy, I heard two
screams coming from room 1201, then Shakuko calling me. “Disco! Disco!”
The other scream was still going on. “Kyaah, hey stop!” “Hold on for a mi-
nute,” I said before rushing into the room. On the bed was a man and a woman
pushing one another with the man being Hoshino and the woman being
Shakuko, and under these two was another woman with her lower body still
naked, it was ‘Kozue’ who grew big.
She’d arrived.
I run up to the bed and was about to jump on Hoshino, but there, “Good
grief, Masato!” Judo-kun came in screaming that and kicked me from behind,
making me roll up to the bed and crash into the table set. Blam! “Disco!”
Shakuko screamed, but in the end she got pushed down against the bed by
Hoshino. “Marc-san! Now’s the moment! Let’s fucking kill that guy and deal
with those two, too!” Hoshino said. Judo-kun, who was called Marc, yelled
“Yaarh!” and kicked the butt of Hoshino, who was mounting Shakuko.
“Aaah!” Hoshino screamed as he was blasted off the bed and rolled to the
ground. “Hah!” Judo-kun let out yet another yell and delivered a second kick
aiming at his face. That kick only hit the wall with a thud, but that probably
wasn’t because Hoshino skillfully avoided it, I bet Judo-kun aimed to miss. It
was such a strong and fast kick that I was surprised to not find a hole in the
wall, so Hoshino’s head might’ve been split in half if he’d taken it head on.
“Idiot, don’t call me by my name,” as Judo-kun was distracted saying that to
Hoshino who was immobilized on the floor, ‘Kozue’ and Shakuko got off the
bed and hid behind me. “Eh? Whatwhatwhatwhat!?” The big ‘Kozue’ said as
she wrapped a blanket around her hips. “What’s that so suddenly? What’s
happening? Why? Where am I? I’m being sent here abruptly, so it’s mega
scary if things happen like that, you know. Anyway, just take care of these
guys, Disco-san.” Hearing that line, Judo-kun made a really happy face. He,
a lover of trouble and fights, engaging everything with a grapple first thing,
was looking at ‘Kozue’ behind me with a face as if he was gonna lick his lips
at any moment. “Want to take care of me, Foreigner? Hanh?” Judo-kun
taunted me with a grinning face. “Nah, let’s not. It’s meaningless,” I shook
my head. “Fights don’t have any meaning anyway,” Judo-kun was still smil-
ing. I bet he just wanted to rampage. I couldn’t handle this guy. The more you
tried to control guys like him, the more they’d rebel. But on the other hand,
if you left them alone they’d start yearning for attention and cause other
meaningless trouble elsewhere. I knew other people like him...thinking that
got me nostalgic about Aaron the Dogwalker Riggs. His face surged in my
mind. “A dog will smell the fear of its owner,” he used to say. Though Aaron
didn’t have any dog, and even at that time, he wasn’t talking about dogs. The
‘dogs’ referred to the members of the gang he was hanging out with. Though
the guy before me wasn’t a dog and was probably more of a pain than most
gangs. Dogs were afraid of the violence that might be turned towards them,
and of their own violence they might turn to someone, but this tiny muscle
boy probably only had longing for the feeling of stimulus, no matter what the
kind was. He really didn’t care what it was. That’s why he got curious when I
mentioned Panda Lover earlier, and was currently willing to jump at me and
start a slugfest. He was yearning for stimulus because he was bored. Because
of chronic ennui. “‘Kozue’-chan, do you know about the Panda Case?” I
asked. “Eh? What?” The big ‘Kozue’ was afraid and shaking behind my back.
The Panda Case. For the ‘future Kozue,’ that case was from eleven years ago.
Plus, she said she tried not to look into past events, so I wasn’t expecting
much. I just wanted to erase the idea of fighting me a second time from this
muscle boy’s head. I simply wanted to call out to the frightened ‘Kozue’ with
a calm voice. However, ‘Kozue’ said, “Ah, panda, you mean the Twin Panda
Babies Kidnapping Case? Why do you know about that, Disco-san? Wait,
there’s no way you do, huh.” “Yeah I don’t.” “It’s something from eleven
years in the future, after all,” Kozue spouted out, seemingly willing to con-
tinue on her own now. “Twin babies were born from a panda called Runrun
in the Jindai Zoo, but they were stolen from the zoo’s breeding room. Pretty
recently. Though I mean recently for me.”
“Konkon and Denden.”
“?”
The person who said that with a faint laugh was the troublesome judo man,
looking at ‘Kozue’ and me. What?
“Konkon and Denden, right?”
“...Those are the babies’ names, yes. How do you know that?”
Don’t tell me, I thought. Was this guy a time traveler too, and he had trav-
eled back and forth between now and eleven years in the future with his body
growing bigger in the same vein as ‘Kozue’? Like that was a new disease that
simply hadn’t been given a name yet?
“A lot of people do,” the judo man said. “I mean, it happened eleven years
ago, no? A rental panda’s two babies suddenly got stolen and provoked a dip-
lomatic incident with China.”

15

So, in other words, this judo guy came from eleven years further into the
future than ‘Kozue.’ In total, twenty-two years into the future? That’s what I
thought right then, but Shakuko said, “Ah, now that you mention it, it did.
Long ago,” from behind my back. I suddenly felt like I’d been left all alone in
this world. “I remembered it when I heard Konkon and Denden. Panda babies
got kidnapped, yeah.” ‘Kozue’ was as surprised as I was, hearing the judo guy
and Shakuko talk. “How do you know that? Actually, who even are you?” Ko-
zue nearly had a panic attack. Shakuko looked at ‘Kozue,’ then at me, and
asked, “Disco, say, this is happening for real, right? Or did I go insane before
I knew it?” “You didn’t.” “This girl grew bigger, right?” “She did.” “What
about Kikyou-chan?” “...I don’t know.” “Where did she go?” “I don’t know,
for now.” “Fuck. Then we need to go search for her- Wait, we don’t know
where to search, right?” “More importantly, Shakuko, how do you...” I was
about to continue but hurriedly closed my mouth. The judo guy’s eyes were
sparkling. I wanted to attract his attention with another topic to ease his de-
structive attitude, but I’d gone too far... Having taken notice of my realization,
the judo guy laughed. “Hehehe. I don’t really get what’s going on but you got
it hard, Detective.” He then put a hand onto my shoulders and said, “Well, in
cases like this, you’re always at fault. It’s mostly your fault for everything
anyway. You’re being fooled, dude.”
“What did you say, you f—” when I had mouthed this much, the hand the
judo man had put on my shoulder brutally hit my jaw. With a fist as hard as a
hammer. My shaking brain finally realized. It was impossible to escape from
violence with this man around. Kozue swallowed her breath and Shakuko let
out a scream.
“Hey, stop that!”
“What does this mean, Disco-san!?” ‘Kozue’ yelled. “What’s going on?
Who and when are we exactly? What’s happening? Who...who am I inside?”
‘Kozue’ checked her own limbs and clothes. “Me? Me? Is this me? It’s me,
isn’t it?”
“Dhuuuuuwah!” This time it was Hoshino Masato who screamed from the
other side of the bed where he was lying. He was holding a rounded-up tissue.
The blood-drenched tissue ball wasn’t completely closed, letting the fingers
inside it out in plain sight.
Seeing that, ‘Kozue’ raised another scream and covered her mouth with
her hands, leading to the blanket wrapped around her hips to slide and expose
her lower body. Her crotch in-between her thighs was drenched in blood, too,
and I wasn’t the only one to notice that.
“Hey!”
Clunk! Another close-range hammer punch coming from the judo man.
“What is this display?! What vile and perverted plays did you exert on this
woman?!” The judo guy yelled at me in anger with overly theatrical phrasing
and a big smile on his face.
“Good thing you found a distraction to starve your boredom, Marc-kun,”
I told him.
Blam! A punch behind my ears, this one so quick and heavy I couldn’t even
properly hear anymore. I’d once received a slap from a black gang member
doing illegal sumo wrestling in Montréal, but this hit right now was more
fierce than that one. I fell to the floor, with neither my brain nor my spinal
cord functioning. I couldn’t put a knee to the ground nor cushion my fall with
my hands. I simply fell down like a stick being dropped. The judo guy said to
me,
“Tsk. Don’t spout out people’s names when you’ve got no idea what
you’re talking about.”
With my face pressing against the fluffy carpet of the Princeton Hotel, I
asked. “What’s your name?”
The man said, “My name’s Mercury C. Not a nickname. That’s my only
name. But don’t you dare call me by it. No lame jokes either, got it? I’ll make
you regret it if you say anything uncalled for about this name.”
Right after hearing that, I said with the utmost empathy,
“What kind of parents would give their kids a name like that?”
Splatch! My nose got kicked by Mercury C’s toes.
“I’ve got no parents.”
“An abandoned child, eh? But you know, your parents aren’t searching for
you. They never even tried, and probably forgot about having given birth to
you,” I thought of saying that, but the blood flowing out of my nose got stuck
in my throat, so I couldn’t speak. Mercury C stepped over me as I was choking
on my blood and coughing it out, climbed up the bed with his shoes on, and
nonchalantly walked with his feet sinking into the mattress towards the other
side, where Hoshino was. With Mercury C about two meters away, I started to
feel like I had some leeway, so I thought: The two Panda Cases...the Twin
Panda Baby Kidnapping Case and Panda Lover’s Serial Comatose Girl Case.
How were the kidnappings that happened in the era of the Kozue eleven years
into the future and the one that happened eleven years ago in Japan re-
lated...copycats? The same crime? The Panda Lover Case was happening right
in the middle of the twenty-two-year period between the two kidnapping
cases... Wait, wait. According to that conversation between Kozue, Mercury C,
and Shakuko earlier, it appeared that the abducted pandas had the same
names. Konkon and Denden...had they named two pairs of twins the same,
and both got stolen? Was it a copycat crime for the fun of it? That’s because
they recycled the names like dummies...but would the zoo recycle names for
the pandas that serve to attract customers? I didn’t know. Maybe that was
simply showing how big the impact of the Konkon-Denden loss was to Japa-
nese people or the staff involved? In order to fill in for their sense of loss, they
gave the same names to the newly born twins, and their struggles got re-
warded with them getting abducted once again...?
Rather than thinking further about that unlikely scenario, it was far more
simple to think this way:
This ‘big Kozue’ was an impostor pretending to be ‘Kozue from eleven
years into the future.’
And there was no doubt she was scheming something and deceiving me to
achieve her goal. The ‘future letters’? A ‘tragic love’? They were still charm-
ing, despite being lies. I might’ve gotten fooled by that boldness. Same for the
knife and fork buried under the ginkgo, she could’ve found me there and in-
stantly come up with that ad-lib. She might’ve secretly seen me take out the
Uno Chiyo knife and fork. Right. In the end, no matter how careful I thought
I’d been, I was simply dazzled by the growing and shrinking Kozue. The con-
firmation of the knife and fork was lacking in itself. The Norma-fied Shakuko
appearing soon after she told me to look forward to Norma Braun was simply
a coincidence, and all the prophecies might have been meaningless made-up
shit that merely sounded profound. With that vague phrasing, there must’ve
been endless ways to make them a ‘reality.’ I could simply have run into the
real Norma Braun at any point in my long life to come. Or I could’ve met an-
other girl that kinda looked like Norma Braun, or anything ‘Norma Braun-
esque’ could’ve happened to me. Shit, was I really being toyed with by a vague
and unclear act combined with a coincidence that I interpreted as being in-
tentional? Was my bizarre fervor towards Norma Braun part of the calcula-
tions made by the impostor playing the role of the ‘big Kozue’?
The legs of the ‘big Kozue’ sitting on the edge of the bed were dangling in
front of my eyes. I looked up and our eyes met. Kozue was earnestly peeling
her eyes at this chaotic situation and didn’t seem to have any skepticism nor
thought about it yet. Of course, that couldn’t be helped. ‘Kozue’ had only just
arrived into this world, she didn’t know about ‘Shimada Kikyou,’ Panda
Lover, or the four fingers that came out of her vagina...of her uterus, if I re-
membered correctly. I was the only one who’d seen everything from start to
finish.
...She had only just arrived into this world?
Was that really the case?
Wasn’t it rather yet another skillful and extravagant act made on the spot
by someone, somewhere, able to enter the ‘small Kozue’s’ body in order to
toy with me? Wasn’t it a small part of the great lie a malicious person that got
inside Kozue fabricated in order to disturb me when, in fact, ‘Kozue’ didn’t
travel through time even once?
“Disco-san, what is happening?” Who lied behind ‘Kozue’s’ trembling
voice coming from atop the bed? “What’s happening over here? Disco-san,
are you okay?”
“Oh, what the heck, they’re all the same fingers. Haha.”
Hearing Mercury C’s cryptic remark from the other side of the bed, I raised
my creaking body and looked over to the other side of the bed ‘Kozue’ was on;
Mercury C had aligned all four fingers directly on top of his palm which he
held close to his face. His other hand grabbed one of the fingers to admire it
under multiple angles. “It’s a rough estimate, but they all have the same fin-
gerprints. Even the shape of the nails and the wrinkles on either side of the
articulations are similar. Identical, even. This was originally one finger. Ei-
ther three are copies or the four of them are,” he said.
What was he saying? “Let me see,” I told him.
Mercury C turned his grinning face to me, followed by four fingers flying
my way. I avoided them by reflex and let them all fall onto the floor.
“That said, you can’t make copies like that with merely cloning technol-
ogy.” I looked at the four fingers scattered on the floor, which Mercury C
pointed at with his jaw. “They’d have problems when it comes to getting the
small graze between the first and second articulations, as well as the position
of the marks of negligence on the left side of the nails to be the same. Fufu,
the epidermis is even scraped in the same way, are you serious? It’s so scru-
pulous... Can these fingers open the door to some vault or something? Then I
could understand the care and fervor behind it, same deal as making fake
bills...or maybe this is art?” I crouched on the floor, facing Mercury C who was
babbling to himself and touched my left hand’s middle finger while looking
at the four fingers on the floor. It was attached. I had four cut-off fingers in
front of my eyes. I tried to touch them too. Success. They were indeed there.
Four people had their fingers cut off... Clones? Then, actually, wouldn’t it be
more proper to say it was one person? However, even if four clones of the
same person existed, would those grazes and hangnails be in exactly the
same spot?
It was too much to be a coincidence. Meaning someone worked on the four
clones’ fingers. What meaning could there be behind that?
None. I couldn’t imagine a situation where the position of hangnails mat-
ters.
Then was it really art...it couldn’t be. I couldn’t imagine anyone had
enough mental and technical leeway to bring cloning to the art scene yet...
Then, my past experiences allowed me to approach the situation in a way
others couldn’t.
I still didn’t know why this was happening, but could it be that four iden-
tical people scattered in different worlds according to the multiverse theory
found themselves in the same universe after passing through wormholes,
and they all had the same finger cut off, and those four fingers got sent inside
Kozue’s vagina?
As for how this was done...I didn’t know. But if someone was capable of
such a feat, then Kozue’s timeslip and Shimada Kikyou’s invasion might have
been their work too.
Panda Lover.
However, how would Panda Lover have gained access to Kozue’s genitals?
Moreover, to Kozue’s genitals from this timeline, with me around.
Wait, hold on. It’s not like anything was possible, even for the mysterious
criminal Panda Lover. Corpse switches, fabrications of alibi, disappearances
of suspects/victims, I’d encountered many such traps. There must’ve been
something laying in wait there. I only had yet to notice what it is.
“Mister Foreigner has his fingers, eh.”
Mercury C, seated on the edge of the bed, bent his legs and made them
dangle close to my face, which was directed towards the four fingers. If any-
thing displeased him...even if nothing did, he’d surely kick me in the face with
his hard-looking feet on a whim.
“Where were those?”
I looked towards ‘Kozue.’ “Inside her vagina.”
“No! Seriously!?” Kozue closed her legs shut with her thighs sandwiching
her hands. “What happened? Who came in while I was over there?”
“What’s ‘over there’?” Mercury C asked. “Where did you go?”
“...”
“From what you said earlier, eleven years in the past, I assume? You called
‘Konkon and Denden’s abduction’ a ‘recent event,’ after all.” Mercury C
hadn’t forgotten. “Was your time travel fun, Doraemon?”
 “...” The ‘future Kozue’ didn’t answer back. I couldn’t seem to discern any
deep thinking going on inside the ‘future Kozue’s’ head from her expression,
nor did she seem so confused. She was unable to think.
“‘Kozue’-chan, what was the name of the parents of those kidnapped
pandas?” I asked.
“Runrun,” ‘Kozue’ answered without missing a beat. She seemed eager to
prove her innocence. As if she was proclaiming “I’m not lying!”
“That’s the mother panda, yes,” Shakuko said. “It’s the same as the case
eleven years ago.”
“Runrun the rental panda was sent back to China after the Konkon-
Denden kidnapping,” Mercury C said. “It should’ve been sent back to Si-
chuan’s Giant Panda Research Center. You’re talking about the case in Japan,
though, right?”
‘Kozue’ nodded, “...Yes.”
“If that’s a lie, what meaning could there be behind it?” Mercury C won-
dered out loud. ‘Kozue’ hung her head with a frustrated expression.
“There’s some strange trap in effect here,” Shakuko said, “Right, Disco?”
I didn’t answer and instead thought. If I were to believe what ‘Kozue’ said,
‘Kozue’ seriously believed that she was Yamagishi (Inoue) Kozue and came
from eleven years into the future. But that was her impression. In reality, she
was someone else who came from eleven years in the past, but didn’t know
that. Someone was greatly deceiving her. With a fake identity and fake time.
Was there some vault I was unaware of that’d open by deceiving that girl?
Wait, wait. If we were going with the time travel theories once again, then
that phenomenon might not only apply to the ‘girl who might be Kozue,’
maybe ‘Konkon’ and ‘Denden,’ too, transcended time. In other words,
‘Konkon’ and ‘Denden’ weren’t ‘kidnapped,’ they were moved from ‘eleven
years in the past’ to ‘twenty-two years later = eleven years from now on’ or
at some point in time before that by some unknown cause or someone’s doing,
were entrusted to the Jindai Zoo then, and time-slipped again at a ‘recent’
time for the ‘Kozue from eleven years into the future’ to a time yet unknown
to us. Their mother, ‘Runrun,’ might’ve time-slipped twice in an attempt to
pursue the twins, meaning she wasn’t sent back to China. Then the news
about it being sent there was fake. It would be a great societal/governmental
lie in order to conceal the mother panda’s timeslip. Three pandas flying
through spacetime...who could be making them do that... Panda Lover...?
And here I was again, trying to pin what I couldn’t understand on Panda
Lover. Trying to use Panda Lover’s existence as a scapegoat to run away from
the mysteries.
Panda Lover stole the souls of young girls. He had nothing to do with the
twin baby panda’s kidnapping that happened (would happen) eleven years
ago or in eleven years. But because of the keyword ‘panda,’ my imagination
always leaned towards that... Was that part of Panda Lover’s aim, too? Wasn’t
I ultimately blindly following Panda Lover’s guidance? But we’re talking
about a culprit that wrote messages such as ‘Pandas, so nice!’ ‘I ♡ PANDA,’

‘Yaah! Pandas are so cool,’ ‘Pa-panda Panda ♪ Panda Ron-ron ♪’ ‘Pandas sure
are cool,’ it didn’t seem implausible for him to abduct twin baby pandas. Was
the Japanese police considering that possibility too? Would the personnel
working on the case come up with the idea that the Panda Lover Case and the
Konkon-Denden kidnapping from eleven years ago might be the work of the
same criminal?
“The foreigner’s in his bubble.”
Mercury C said. I still hadn’t answered Shakuko. There was some strange
trap in effect here, right? ...Of course there was. “Someone is being deceived,”
I said to the floor. I didn’t look at anyone’s face. Was it me? Or ‘Kozue’? Or
‘someone thinking they are Kozue’? Or someone else entirely? Or were way
more people than I’d imagined being deceived on a large scale? Who would
benefit from this trap and in what way?
...No matter how much I thought about it, I remained in the dark.
“Hey, Foreigner, show me your left hand instead of fidgeting around over
there,” Mercury C said. I extended my left hand towards Mercury C, who was
still sitting on the bed, without raising my face. Mercury C grabbed it, pulled
it towards him, then said, “Those four fingers, don’t they look like yours?”
I was startled. Not at what he said, at the volume of his voice. I wasn’t star-
tled at the contents of that sentence because it didn’t take me by surprise.
They were similar, I knew. The hair on them. The tiny wounds. The epidermis.
The hangnails. What the fuck?! The moment my internal fear was about to
burst out, Mercury C pulled my left hand even closer to him, I felt a lukewarm
air hitting on my fingers soon followed by an intense pain exploding in my
middle finger. He bit me raw! G-g-guh! It fucking hurt! I rapidly formed a fist
with my right hand and threw a hook towards Mercury C’s temples. It landed.
Ding! My left hand’s middle finger snugged out of Mercury C’s mouth and the
inertia made him fall off the bed. I was sure he’d bitten it off, but it was ap-
parently still attached. “Ouch!” Mercury C said; I took a stance. Now we’d
have another sparring match...there really was no end to it. As long as he was
nearby, Mercury C would continue to meddle with me, and every time I re-
acted to that I’d make him happier, leading him to try getting more adrena-
line out of me.
I had to kill him.
I aimed at the left side of his jaw with a right kick descending straight
down on him to break his neck bone in one shot, but it didn’t land; not be-
cause his body had become transparent and my kick passed through him, but
because he crouched to avoid it. He must’ve sensed my murderous intent.
Therefore, now that my heartfelt kick had failed, my life was moments before
extinction. Mercury C probably wouldn’t have mercy on me...thinking that, I
internally clenched the cross in my heart. But Mercury C showed a smile and
sat back on the bed. He raised both hands and showed me his palms. ??? “Calm
down, Foreigner. That wasn’t an attack on my part just now. I marked you.”
What was he saying? “For now, as long as you have my biting mark on your
finger, in case it gets cut off and mixed among those four, you’ll be able to
find the original, no? Also, if you ever get in a deathmatch with a clone of
yours, you’ll be able to demonstrate that you’re the original by showing that
wound. A pretty nice idea to prevent any unnecessary confusion in identity,
right? Though, of course, you may already be a clone and not the original, so
this wound wouldn’t resolve that problem.”
I stopped the next attack I had prepared with my knees and fists on the
spot... I wanted him to leave me alone as much as possible.
I stared at the fingers on the floor. The color of the skin, the hair growing
on them, the thickness of the articulations, the overall length of the fingers,
the shape of the nails. They certainly looked like the ones in my possession.
But “I’m the only me,” I said. I’d been involved in many complex cases, but I
didn’t remember letting anyone clone me.
Were many wormholes directed towards this timeline and gathering var-
ious mes from a lot of universes?
“Even if there were clones of you, they wouldn’t be you,” Mercury C
laughed. “They’d be strangers with the same face and body as you. Be at ease.”
Even the mes in other universes were strangers. But that’s not what this
was about... I wasn’t worried about identity problems.
“Why are all these things happening to me?” I let out my real feelings in a
murmur.
Mercury chuckled. “That’s how detectives are, no? They’re meant to at-
tract cases. They can at most be careful not to get swallowed by a big fish.”
“And you’re the one fishing? Trying to play at being a detective now?”
“All detectives are just playing at being detectives.”
Stop acting like a living joke.
But my life was neither a joke nor a game. My name being Disco Wednes-
dayyy had nothing to do with my quality of life. And the job of detective
couldn’t be performed by someone treating it as a ‘game.’ Don’t look down
on twists and car chases.
“Does that hurt?” Mercury C tilted his head in a cute fashion and looked
at me. “Oh my, are you crying?”
I’m not! ...Screaming that would simply entertain him, so instead I said,
“I don’t know how these four fingers found themselves inside Kozue’s vagina,
nor who did it and when. Strange phenomena have been occurring to Kozue’s
body ever since the night five days ago. In reality, she’s currently six years
old...” I summarized the chain of events that occurred to Kozue’s body to
Mercury C, who was looking at me with an eyebrow raised, calling ‘Kozue’
‘Kozue’ for the time being. The ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ and her body’s
growth and shrinking. Her first menstruation, ‘Shimada Kikyou,’ the
memory of the six-year-old Kozue being raped that ‘Kikyou’ saw, as well as
the man with a black bird tattoo on his right arm and glasses, and finally the
fingers inside her vagina. Mercury C listened in silence...that was a surprise
to me. He didn’t even attempt to throw in a comment.
When I finished, Hoshino Masato said “That makes no sense. As if some-
thing like that could happen!”
It was meaningless to say that. Neither Mercury C nor I bothered with it.
Instead, Mercury C said:
“So, where is the six-year-old Kozue again?”
That, I didn’t know. “The Pineapple Tunnel.”
“I know about the Pineapple Tunnel, though.”
“Ah, me too,” Mercury C said, followed by Shakuko who had returned
from the bathroom with ‘Kozue.’ “It’s the Pinehouse, right? There’s been a
murder and great detectives are gathering there.”

16

I booted up my laptop and once again searched on the net. Everyone gath-
ered around the desk I was sitting at and peeked at the screen. That affair was
featured on the same news site I’d used earlier at Villa Hapira Kojimacho to
look up info about the Panda Lover Case.

The great gathering of great detectives!? The Pinehouse Murder Case!

 The mystery novel author Mr. Anbyouin Owaru [real name: Mitamura Saburou, 37] was
murdered in his residence-cum-office (commonly called the Pinehouse), situated amidst the
mountains near West Akatsuki City in the Fukui Prefecture; many famous great detectives all
over the country and the world are being invited there.
That eminent lineup is currently composed of: first, Hakkyoku Sachiari who solved the
Kohamajima Minotaur Case just last month, followed by Choukuuji Keraku and Kiyuu form-
ing the Choukuuji Brothers, Daibakushou Curry, Hongou Takeshitakeshi, Mame Gen, and De-
zuumi Style, with the Deduction Prince Mikami Nils being rumored to take part in it as well.
Anbyouin-san is thought to have been shot from behind by a bowgun right after leaving his
personal apartments yesterday late at night. When the corpse was discovered in the circular
hallway of the Pinehouse, it had drawn a full circle of bloodstains.
It seems that the family of the deceased Anbyouin-san are calling all those great detectives
in order to find the culprit, elucidate the motive behind Anbyouin-san’s murder, as well as
solve the mystery behind the bloodstains.

Did all big Japanese detectives have names like that? ...Not like I was in a
position to talk. I guess I could mix in that group without attracting too much
attention. Mercury C too. “Or is it unrelated to the Pineapple Tunnel?”
Shakuko asked. I wondered. “No idea. But I guess that’s about the only build-
ing with pineapple in its name.” “Though it’s ‘Pinehouse’ officially.” “But
the important thing to note here is that this information arrived with this
precise timing.” Was that a trap that tried so hard to seem smooth and natu-
ral, it actually came off as forced? Was Mercury C right here not a random
intruder but one of the people trying to set me up? Or was there no will at play
here, only the great influence of destiny? I had no idea what results would
come of this at the time, but was it the kind of foreshadowing that one looked
back on later, feeling stupid that they didn’t get it?
Wills and destiny. I recalled ‘Kozue’s’ words once more.
This world’s events are all decided by the interactions between destiny
and wills, they say. Did you know?
 If those words were true, then if there was an event, it must’ve come from
the interactions between wills and destiny. It couldn’t be purely wills nor
purely destiny. What will and what destiny were making me read this article?
I would soon come to know. I clicked on a related article.

A girl’s ghost in a mystery novel author’s house.

The ghost of a young girl has been recently reported to haunt the circular residence-cum-
office situated in the mountains near West Akatsuki City in the Fukui Prefecture built three
years ago by the mystery novel author famous for novels such as Pineapple Library, Anbyouin
Owaru-san, and is rumored to make chills run down the spines of the editors who come to visit.
That (thing we think is the) ghost of a young girl was given the name Yukizuka Pineapple,
after the famous protagonist of Pineapple~, and has bizarrely become a fad among the locals
recently.
The ghost labeled ‘Yukizuka Pineapple’ has been appearing all over Anbyouin-san’s Pine-
house ever since fall last year with no regards for the time of the day or the night. She is said
to wander around the residence while sobbing. However, she cannot be seen. It is reported that
the psychic hired by Anbyouin-san this spring successfully made contact with ‘Pineapple’-
chan. In the brief conversation they had with ‘Pineapple’-chan, she seemed to be wanting to
dance somewhere outside... (a ghost wanting to dance?) Many psychics and mediums have
visited the Pinehouse in an attempt to free ‘Pineapple’-chan, who cannot dance due to being
trapped inside, but it appears that ‘Pineapple’-chan only cried and didn’t pay heed to what they
said to her. When will ‘Pineapple’-chan’s curse finally be lifted so she can head towards the
dance stage (the other world? Going to heaven?) she wishes for...not even the author special-
ized in mystery can solve this one.

Kozue was calling me. She was calling my name, crying.

That was the will at work here, and the discovery of this article, which
seemed random, was in fact destiny at work.
“Where’s Fukui?” Shakuko asked. “Tohoku?”
“That’s Fukushima,” I said. “Fukui is in Hokuriku.”
 “Why the heck do you know more about Japan than me?” Shakuko
laughed.
“Mercury C, I’m busy. Take Hoshino back if you want to. He’ll find a place
to stay in no time anyway.” In the first place, I’d only taken him along be-
cause I thought having him close at hand would make it easier to predict how
things would happen. Hoshino hadn’t hit me, but Mercury C, whom Hoshino
brought, had. Same difference. That was sufficient for the ‘future Kozue’s’
prophecy to count as true. I had no business with Hoshino anymore. He was
lying on the carpet with a leg raised, touching the wall.
“Hey, not just Hoshino. I’m taking Muroi and Yamagishi too,” Mercury C
said.
“What?”
“I don’t care for where you’re going, but I won’t let others come with you.”
“...”
“Go die alone, Detective.”
I took a stance; Mercury C followed suit.
“Move.”
“Sorrow visits everyone near you.”
“Shut up.”
“Absolutely everything is your fault, Detective.”
Mercury C didn’t seem to enjoy provoking me. ...He was being dead serious.
Was it really my fault? Everything?
There’s no way that was the case. I didn’t know what Mercury C was up to,
but this guy had no idea what he was saying. He’d only met me a bit earlier
anyway, what could he know about me?
My right hook landed cleanly on Mercury C’s temple, but that merely
shook his upper body slightly. I could tell he didn’t suffer any damage from
his following winded punch that shattered my arm guard from the inside. Ka-
boom! ‘Kozue’ raised a scream as my body was blown over to the sofa set near
the window.
“Please stop! There’s no meaning to it! Disco-san isn’t at fault!”
 My back slid onto the smooth table, guiding me to the other side where I
fell and hit my head against the wall. I could hear Hoshino laughing. I stood
up, but most of my energy had been drained from Mercury C’s last punch.
Sometimes guys capable of such a ‘draining punch’ showed up. I couldn’t
stand up to him anymore. What to do? I really wanted a gun. Shit, one attack
would disarm me and I wouldn’t be able to stand up. I couldn’t afford to en-
dure another one. I had to carefully look at the opponent’s movements. I gotta
find the hints leading to this guy’s winded punch...
Winded?
Why was I, someone who’d survived countless scenes of bloodshed, get-
ting hit by this guy’s winded punch...? Having finally raised this suspicion, I
became ashamed of my carelessness. There was no way a winded punch could
ever hope to hit me. I had completely wavered and gave in to fear. Like an
amateur. Because, for a long time, even when I experienced fear I wouldn’t
think ‘I’m scared,’ when I flinched to Mercury C’s tacky leaning towards vi-
olence and thought ‘Oh no’...that was basically the same as thinking ‘I’m
scared.’ I’d screwed up and let myself get engulfed by fear, ultimately throw-
ing off my movements. Calm down, Disco. You can’t dance with shaking legs.
Get a good footing if you wanna dance. Keep a rhythm. Listen to the music...in
other words, look at your surroundings. Look attentively. Look closely at the
man standing before you.
You only got caught off-guard by that first punch.
I could see it now.
I landed another right hook at the same spot on Mercury C’s head. It
landed. Bahm! Mercury C’s toughness was genuine. I bet he wouldn’t falter
even if I threw ten or twenty of these. I imagined his knees wouldn’t even give
in. Mercury C repeated the same punch...I could tell by the movement of his
shoulders. Here it came? I could see it. A winded punch. I crouched and
avoided it, but felt like I could’ve made it a closer call than that. My body had
calmed down, following my feelings’ example. I hit Mercury C’s jaw with my
left along with the motion of raising my body, then followed in with a right.
One two. Bam bam! I could do it.
Getting cornered by fear actually managed to bring me back to calmness.
Resignation cooled my head down. My eyes that were previously confused
were now perfectly focused on their target.
“Oh, you’re moving better now,” Mercury C said. His strength of will was
genuine too. It seemed impossible for him to recoil or flinch. “Do you know
what’s the strongest martial art in the world?”
“...” I slowly moved a leg up. I could dance.
“It’s sumo,” Mercury C stopped in his tracks, opened his legs, lowered his
hips, and bent forward.
I’d seen sumo wrestling a few times on TV. As my memories allowed me
to predict, Mercury C charged straight at me. I dealt with him in the same way
as I did with the countless cars that came rushing at me in the past: first,
jumping in the air, then hopping over the hood; I put a hand on Mercury C’s
back, that allowed me to move my legs horizontally to extend my air time,
and landed onto the back of this mad-rushing man. Badong! Mercury C
crashed into the desk set up against the wall. It was a mystery how it turned
out like that, but the chair got sent flying, hit the ceiling, and bounced up
again after hitting the floor. Shakuko and ‘Kozue’ simultaneously raised a
scream.
“Stop that now!”
“Put an end to it, please!”
Would Mercury C feel inclined to do that? Like on a whim, maybe? I
grabbed the back of the wooden chair that had bounced twice, took a firm
grasp with both hands, and suddenly swung it right into Mercury C’s back. In
reality, glass bottles and chairs don’t explode into fine particles like in mov-
ies. But this time, the chair’s legs broke after hitting Mercury C’s back. That’s
because I’d swung it down for real. I thought it’d be just the right amount of
force to kill him, so I adjusted my swing at the last moment.
But I wasn’t even close!
 Mercury C stood up from the desk and immediately twisted his body to
face me; he then swung his palm like a bear would mow down with his claws
to catch a prey and grazed my jaw. The space in-between my scapulas raised
a tingling sound. I was feeling fear again...but I wasn’t scared. I could confi-
dently dodge that swing right now too. And it’s not like his arms were short.
I took one step towards Mercury C and twisted my body, then took another
step and twisted my hips as if releasing a stretched rubber band. I hit Mercury
C’s head on the opposite side to the punches earlier with the wooden chair
whose legs were broken off. Crack!
“Disco-san, no!”
“You stop too, Disco! He’s gonna die at this rate!”
Mercury C wouldn’t die. He simply fell on the desk, put a knee to the
ground, and placed both hands on the ground. But at least he’d lowered his
guard. I twisted my body once more and aimed at him. At his head again.
“Secret technique: Nekodamashi!6”
Mercury C screamed that, then plunged his head into the chair on his own
as I was about to swing it down. He reduced the damage by changing the tim-
ing of the hit! There, the surprise caused me to let go of the chair.
“Secret technique: Nekodamashi!” he screamed again and plunged his
left palm at my chest. Since I was wary of a strike to the head I got blasted
away and fell to the floor... At the same time, Mercury C jumped then fell down
on me like a raptor plunging on its prey. Even if I dodged to the side, Mercury
C would swiftly extend his legs to assure a clean landing then quickly kick me
while I’m on the floor. I bent my legs on the spot and raised my hips, then
threw a kick with both legs joint to retaliate against his kick. Shwing! Our
soles came in contact. Of course, Mercury C was the one who got sent flying.
He laughed as his head hit the ceiling before falling to the ground and rolling
off from there. “Hahaha! Wooow!” We stood up at the same time and glared

6
An unorthodox sumo move that involves clapping your hands before your opponent’s
face at the very start of a round, when both wrestlers usually clash in the middle of the ring,
to make them close their eyes and gain an advantage in initiative.
at each other. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Shall we raise the torque then?
Vroom vroom vroom vroooooooom!”
Shakuko then yelled. “Stop! Just stop! Don’t go crazy in such a narrow
space!”
“Shakuko, go to Fukui along with me. ‘Kozue,’ you too,” I said.
“Don’t! You won’t get anything out of sticking to this man,” Mercury C
said. “You’ll only have crazy misfortune befall on you.”
I still couldn’t find anything to argue back against Mercury C’s words.
Mercury C pressed further. “You’re the center of calamities, Detective.
Everything you touch rots away. They all turn into good-for-nothings. They
get polluted, corroded, and fall apart from the inside. Either that, or they in-
stantly turn hollow and lose all righteousness, meaning, and worth. They lose
everything. Listen attentively, hey! All detectives are faulty. Not just you,
each and every detective is at fault. Perish. All of you drop dead. Don’t bother
others and go commit suicide. Kick the bucket in silence where no one can see
you. Die die die die!”
“Enough now,” Shakuko said. “What are you saying, man? It makes no
sense. Anyways, I’ve decided. Neither me nor ‘Kozue’ will go along Disco.”
“Haha!” Mercury C laughed.
“What are you laughing for? You’re accompanying him to Fukui in our
stead.”
“Huh?”
What?
“To the Pinehouse. Go there as Disco’s bodyguard.”
“What are you saying? Why would I go to that place, damnit.”
“If you curse someone, dig two graves. Look, a great detective died, didn’t
they?”
The laptop fell off from the desk because of our fight, but it was still dis-
playing the same news site as earlier; however, there was a new headline fea-
tured there.
 Fukui Prefecture’s Pinehouse: a great detective killed in a locked room.

Mercury C and I slowly approached the laptop, I took control of the mouse
and clicked on that news article.

Fukui Prefecture’s Pinehouse: a great detective killed in a locked room.

It seemed the great detectives had started their battle of wits concerning the murder of the
mystery novel author Anbyouin Owaru-san in the Pinehouse situated in West Akatsuki in Fu-
kui, but this morning, one of the great detectives that was gathered there, Daibakushou Curry,
passed away at around 6:20 by having chopsticks plunged through his face.
Daibakushou-san was a resident of West Akatsuki and the first to arrive at the Pinehouse.
He immediately started gathering information for his deduction and, according to someone on
the site, sounded confident in his speech. Right before his death, Daibakushou-san had every-
one in the Pinehouse gather at one place to expose his deduction, then secluded himself in a
room where he was apparently murdered in a locked room situation. We don’t have any infor-
mation concerning his deduction, but we can say that the death of a great detective following
that of a mystery novel author only added to the turmoil that is the Pinehouse Case.
West Akatsuki is under the shock of its local great detective’s death.
It seems that the other great detectives who were in the Pinehouse, Hakkyoku Sachiari-san,
Choukuuji Keraku-san and Kiyuu-san, Hongou Takeshitakeshi-san, Mame Gen-san, and De-
zuumi Style-san will continue to investigate. According to a police officer present there, they
are “still far from reaching the truth.”
No concrete information concerning the Deduction Prince Mikami Nils-san’s appearance
has been publicized.

“Weren’t they possessed and killed by the ghost?” Mercury C said.

By Kozue? There’s no way she would do that.
 “You got it now? Go there with Disco,” Shakuko repeated. “You’re saying
all detectives should die, and in fact, they’re doing just that, you know? I be-
lieve that this great detective died that way because you said so. Take the re-
sponsibility for that and go there.”
“What are you saying, idiot, there’s no correlation. The times don’t match
in the slightest. It’s a coincidence.”
But time was vague anyway, events occurred because of wills and destiny.
Since there was an event, there were both wills and destiny behind. Destiny
was present even for the seemingly random events. And so were wills. In this
case, the will was probably more important, someone must’ve been wanting
to kill this great detective... Would that be Mercury C, who was currently next
to me, in this case?
“Leave ‘Kozue’-chan to me, Disco.”
“...”
“Disco.”
‘Kozue’ called out to me.
“You can go. I will write you letters.”
Part 2: The Pinehouse Dead
 1

Dear Disco-san. It’s Kozue. Have you boarded the bullet train yet? (emoji)
(emoji) (emoji) I’m going to eat at the Parco’s restaurant along with
Shakuko-san. But my stomach has been hurting for a while (kaomoji) I think
it’s just the normal thing that happened last time I came, but both you and
Shakuko-san said fingers came out of there, so apparently a whole lot hap-
pened while I was in the future (emoji) it’s so mysterious. If the Twin Panda
Kidnapping Case really happened eleven years ago, I’m guessing it was wrong
for me to come to this period. I come from eleven years from now on, so since
it happened eleven years ago we’re right in the middle, aren’t we? I’m so
scared of being here in these circumstances. I’ve been thinking a lot about
how my presence could result in things happening that way, but my brain
can’t process it (emoji) (emoji) (emoji) (emoji) But at least I’ll be able to in-
vestigate this in further details once I go back to the other me, I might be able
to figure something out. And of course, I’ll report everything I find next time
I come here. ...Please get along with Mercury-san (kaomoji)

For the moment, I’m always sticking near Kozue’s body, so we won’t have
many occasions to send ‘letters’...is what I’d previously thought, but the ‘let-
ters’ were making their appearance now. Those didn’t involve the sketchbook,
but the aspect that should be highlighted here was that this situation where
the ‘future Kozue’ and I took some distance from each other and started ex-
changing letters was produced in such a way that it inevitably points towards
destiny and fate... Taking notice of that aspect was the most vital point here.
The letters from the sketchbook would surely manage to slide into our hands
eventually. The ‘future Kozue’ was ‘eleven years in the future’ for longer than
the previous time...roughly a month, so according to her, she memorized all
the ‘letters inside the sketchbook.’ I bet the ‘letters about the tragic love be-
tween the future Kozue and I’ were fabricated through that memorization
process...they were made up anyway, probably.
The overlap between the Panda Case from ‘eleven years in the future’ the
‘future Kozue’ talked about and the Panda Case from ‘eleven years in the past’
‘Shakuko’ and ‘Mercury C’ talked about, plus the overlap between the four
middle fingers of similar left hands...or rather, hands that seemed to be
straight up copies, that came out of the vagina of Kozue who was
‘Kikyou’...thinking about this overlap of overlaps, I couldn’t help but think
about all the other mes in the multiverse. In short, there were at least five
versions of me existing separately in different universes, and the five of us
could communicate through Kozue’s vagina... Let’s assume that was the
wormhole. Had I only received the middle finger of each because that basi-
cally indicated the upper limit in what can pass through her vagina? What
correlation was there between wormholes and finger-banging? ‘Shimada
Kikyou’ hadn’t enlarged Kozue’s body, therefore her vagina was that of a six-
year-old girl. A small, narrow wormhole. However, the vagina should end
with the uterus... Was it possible that the furthest parts of her vagina actually
shrunk to an extreme, thus forming a black hole-like attractor that bent
spacetime and connected it to other universes...? Then all the imagery on TV
and in books of tadpole-looking spermatozoids penetrating a round ovule
might be a big lie orchestrated by someone, and in fact, life wasn’t created
but brought to us? Is that why the story about the stork came to be? That
wasn’t a fairy tale but a faithful tale? But then that would mean I came from
somewhere, too. Birth was but a relocation, however, if death was death, then
the total number of lives in all universes must keep decreasing... Or was death
not death but a resurrection in an unknown form? No, if birth was a relocation
then would death, too, take us somewhere else? Did going to the world be-
yond literally mean going to some other world? If life and death, both ends of
the same string, moved us endlessly in a perpetual motion, then that trajec-
tory might loop and become a circuit and, at some point, give place to eternal
recurrence. That might be what had caused the overlaps between ‘Kozue’s
timeslips’ and the Panda Abduction, as well as the one for the extreme simi-
larity in my middle fingers.
What exactly was sex?
It was well-known that the condition to trigger time travel was thought to
be reaching a speed nearing that of light, but what if that was an exaggeration
owing to a miscalculation and, in reality, the movement of a man’s penis pis-
toning a vagina sufficiently reached that speed? That in-and-out might trig-
ger the birth of a wormhole inviting a new life... Observing how the Panda
Case and the same middle fingers incident overlapped, I wondered if life
wasn’t the only thing that came out of a female’s uterus, but if things much,
much larger than four fingers, like the whole ‘history repeating itself’ thing,
might be coming from there too. What if the biblical writings were faithful
tales too, and the current present world was entirely created through the sex
of a single couple. Then those two might be Adam and Eve... What if the chil-
dren born through the humping of their genesistic super-intercourse was not
just me or everyone else, but this entire world? The Creation. One Fuck, One
Universe.
...Thinking that, I finally realized how stupid that thought was. Life didn’t
always come from the uterus. Plants and non-mammal animals didn’t have
uteruses. I’d falsely equated life as humans and made myself the representa-
tive of all life. Thinking that everything belonged to me and that I embodied
everything was, yet again, childish and pathetic.
Despite thinking that, I still proceeded further.
If we assumed that ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’s’ sex was the only fucking that mat-
tered in this world, then this world which was created in the deepest part of
‘Eve’s’ vagina was fooling us by granting us a false illusion of reproduction.
Of course, all in order to hide who ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ were. Hide a tree in the
forest. Hide sex among sex. If the existence of all the occurring events and
lives, as well as the time ruling them, was born from the humping unfolding
in an ‘Eden’s Garden’ somewhere, then if some hindrance were to interfere
in that and cause the dick to falter or the pussy to dry out, this world might
end. That sex should be protected for the preservation of the world. That’s
why the world created fake sex and inlaid us with it, for self-protection...?
If we assumed that this worthless fantasy was true, who were ‘Adam’ and
‘Eve’?
Let’s say I was ‘Adam’... I once again thought of myself as the center of the
world, but immediately concluded it was impossible. My sex wasn’t like that.
It didn't give birth to anything. It didn’t add to anything. It didn’t bring in
anything. The delusion I could create a world was outrageous...or was the rea-
son why I strongly believed that simply because sex repulsed me? No, fake
sex was exceedingly common in this world. Real sex wasn’t even an act of re-
production, the female was a tunnel and the male a device to activate it...or
did I think that just now because of my revulsion against all kinds of sex that
pushed me towards stripping it of all its value? Was that revulsion a tempo-
rary emotion I was feeling because I’d recently heard about the rape that ap-
parently happened to the young Kozue? ...But if those fingers were mine, I
was involved in some way with that rape... Was I unconsciously angry at my-
self? That anger leading me to doubt life and sex? Did it lead me to denying
life itself in a roundabout way while purposely and childishly self-aggran-
dizing to slide in slander at myself?
Reasoning driven by emotions tended to be subject to many biases, and
therefore was not to be trusted...but was that true? Were all acts of emotional
humans helplessly emotional, and was there no way of getting past that? The
behavior of not wanting emotions to interfere, too, came from emotion...
Who could get rid of their emotions? Who could criticize emotions from a
neutral standpoint? That was as impossible as counting how many times one
had breathed. Thinking that way, when I deemed my own self-denial as ‘en-
lightened’ or ‘worthless,’ some personal emotional bias must be at work
too...but human emotions didn’t change all that often, so the bias from mo-
ments earlier and the current one were the same... I was denying my self-de-
nial… I despised the other mes that had possibly been in possession of those
four fingers. I despised anything sexual. I despised myself for being able to
take part in sexual activities. When I anal-fucked Shakuko...why didn’t I pen-
etrate her vagina at that time? Was I unconsciously aware of the wormhole-
device that was a woman’s genitalia and instinctively avoided intercourse in
fear of triggering it? Had I fucked Shakuko’s vagina then, would a new case
have arrived from some other universe...? And here I was again, thinking
about stupid shit.
I should really put an end to it soon.
I was dulling my actions with useless thoughts. Was I getting tired of act-
ing after all I went through? What in the world was I doing, hating on sex, life,
and myself? Was I pretending to hate them because I was too lazy for it...or
was I perhaps scared? I’d never encountered ‘time travel’ in past cases. And
obviously, I’d never imagined soul exchanges (or a phenomenon that looked
like it) or multiple coincidences that force one to think destiny is at work. I
was living in an American movie-like reality until just recently, but I some-
how managed to barge into this incomprehensible and erratic world... Had I
unknowingly passed through a wormhole? Was I in a different universe? Had
I passed through some woman’s vagina because of someone’s sex and ended
up caught up in a strange affair in this world?
That sounded so stupid. I let the unstopping train of my thoughts guide
me to further stalemates. I had to take the very first step. I've had my fair
share of letting things get away from me due to a refusal to make the first
step, Norma Braun being the start of it.
“Is there anyone you like?” I asked Mercury C, who was reading The
Wedge in the window seat of the Hikari 209, thinking to myself how only el-
ementary-schoolers asked that kind of stuff. But, at that moment, I had a
genuine and naive interest in Mercury C’s love stories.
Mercury C closed The Wedge and rested it on his knees, then looked at my
face and asked, “Now?” Mercury C didn’t take that question lightly nor
seemed to think it should be confronted as such. “There’s not really anyone
currently. I broke up with my girlfriend recently.”
 Mercury C said he had some preparations to take care of back at his apart-
ment and disappeared, so I was greatly surprised when he showed up as
promised at Tokyo Station’s Yaesu Central Entrance. I’d thought he would’ve
gotten bored of it and started searching for another source of fun instead of
going all the way to Fukui. And in fact, I couldn’t discern much excitement or
enthusiasm towards the case in Fukui in his face when we were headed to the
home platform or sat on a bench.
“How recently?”
“Ah, nearly a month ago, I think.”
“What was the reason? If it’s okay to ask.”
“I don’t really mind. Though it’s still not really clear to me. Our personal-
ities kinda didn’t match, I guess? There’s a lot of little stuff so it’s a pain to
bring up all of them, but well, it was an accumulation of that.”
Seeing Mercury C earnestly answering my question awoke a strange feel-
ing inside me. Neither the violent Mercury C nor the current straightforward
Mercury seemed like fakes to my eyes. I wasn’t seeing much difference be-
tween his emotional state from earlier and his current one. I could imagine
Mercury C hitting me in the temple, making me roll under my seat, and
stomping on me at any moment. Like beating a rhythm. This guy didn’t need
any stimulation to be violent.
“Hmm. What kind of person was she?” “Kind and pretty.” “Nice. Her job?”
“An OL.” “A what?” “An employee. The head of a food company.” “Hmm.
What were you doing together?” “Watching movies and groceries. Also
drives.” “You have a car?” “In hers.” “And where did you go?” “Mountains,
the ocean, and hot springs.” “Hot springs, eh~. I’ve never gone to one myself,
you see. Any recommendations for a good one?” “The Hage one in Kumamoto
is great. Like really great, okay? You gotta go up a mountain, but the food is
amazing and there’s not many customers.” Kumamoto Prefecture? So they
went all the way to Kyushu in a car...though that indeed seemed like some-
thing he’d do. “Was there any hot spring in Fukui again?” “No prefecture in
Japan doesn’t have a hot spring.” “I kinda wanna go to a hot spring in Fukui.”
“Look it up on your phone. There might even be one in West Akatsuki for all
you know.”
I connected my phone to the net and searched ‘West Akatsuki, Fukui Pre-
fecture’ on Onsen Navi.7 One named West Akatsuki Yuu Yuu8 came up.
I used this occasion to search for new pieces of information on the Panda
affair on news websites, but all the media outlets were simply repeating the
same stuff about the great detective Daibakushou Curry’s death, so I didn’t
get anything new. I returned to the West Akatsuki Yuu Yuu page and looked
up their stay information; apparently the hot spring had an inn attached. I
stood up, got out on the deck, and phoned West Akatsuki Yuu Yuu. “Yes, here
is Yuu Yuu,” a young woman answered. “Ah, sorry to bother you in these busy
times.” “Not at a~ll.” “Would ya have a room available for two people to-
night?” “Ah~,” the woman said. “Please hold on a moment, a room might
have been freed now. Sorry~.” After that, Earth, Wind and Fire’s September
was played from ‘Do you remember?’ to the ‘ba-dee-ya’ part, then the
woman came back. “Ah, sorry for making you wait, it's okay~. Is a single
room for two people tonight fine with ya?” “Can we have two rooms?” “Sure.
We had many cancellations just earlier~. But with one room per person it will
cost quite more than a room for two, does that pose any problem?” “No, it's
fine.” “Thank you very much. Filling just one or two rooms is a great help for
us~.” “Really? Because of the murders, I’m guessing?” Her bright tone got
me carelessly asking that. “’Hat’s right,” the woman on the other side of the
phone said. “I assume you heard about it too? Apparently there’s some big
trouble happ’ning. And so a lotta great detectives took a room here, but they
all cancelled today for some reason. It’s hard for us, really. Well, though I say
that, it’s prob’ly the toughest on the customers, with that person who died...
Sorry, e~rm, when are ya planning on arriving?” “We’re headed your way on
the bullet train right now.” “I see~, from Tokyo?” “Yes.” “And where are ya

7
A navigation system for hot springs.
8
Pronounced like 悠々 (YUUYUU; calm, relaxed), but written with the repetition of the
character 湯 (YU; hot water) + the letter ‘u’.
currently?” “We just passed through Nagoya.” “Then ya have two more
hours. What will you do for dinner?” “Are there places we can eat out at?”
“There’re soba stands and small bars at your disposal if ya want.” “I see. But
we’ll eat at the inn for tonight.” “Su~re. Shall we prepare you a breakfast too?”
“Please.” “Then morning and evening meals, roger. Will this reservation be
for tonight only?” “Mhmm...” “Ahaha. Ya don’t know? Are ya a great detec-
tive too?” Great detectives can’t answer themselves when asked that, no?
“I’m probably not.” “I see~. The great detectives went, err...to that residence
talked about in the case.” “I see.” “What shall we do? Should I reserve it for
three days for the time being? The phone’s been ringing a lot since earlier.
The rooms might fill up while you’re thinking.” “You’re right. Then please
reserve three days for now.” “Thank ya very much. If you want to prolong it
please tell me as fast as possible and I’ll arrange it.” “Understood.” “Then
excuse me, can I ask for your name?” I don’t wanna give my name, I instinc-
tively thought what I had always felt in Japan. But not having a name is trou-
blesome. “It’s Odoriba Mizutarou.” “Eh? Sorry, could ya say that one more
time?” “My surname is Odoriba.” “O-do-ri-ba-san, is it?” “Yes. Like a place
to dance.” “Yes yes. Odoriba-san, I see. And your first name is?” “Mizutarou.
Tarou who follows the flow of the water.” “Mizutarou-san. Huh. Quite a rare
name.” For the Japanese, rare often means in terms of meaning rather than
pronunciation. Well, in my case, Americans laughed at the meaning too.
Though more often than not, they just lightly expelled air through their nose.
“Could I have the name of your companion as well?” Did Mercury C need a
fake name? I forgot to consult him. Well, whatever. “It’s Mercury C.” “? Sorry,
could you say that one more time?” “It’s Mercury C.” “...Marc Urie Sea-san.
Is he a foreigner?” I was the foreigner. “No, he’s Japanese. Probably. Mercury
the planet followed by C the letter.” “Heeh, Mercury C-san. Is he a fortune
teller?” “No, an author.” “Heeh.” A weird name can easily pass as a pen name.
There, I remembered and said, “Ah, sorry. For the room number, please, an-
ything but room 202.”
 Yuu Yuu didn’t have a ‘room 202.’ Apparently the rooms weren’t num-
bered but named after plants.
I returned to my seat to find Mercury C drinking iced coffee. “What name
do you usually go by?” I asked as I sat on the seat. He raised an eyebrow, “I’m
giving out my real name, like normal.” “What’s your real name then?” “It's
Mercury C, of fucking course.” “With your surname being Mercury and your
first name C?” “My first name being Mercury and my middle name being C.”
“What happened to your last name?” “Must’ve dropped it somewhere, shut
up.” “I reserved under ‘Mercury C.’” “Tch, I told you not to use that name.
Well, fine, thanks. I don’t have any cash though, you know?” Waiting now to
say that? “...Well, whatever.” I still had a bit of the money I received from the
Yamagishi couple and Oda Kenji left. “Also, I said you’re an author.” “I’m a
Japanese confection artisan though.” “Ah, that’s what you usually use?” “I
really am! I’ll make you something with red bean paste another day.” “...”
“I’m pretty skillful, okay?” I couldn’t imagine this guy having a job. “And are
you employed right now?” “Of course I am, I’d starve otherwise. You said
employed, but it’s my own shop though.” “Eh? Where, and what’s the name?”
“A shop named Makuriya in Chofu. It’s behind the University of Electro-
Communications.” “Heeh. Is it fine to not be working?” “I’m the owner, so
no problem.” ...How should I put it, this guy was good at surprising others.
The tea cart passed by, so I ordered iced coffee too. Then Mercury C asked me.
“So what about your love life?” “Eh?” “Yours. Do you have a girlfriend?” “A
girlfriend, you say...” Why would a detective living in a hard-boiled world get
himself a girlfriend? “I know a few people here and there.” “Hm. So there’s
really no one you love?” Norma Braun. “There’s not.” “There is, no? You liar.
I’m good at seeing through lies.” “I’m telling you, there’s not.” I drank my
coffee...that action might’ve seemed as if I was hiding something. Mercury C
stayed silent for some time, then said. “...Your middle finger, is it still there?”
“It is,” I answered while showing him my left hand. It was. “Do you think it’ll
go away, Mercury?” “I wonder. Do you want it to?” “Of course not.” “I’d have
fun chopping it off though.” “...” “Well, there’s no way those fingers can be
yours, though. At least for a while. They didn’t have my bite marks, after all.”
My finger had them. “Someone somehow managed to copy your fingers. They
still had your recent wounds, so they must’ve collected samples of you not
long ago, too. Someone must’ve come next to your bed while you were sleep-
ing and took pictures of your finger for its shape.” Would that have been pos-
sible? In San Diego, I hid a gun under my pillow, and the sound of a woman’s
negligee falling on the carpet from a chair caused me to wake up and take out
the gun. Did I grow senile because of the peacefulness I’d been experiencing
ever since coming to Japan and living with Kozue? Would I be able to go back
to the streets of America now that I’d become laid back? At current, it would
seem I was separated...for a reason yet unknown, from Kozue, but did I intend
to stay forever in Japan and take it easy? Never going back to America? There
was no shortage of kids getting caught up in crimes and vanishing from their
parents’ sight over there. I could find children’s corpses buried in the soil and
dig them up; I could free living children trapped in factories, brothels, or
fucked up mansions and give them back to their parents; I could find the re-
mains of kids that were disposed of after having had their organs stolen, and
find those organs on the black market; I operated as a missing child detective
with that level of confidence. I could do it, I knew there were jobs only I could
do. I could orient the stories of both children who lost their parents and par-
ents who were separated from their children into a more positive direction.
Parents of missing children tend to question more and more whether they’re
alive after many years pass. They come to think that learning what happened
is sufficient. In the end, their yearning for a clear truth becomes stronger
than their feelings. I could give those people an answer. Was that possible for
the current me?
Anyway, I should do something. If I’d forgotten, I would remember. If I’d
lost my sharpness, I would get it back.
“Cutting my finger off and copying it wouldn’t be of any use,” I said. But
Mercury C replied with “It might have a use you don’t know about,” brim-
ming with confidence. I said, “I’m no different than a random tourist. I coin-
cidentally found myself in Chofu for a while. What kind of meaning can you
push onto me?” Mercury C laughed. “It’s a simple matter. Things are hap-
pening in places you don’t know about, in places you can’t even fathom. You
know, if we could say ‘X is impossible’ or ‘X must have happened’ and shed
light on everything with only our imagination, we wouldn’t need detectives.
Gather facts.”
He was telling me, ‘Anyway, you should do something.’ Even Mercury C
said that to me.
“Just facts,” I said. “You got it,” Mercury C agreed. In reality, I understood
that too. Detectives can’t come to a conclusion exclusively inside their heads.
Car chases. Brawls. Gunfights. The appearance of the true culprit and the res-
olution. I’d witnessed many twists with these very eyes. I’d seen those reso-
lutions unfold before these very eyes.
Gathered at the Pinehouse were the great detectives...I wondered about
what kind of people they were. In this world exist detectives who expose the
‘unique story’ they build up from all the evidence they gathered, and, as long
as there is no inconsistency or if the true culprit admits to their crimes, con-
sider it to be fact and bring down the curtain. They didn’t especially bump
into anyone. They didn’t enter a slugfest with anyone. They didn’t always put
themselves in danger. They interacted with events in a different way than I
did. Which one would happen at the Pinehouse? My way? Or their way?
“What’s your opinion on the murders happening at the Pinehouse?” I
asked Mercury C.
“I’ve got no such thing.”
“...Waiting until we arrive?”
“Ahn? What, you’re interested in the case? What are you on about, why
did we come here? Didn’t we come to see the ghost of that girl?”
“...”
“The murders are none of our business. Let it be, it’s stupid to get moti-
vated over that.”
 People who aren’t detectives could just do that? They could go to a murder
scene and not investigate about the culprit? ...I couldn’t quite imagine that. It
was like an occupational disease. If trouble existed, I got the urge to get rid of
it. That always got me involved in hassles...but it was also what put food on
my plate. For example, if I were to experience a normal case without twists or
masterminds or betrayal, I would surely think, “There’s no way it can be that
simple,” and uselessly start searching for a hidden truth. I wouldn’t believe
that it could be a ‘normal case.’ My ‘normal’ has been shifted into a weird
direction. So much that ‘weird’ can’t describe it sufficiently.
“Oh right. Of course, huh,” I said, “I was about to let myself get dragged
into the case.”
“Don’t read into a weird context and stupidly stick your face where you
don’t need to, Detective.” Mercury C finished his iced coffee, his straw stuck
against the ice made a zzzt sound. “Don’t do anything unnecessary for your
job. Your work starts when you receive a request.”
Right. The case happening at West Akatsuki had nothing to do with
me...but why was Kozue’s ghost mixed up in it?
I concluded that the ghost was Kozue because of ‘pineapple,’ ‘female
ghost,’ and ‘dance,’ but maybe I was unconsciously reading into a weird con-
text. I might’ve assumed things through the mood and timing, and persuaded
myself into believing that imagined world. But imagination alone wasn’t
enough.
I had to look at the facts. I checked the information at my disposal from
the B seat of the Shin-Osaka green car 13 headed towards Maibara Station.
The mystery novel author Anbyouin Owaru who did a loop around the
hallway in his Pinehouse.
Anbyouin was shot late at night in front of a door in his house with a
bowgun, collapsed onto the ground, then crawled all the way around the hall-
way and returned to his initial position. But, even though he passed in front
of rooms with people in them, he didn’t call for help.
In the end, was that hemorrhage a suicide?
 Or did he have a reason to not call for help?
How did the gathered great detectives work?
I had never read Japanese detective novels. From my experience, things
that happened in novels pretty much happened in real life as well. With de-
tails omitted from novels.
 Since one of the great detectives was killed, that meant the mystery didn’t
end with the last loop Anbyouin did, but was still in progress.
I checked the news site on my phone once again. There was a new headline.

A new great detective murdered in West Akatsuki.

It seems that the bizarre death of the mystery novel author Anbyouin Owaru-san is trans-
forming into a serial great detective murder case. The new great detective to have been reported
dead is Judy Dollhouse-san from Shizuoka. Judy-san was apparently found dead in a room of
the Pinehouse, and furthermore, in a locked-room state.
With the second locked room murder (?) after Daibakushou Curry-san’s, also counting as
the second great detective’s murder, the people in the Pinehouse are in great confusion.

We had to go; quick.

I handed my phone to Mercury C seated next to me to show him the article,
but he said “Not my problem, I don’t care,” and pushed it away.

Descending at West Akatsuki Station, there was a young woman holding a

mic being filmed with a TV camera at the edge of the platform. She was sur-
rounded by staff while other crew people were moving luggage, making the
long yet narrow platform lively. However, there was nearly no other customer
to be seen apart from those related to mass media. I bet it’d be more quiet if
it wasn’t for this case. The platform looked like a river bank built by connect-
ing stone blocks with rough cement. The overhead bridge connecting the two
platforms was made out of rusted iron bars and concrete; moreover, the
metal planks, from which the paint had completely come off, were covered by
plastic planks, but the rust of the bolts maintaining them into place had com-
pletely dirtied it, so it gave off the impression that it would sully the nearby
ground when it rained.
But Fukui was sunny today. The sun was still high in the sky when Mercury
C and I got off the wagon; the temperature was cooler, which spared us from
uselessly sweating and getting our clothes sticky, so it made it that much eas-
ier to move around.
The taxi driver parked in front of the station should’ve been making a
large sum from carrying around media-related people, cops, or whoever all
day, but being overloaded with work must have ruined his mood as the sight
of him apathetically gripping the handle made it look like he was the person
suffering the most from these murders. He immediately took off when Mer-
cury C and I got in, sped up the overpass, merged onto the national highway,
followed the river for some time before crossing it, and arrived at the inn in
no time. 750 yen. So much! It’d have taken no time just walking! Japanese
taxis are too expensive.
West Akatsuki Yuu Yuu felt like a rural dentist. A colorful exterior and an
unnatural flower bed to fool the kids who hate treatment. Not exactly unnat-
ural, though. The entrance was furnished with floor tiles, and beyond that
was a cheap-looking carpet. Flimsy and hard brown slippers. However, only
the flowers decorating the central lobby felt fancy and purposeful. It pro-
moted the establishment from ‘dentist’ to ‘inn.’ Someone here must’ve been
passionate about flower arrangement. The entrance immediately gave way to
the reception desk, where a young woman wearing vermillion clothes took
care of our check-in. I was ready to have our names or appearance be the sub-
ject of jokes, but she didn’t say a word about it...it must be the experience of
having interacted with the many great detectives here. The girl said, “Please,
this way~. I will guide you to your room,” with a bright smile, then got out
from behind the counter. Was this inn so small one had to take care of both
the reception and guiding the customers? As the woman smoothly explained
things like “The large bath is over there” or “The open-air bath is over there”
while walking at a good pace, Mercury C spoke out to me: “Let’s go in to-
gether later, okay?” Woah, creepy. “Nope,” I firmly turned him down.
The taxi we called at the reception in Yuu Yuu was the same driver as ear-
lier. Mercury C and I got in and said “To the Pinehouse,” to which he didn’t
hide his annoyance. “Are ya customers great detectives too?” Mercury C sud-
denly said “Of course,” which caught me by surprise. “I’m saying this for
your good, give up on going there. Ya heard about the other great detectives
being killed one after the other? Ya know, that’s a hassle. You’re staying at
Yuu Yuu, right? Then don’t go to such a bothersome place, stay at Yuu Yuu,
go eat soba, fish, and other foods from rural Japan, and go home.” “You’re
right. We’ll do that then. After giving a look at the house,” was Mercury C se-
riously intending on checking for Kozue then going home? But Kozue was at
the Pinehouse as a ghost. Would it be that easy to encounter her? Or would
she show up as soon as I got there? ...Or did Mercury C not believe in Kozue’s
presence there? Maybe he didn’t come along with me to meet Kozue but to
confirm her absence. To kill time.
However, even if I found Kozue, what could I do for her? The ‘future (?)
Kozue (?)’, or even ‘Shimada Kikyou (?)’, might still be in Kozue’s body. I
wanted her to return to her body, but I had no idea what to do in order to
achieve that.
It looked like she automatically returned to her body when it was empty,
so Kozue might return to her body in Tokyo as soon as I got to the Pinehouse.
Then this would’ve been for nothing...but if someone else entered Kozue’s
body, her soul would get ejected...to the Pinehouse?
The current me was unable to not equate the Pinehouse to the Pineapple
Tunnel. The Pinehouse’s rooms were laid out around a round hallway. It
looked like a pineapple’s flesh...that was likely why it was called the Pine-
house. In reality, the building was cylindrical, but the central part was a round
hall, and apparently the skylight on the roof was round too, so it was shaped
more like a baumkuchen...so it should look like a brief tunnel oriented to-
wards the sky...but that perspective came from above and couldn’t be seen by
people on land. The Pinehouse was situated atop an Anbyouin-owned moun-
tain South-East of West Akatsuki, around the entrance to Tanokura. The
smooth and warm and hard and sour Pineapple Tunnel.
“Daibakushou Curry-san is from this town, right?” I asked the driver
upon recalling that. “Yep~. I’ve met him numerous times.” “Oh, really?” I
looked at the nametag next to the handle. Iwasaki Kousuke. “That boy didn’t
have a license, ya see. So I drove him around pretty often.” “This place seems
troublesome to get around without a car, yeah.” “Sure it is. Ya can’t do any-
thing.” “But I can’t imagine a great detective having much demand in such a
quiet place.” “That’s not really true. We’ve got some strange stuff happening.
That boy was pretty busy for sure. Though he seemed to have fun.” “Fun?”
“Yeah, he was so excited he couldn’t stay in place. Though that was during
his happy phases.” “‘Happy phases’?” Then did he have ‘sad phases’ or
‘painful phases’...? Iwasaki explained, “That boy had a sort of emotional dis-
ease. When it was no good, it was really no good, he couldn’t even go outside.”
Depression, eh. Many brain-workers and artists are prone to mental diseases,
like Goethe, Darwin, Tchaikovsky, and Dostoevski. They’re still not generally
included in the equation, but that might be the case for great detectives too.
“But it’s really a shame. Daibakushou-san’s passing away.” “Sure is. When
he was giving it his all too. Normally he’d get to the case, resolve it right away,
and go home; t’was quite the sight. I didn’t think anyone would kill him. Made
me realize he was always going to dangerous places.” Two people had been
killed at the Pinehouse already. In locked rooms.
Two patrol cars were parked at the entrance to the mountain; the cops
stopped the taxi. “Where are you going?” I opened the window and answered,
“To the Pinehouse.” “Well, I can see that. For coverage?” “We’re detectives.”
“Oh, I see. Your name?” “Odoriba Mizutarou.” “Do you have anything to
prove your identity?” I presented my passport and Odoriba Mizutarou’s busi-
ness card. “Real name...what’s this? Disco?” “Disco Alexander Wednesdayyy.”
“What a strange name...wait, oooh! Hohoho.” The man in uniform started
laughing. “Hold on a bit, mister. Disco-san...is that your first name?” “It is.”
“Okay, hold on. I’m borrowing this.” The man went to his colleague waiting
near a patrol car with my passport. Seeing the cops react to my name con-
firmed my suspicions. ‘Pineapple-chan’ from the Pinehouse didn’t say she
‘wanted to dance’ like what was reported, she was calling out my name,
‘Disco.’ Three cops came over. All of them were a little flabby. “Mister, what
did you come to the Pinehouse for?” one of them asked. “I’m here to see the
ghost of the girl,” my intonation when answering was slightly misplaced due
to the man pressing me for an answer, but they didn’t seem to have noticed
it.
The taxi we were in took off, following the patrol cars. That made our per-
spective shift, which revealed what was hidden behind the cars. There was an
area surrounded by yellow tape, with a big, brown, snake-like mark inscribed
perpendicular to the cars. But that wasn’t a snake. It was dirt engraved like
the letter S. It had been run over by a car and was now closer to a $ than an S.
It’d probably rained before the dirt was touched because a puddle formed
closeby, and the outline of the $ where it overlapped was blurry. Since the
cops were protecting it, that meant it either had to do with the murders at the
Pinehouse or they were strongly suspecting that to be the case. We got away
from the S as the taxi we were in climbed the mountain path. Midway there,
we crossed a parade of minivans and bikes led by an ambulance. “They’re
quick,” Mercury C said. I spontaneously asked Iwasaki, “May you turn the
radio on?” “What’s going on there? Looks like something happened yet
aga~in,” he complained in a fedup tone.

...According to a breaking news report, at Anbyouin Owaru-san’s residence in

West Akatsuki, also known as the Pinehouse, yet another great detective was found
dead in a locked-room state, seemingly being a part of the serial great detective killing
that is following Anbyouin-san’s murder. The deceased was the elder brother of the
Choukuuji Brothers, Choukuuji Keraku-san, 28 years old, and the cause of death is
once again thought to be brain injury coming from having chopsticks stabbed through
his face. However, Choukuuji Keraku-san’s corpse is being sent to Akahoshi Hospital
in Takefu in order to more accurately research the cause of death. ...

“Another room free,” Mercury C laughed, “Let’s stay there if anything

happens.”
“Stop that,” Iwasaki, the conductor, said. “Leave that alone, it’s better to
go back, I tell ya.” The old man’s face was only illuminated by the sunlight
that passed through the cedar trees, but it suddenly became bright as our sur-
roundings flattened and both sides of the mountain path opened up.
I could see the sky and a cylinder. That was the Pinehouse.
Kozue.
“Misters, it’s really better to go home, ya know?” We brushed off Iwa-
saki’s warning and got out of the taxi. “Thank you,” Mercury C said before
closing the door; the taxi left. Many minicars, bikes, and people from the me-
dia who didn’t partake in the parade were forming a circle between me and
the gate to the Pinehouse. Plus, there were even more cops behind that gate.
The cops from the patrol car that led us here approached us and said “Well
then, please follow us,” so we started walking towards the front gate along-
side them and soon found ourselves surrounded by the press corps. “Are you
involved with the case?” “Excuse me, your name?” “Are you a great detec-
tive?” “Could you tell us your name?” As I was thinking to myself amongst
the flashes that I didn’t have a presentable name to give out, Mercury C said
“I’m the great detective Impussibule ImpussibuuuuleImpussibuleReally-
ISwearAhhhnBop♪” as a joke while singing. But some reporters were taking
notes with earnesty. No matter the name, it won’t come off as a joke if it’s a
great detective’s.
After we passed through the main gate and found ourselves among many
police officers in civilian clothes, I recalled my duty, took out my phone, and
called Shakuko. “Yes, what is it?” “Shakuko, how is it there?” “Aah, we’ve
been sleeping ever since we finished eating.” “What’s going on regarding
Kozue?” “She’s sleeping.” “No, I mean to her body.” “Ah, well nothing really.
Still big.” “I see. I arrived at the Pinehouse on my side.” “Okay. Then be sure
to find Kozue-chan.” “Yeah.” As I hung up the phone, a policeman addressed
me, “Wednesdayyy-san?” “Yes. I came here to meet the girl.” “First things
first, please come over here.”
The Pinehouse was a Western-style mansion built out of light brown
bricks neatly arranged. The circumference had more intricate details. It
looked like a Middle Ages theater from the outside.
Two floors. I checked the windows but saw no traces of Kozue. But she
should’ve been somewhere in here.
I was following the cops towards the entrance to the Pinehouse and de-
cided to start calling for her. “Kozue———!”
The seven cops walking in front of me turned back and looked at me with
faces as if to say “Why is this foreigner suddenly screaming? Is he okay in his
head?” when I discerned a small figure running towards us from behind them.
It seemed to be made out of clothes, a small...a small what? A boar? The
plushie came running with its small legs kicking the ground, passed through
the legs of the officers who had stiffened upon noticing it, and softly grabbed
onto my shin. The light, slightly warm, small boar-like plushie was looking
up at me from my feet, it stole my heart.
“Kozue.”
I called out to it. The boar (?) laid its round front leg on my calf and hugged
it.
Craaap, it’s mega cute.
“Wooah, mega cute,” Mercury C said the same thing.

3
 But Mercury C and I were about the only ones to call a 13-centimeters-
long plushie capable of standing on its own, running, and hugging cute; the
cops were dumbfounded, like their minds were an endless desert. I used their
confusion to pick up the plushie from my feet and say “No one follow me!” to
no one in particular, then left them behind with quick steps and headed to the
side of the Pinehouse. I ran along the round walls to the left with the grass
wetting the hems of my pants. When I got in far enough, I found myself in a
graveled courtyard with a concrete-made, cubic incinerator beneath the
shadow of the leaves. The media’s eyes shouldn’t be able to reach me when I
was hidden by all these trees and the pinehouse. I put down the plushie on top
of the furnace which had a tall chimney. Even with my hands gone, the boar-
like creature managed to stand on two feet.
First, I had to confirm. “Are you Kozue? Are you Yamagishi Kozue?”
The plushie nodded. Normally there would be no way for me to believe it
with just a nod at that question, but I did anyway. My head was telling me
someone might’ve been deceiving me. Even so, my heart said, “I’m glad I
found you, Kozue. You must’ve been lonely without me, no?” I had no need
to try confirming her identity any further. This was Kozue.
“When did you enter this plushie?”
Kozue slowly tilted her head at my question. Must it be a yes-no question,
maybe?
“Today?”
No response.
“Yesterday?”
No response.
“Before that?”
No response. Which meant,
“You don’t know?”
She nodded. Right, I had to ask something much more important.
“Is the Pineapple Tunnel here?”
A nod. As I thought.
 “Is this building the Pineapple Tunnel?”
Another nod. I was slightly taken aback. That was completely different
from the near-death experience ‘path of light’ I had imagined. I’d never have
thought it was a round house. But, did Kozue try biting it? Was it really sour?
The plushie Kozue once again stuck to me.
When it did, I felt an unforeseen sense of disgust. Of anger. I was being
reminded. The ‘tattooed, glasses-wearing man’ Shimada Kikyou related to
me. I noticed my image of Kozue had been sullied and couldn’t forgive myself
for it either. Kozue hadn’t been sullied one bit. Moreover, her soul was the
same Kozue as ever.
“Kozue, can you get out of this plushie?”
Kozue looked at me through the face of the plushie. No answer came forth.
But looking into these black, plastic eyes of the plushie pulled me away from
the tension of the situation. I let out a smile.
“Is this a boar?”
Kozue shook her head, jumped on my knees, then tried to climb up my
shirt, so I moved her onto my shoulders. The plushie’s protruding nose softly
touched my ear, then let out a faint voice:
“Spiky pig.”

It was Kozue’s usual voice. Spiky pig...? But it had defenses protruding
from under its nose on both sides. I couldn’t see it as anything but a boar with
somewhat long hairs on its back. But if Kozue said so, I saw no problem with
spiky pig. Spiky pig was fine. I stroke Kozue’s spiky back on my right shoulder.
“Kozue, you must’ve been lonely.” Hearing that, Kozue snuffed her nose
against my ear once more and said, “Babuu,” imitating Ikura-chan. Kozue was
able to joke even in such a situation, I was about to cry at her misery for being
unable to keep herself from joking. “Disco, I want to go home,” Kozue said. I
wanted to answer “Sure thing, I was waiting for that. Let’s head out of here
right now” and stand up, but did none of that and instead began thinking. If
I brought Kozue home in this state, what would happen if the Kozue in Tokyo,
the ‘future Kozue,’ exited her body? Would Kozue be able to return to her
body? Would she not be able to unless she stayed near the Pineapple Tunnel
like she’d done up till now? If there existed a wormhole-like passage con-
necting Chofu’s Kozue to the Pinehouse in West Akatsuki, Fukui Prefecture,
it might be better not to move the soul of Chofu’s Kozue nor Fukui’s Kozue.
Shit, I’d come all the way to Fukui with high expectations and managed to
find Kozue this easily, but the situation hadn’t changed an ounce. It’s useless
if I can’t return Kozue to her body...I was about to think that, but decided to
look at it differently. At the very least, I could be by Kozue’s side. Also, I
thought. If the Pinehouse was the Pineapple Tunnel and there were murders
occurring here, Kozue must be involved in some way. ...Or were the biases
from my emotions pushing me into reading into a non-existing context
again? No. ...I mean, even if that was the case, I still had to do something until
I was proven it was useless. “Kozue, I have some work to do here for a little
while so be patient. We’ll go back together once I’m done with it.” Was I
merely consoling myself? Was there any ‘work’ I could accomplish here? “No!
Let’s go home now,” Kozue protested with a voice as small as if caressing a
square of tissue with a needle. “It will be okay, Kozue. I will be with you the
entire time so you won’t feel lonely.” Once Kozue switches with the ‘future
Kozue’ in Chofu I would only have to go back to Tokyo as fast as possible, I
was fine with this endless commute between Tokyo and Fukui. “No~ way~, let’s
go home, Disco. It’s scary here.” Kozue rubbed the spiky pig’s nose against my
right cheek. Indeed, this was a scene of murder. With more still going on.
Apparently the great detectives who assembled to investigate it were get-
ting killed... What would a child-searching detective do? Was I on the to-be-
killed list as well?
The killer could go after me if they wanted, I thought. I would only need to
bring them down before they got me. That was more like me. I lived in a dif-
ferent world than those with cases ending in a “You are the culprit!” reveal.
Well, even if it didn’t develop into the kind of thrilling situation I was ex-
pecting, there were other things Kozue and I could cooperate with. Especially
in Kozue’s case.
 “Kozue, someone was killed in this house. Do you know about it?”
The spiky pig nodded from the top of my shoulder.
“Do you know who killed him?”
Another nod. Oh, already the resolution, I thought.
“Who?”
Snuffling. “Owaru-chan.”
Owaru-chan? “No, Kozue, that’s the answer to ‘Who was killed,’ right?
I’m asking who that ‘Owaru-chan’ was killed by. Who killed ‘Owaru-chan’?”
Kozue became silent. I looked at its face but there was only my face re-
flecting into the black, plastic eyes to be seen.
I had an idea. “Kozue, did you perhaps meet ‘Owaru-chan’ when he died
or after?”
I thought it might be easier for souls to interact with each other, but that
might be a wrong assumption... Was I reading into nonsensical context again?
Yet again, Kozue nodded.
“Eh? Kozue, you did?”
“Owaru-chan is here~ in many places.”

“Really?”
I looked around me instinctively.
“Is he here now?”
“Not now.”

“What is ‘Owaru-chan’ doing?”

“Nothing~. Just looking.”

“At whom?”
“Everyone.”

That’s kinda creepy.

“Is ‘Owaru-chan’ angry?”
“Not at all~. He’s smiling.”

“Is he kind to you?”

“I'm scared so I’m hiding. I don’t like it.”

“I see. Continue doing that from now on. Whose toy is it? The spiky pig.”
“Angel Bunnies.”
 “Is that a great detective?”
“Nooo~. Drama people.”

“Someone from a theater troupe?”

“...”

“Someone alive?”
“Living alright~ (giggles).”

The mention of ‘Angel’ near the Pineapple Tunnel made me imagine

things, but oh well. I’d hear about the ‘Angel Bunnies’ later on.
“Kozue, since ‘Owaru-chan’ died, many people came, and a few others
died, no? Do you know who the culprit is?”
Kozue nodded. Really, another resolution? I thought
“Who is it?”
“Essessneinpinner.”

“...? What?”
“Essessneinpinner.”

“Who’s that?”
“He peels off the nails of sleeping people.”

“Like, he detaches the whole nail?”

“Yes.”

“Is that Essess something alive right now?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he now?”
“Nowhere.”

“Nowhere at all?”
“Yes.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“I don’t.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw his face?”

“I don’t know. He has no face.”

“No face?”
“Yes. All black.”

“Like wearing a mask?”

“?”
 “Is his face covered by something?”
“He has no face. It’s all black.”

“I see.”
It didn’t seem like I could get a proper answer from Kozue even if I ques-
tioned her further. She was a soul who dived into a plushie, so maybe she was
able to see things us flesh beings couldn’t, or maybe she had a way of looking
at things completely different. Right. Unlike me, Kozue didn’t have eyeballs
nor a brain.
“Kozue, how do I look to you right now?”
“Like Disco!”

Like, eh. The Disco-like me was properly Disco. But I didn’t know if that
was true for the Kozue inside the plushie...thinking that, though it pained me
to do so, I considered doubting the Kozue I had been talking to up till then.
Kozue was inside this plushie. That couldn’t be anyone but Kozue. If I were to
be doubting that, it would be impossible to confirm anyone’s identity.
“Kozue, isn’t that body tough on you? Does it hurt anywhere?”
“It doesn’t hurt~.”

“I see. The spiky pig sure is cute.”

“Eheh~.”

Kozue raised both front legs of the spiky pig and moved her back legs to-
wards the interior to take the pose of someone embarrassed. She seemed en-
ergetic enough and not especially suffering. Then I didn’t need to worry.
“Kozue, can you leave this spiky pig too?”
Kozue squished the pig’s nose onto my ear.
“I don’t know.”

“How did you get in?”

“I don’t know~. Disco came and I went ‘Wah!’”

“‘Wah,’ huh. Hmm.” I lightly scratched the sole of the spiky pig’s front
legs. “Tickle tickle.” The spiky pig flapped its legs all around on my right
shoulder. I couldn’t hear Kozue’s faint voice anymore when the spiky pig’s
nose (mouth) got away from my ears, but it seemed to be laughing from the
tickling. When I stopped tickling her the spiky pig charged towards my ear
and crashed its nose on it.
“No no to tickles! Disco, bad!”

She put up a front.

“Did you feel the tickling?”
“I don’t know. But when you said tickle tickle, I felt ticklish.”

“Haha. Then what if I pinch you?”

“Nooo! Disco, you’re mean! Please no!”

Had I pinched her, she might’ve felt pain just from thinking she was being
pinched.
“Okay, then look the other way.” The spiky pig obeyed and faced my right.
“Raise your hands if you feel like I’m touching you.” I slowly brought my in-
dex above the spikes on her back, then touched them. The spiky pig didn’t
raise its hands. I pushed stronger onto its back. Still no movement. I knocked
on it. The spiky pig I called ‘Kozue’ turned back. “Did you feel anything? The
spiky pig shook its head. It didn’t have cutaneous sensations. Then it
wouldn’t feel any pain even if it were to fall from my shoulders...but it should
feel some from the knowledge it is falling. Pain isn’t about feeling pain. Pain
is about thinking you’re in pain. In reality, one wouldn’t think twice about a
screeching pain if they didn’t know about it.
“Hey, Detective, what are we gonna do now?” Suddenly hearing that, I
turned around to find Mercury C who had come near Kozue and I from the
front entrance. “You caused a pretty big ruckus, you know.”
“Kozue, go in there.” I put the spiky pig inside the breast pocket of my
shirt.
For the moment, at least while she was still inside the spiky pig, no one
could lay a hand on Kozue. I wouldn’t let them.
After looking at Kozue who had the bottom half of her body buried in my
pocket, Mercury C asked, “Can you take it home?”
“I don’t know. I can’t even imagine how moving it away would influence
the situation... Well, it’s probably better not to move it.”
 “Then do you wanna stay here and do something about it?”
“Something, you say... I’ve no idea what I should be doing.”
“Starting on doing something you have no idea on how to do is what we
call ‘doing something.’ Remember it well.” I noticed that Mercury’s mood
had readily improved before I knew it.
“You look like you’re having fun. Did you find anything you wanna do in
here?”
“There’s a bunch of great detectives in there and they’re being killed one
after the other, you know?”
“...We knew that before coming here, no?”
“We did, but I wasn’t listening. Fufufu. The murders won’t stop anytime
soon. To tell you the truth, I’ve never witnessed anyone dying yet.”
“...Stop it. You should just go home. That’s stupid.”
“No thanks. I wanna see some great detectives die.”
What’s wrong with this guy...
Mercury C was laughing proudly. “From what I’ve heard, those great de-
tectives gotta expose the answer they’ve prepared in front of everyone, and if
they’re wrong, they get killed right after. Did you know that? Kukukuh. I’ll be
enjoying that. Those idiots acting like great detectives getting killed will
make for a great spectacle.”
I was really conflicted on whether I should’ve punched him or not. But was
it a good idea to beat the shit out of each other once more now that I had Ko-
zue inside my breast pocket...? I really thought it through.
It was a no. It was a hassle, plus I was sick of pain.
It’s not like punching Mercury C would fix his crooked morals anyway. The
guy would still be smiling after enjoying our rematch. Pain might even be part
of the pleasure for him.
I said, “If we can end this case, then let’s hurry up, do that, and go home.
You don’t have the leisure to fool around in a place like this either, right?”
“I said no,” Mercury C still refused. “This is way more fun.”
“You were the one who wanted to go back as soon as possible.”
 “I’ll go home once I’m bored. From the looks of it, you won’t go anywhere
for a while either. Not with that cutie stuffed in your pocket.”
“...” This place was really the Pineapple Tunnel. It pulled Kozue in, made
me come all the way, and made Mercury C, who had no interest in the case
prior to coming, say he wanted to stay. Only weird things were happening
here. There was something here. I thought so. But was that again me reading
into some weird context?
Weird context?
That reminds me, I thought.
When I questioned Kozue earlier, she heard something wrong. Something
concerning the truth of this case.
I asked “Do you know who killed him?”
And Kozue nodded.
I then asked her “Who?” and,
Snuffling.
Kozue, for sure, answered “Owaru-chan.”
Then I got convinced Kozue misheard the question, “No, Kozue, that’s the
answer to ‘Who was killed,’ right?” and asked who killed Anbyouin Owaru
once more, but wasn’t that a bad decision when taking in account that Kozue
was six years old and currently inside a plushie? What if she had properly lis-
tened to the question and truthfully gave an answer for the identity of the
person who murdered Anbyouin Owaru? But since I told her ‘No’ one-sidedly,
when I repeated my question, didn’t she hesitate to give out the same answer?
Like a normal six-year-old girl in such a scary situation would?
“Kozue,” I picked the spiky pig up from my breast pocket. “I’ll ask once
more,” I said in a gentle tone. “Who killed Owaru-chan?”
She snuggled up to my ear again. “Owaru-chan.”
So that was really it.
Mercury C, who shouldn’t have been in range to hear Kozue, threw me re-
proaches, “What are you doing, that’s cheating. Don’t ask ghosts for the an-
swer.”
 “She’s not a ghost, idiot.” I put the spiky pig back in my breast pocket. She
was not dead.
And Anbyouin Owaru had killed himself.
“Don’t you dare tell me the answer, okay?” Mercury C said.
I’d probably say it once it was confirmed to be true.

Great detectives shouldn’t be pardoned for any and all eccentric behavior
they might show. Dezuumi Style shouldn’t have suddenly exclaimed “Waha-
hahaha! I solved it! Uwahahaha!” with a high-pitched laugh from the sec-
ond-floor window and jumped down into the courtyard Mercury C and I were
in. Even if that was his style. Obviously, Mercury C would never go along with
someone’s theatrical acting, so he dealt him a dreadful kick the instant before
he reached the ground, making him bend at an important angle and sending
him flying away into the woods. Honestly, he mostly got what he deserved. If
he thought anyone and everyone would understand the context he was used
to in his world, he was greatly mistaken.
“Uwahahahahghn!” Bam! Seeing Dezuumi coming from right above us
and leaving horizontally cooled me down instantly.
But well, having Dezuumi break three ribs and lose consciousness made
for some positives.
First, I’d obtained some time to catch up on the case.
Secondly, Mercury C had fled into the mountains to escape from the offic-
ers pursuing him, so that removed some useless stress.
And finally, thanks to all the ruckus, it seemed the witnesses started ques-
tioning whether the scene they saw with the spiky pig rushing towards me
was a hallucination or an error on their part. And Dezuumi, who saw me talk-
ing to the spiky pig from the second-floor window, got taken to the hospital.
I could sense the officers’ glances towards the spiky pig on my chest. But
no one said anything. I spoke to the spiky pig in a small voice, “Kozue, you
must stay still. Act like a plushie.” Since there was no apparent response, I
sneakily took her out and brought the spiky pig’s nose to my ear. “(giggle) Okay,
okay~ Disco. I’m not moving~. (Kyaha~)” She seemed to be having fun. Good thing.

I then returned the spiky pig to my chest and headed for the front entrance.
As was the case when the spiky pig rushed to me, the door was kept open,
so I could see beyond. There was one more door beyond it, which was kept
open as well, leading into the round hall furnished with sofas.
I could see a few men and women on those.
I passed through the front door, then through the narrow reception space,
and reached the round hall. The ceiling in the house abruptly changed to be-
ing higher and brighter when I got in there. I looked up to search for the rea-
son and saw that the whole ceiling was a skylight; the hall was like a giant
terrace. There was a tall traveler’s tree in the middle of the room. Six people
were either sitting on the sofas surrounding it or standing up near them. All
young and well featured, wearing slim, trendy clothes. What the heck, it looks
like a school drama broadcast on Fuji TV, I thought. Even Kinpachi had some
less attractive actors to be somewhat realistic, didn't it?
A boy among them, wearing sagging jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt re-
vealing expensive-looking accessories hanging on his wrists, the spitting
image of what a rich high-schooler would wear in my head, called out to me
and my quizzical expression. “Nice to see you here, William Eady-san. Or
maybe I should have noted how long it has been since our last encounter?” he
said with a smug face. “If I’m not mistaken, you are a pro in searching for
missing children, right?” “Have we met anywhere?” “Do you not remember?
Two years ago, in Kyoto.” Aah, that. “I do remember the case. I found Nagano
Rika-chan in a swamp. She was hidden under junsai.” “Most precisely. And
after Nagano Rika-chan, we found the other 40 victims, all buried in places
where Kyoto vegetables were being produced. The discovery of Nagano Rika-
chan became the hint we needed. It’s thanks to that we were able to find all
the others.” What did he want to say? “For me, the grief of Nagano Rika-chan
and her family is all there was to this case,” I said, making the rich detective
sigh. “...How cool.” Okay, this guy was an idiot. He continued, not noticing I
was already fed up with him. “But, in reality, two species out of the Kyoto
vegetables should’ve gone extinct long ago.” Someone interjected here. “The
Koori daikon and the Touji turnip, right?” Yet another stupid kid with his
smug face. “Exactly. Sugukina, Uguisuna, Maizuru turnips, Shougouin tur-
nips, Sabaka turnips, Matsugasaki turnips, Oouchi turnips, Karami daikon,
Shougouin daikon, Sabaka daikon, Tokinashi daikon, Momoyama daikon,
Kugi daikon, Aomi daikon, hatakena, mizuna, mibuna, Kamo eggplants, Ya-
manashi eggplants, Mogi eggplants, Shishigatani cabbage, Ebi potatoes, Ya-
mano potatoes, Kyoto takenoko, Kyoto udo, Kyoto seri, Kyoto myuuga, kuwai,
Horikawa gobo and Shougouin cucumber, kyuujou onion, Hiragino cowpea,
hanana, Manganji capscicum, Takagamine capscicum, Tanaka capscicum,
Fushimi capscicum, Katsura melon, purple zukin, Kintoki carrots, and junsai.
Almost every student in a certain class was buried respectively under these 41
species of Kyoto vegetables.” Ahaha, one of the girls laughed. “What’s up
with that, I bet it’s another case of the ‘hide a tree in the forest’ formula?”
Another girl replied, “That’s always what those end up being. They kill more
than necessary for the purpose of hiding something.” The rich boy continued,
“Yes, and I, too, was thinking along that line at first. I started by suspecting
the main teacher of that class, born from a farmer family and missing at the
time of the investigation, but then I thought that the two we had yet to find,
the ones buried under the legendary Koori daikon and Touji turnip, might be
in fact the culprits. ‘We already found 41 of them dead, so the remaining two
must be buried somewhere under vegetables as well. And their teacher, who’s
knowledgeable about Kyoto vegetables, knows where the extinct Koori dai-
kon and Touji turnip are being grown, so he probably commited this large-
scale murder as a way to appeal his discovery,’ the two remaining students
might’ve been hiding, using that assumption as camouflage. Something like
that. It is somewhat reminiscent of flood news. 43 people got swept away and
41 corpses were found, so if they stay missing for some time, nobody will be-
lieve in their well-being. I considered the possibility of these two using the
expectation that they were more liable to be dead than anything.”
But that was wrong.
“But that was wrong,” the boy said too. “The amazing detective right here,
Eady-san, found the remaining two. Buried under the Koori daikon and the
Touji turnip.”
“Haha!” This unexpected turn of events amused the rest of the group.
“What, so these two species didn’t go extinct?”
“They didn’t, indeed.”
“Did someone hide them? Or were they growing in a weird spot?”
“They were properly growing in fields.”
“Ehh? What do you mean?”
“It’s simple. Hide a turnip among turnips. A certain farmer mistook Koori
daikon as a failed breed of Aomi daikon, so he ate it with his family instead of
selling it. In the first place, Aomi daikon are a variant of Koori daikon, so it’s
natural they are similar. And the Touji turnips were thought to be Oouchi tur-
nips. Both of them were only hidden by the shared assumption that they had
gone extinct. Since it is thought that Touji turnips went extinct in the ’50s of
the Showa Era, and Koori daikon in the ’10s of that same era,9 no one remem-
bers their taste. Nor their appearance. If the vegetable doesn’t have a recog-
nized form and isn’t deemed beautiful by set standards, it won’t get put onto
the market, so no one will get to see them.”
Hoh, everyone was listening to the boy with great interest. My legs felt
numb. I sorta got put into this flow where I had to listen to this guy, but I
wanted to go around various rooms and investigate.
“That’s amazing, I’m impressed you managed to find those.” One of the
boys said.

9
Respectively the late ’70s/early ’80s and the late ’30s/early ’40s in Western calendars.
 I shrugged my shoulders. “I simply searched where people hadn’t
searched.”
“So cool,” they said with big smiles on their faces. I swept my hands to
make them shut up. “Are you people great detectives?” I asked. “Yep, we sure
are!” one of the girls said. They didn’t seem any different from Hoshino Ma-
sato to me. Were all young Japanese people like that? No, this kind of charac-
ter probably permeated in that generation, pulling them towards that role
when put in a theatrical position. They’d yet to accumulate much experience.
“Enough with the old tales, let’s talk about the current case,” I said, but
the ‘Yep, we sure are!’ girl stopped me. “That’s a no-go, you can’t cut a great
detective midway through a story. That’s a basic rule.” “Not like I’m your
employer,” I said, then sat on a sofa. The great detectives consulted each
other’s faces. These guys were the popular group thinking they’re celebrities
in high school, there’s always one like that. “So? What’s the truth?” asked
the cheerleader. The charming prince continued his tale.
“The culprit had already passed away. All by committing suicide. This
might be pushing the limits of psychology a little, but at this point, we cannot
draw a definitive conclusion on details like these anymore.”
“...” Everyone went quiet. ‘Details like these’ are what’s important,
though. I thought everyone got angry like me, but they were just surprised.
“Eh? What do you mean?” One of the girls asked.
“The two buried under the Koori daikon and the Touji turnips were the
only true victims. The other 41 were the assailants. All of them bullied the two.
And one day, they finally went over the line and killed them. Everyone pan-
icked and hid the corpse, it just so happened that it was under the legendary
Kyoto vegetables. All the classmates, tortured by their guilt, conscience, and
whatnot, unable to bear it, decided to all die to hide the truth of the bullying.
And to atone for their sins a minimum, they devised a plan to advertise the
existence of the thought-to-be-extinct Koori daikon and Touji turnips. So
everyone chose a different Kyoto vegetable to die under. That way, the police
would surely search for the missing two corpses and find the two missing
breeds. They thought no one would suspect bullying if they additionally cre-
ated a culprit. The main teacher’s corpse was found too. He was disguised to
look like he killed himself, but well, he most likely got caught and killed by
the students before the suicides. But the point of the story is the coincidence
in numbers. There were a total of 43 students in the class, and there are 43
varieties of Kyoto vegetables. Had the Koori daikon and Touji turnips not
been found, that number would only be 41, but they got found and, in the end,
matched the number of students. That’s a sort of synchronicity, isn’t it? But
that sort of thing happens all the time. A coincidence brought about that
many children’s deaths, but kids die at the same rate as bizarre coincidences
like that happen. Ultimately, the Koori daikon and Touji turnips were found,
so all’s well that ends well, a true happy end. The students who participated
in that mass suicide were a bunch of good for nothings, the kind that would
bully their classmates to death, but they were able to turn their existences
from negatives to positives in their own way.”
Hoo~, everyone let out voices of amazements as they applauded him.
Eh? I couldn’t comprehend it. Was that a moving story? The Japanese are
so rotten, goddamn. In so many ways.
“Yo, fuckhead, there’s no way vegetables are more important than human
lives,” I said. I instantly thought there was no chance in hell for it to work,
but I couldn’t help myself from saying it.
The handsome boy I called fuckhead looked at me in surprise. I expected
him to laugh at me and tease me, but he instead said: “You’re so right, seri-
ously. I think so too.” That superficial meek expression was even worse than
him laughing at me. Fuck, I couldn’t do this anymore. For him, all of this was
just about logic and knowledge. I couldn’t see any human quality in them, but
thinking about it, well, it’s not like they were inhuman. Their thoughts and
sensations differed from mine, but they were equally as human as I; they were
probably the way they were because they are humans. And they were not the
only ones responsible for having turned out like this. As an older human, I
had some responsibility towards the world for them being the way they are.
 I enquired the pompous, handsome boy hanging his head. “What’s your
name?” He raised his face. “I am Hakkyoku Sachiari.”
“A great detective?”
“I think so myself.”
“That’s a really happy name you got there.”
“I’m a candid guy.”
“I can see that.” I wondered if he hadn’t fallen into despair over some-
thing despite his cheerful expression. But if one doesn’t notice that, they’re
genuinely candid for sure. Someone behind me started saying “My name is...”
and was about to stand up, but it was a hassle, so I told him to shut up with a
movement of the hand. He obediently stopped on the spot. Ahaha, another
girl laughed. “Mister, you’re like a jedi master. Can you move people by shak-
ing your hand from side to side?” I had no words for her, nor felt like answer-
ing. The names of great detectives I knew from the news site were Hakkyoku
Sachiari, Choukuuji Keraku, Choukuuji Kiyuu, Daibakushou Curry, Hongou
Takeshitakeshi, Mame Gen, Mikami Nils, and Dezuumi Style. Plus Judy Doll-
house I had seen on the net earlier. Among those, Daibakushou, Dollhouse,
and the Keraku side of the Choukuuji brothers got killed by having chopsticks
stabbed in their faces, and Dezuumi got transferred to a hospital, so he was
out of the equation too. The number of remaining names and of the people
here didn’t match up. There were four boys and two girls here. Many other
people must've arrived impromptu, like Dollhouse did. I was another case of
that. But I was no great detective. I had no care for great detectives’ names.
Time to act.
Now, what should I do to the Pinehouse to stop it from acting as the Pine-
apple Tunnel?
Shall I burn it?
Kozue likely wouldn’t stay forever in the spiky pig. There should be a mo-
ment when she returns to her body in Chofu. Would setting fire to the Pine-
house and completely destroying it when the spiky pig becomes empty work?
 However, Kozue’s soul seemed to be coming here after being pushed away
by the ‘future Kozue,’ so the next time the ‘future Kozue’ would eject her,
where would she go if not the Pineapple Tunnel? Having lost her destination,
she might get stranded at some remote place.
No good. It should be for the best to keep the Pineapple Tunnel’s position
as is while I couldn’t predict how things would behave.
But there were only weird people here. Cops, media people, and great de-
tectives. And someone killing the great detectives one after the other... ‘Es-
sessneinpinner’? An ‘all-black’ entity who ‘peels off the nails of sleeping
people.’ And if I remembered correctly, a troupe called ‘Angel Bunnies’... The
spiky pig apparently belonged to one of the members. But why would some-
one bring a plush in here?
I wanted to hurry up and take Kozue out of this place. But I needed to know
about what was happening here for that.
Also, I needed to make sure the ‘future Kozue’ didn’t come here.
I stood up, ignored the great detectives who seemed like they hadn’t
teased me enough, took some distance from them, and took my phone out. I
had enough signal. I called Shakuko, and she answered without delay.
“Thanks for your work,” she said. “How’s it in Fukui?” “Mountains all
around.” “Did you already go to the crime scene? The Pinehouse, was it
called?” “I’m currently in there.” “How is it? Feels like Kozue-chan might be
around?” “I found her. We’re already together.” “Eh? Seriously? You found
her?” I could hear her say “He said he found the small Kozue-chan” to the
‘future Kozue’ next to her. “You’re amazing, Disco. That’s genuine talent you
have there. Normally one can’t find something like that this fast, can they?”
“I was just lucky this time around.” I mean, she was the one to run up to me.
“How’s the tiny Kozue-chan like? Healthy?” “She is.” “But what about her
body? She doesn’t have one, right?” “She does though?” “Eh?” “She found a
replacement to enter over here. A cute one.” “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, no need to talk about that now. Anyway, Kozue is safe for the time be-
ing. How’s your Kozue doing?” “Healthy as usual. Wanna talk to her?” “Not
now.” I had the spiky pig on my chest. There was no telling what could hap-
pen if the ‘future Kozue’s’ voice leaked from the phone and reached Kozue’s
ears. “The big Kozue-chan said she’d investigate the Panda Lover Case once
she returned to the future. Shall I tell her to investigate the one on your end
too? It’s getting pretty wild from what I saw. Every news site is constantly
talking about it.” “Yeah.” Should I get the ‘future Kozue’ to investigate the
Pinehouse Case? Of course yes. “Please do that.” “Okay, then you gotta keep
a strong will. You’re gonna arrest Panda Lover, and you’re gonna resolve the
Pinehouse Case. You have the potential to do so. Disco, can you believe that?”
Was I capable of that? Really? “...” “Hey, that meek spirit won’t birth any in-
evitability, you know? You gotta create your destiny. With your own will.”
This world’s events are all decided by the interactions between destiny and
wills, I recalled the ‘future Kozue’s’ words. However, was it really possible
for wills to create destiny? If one had the will and the abilities, they could do
it. Yeah. But did I really have the abilities for that? I couldn’t know until I
tried...that state of mind showed how unconfident I was. Confidence is born
from experience. There’s no way I could be confident in something I had no
experience in...but young people can be confident even without any grounds
for that. I wasn’t young anymore, but I could remember what it felt like to be
young. Remember how you felt back then. I didn’t become a detective expert
in finding missing children because I had found many children. My convic-
tion that I could make that my job became my confidence for doing so, I had
no grounds for it. That’s it. I had a will, and a groundless confidence coming
along with it, I had a period like this, too. I should remember that. I could do
it. I wasn’t stupid. I could think of and do things great detectives couldn’t.
I can do it.
“I swear it. I will solve the mystery of the Pinehouse. Faster than any of
the great detectives here.” I was apparently heard saying that on the phone
because I heard the great detectives mocking me by whistling and making all
sorts of cheers behind me. These guys didn’t know. That, by having these
feelings of wanting to solve the mystery faster than anyone else, I was plan-
ning on hearing the answer from the ‘future Kozue’ later. Call me Cheat De-
tective Disco Wednesdayyy. Though I felt like using the name William Eady
here would be better for the future.
“That’s great, Disco,” said Shakuko. “Kozue-chan said she would send
you a message later. See you then.” “Yeah.” “Call me again if anything hap-
pens. I’ll do the same, don’t worry.” “Ah, what is Hoshino Masato doing?”
“That boy went back to his room, grumbled, and fell asleep. Haha.”
I hung up the phone. I turned back to find all the great detectives looking
at me with big grins on their faces. The boys behind Hakkyoku Sachiari slowly
started clapping their hands, clap, clap, clap. “Mister, you just made a great
detective’s declaration. To our face nonetheless. But you won’t make it in
time. I’ll definitely get to the truth next.”
But these guys didn’t know what was happening to Kozue. They didn’t
know about the Pineapple Tunnel-nature of the Pinehouse. That was directly
related to this case. That’s how detective novels where great detectives ap-
pear worked. There was no useless element. That’s why these guys would get
it wrong and die. “You better stop,” I said. “You’ll find yourself with chop-
sticks through your face too.”
The great detectives lost their smiles. That was better.
“Not their face, their eyes. Where they get stabbed,” Hakkyoku said. “But
that applies to you too, Eady-san. You should better refrain from making any
hacky deduction here. Three great detectives already misread the truth and
got killed.”
“Was there any message from the killer?”
“The killing itself is probably the message. They said they saw through the
truth, exposed their solutions, and got killed right after. And new information
becomes evident after that.”
Wasn’t that because they read into weird contexts too? I thought. My sus-
picions only existed because I was the current me. In the past, I might’ve seen
things in the same way Hakkyoku did. A death penalty to inform of an error
in the deduction. But what if that was mistaken and, in reality, they simply
stabbed chopsticks through their own eyes in a locked room?
I was thinking such things but found them to be stupid myself. Nobody
would just make a locked room and stab their eyes with chopsticks. Wasn’t I
too careful of reading into events from events? The message was probably
created and should be decrypted under normal sensations.
Things have context to them. That’s a fact. Context → common text. What
were we all reading into? Similar experiences? Experiences are stories that
happened in the past. I had lived a life much too storied, so I over relied on
story-like context. I couldn’t deny that. But ever since I got involved with Ko-
zue, I had been doubting things non-stop, I even began to doubt the special-
ized sensations I got from past experiences from my job. Crap. Reading into
context was a tool of mine, what was I doing by putting it into question. More
like, why was I doubting fundamental sensations humans have? How would I
live after that?
Seeing me lost in thoughts, Hakkyoku said, “You’re the first one to have
doubted this message, Eady-san” in an impressed tone...mixing some exas-
peration as well. “Certainly, if a corpse is found inside a locked room, it’s
normal to assume it was a suicide. But we are too used to doubting that. When
Daibakushou-san, Choukuuji Keraku-san, and Dollhouse-san failed their
deductions, they might have killed themselves in a locked room simply as
self-punishment. They might even have had a reason we haven’t figured out
yet for using chopsticks to stab their eyes.” Exactly, I thought. Detectives
were used to doubting. But they created shortcuts in their thinking. At its core,
obediently accepting a death in a locked room to be a suicide and starting by
suspecting it was a homicide without care, were the same kind of reaction.
They only differed in their shapes. We almost never get to doubt our first sus-
picion.
But the current me was different. Why was that the case?
Don’t read into a weird context and stupidly stick your face where you
don’t need to, Detective.
 It’s because of what Mercury C had told me. That was a shock to me. As for
why it shocked me, all the destiny and fate I’d believed in was ultimately
‘weird context.’ I met Kozue, the ‘future Kozue’ came, the ‘Norma Braun-like
Shakuko’ came, ‘Shimada Kikyou’ came, the Panda Lover Case got involved,
and ‘Hoshino Masato’ came; I felt an undeniable existence in destiny and fate
because of what happened with the ‘letters,’ but thanks to Mercury C I
learned that I needed to put that into question. And now I applied that and
doubted for real. Even though that line might just have been the result of the
fresh violence Mercury C swung around to get rid of the boredom only he was
feeling. He was such a douche. But it was fine. In reality, I was a little thankful.
Detectives existed to doubt. Their doubts getting deeper—though I had no
idea how it affected my life—was a good thing when it came to facts and
truths.
That said, these suspicions were stopping me in my tracks. I needed to act.
Just facts. I had to gather facts. Doubting could come later.
Just when I was done gathering my feelings yet again with the same logic,
I heard a squeaking sound from above. Above me was Mercury C. Floating? No
way. He was walking on the skylight. The glass was so transparent and clean
one couldn’t distinguish whether it was even there. The great detectives who
looked up at the same time were also staring at Mercury C.
“Oh, isn’t that the person who sent Style-chan flying away?” One of the
girls said. “Should I call the police?” “More importantly, should we prepare
cushions underneath or something?” A boy said. “That guy’s really agitated,
so there’s no telling when he’ll fall.”
Him falling and dying shouldn’t be a big problem. But what was he doing
up there?
As I was asking myself such questions, Hakkyoku remarked, “So he no-
ticed,” in front of me, everyone else agreed, “Looks like it.” What? What
could he see? Mercury C was looking down, our eyes met through the glass.
He waved at me so I waved back. “Ah, so that person is a great detective,” one
of the girls said. I wanted to tell her, “Nope, he’s a Japanese confection arti-
san,” but ‘great detective’ was a title, not always a job. A Japanese confection
artisan could become a great detective. Well, that didn’t seem likely to hap-
pen from his personality, but there’s no telling what he’d call himself if he
found competition or enjoyment in something.
“How does one get up there?” I asked. Hakkyoku showed me the way,
“Over here.” The other three boys and two girls followed us. We left the en-
trance, headed left, and followed the walls on the opposite side to the court-
yard from earlier; a gutter was stretching vertically from the roof. “That man
most likely climbed from here as well,” said Hakkyoku. “As well?” “Yes, since
Daibakushou-san climbed it earlier.” Huh. The first great detective to die.
What was the meaning in enacting the same thing as him? “Mercury~~,” I
called him. “Shut up! You’re too loud, don’t say my name so loudly, dumbass!
I’ll kill ya!” An angry voice came from above as a reply. “Uwah, how rude.”
One of the boys remarked while laughing out loud. “Is he called Mercury? The
man above,” one of the girls asked, so I acquiesced. “Eh~, that’s pretty cool.
Though he’s big scary,” she frolicked. “That’s not being scary, it’s called be-
ing sigma,” another boy joked. Really, what was with their flow...it always
sounded like something straight out of high school. ...I couldn’t bear that
popular ambiance.
They were better off keeping their distance from Mercury C.
I grabbed the gutter with both hands, put my legs around it, and climbed
with great vigor. The great detectives under me got heated, seeing me like
this, “Woah. He’s like a rare species of monkey.” Paying no mind to them, I
reached the roof. Mercury C had reached the middle of the skylight, which
was shaped like someone had laid a plate upside down on a forest.
“Mercury.”
He looked back. “Dude, you’re calling me by that name way too much.”
“Then think of another one.”
“My name is my name. I can’t really get another one.”
I can though, you know? “Then don’t complain.”
 “Shut up. Enough with that, come here, there’s something neat.”
A line of the iron window frame was extending from the center to me, so I
headed there by stepping on it.
“Mercury, why don’t you walk on the iron frame? It’s dangerous.”
“Because walking on the glass is more risky, obviously.”
Uhh, sure.
When I reached his side, Mercury C pointed at the dome at the middle of
the window frame, ‘This is the center of the world’ was written on it. Some-
one had engraved it by hand long ago using a stone or something similar.
“What could that mean?” I asked. “I bet it’s pretty literal,” Mercury C re-
plied. “This must be the center of the world.”
I was gonna ignore his nonsense, but then Mercury C stood up and pointed
to the East. “Look.” I stood up and looked in the direction Mercury C indicated.
Our viewpoint was higher than the trees forming the forest surrounding the
Pinehouse, we could see that forest spreading diagonally due to the shape of
the mountain, and the national highway the taxi took to get here beyond that.
The two patrol cars who stopped us were still where they were originally. And
behind them, a square delimitation. The ‘S’—not to be mistaken with a ‘$’—
blockaded by yellow tape from the Fukui Prefecture Police. And something I
hadn’t noticed when inside the taxi: besides the highway, right in the middle
of a field where rice had turned into a healthy green, there was another yellow
square. I couldn’t tell what was in the middle of that faraway barrier. Seeing
me squint my eyes, Mercury C told me. “Over there is a lower case ‘d’.”
A ‘d’ beyond the ‘s’? “Then does it form a word?” I looked at Mercury C.
He had a beaming smile. “Yeah. Beyond the ‘d’ is an ‘a’, and even further is a
‘g.’”
sdag? SDAK could’ve been S. Dak, the abbreviation of ‘South Dakota.’
smug (grinning)? smut (soot/lewd fiction/corn disease)? shag (to fuck)? slag
(to slur)?
“There’s more in the forest. ‘n’,” Mercury C said.
nsdag?
 I couldn’t make any sense of it. “Are there more of those?”
Mercury C put up a smug smile. “Yeah. Right under our feet.”
I looked down. The sun had disappeared behind the ridgeline of the moun-
tains stretching behind the Pinehouse, but it was still relatively high at 6 in
the evening, so the light from the blue sky shone onto the transparent glass
and lit the Pinehouse, gently illuminating the hall and the second floor. There,
I saw the ‘◯’. A big, red circle. The ‘◯’ from the bloodstains making a big
loop around the second floor.
“‘o’, ‘n’, ‘s’, ‘d’, ‘a’, and ‘g’ are aligned at regular intervals. Though the
letters aren’t all of the same size,” Mercury C said.
onsdag? What?
“onsdag is Danish, it means ‘wednesday.’ It’s your name, Detective.
You’re being invited. Though it seems you didn’t know.”

Danish? My name?
What was he saying?
“And you’re standing right at the center of the world,” Mercury C contin-
ued. “The window frames are spreading from the ‘center of the world’ at an
interval of 30° each. And this is the True North one.” Mercury C stepped on
the frame opposite to the one I’d climbed up on. “That ‘s’ is at precisely 60°
from this one. It’s an extension of that frame.” He moved onto the second
frame right of the ‘True North’ one. “The ‘a’ was in the vicinity of the River
of the Stars, then if you cross the field beyond that and climb the mountain,
you’ll see the last letter ‘g’. The police already found them and have them
protected. Also, roughly 20,000 kilometers in the same direction beyond the
‘g’ lies Greenland. The official language there is Danish. If you expand the
‘onsdag’ written in this mountain 10,000-fold, the ‘g’ lands in Greenland, on
the continent. Which means the scale of the virtual map laid here is 1:10,000.
In the same vein as the ‘onsdag’, following the frame in this direction, there
are eleven more words at regular intervals; each of them is written in the lan-
guage of the country you land in by expanding the size of the word 10,000-
fold.”
Twelve words in twelve directions.
Mercury C took out a memo pad from his pocket and showed it to me.
 Twelve words were already written on it. I noticed, “Oh, so earlier you
didn’t escape in the forest, you went investigating.”
“Of fucking course. I never run away.”
 “But you went around all of those in such little time? That’s amazing.”
“I had the cops pursuing me help a bit.”
“...I see.” There was no doubt to me those guys must’ve suffered. I read
the memo.
True North was written ‘отмачивание.’ Russian. 30° clockwise from it
was also written ‘отмачивание.’ It means ‘to wash and peel off.’
Still going clockwise, on the 60° mark was the Danish ‘onsdag’ =
‘wednesday’; on the 90° mark was English from the USA, ‘outrider’ = ‘van-
guard’; in the 120° direction was ‘ovario’ = ‘ovary’ in Spanish from Chile; at
150° was ‘onobwi’ = ‘sixty’ in Gilbertese from the Republic of Kiribati; at 180°
was Javanese from Indonesia, ‘olak-alik’ = ‘repeat’; on the 210° direction was
‘oktubre’ = ‘october’ in Filipino, the language from the Philippines; at 240°
was Madagascar’s turn with a word in Malagasy, ‘oviana’ = ‘when’; on 270°
was Spanish from Spain, ‘orquesta’ = ‘orchestra’; the 300° word was in Mon-
golian, ‘одоо’ = ‘now’; and finally on the 330° mark was, in Chinese from The
People’s Republic of China, ‘廿六日’ = ‘twenty-sixth day.’ I noticed the Chi-
nese word was the only one without an ‘O,’ so I headed in the 330° direction.
I reached the end of the roof, looked down, and saw two thick, square timber
woods arranged perpendicularly against the round walls. I walked along the
edge and confirmed my theory. There was another set of square timber. Of
course, the aim for that was to have a ‘⌞’ top right of the ‘◯’ and ‘⌟’ on the
top left to represent the ‘廿’. “Such a desperate move,” I mumbled to myself.
Measuring the mountain and laying out words on it...who would put in the
effort to do that? Was there any meaning behind that action?
I guess someone did it because there was one.
‘To wash and peel off,’ ‘to wash and peel off,’ ‘wednesday,’ ‘vanguard,’
‘ovary,’ ‘sixty,’ ‘repeat,’ ‘october,’ ‘when,’ ‘orchestra,’ ‘now,’ ‘twenty-sixth
day’...?
There was no way this set of terms could mean anything.
But the person who set this up must’ve done it with a meaning in mind. I
continued my train of thought. And what was up with ‘to wash and peel off’
being a single word, what are you doing, Russian~? What are you using this
word for?
Maybe, I thought. Following the pattern of the word ‘wednesday’ vaguely
overlapping with my existence, couldn’t the two instances of ‘to wash and
peel off’ refer to the two Choukuujis coming to the Pinehouse? I didn’t know
Russian and it’s not like my Japanese was flawless either. There might have
been congruities I hadn’t noticed. If the double ‘to wash and peel off’ pointed
at the Choukuuji brothers, the other nine words might’ve pointed at other
detectives...or maybe not detectives, but people involved with the case.
Ah, I recalled that ‘Hongou Takeshitakeshi’ might fit right into the ‘repeat’
category, wouldn’t he? I pondered. I couldn’t see any distinguished common
aspect between ‘to wash and peel off’ and the name of the Choukuuji brothers,
but maybe the correlations took various forms. Maybe my name was the only
straightforward one and the others required more twisted logic or jumps in
reasoning. But, though it was just a hunch, I felt like this reasoning was mis-
taken at the core. Couldn’t basically anything come up if one searched along
this line? Also, I thought. Each and every one of those great detectives had
bizarre names, but you can’t tell me that’s their real names, can you? So the
correlations might be hidden along with their real names. It might even lie in
their addresses, date of birth, or other aspects of their profiles... Mercury C
spoke to me as I was thinking.
“For your information, it’s useless searching for meanings in those
twelve words.”
Eh?
“I bet you searched for meaning in other words just because ‘wednesday’
was a hit.”
“What...” I turned towards Mercury C. “That can’t be possible. There’s
Hongou Takeshitakeshi’s repeat, isn’t there?” I insisted. “Oh, damn you’re
right. Haha,” he laughed. What, so he hadn’t noticed? I was on the verge of
losing hope in him when Mercury C continued, “But that’s just a coincidence.
They’re unrelated.” “A coincidence?” “The culprit laid out random words in
hopes of creating such coincidences. You fell right into their plan. Words have
all sorts of meanings, so you can always twist them to get what you want.
You’re reading too much into this. That’s why I told you, didn’t I? Don’t read
into weird contexts.”
Boom, he said it again! “Then why did the culprit go out of their way to
create this big picture?”
“That’s obvious. The culprit tried to make the circle of bloodstains look
like an ‘O’ from the alphabet.”
“...? But there’s no meaning to these terms, is there?”
“There’s none. But there is intent.”
“? What do you...”
“They wanted to make us read the circle of blood as ‘O’.”
“...?” Wasn’t that literally what it was?
“It’s not literal,” Mercury C said as if reading into my thoughts. “This
isn’t an ‘O’. It’s not a mere circle of blood either. It’s a ‘0’. Zero. The number.”
“Ehh...?”
“Come here and look at that,” Mercury C took out a few photos from his
back pocket. “I yoinked them from the cops.”
What does yoink mean? I thought, but in that context it probably meant
‘steal.’
Context again, eh.
I walked on the iron frame and returned to the ‘center of the world.’ I could
see Hakkyoku and the others beneath the glass. They were sitting on the sofas
and looking up at us. Hakkyoku waved at me when our eyes met. I ignored
him.
“Look.” I received pictures and inspected them, they were photos of what
seemed to be the gravel from the courtyard in the back of the Pinehouse.
“Look closely,” Mercury C urged me. I stared at the three pictures. “Can you
see it?” “I can.” I could see it. Not letters, but digits. “Yesterday, late in the
night after the murder happened, it rained on this whole mountain. It con-
tinued for some time, then stopped.” And it left these numbers in the court-
yard...rather, it left traces of the numbers after they were removed. Now it
made sense. When Anbyouin Owaru died, someone arranged timber in the
courtyard to form numbers. That was a sequence of ten numbers starting
with zero. But someone probably moved all the timber away, leaving only the
‘0’ of the Pinehouse. The person who wanted to hide the ‘0’ went into the
mountain and accomplished that arduous task to disguise it as an ‘O’. They
even recycled part of the logs. Four of them for the horns of the ‘廿’. I hadn’t
checked, but there’s no doubt some were used to form the letters in the
mountain. For close ones since wood was heavy. But it rained on the digits,
leaving a trace even after the timber was moved post-rain, which appeared in
the picture and reached my eyes. Nine digits. A sequence of ten digits when
including the ‘0’ from inside the Pinehouse. ‘0’ ‘7’ ‘7’ ‘8’ ‘4’ ‘5’ ‘X’ ‘X’ ‘X’ ‘X’.
That was a phone number including the area code. I’d seen the pattern 0778-
45 somewhere. West Akatsuki Yuu Yuu had it. In other words, 0778-45-XXXX
should be attributed to someone in the West Akatsuki area too.
I looked up, Mercury C was presenting a phone to me. I received it and en-
tered the number.
“Did you already call it?”
Mercury C smiled and didn’t answer.
Mrrrr, mrrrr, after the ringing ended, it apparently switched to the greet-
ing of the answering machine. It was the recording of a man’s voice. “Yes,
Mitamura speaking.”
...! Mitamura? Was that Mitamura Saburou?
Wait, wasn’t he Anbyouin?

“Saburou cannot answer due to having been killed. The culprit is Tanigu-
chi Tohru. If you are Taniguchi Tohru, please confess to your deeds after the
beeping sound; other people can leave their condolences.”
Piiii.
 I put the phone away from my ears and hung up.
“Woah, idiot, at least express your condolences, it’s not often you get the
chance to,” said Mercury C.
“What was that? A joke?”
I was deeply confused. Wait wait wait wait, I was saying in my head, but I
had no idea of how much I wanted people to wait nor what I wanted to do if
they waited. More like, what does waiting even mean? Anyway, please wait. I
couldn’t make sense of it.
“Is this real,” I asked for starters. “Well, depends on what you mean by
real,” Mercury C answered in a vague way. “He said the culprit’s name inside
the message, didn’t he? Is Taniguchi Tohru really the culprit?” But who the
fuck is Tohru Taniguchi? A proper name I’d never heard of before came out
of the blue!
It couldn’t be helped that I didn’t know. I had only just arrived to Fukui
from Tokyo, and yeah, I got inside the Pinehouse, but I hadn’t had the situa-
tion explained to me. Only thing that happened was those great detectives
fooling around.
But Mercury C, who had traveled with me, said, “Taniguchi Tohru is the
man who once kidnapped Mitamura Saburou when he was 17 years old.
Though it’s a 20-year-old case now.”
“What’s that… Is that a real thing that happened?”
“That’s the crux of the question.”
“What do you mean?”
“One day, 20 years ago, Mitamura Saburou suddenly vanished without
leaving a trace. It was on the morning of the 26th of July.
The ‘twenty-sixth day’? “Isn’t that related to that thing from earlier, you
know, the...”
 Mercury C stopped me before I could continue. “I told you to stop paying
attention to those made-up words, idiot. ‘Wednesday’ was just a fluke,
there’s no meaning behind them, go die!”
Mercury C continued, oblivious to my shock of having been ordered to die
atop the roof of the Pinehouse at the summit of a mountain. “Twenty years
ago, on the morning of the 26th of July, Saburou woke up in his home in Se-
tose, West Akatsuki, and went to a nearby Shinto shrine with his little broth-
ers Kento and Kanji, both elementary schoolers, for their radio calisthenics.”
“...What are these radio calisthenics?”
“Kids from in the same area gather somewhere with their guardians and
exercise along with a radio program.”
“In the morning? Is the hour fixed?”
“Half past six.”
“Half past six!? Tell me that was just during the war, at least. I guess not,
since it was 20 years ago.”
“Most elementary schoolers are doing it, even these days.”
“...Woah. The Japanese are insane. Does everyone swing around a stick?”
“No, you dumb foreigner. We call them exercises, but it’s on the level of
basic stretches.”
“Huh. Seems efficient to decrease juvenile delinquency.”
“So, Kento and Kanji finished the radio calisthenics, and Saburou disap-
peared during the time they went to get their cards stamped to show they
participated. There were about 30 people gathered there, but no one had a
clue about Saburou’s whereabouts.”
“Any ransom?”
“None. He disappeared for 71 days and was found sleeping in his own bed
by his family on the morning of the 72nd day, the 5th of October.”
“What was his testimony?”
“Only the name of the culprit. Taniguchi Tohru. He couldn’t say anything
about Taniguchi’s age nor appearance. Saburou had no memory of those 71
days except for the name of Taniguchi.”
 “That can’t...”
“Of course, it’s probably a lie. If I were there, he wouldn’t have fooled me
with that.” Mercury C still adorned a daring smile.
“If you went all out, he would even admit to stuff that didn’t happen, so
it’s no good.”
“...Saburou had the same clothes on as the morning when he disappeared,
but they found no signs of him wandering through the mountains for 71 days.
They had been washed clean. Same for his body. But he had a scar on his body.
From an operation.”
Was he involved in organ traffics? “What did they take from him?”
“His appendix.”
“What?”
“The appendix, or appendices.”
“Ah. Wait, that’s a normal surgery no? It just got removed because that
was necessary. And it happened during his disappearance, you say?”
“Apparently.”
“...” Did ‘Taniguchi Tohru’ cause his appendicitis, took Mitamura
Saburou to the hospital, and had him operated on? I could see that happening
for VIPs of governments, but would someone kidnap a civilian for that? Since
there was no ransom, it might’ve been an act of care. Was he kept by a pervert
that erased his memory? “Did they investigate past clinical records?”
“Yeah, but nothing seemed to match with Mitamura.”
“And for a doctor named ‘Taniguchi Tohru’?”
“They searched for that too, but no doctor named ‘Taniguchi Tohru’ ex-
isted.”
“Not even among medicine students?”
“That, I don’t know.”
“He might’ve gotten his medicine license abroad. But anyway, he got his
appendix removed. That greatly reduces the possibility of Mitamura
Saburou’s abduction being a farce coordinated by him alone. Was there any-
thing different about Saburou apart from that scar?”
 “Compared to the results of his health examination from May that he took
in high school, the Saburou in October had grown five centimeters and gained
seven kilos.”
“Pretty good growth. So he was healthy. Any psychological trauma de-
tected?”
“I don’t know if it’s because of PTSD, but Saburou’s friends started circu-
lating weird rumors about him after his return. Apparently his personality
before and after the kidnapping was completely different.”
“? What do you mean?”
“He was exceedingly calm.”
“...Doesn’t that just mean he grew up? As a human, I mean.”
“Beats me. Some rumors even theorized Mitamura Saburou got abducted
by a UFO and the one who returned was a clone of him.”
A clone?
My four identical middle fingers. If those were harvested from my clones,
was there possibly a correlation with the aliens who might’ve created
Mitamura Saburou’s clone?
“Were there any UFO sightings?”
“Of course not.”
Then I was just running my imagination... Could the person who copied
Mitamura Saburou 20 years ago in Fukui and the person who made four cop-
ies of my finger be the same person? Would that person be ‘Taniguchi Tohru’?
Was he the man who raped Kozue? Could ‘Taniguchi Tohru’ be the man with
a tattoo of a black bird on his right arm and wearing glasses? Then I had to
search for ‘Taniguchi Tohru’ and make him suffer accordingly.
But I was probably overthinking again, I was trying to forcibly link the
events happening to me with another case just because the word ‘clone’ came
up. Not to mention, a case that happened in Fukui Prefecture 20 years ago. I
wasn’t the center of the world.
That was...here. I looked down on the round roof of the Pinehouse spread-
ing under my feet. ‘This is the center of the world.’ What could it mean?
 However, was I really overthinking it? Weren’t the events at the Pinehouse
related to what was happening to me? I hadn’t checked myself, but ‘wednes-
day’ was written nearby, no? Mercury C, too, said I was invited by this case.
So wasn’t it natural to think that way? If something was natural, others could
predict it. Doing something that provoked a natural thought was a message
to someone. If the murders of the great detectives indicated a mistake in their
deductions... If that was indeed the case, wasn’t it correct to assume that my
weird name being in such a bizarre place wasn’t the result of a coincidence?
“In the end, Saburou’s memory didn’t come back until his death,” Mer-
cury C continued. “He graduated from Takeominami High School, entered
Echizen University, debuted as an author for Kodansha NOVELS, wrote a
bunch of idiotic mystery novels, and died last night. What a shitty life, geez.”
“So he was an author for his entire adult life. That’s impressive. If
Mitamura Saburou’s life is shitty, then yours and mine are too.”
“Shut up. Japanese confections are an art.”
I wanted to argue that Anbyouin’s novels were a form of art as well, but it
was a hassle, so I let it be.
At least, searching for children wasn’t an art. I was certain of that.
Who cares about that, though. “So Saburou got killed, great detectives
gathered, and then they started getting murdered. Three deaths as of this
morning. The pace is way higher than regular serial killings. It’s more a mas-
sacre of great detectives than separate murders.”
And those three presented their deductions before their deaths.
“Besides, Mercury, are you okay acting like a great detective when in the
bullet train you said you didn’t care about the case? Don’t get killed by having
chopsticks stabbed through your eyes too.”
Kukuku, Mercury C moved his shoulders theatrically as he laughed. “If
someone wants to kill me, I’m all ready. I’ll definitely butcher anyone coming
at me with chopsticks in their hands.”
This guy could find fun in anything, eh. “But Mercury, I got that the mys-
tery with the ‘to wash and peel off’ was a misdirection to hide the phone
number written in big format in the courtyard, but aren’t there a lot of con-
tradictions with that story? Mitamura Saburou was the one who wrote the
digits, no? I don’t get why Mitamura Saburou would leave such a roundabout
message. Also, if he recorded the message right before getting murdered, why
didn’t he run away if he knew he was gonna get killed? Plus, Taniguchi Tohru
wasn’t to be found anywhere, no?”
“I can resolve all of your questions in a jiffy,” Mercury C said. “It’s simple.
First, Mitamura Saburou killed himself. Taniguchi Tohru doesn’t exist.”

Mercury C probably couldn’t understand the real reason behind the shock
that left me standing stock-still, that being the words the spiky pig told me
earlier.
Owaru-chan was killed by Owaru-chan.
Was Kozue’s answer correct after all? I softly touched my breast pocket.
The spiky pig was still in there. I touched it. It shivered. It was alive. It was
there.
“Then why did Mitamura Saburou leave such a message?”
“To create this situation. To gather great detectives. Great detectives
wouldn’t come without a mystery. And he gathered them to kill them. The
detectives are being killed by themselves. They all committed suicide after
getting their deduction wrong. Because they’re stupid. They stab themselves
in the eyes to erase all suspicions of it being a suicide. No one would choose
such a painful method to die, after all. Hanging, guns, knives, or suicide
jumping were motifs used in many novels to disguise suicides, but no one
ever made nor thought of something like this, I bet.”
“Hold on. It’s not because the method is never-before-seen that they re-
ally killed themselves. We still have no idea what they wanted to do, do we?”
“We do. The police found an anesthetic coming out of Choukuuji Keraku’s
eyeballs. And this...” Mercury C took out eye drops from his back pocket. They
were commercially available ones. But I bet they were normal eye drops. “It’s
epinephrine with 2% of lidocaine. Choukuuji Keraku dropped some in his left
eye before gripping the chopsticks for a local anesthesia. He also put some on
the chopsticks. He must’ve been quite afraid, hahaha.”
I swallowed my saliva. “...Mercury, isn’t that a piece of evidence? You
shouldn’t be leaving fingerprints on it.”
“No, no, this bottle is mine. I got them to share some of the other bottle’s
contents. The rest is still inside Choukuuji’s eye drop bottle. I gave it back to
the police. They were done collecting fingerprints. And it’s been verified,
Choukuuji’s shaking fingerprints.”
“...Why would you borrow that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’ll let people use it before they stab themselves in the
eye, because I’m a kind soul.”
“No, hold on,” I said. “That means Choukuuji used the anaesthetic to
lessen the pain of his suicide, right? But he did it right after failing in his de-
duction. Then when in the world did he prepare the anesthetic?”
“The most likely option is that he stole it from West Akatsuki’s clinic. It’s
near our inn. Near Yuu Yuu. The police checked and some bottles were miss-
ing. Weirdly enough, the cabinet’s knob and glass were apparently awfully
clean. Even the nurse’s fingerprints had been erased. Someone wiped them
clean. Along with their own fingerprints. The lousy detective Choukuuji
Keraku wasn’t confident in his abilities, so he went to steal lidocaine in case
he would need to stab himself in the eyes before going to the Pinehouse. The
little brother, the one left alive, talked to the police about it.”
“Isn’t it possible that someone else holding eye drops, like you, lent him
the bottle?”
“Dumbass, where in the hell would you find someone as kind as me?”
“...It’s mind-rendering.”
“I’m feeling fine though.”
“I’m talking about my mind. Hold on, why did the great detectives kill
themselves in the first place?”
“That, we’d need to ask the great detectives in question.”
 “Why their eyes in particular...”
“To that too, only they can answer. I don’t care about their reason for su-
icide nor why they chose a certain method to kill themselves. I only need to
understand what happened. The great detectives fail, then commit suicide.
That’s all there is to it. Well, they must’ve done it to create the current situa-
tion. Everyone other than me is convinced the great detective got killed inside
a locked room, aren’t they? Well, that’s the situation they wanted, surely.”
? Then, I realized. “So if I’m following what you’re saying, and if that’s
right, Mitamura Saburou commited suicide, Taniguchi Tohru doesn’t exist,
and the great detectives commited suicide as well? So the case is already over,
no? Or rather, there was no case to begin with, was there? The only thing left
is to find who erased the phone number Mitamura Saburou left and created
the twelve words starting with an ‘O’ to invite the great detectives. But it
doesn’t hurt to ignore that. There’s no mystery. The great detectives can go
home. That should nullify that person’s schemes. I find it hard to believe they
would kill someone to call the great detectives back. And I bet the police can
find their identity by interrogating the alibis of the people present on that
night. It’s not something one can do alone, so there must be a few of them.”
“Right.” Mercury C acquiesced to answer my search for agreement. I
didn’t get why he wanted me to agree with him. He continued. “So, Daiba-
kushou found them. The ones who entered the mountain and did their best
writing those letters after the rain let up was the Angel Bunnies troupe.
They’re currently coughing up everything to the police. These idiots are be-
yond saving, doing that just because it was written on a will. There’s a limit
to how gullible one can be. I mean, they were hella suspicious from the start
since the only people present in the Pinehouse when the crime happened
were the victim and the troupe members. Of course they’d be the first ones to
be suspected. So that doesn’t make Daibakushou a big shot for pointing that
out.”
I couldn’t comprehend.
 Was it confirmed that those members were involved? No, there was some-
thing more important, hold on, Daibakushou had found them...what did it
mean? Daibakushou was already dead.
I remembered. When we saw that Mercury C had climbed up the skylight,
Hakkyoku said Daibakushou had done the same.
“Mercury, is this...is everything you just told me not your theory but Dai-
bakushou’s?”
Mercury C made a face as if I was weird for being surprised. “Part of it,
yeah.”
“Which part?”
“Mitamura Saburou killed himself. He left a message on his home phone,
wrote the number in the backyard, fell after getting shot by an arrow in the
back, and crawled around the hallway to draw the zero. The Angel Bunnies
members wrote the twelve words radially according to his will to turn the
zero into an O. Daibakushou arrived, ran over the ‘S’ on purpose, found out
about the twelve words, and later found out about the phone number, but he
concluded the message claiming to be a homicide wasn’t fake but a disguise;
Mitamura Saburou should’ve predicted Daibakushou, who lived in the same
town as him, would arrive to the Pinehouse before the ground could dry and
would find the phone number, so the concealment of homicide was to conceal
a suicide. In short, the part about Saburou’s death being a suicide.”
So most of the deduction about Mitamura Saburou’s death was done by
Daibakushou. But then the great detectives started dying and the affair grew
bigger. But Mercury C said the great detectives’ deaths were suicides. Every-
one committed suicide one after another while pretending they were being
killed...four people already, including Mitamura Saburou. The Kyoto vegeta-
ble case Hakkyoku blabbered about earlier ended with what we thought was
a serial killing turning out to be a mass suicide, but did this case have a dis-
covery of the same kind as the ‘Koori daikon’ or the ‘Touji turnip’?
I asked,
“Is there any proof that the troupe members wrote the words?”
 “A lot of it, apparently. Normal stuff like fingerprints.”
“What was the contents of the will? And the motive behind Mitamura’s
suicide.”
“I still don’t know,” Mercury C said, seemingly uninterested. He didn’t
know about the great detectives’ motives and wasn’t interested in that either.
“So in the end, was Daibakushou’s deduction correct?” Did he die in spite
of that? By plunging chopsticks in his eyes?
That couldn’t be the case.
“That can’t be,” Mercury C said the same thing. “He obviously got it
wrong. But I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I’m not clear-cut on whether Daibakushou was wrong.”
“But the great detectives that came after presented other deductions, no?”
Judy Dollhouse and Choukuuji Keraku. “And there was information that Dai-
bakushou didn’t know about, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then he was wrong.” I started thinking again. That’s how cases great
detectives were involved with worked. Every piece of information is mean-
ingful...which means we cannot understand the full meaning of the case
without complete information.
Mercury C raised the corners of his mouth and let out a laugh. “Heh. I’m
on the side of thinking there’s always something we don’t know about,
though.”
Details are important. Especially for motives behind suicides. I mean, it
was no good if we couldn't figure that out. Mercury C wasn’t fit to be a great
detective. “Mercury, have you investigated Dollhouse and Choukuuji’s theory
too?” Had he already fucked that many people over?
“That’s still to come,” Mercury C said. “Detective, do you know what Dai-
bakushou didn’t know about?” Mercury C was looking down at the glass from
the top of the Pinehouse. “Daibakushou was a resident of West Akatsuki, so
he arrived first at the Pinehouse...he ran over the S then. So he must’ve gotten
excited when he went inside the mountain to check the letters and when he
saw the digits in the backyard. He was standing atop the ‘center of the world’
and only looked at the exterior. Say, Detective, can you see it?”
Asked by Mercury C, I looked down at the Pinehouse. It was getting dark,
the chandelier hanging from the ‘center of the world’ had been turned on be-
fore I knew it. The great detectives were seated on the sofas right under it, but
they didn’t seem to be talking to each other. Did they finally get bored of blab-
bering and decided to focus on their own deductions?
Mercury C asked me what I could see, didn’t he?
“I can see a chandelier, a circle of blood in the hallway, and great detec-
tives.”
“Wrong,” Mercury C replied. “What you see is the stars in the sky, traces
of blood in a hallway, and a bunch of idiots.”
“The stars in the sky?”
I looked up at the sky. The sky in Fukui was slowly turning dark blue, but
it wasn’t dark enough for stars to be apparent to the eye yet; the mountain
beyond the rice fields must’ve been hiding the bottom half of the Sagittarius
Constellation. The Sagittarius in the sky and Mitamura Saburou who was
pierced by an arrow. Did Mercury C notice something in that?
“Where are you looking at, dumbass. The sky I’m talking about is revolv-
ing under your feet.”
Hearing Mercury C’s words, I returned my eyes to the insides of the Pine-
house. Under my feet? There was a chandelier there...great detectives doing
whatever with blank expressions on their faces...it’s not like the carpet
around them represents stars...the chandelier had ten big, round light bulbs
expanding radially with varying distances...the longest arm nearly reached
the limits of the skylight... I looked at the chandelier not as a source of light
but as an object. Among the ten bulbs, only one of them was being made to
hold a ring. The ring, seemingly made out of a thin plate of aluminum, made
the bulb look like Saturn. But why would someone add a light-blocking ring
to a light bulb...it only makes the light weaker... No, that wasn’t the point. It
wasn’t a coincidence it looked like Saturn, it must surely be Saturn.
The stars in the sky.

Ten light bulbs. The Solar System is composed of ten celestial bodies with
the Moon included. These bulbs expanding radially at various distances were
Stars. And the ‘center of the world’...however, isn’t this the center of the Solar
System? If it was, there would’ve been a light bulb representing the ‘Sun’
right under the ‘center of the world,’ in the middle of the chandelier, but
there was not. The ten light bulbs were expanding in ten different directions.
So? I thought.
‘Here’ was the ‘center of the world.’ We were on Earth. So the ten Stars
were revolving around here according to the geocentric model. That’s why
the ten light bulbs were the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ura-
nus, Neptune, Pluto...and the Moon. I counted at which place Saturn was sit-
uated and confirmed my hypothesis. It was the seventh farthest body to the
‘center of the world.’ Indeed. I then noticed that the window having twelve
frames meant that there were twelve blocks of glass.
A circle radially cut into twelve. Twelve rooms surrounding it. Ten Stars
spread around.
I could finally see it.
On the second floor, facing the door of each room was a table; each one of
the twelve tables had a different object resting on them. I could differentiate
them even from above and through the skylight. These were a sheep, a cow,
two children close to each other, a crab, a lion, a young girl, a balance, a scor-
pion, a centaur holding a bow, a creature with the upper half of a goat and the
lower half of a fish, a water jug, and two fish; respectively representing the
twelve Constellations.
“It’s a horoscope.”
 I looked at Mercury C’s face.
He was smiling. “Alright, let’s go down and start divinating.”
As I was walking away from the ‘center of the world’ on the frame to the
edge of the roof, I got struck by a weird feeling. It was a feeling of surprise. I
normally wasn’t the kind of detective to think that way. I was almost thinking
like a great detective. I should’ve been more practical, a realistic detective ig-
noring metaphors, but I had become the kind of person to believe in mysti-
cism and to see celestial bodies in light bulbs.
Was it the fault of the mysterious events that happened to Kozue and her
body?
Or was it the fault of the Pinehouse Case?
The same went for Mercury C. He said he was ready for anyone coming at
him with chopsticks in hand, but he already knew the great detectives had
killed themselves by that point. And now he was reproducing Daibakushou’s
theory because he had found a form of entertainment in it.
Well, whatever, I thought. I had come here with no idea of what I should
do, but now that was clear in my mind. I had Kozue resting in my breast
pocket, so I would watch over the situation for the moment.
I still didn’t know how Mercury C had climbed up, but he simply jumped
to get down. Instead of using the gutter like me, he jumped from the edge of
the roof, grabbed a branch midway through his fall, bent it with his weight
making for a soft landing, and let go of the branch, making it scatter leaves
around. Honestly, that sequence was stylish. It made me rethink what was
possible to do for humans. But it would’ve been uncool if I broke a leg while
trying to imitate him, so I descended the slow way. Mercury C went around to
the main entrance without waiting for me. I got there too, a bit later. There
were two cops in uniform in the reception room, probably in charge of pro-
tecting us. They were busy waking a guy who had collapsed on the ground.
Looking at them, lit by the light leaking into the reception room, it was the
great detective who appeared in the air and got sent flying away by Mercury
C: Dezuumi Style. He had broken some ribs an hour ago and now was bleeding
from his nose. It was obvious who had punched him. “Hey, are you okay?” I
asked him in English. A cop spoke to me in Dezuumi’s stead. “Oi, do some-
thing about your companion. He’s insane.” I ignored them and questioned
the great detective again. “Say, what did you do to him this time?” He looked
at me with a puzzled face and replied with a hoarse voice, “Eh...? Like, I just
informed him I was fine...” His eyes weren’t focused. The hit must’ve shaken
his brain pretty hard. I left him with the words “Go visit the hospital again,”
and entered the Pinehouse. I looked up at the ‘Solar System’ horoscope. One
of the bulbs had a loop around it. Saturn.
The two female great detectives rushed up to me. I didn’t know these girls’
names. Their faces were cute in a flashy way. One like a cheerleader and one
like a party girl. Same difference. “Eady-san, could you come over here? We
want to talk to you about something,” said the cheerleader as she pulled on
my arm and headed to a room on the first floor. “Hold on, where did Mercury
go?” I asked, to which the cheerleader answered, “In my room. He asked to
borrow my laptop.” She pointed at a room nearly opposite to the one she was
pulling me towards. The door was open and I could confirm the presence of
someone resembling Mercury C beyond it. But that was only until the door of
the room the two girls led me to got closed.
The room was messy, as if someone had been frantically searching for
something in it. But seeing that the bed and ground and side table were
mostly covered by female clothes, I understood that this wasn’t the result of
a household search for a burglary but of a woman’s hesitation regarding what
to wear. Looking at the fashion of the Western clothes covering the ground,
it must’ve been the cheerleader’s room. She only had miniskirts. Wait, hadn’t
they only arrived today...
When I moved a red thong off the bed to sit, the cheerleader raised a
scream and started gathering her underwear and clothes, though it was
closer to piling them up than putting them in order. When enough space had
been made, the two girls sat around me.
 “Good evening,” they said in stereo. “I am Mame Gen,” the cheerleader
said, then pointed at the party girl. “And she’s Nekoneko Nyannyannyan. We
didn’t have the chance to introduce ourselves earlier. I mean, strictly speak-
ing, you didn’t either, Eady-san~.”
Then came Nekoneko Nyannyannyan’s turn to speak. I had an overhead
view of her dress which was excessively open around her chest area, so it was
hard not to throw frequent glances at it. “From me too, nice to meet you~,
Wednesdayyy-san.” Both of them flaunted an intellectual atmosphere
around them unfitting of their appearances and speech. They were great de-
tectives. They had at least reached my real name. “But that wasn’t really a lie,
right? You sometimes use the name Eady-san, it depends on the situation.
You either use Eady-san or Odoriba-san in Japan, isn’t that right?”
They had done their research. But I stayed silent, waiting for them to make
a move.
Mame Gen continued.
“Do you think Panda Lover might be here? Or perhaps, are you Panda
Lover?”
I couldn’t help but be surprised. This time Nekoneko continued. “We did
our research, obviously. And when investigating you, Eady-san, Muroi
Shakuko-san’s name came up, and when we searched for her location, she
wasn’t in Fukuoka but in Chofu; she had come to your house, Eady-san. We
talked to the Chofu Police too. They told us a young girl claiming to be Shi-
mada Kikyou called the 110. But since you came here to Fukui, that means
Shimada Kikyou-chan is in Muroi Shakuko-san’s custody, so we asked
around a few decent hotels in Chofu and found her in no time. To be honest,
on the first try. She told us about the situation happening on your side. That’s
when we thought it would be in everyone’s best interest to cooperate.”
I was optimistic about it too. It should be extremely reliable to have that
many great detectives around, no?
Mame Gen laughed. “I had a feeling it was bizarre, you know~. I thought
we had a pretty clear view of the situation, but still got hit with a redo. And
now it’s obvious why that happened. We were missing a good chunk of the
puzzle pieces~.”
Slightly confused, I stood up. “Hold on a moment.” They made a surprised
expression for just an instance, but closed their mouth as soon as they looked
at my face. As I was exiting the room, they told me “Please be careful not to
bring that berserker in~.” I left Mame Gen’s room; Mercury C had finished
researching what he wanted on Nekoneko’s computer, he called out to me
from the sofa he was sitting on when he saw me. “Hey, Detective, what the
hell are you doing, leaving all the research to me?”
“Hold on a bit more, Mercury,” I said. “I’m popular right now.”
Mercury C let out a chuckle. “What’s the point in being popular among
ugly idiots who’ll probably die soon?”
It was ominous and rude, plus they were neither ugly nor idiots, but I
didn’t reply. “Wait for five minutes.”
I took out the spiky pig while waiting for Mercury C and called out to it
with a whisper. “Kozue.”
I put it against my ear to hear her.
“What~?”

“I will entrust you to the mister over there for a short while, will you be
fine?”
“Eeeh~, what about Disco?”

“I’ll be back in a jiffy. I just have some work to do.”

“Then you have to come back quickly, okay?”

“Don’t you go anywhere.”

“I won’t~.”

I handed the spiky pig to Mercury C.

“Hn.”
“Handle it with care.” If something happens to it, I’ll kill you.
“Shut up. Perish.” I know threats wouldn’t work on Mercury C, but at least
Kozue shouldn’t be in harm’s way with him.
 “Don’t use violent words, Mercury. Also don’t hit the great detectives too
much.”
“It’s okay, the cops can’t see my punches,” he replied.
I returned to Mame Gen’s room.
“I might be stupid and ugly, but I won’t die,” said Mame Gen.
“You could hear us?”
“I’m neither stupid nor ugly, though,” complained Nekoneko.
I wanted to return to Kozue’s side as soon as possible, so I briefly informed
them of my situation in three minutes. Kozue’s internal timeslipping. Shi-
mada Kikyou’s intrusion. The menstruations. The four identical fingers. The
man with the black bird tattoo. The Pineapple Tunnel and the Pinehouse. The
spiky pig. It was a complex story, but neither Mame Gen nor Nekoneko inter-
rupted me, nor asked questions. They didn’t seem to be doubting me, despite
my tale being both strange and bizarre.
“...Is it fine to tell this to other people?” Nekoneko said. “Of course, only
among the great detectives.”
“Sure,” I said, but added, “but make sure it never reaches the spiky pig’s
ears.”
“...But,” Mame Gen argued. “At some point, we’ll have to ask Kozue-chan
about the Black Bird Man, won’t we?”
That’ll probably be necessary, I thought. “But now’s neither the time nor
the place.” That should be done somewhere more warm and bright, where
Kozue could realize herself that she’s surrounded by love. “I’m here to pro-
tect Kozue.” I had to be clear with the two great detectives. “I only told you
two what I did because I want to put an end to this case. But if something were
to happen to Kozue, listen well, if anything happened to her, I would drive the
one who did that into the Pineapple Tunnel.”
Just saying out loud that something might happen to Kozue made me an-
gry, so I ended up sounding menacing.
“...It’s fine,” said Nekoneko. “Everyone here is a great detective. They’re
all smart. You can’t be one without being logical, after all.”
 “Right,” Mame Gen agreed. “At least everyone here, though weird they
might be, are good people. It might be rude to say this, but wouldn’t the most
dubious person here be your friend, Wednesdayyy-san?”
Pfft, I laughed. Had Mercury C hit these two as well?
“He’s not a threat. At least, not to Kozue.”
“Not to Kozue, you say...” Mame Gen grumbled. “But he’s scary to us, se-
riously.”
“Sorry but,” I shrugged my shoulders, “there’s nothing I can do about
that fear. The future is more important. Girls, can you be of help to Kozue and
me?”
“I don’t know what we can do yet, but it seems certain that what’s hap-
pening to Kozue-chan is related to this case,” replied Mame Gen. “I mean,
that’s what this situation is saying, no?”
“It definitely is,” Nekoneko sided with her. “There must be some meaning
in Kozue-chan coming here from Tokyo, and I’m sure we won’t be able to
solve this case until we figure out what that meaning is.”
“So we’ll help you, Eady-san. ...May I call you Eady-san?”
“Sure.”
“Nyannyan, do you think we should go to Tokyo? To confirm what’s hap-
pening to the big Kozue-chan.”
“...No, shouldn’t we rather stay here? I'm sure there's meaning behind all
of us being drawn here. Plus, everything needed for the case is present here. I
feel that’s why Kozue-chan and Eady-san came here.”
“...It certainly feels like it. But then, what should we do about Panda Lover?
The Panda Case has been happening all around the country, but they’ve yet
to visit Fukui, you know?”
“Mmmm~. I’m split on that.”
“Panda Lover is most likely in Chofu, Tokyo,” I said. “Though I can’t re-
ally disclose my reasons.” It’s just because Horikiri Maki, the first victim of
the Panda Case, lived in Chofu, and because ‘Kozue’ was in Chofu. These
weren’t worth being said out loud.
 “Chofu in Tokyo, huh. I don’t know about that,” Mame Gen said. “From
what I’ve seen on the news, it doesn’t feel like Panda Lover has a set residence.
I wonder, is there a great detective working on the Panda affair? Nyannyan,
have you heard anything about that?”
“Nothing~. Well, I get why. The family and friends of the victims
shouldn’t turn to a great detective for such an affair. If it was me, I’d go to a
shrine. Or a medium.”
“Same, I wouldn’t know what to do if such a request came to me. It’s a bit
too different from locked rooms or vanishing houses, after all. There’s no
clear starting point.”
I got the main image of what ‘locked rooms’ and ‘vanishing houses’ were
meant to be, but I couldn’t imagine what kind of cases they were concretely.
Still, how did they see a starting point in such outrageous happenings? “Ko-
zue’s voice could be heard from inside this house, right? What are your
thoughts about that?” Is there a starting point there?
“Ah~, I’ve yet to hear that. Though I heard about it,” said Nekoneko.
“What about you, Mame-chan?”
“Neither. But thinking about it, it’s really sad. That girl was calling for
Eady-san’s name, right? ‘Disco.’ Crying. And yet she got made fun of for be-
ing ‘a ghost who wants to go dancing.’ Makes me feel bad for her.” Mame Gen
looked at me. “But this female ghost...well, not really a ghost, but she started
appearing roughly three years ago, no? They called her ‘Pineapple-chan,’
but...is ‘Pineapple-chan’ really ‘Kozue-chan’?”
“...If ‘Pineapple-chan’ was really calling my name in tears, that’s Kozue,”
I answered. “Who else can testify that, Mame?”
“It seems Anbyouin-san was living alone here,” she said. “But apparently
a few editors heard her, so I’m going to ask around. Eady-san, please don’t
call me ‘Mame.’ You don’t need to add an honorific, but at least make it
‘Mame Gen.’”
“...” I couldn’t really say “Who cares, it’s just a name,” being who I was.
 “We also need to investigate the differences between a soul out of its body
and a ghost,” said Nekoneko while laughing. “Even the sacred is part of real-
ity, huh. I guess it really is. But you know, this sort of factor being involved in
a case is a first for me.”
“For me too,” added Mame Gen.
It was new for me too. My first timeslips, and my first sequence of bizarre
coincidences.
What was hiding behind this case?
When I left Mame Gen’s room, Mercury C was awaiting me. In the air.
I found it weird that he wasn’t to be seen near the sofa, when I heard a
shout from the ceiling.
“Dude, you’re late!”
I looked up to find Mercury C riding the chandelier hanging from the sky-
light like some hero or villain.
“What are you doing, Mercury? It's dangerous, get down here.”
“I figured out the third deduction while you were taking your sweet time,
you know.”
“Seriously?”
“Hold on a bit, I gotta retrieve that first...” Mercury C swiftly crossed the
silver-colored arm supporting the ‘celestial bodies’ light bulbs. When he
reached the third farthest ‘celestial body’ from the center, he started remov-
ing the lampshade. “H-h-hot!” That was probably ‘Mercury.’
“Hey, where’s Kozue?” To my question, Mercury C, carrying the round,
white lampshade under his arms, answered “Here, here,” pointing at his
chest. The spiky pig was beneath his neck, kept in place behind the collar of
his T-shirt.
“What are you doing, bastard! Come down here,” I said.
“Shut up, I’m doing that now.” Mercury C jumped off without hesitation
and landed on a sofa with triple sheeting, making a loud, flashy Bump! and
breaking its legs. With the sound of the clamor, a few doors around us opened
at once. It was probably the great detectives who had taken refuge into the
rooms they were attributed to. Mercury C descended from the flattened sofa
without batting an eye, ignored them, and walked straight to me.
“Be careful, Mercury C. What if something happened to Kozue?”
“I told you everything was fine.”
He said, sitting on a sofa. Next to him was a collapsed person I hadn’t no-
ticed until then. That person facing up with blood flowing out of their nose,
thank god, wasn’t wearing a police uniform. It was once again the tragic De-
zuumi Style. But hadn’t Dezuumi been transported to the hospital after being
sent flying away by Mercury C? “A twin?”
“He came back earlier. All because he tried talking to us when we had just
found the pig Kozue.”
I let out a sigh, then shrugged. “Can’t be helped that he gets beaten then.
Is he out?”
“He might be dead.”
It was actually possible, so I crouched to check his breathing. It was faint.
“You should really return to the hospital, man.”
I advised him, but then his pupils came back to his white eyes. “I’m only
pretending to be dead. I’m fine. He told me not to talk.”
“Aren’t you talking right now?” Mercury C kicked Dezuumi’s legs without
moving from his seated position.
“Sorry.”
I decided to leave alone the great detective who was trying to calm down
from having been hit for comical effect, and picked up the spiky pig Mercury
C was presenting to me. “Are you fine, Kozue?” Its round hands knocked on
the palm of my hand, so I put its round nose close to my ear. Kozue said “I’m
not pig Kozue, I’m the spiky pig.” I transmitted it to Mercury C. “She’s telling you
to stop with pig Kozue.” He laughed it off and placed the lampshade on De-
zuumi’s stomach. On the part with the socket was a ♀ with horns, a picture
resembling a horizontal 69, and the number ‘27.’
 I looked at the printed-out sheet of paper Mercury C handed me, and as I
thought, the ♀ mark with horns represented ‘Mercury’ in astrology. The ex-
planation began.
“This Pinehouse is a giant horoscope. It divides a circle into 12 parts and
paints a birthday date and time through the disposition of stars as if they were
in the sky. Twelve lines separate twelve spaces. We can call these spaces
‘Houses.’ Astrology is about knowing which House is under which constella-
tion and which star it is attributed to. We’re going upstairs.”
Mercury C stood up, and I followed him.
Having gone up the curving stairs, we were met with the red carpet adorn-
ing the floor and Mitamura Saburou’s bloodstains crossing it from when he
crawled around it. These were roughly at the center of the carpet. When going
up the stairs, one was immediately facing the room with the number 7 in-
scribed on the door across the dark-red bloodstains; a mahogany table with
a balance on top of it was placed right across the door. These rooms were
seemingly numbered counter-clockwise, so when following Mercury C going
on the left we saw 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, encountered room 1 along with another set
of stairs, then, continuing from that, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Each table had its object,
going from room 1 to 12: a sheep, a cow, twins, a crab, a lion, a young girl, a
balance, a scorpion, a centaur holding a bow, a goat with the lower half of a
fish, a water jug, two fish; so, in other words, the symbols for Aries, Taurus,
Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquar-
ius, and Pisces respectively. All of them had bizarre shapes and designs.
In the end, after going around the hallway on the second floor without
saying a word, we looped back to room 7, descended the same stairs we had
used to go up, and stopped under the chandelier from which Mercury C had
removed a lampshade, near the flattened sofa. Still together, I told Mercury
C, “In the end, I couldn’t figure out from where to where Mitamura Saburou
had crawled.” I’d paid attention to the bloodstains to figure that out, but the
bloodstains kept a fixed thickness in the center of the carpet all throughout
the hallway. “Almost as if he was careful when crawling to make it look that
way. Where was the body found?”
Mercury C ignored me and resumed the explanation. “Detective, what was
on the table of the first House, so room 1, basically.”
I recalled. “...A sheep.”
“‘Aries’ was placed in the first House. The Aries Constellation rising from
the Eastern horizon sets the inner time of this big horoscope. And the chan-
delier above us informs us of the position the stars in the sky have at that time.
Look up at the ‘sky,’ Detective. The skylight covering most of the well of the
Pinehouse is divided into twelve by iron frames separating each House from
the others; those are the cusps. The frames that expand into the first room, if
you prolong them, are the Ascendant cusps. Continuing on the left, other
cusps are separating the ‘sky’ into the second and third Houses. Inside the
fourth House is the bulb closest to the center of the chandelier, the ‘Sun.’
Each bulb has its precise position written on its lampshade.” Mercury C
picked up the lampshade he had removed earlier and tossed it my way. Dezu-
umi had seemingly run off somewhere. I received ‘Mercury’ and looked at the
♀ with horns, the horizontal six-nine, and the 27. I had thought it was made
out of plastic, but this thing was made out of ceramic. “Alright, now give it
back,” he said, so I threw ‘Mercury’ back at him, but it grazed Mercury C, fell
onto the ground, and broke along with a loud noise. Mercury C had smashed
‘Mercury’ without dirtying his hands. He put up a big smile. Climbing the roof,
climbing on the chandelier, breaking a sofa...doing whatever amused him,
huh. “The numbers inscribed on it show that, at the determined time, ‘Mer-
cury’ was at ‘27°’ of the ‘Cancer sign.’ The remaining nine lampshades have
the position of each ‘Star’ written on them in the same way. That completes
this ‘horoscope.’”
Mercury C took out a sheet of paper from his rear pocket.
 I didn’t know how to read horoscopes. But I knew it was a tool to predict
someone’s life or personality. How much does someone's date and time of
birth dictate one’s life, I wonder?
“So are you saying Mitamura Saburou built this Pinehouse after his own
horoscope?”
To my question, Mercury C answered,
“Thing is, this ain’t Mitamura Saburou’s horoscope.”
 “Huh? Then whose is it? Can you calculate it from the position of the hor-
oscope?”
“I can. You can do it by looking at the position of the Stars from Earth’s
point of view, but well, going pretty roughly, the Sun moves about one degree
per day, the Moon one degree every two hours, Mercury one degree every day
too, Venus one degree and ten minutes every day, Mars one degree every two
days, Jupiter two to three degrees in a month, Saturn one to two degrees in a
month, Uranus is only four to five degrees and Neptune two to three degrees
per year, and finally Pluto with one or two degrees at most in a year. Pluto
takes 248 years to revolve around Earth, did you know?”
“...So, whose date of birth does this horoscope paint?”
“No one’s. The person described by this horoscope has yet to exist.”
I couldn’t understand for a second.
“It’s a horoscope of the future, Detective. But I guarantee you, the person
born at this time will be kind and grounded. Hahaha.”
“...How much in the future?”
“What day is it today?”
“The 14th of July.”
“Then tomorrow.”
“Ahhn?”
“It’s the horoscope of the 15th of July 2006 at 23:26.” Mercury C looked at
his watch. “About one day and five hours from now. What do you think will
happen?”
It felt nothing but ominous.

“Any possibility of the calculation being wrong?”

My question seemingly struck a nerve in Mercury C, making him groan
“What did you say, you fucking shithead foreigner,” so I hurriedly reworded
my question. “No no no, I’m not talking about yours. The Pinehouse’s calcu-
lation. I mean, if it was yesterday instead of tomorrow, it would coincide with
Mitamura Saburou’s suicide, wouldn’t it? He might even have planned it in
advance.”
“Suicide, you say...it might not be one though, you realize?”
“Hey, but earlier...”
“I simply recited Daibakushou Curry’s deduction. And the guy in question
died, remember?”
“...”
“And now I’m reciting Judy Dollhouse’s shitty deduction,” Mercury C said
before looking behind me and letting out a provocative laugh. The charming
boy from earlier, Hakkyoku Sachiari, was standing there.
“Judy’s deduction was splendid,” he said.
“A wrong deduction is a shitty one,” replied Mercury C.
Hakkyoku was looking straight into Mercury C’s eyes. He was so calm he
seemed like a different person than his earlier frivolous persona. But this
standoff made me cautious of Mercury C possibly jumping on him. If that
were to happen, I would have to stop him mid-air.
“Not like I really care, but could you hurry up?” Hakkyoku said. “I was
planning on returning to Tokyo before tomorrow, but I have to take the 19:22
local train for that.”
“Are you giving up and going home?” Mercury C laughed. “Why not,
that’s a fair choice. No one will blame you. No one would wanna die in a place
like this, after all.”
Hakkyoku opened his eyes wide in wonder. “Haha! Death is the least of my
concerns... Well, that is a lie, but I am not at all worried about dying here. Plus,
the great Hakkyoku would never give up on a case halfway through. I take my
job seriously, despite how I may look. You needn’t worry about me, I will give
this case a satisfactory resolution before going home. That is the least I can
do, as a great detective.”
I looked at my watch. 18:12.
“You piss me off, so I might even kill you myself,” Mercury C took a step
towards him, so I put myself between them.
 “Mercury, please tell me the rest of the deduction.”
I was tense, thinking about how him going against my will would only in-
crease his amusement, but Mercury C rescinded his step surprisingly obedi-
ently. “’Kay, whatever. I’ll go through it quickly.”
As I was feeling relieved, Hakkyoku spoke from behind me. “Please do so.
If possible, within ten minutes.”
Mercury C suddenly jumped. What a frightening jumping power. He
stepped on my chest and my shoulders to go above my head, so I instantly
rotated my body to grab his shirt’s collar right before his landing, but the kick
he unleashed at the same time had already reached Hakkyoku by then and
made him collapse onto the ground. It made a loud Bam!, then Mame Gen and
Nekoneko, who had left their rooms before I knew it, screamed when they
saw Hakkyoku on the ground on the other side of the coffee table. Another
voice came from above, “Stop thaaa~t!” I looked up and saw one of the male
great detectives whose name I hadn’t heard standing before a door that was
previously locked when Mercury C and I went around the hallway.
“Hakkyoku-kun, are you okay!?” I was worried about that too. But “Com-
pletely fine, no problem,” said Mercury C. “See,” upon being spoken to,
Hakkyoku said the same, still on the ground. “Okay,” Mercury C laughed.
“This dude, he rotated his face at the same speed as my kick. Haha. Are we in
a manga or something?” Hakkyoku-kun answered, “If we were, I would have
been relatively fine, though. Turning my neck this fast is still pretty painful.
Taking the kick head-on might’ve been less painful even.” “Dummy, had my
kick connected, anything above your shoulders would be gone.” “Pfft, we’re
not in a manga.” Hakkyoku-kun continued to laugh from the ground. “Fine,
fine. Then end it in nine minutes, please. After all, I already heard this deduc-
tion once. If anything, I could emulate the one coming after if you want, shall
I?” “No thanks, dumbass. Then let’s hurry up, Detective.”
“Eh?”
“What’s with that reaction, pay attention. And you can stop that now, let
go of me.”
 I let go of the collar of his shirt I was grasping in vain.
“It’s simple. Hey, Detective. Do you know about Tsukumo Juuku?”
Tsukumo what? “I don’t. What’s that?”
“A person. Somewhat.”
“Somewhat, why?”
“It’s a character from a novel. Do you know about Seiryouin Ryuusui?”
Another weird word. “Is that a character from a novel too?”
“This one’s the author.”
I see. It’s well known that weird names can only be authors, great detec-
tives, or characters from novels. “Does this Tsukumo Juuku appear in
Seiryouin Ryuusui’s novels?”
“Yes. As a great detective.”
Of course.
Mercury C continued. “Then do you know about Ehimegawa Juuzou? No,
at this rate, there’s no way you do. He’s an author too. A dimwit author writ-
ing a bunch of detective novels. And both Seiryouin, Ehimegawa, and An-
byouin debuted from the same place.”
“Kodansha NOVELS.”
“Exactly. The Kodansha Third Literary Publishing Department in charge
of Kodansha NOVELS also publishes the magazine Mephisto that runs a new-
comer award. 10 The works winning that award are directly published by the
Kodansha NOVELS label. The second winner of that award was Seiryouin
Ryuusui. And the 19th one was Anbyouin Owaru.”
“I’ve never read any of those. So, what about Ehimegawa?”
“Ehimegawa is the key.”
“Of what.”
“Of this case. In 2003, Ehimegawa Juuzou happened to have published a
novel revolving around one of Seiryouin Ryuusui’s characters, Tsukumo

10
A list of all the actual winners where you can see for yourself the references to reality:
https://jmystery.fandom.com/wiki/Mephisto_Prize
Juuku. Its title is Tsukumojuuku. Hold on a second. Hey, Great Detective.
You’re not doing anything. So move your ass and go fetch the Kodansha NOV-
ELS from Mitamura’s room.”
“You go do it,” said Hakkyoku as he stood up from the ground, then went
towards the first room of the first floor. He opened the door to a room filled
with bookshelves. He went there himself despite sounding rebellious. Well,
that way’s faster, after all.
“So, Ehimegawa Juuzou’s Tsukumojuuku is modeled after a real detec-
tive,” Mercury C continued without waiting for Hakkyoku. “This guy,” he
said as he took out a piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it to me.
Looking at it, it was the picture of a young, handsome man striking a pose in
front of the camera. It looked ripped from a magazine; there was a caption
next to the black and white photograph.

A BOY FREAKISHLY BEAUTIFUL & BRILLIANT !

That handsome boy was raising the hems of his shirt, exposing his stom-
ach adorned with three holes.
Those weren’t piercings. Nor scars. Nor were artificial. They were real.
This man had three belly buttons.
Then the expression ‘FREAK’ felt borderline when taking human rights
into account, though I couldn’t care less about human rights. What I could
care less about was this detective.

PRIVATE DETECTIVE : CURRY DE DAIBAKUSHOU

 I raised my face then spoke to Mercury C. “Is that ‘Tsukumojuuku’ mod-
eled after Daibakushou Curry?”
“Yeah,” Mercury C confirmed. That’s when Hakkyoku came back, carry-
ing books with both hands. Mercury C took a thin one among those without a
word of gratitude to Hakkyoku, then threw it towards me, saying “Detective,
look at the cover.” Disconcerted, and still holding the magazine scrap with
Daibakushou’s picture, I somehow managed to catch it; I looked at the cover.
The title was apparently Pineapple Snow, ‘Anbyouin Owaru’ was also written
on it. “No, not the front cover, on the other side, the back one.” In English,
‘cover’ referred to the front cover, but the loan word in Japanese referred to
the entire packaging. I opened the front cover. There was a synopsis written
on the inside cover. On the morning when the first snow of the year fell on
West Akatsuki in Fukui Prefecture, the great detective Yukizuka Pineapple
rises from the dead; this is the beginning of a new serial murder case! A Saint
Shock Sharply Signed with Subtle and Snappy writing! The never-seen-be-
fore-nor-after 14th entry in the Pineapple Series! Hmm. “No, dumbass.
That’s the start. I’m talking about the back.” Oh right, Japanese books started
from the right. The page I would normally assume to be the first one had an
author’s introduction for Anbyouin Owaru. No picture. Born in Fukui on the
30th of October 1968. Debuted by winning the 19th Mephisto Prize with Pine-
apple Library. A mysterious shin honkaku writer. 11
“This?” What about it?
“Mitamura Saburou is a Scorpio.” As usual, I still didn’t understand. Mer-
cury C threw another book at me. Its title was Smokestack Runbaba Inexpli-
cable. Authored by Ehimegawa Juuzou. Having learned my lesson, I looked at
the synopsis on the inner cover: Tokyo, Chofu, Autumn, a Western house, a
corpse on top of a smokestack, inexplicable. It got worse; great detectives ap-
peared. The birth of an inexplicable masterpiece by an unknown new author!
The author's introduction had: Profile unknown. Debuted as a shin honkaku

11
https://jmystery.fandom.com/wiki/Shinhonkaku_Detective_Fiction
mystery novel writer in 1990. “So, what about this one?” I asked, to which
Mercury C asked back. “Detective, do you read mystery novels?”
“Japanese ones? Well, I’ve not read much, neither Japanese nor American
ones. I watched quite a lot of mystery movies, though.”
“Well, I do. I do love my hobbies.”
“...I bet you do.” Obviously, one cannot think like a great detective nor in-
vestigate a case or solve it without having read mystery novels.
Mercury C continued,
“You probably won’t be too surprised hearing this, but Anbyouin Owaru
and Ehimegawa Juuzou were said to be the same person.”
“Heeh.”
“Well, it hasn’t been officially confirmed, but it’s the sort of taciturn se-
cret everyone knows but keeps silent about. So, after re-debuting as An-
byouin in 2001, he never wrote as Ehimegawa Juuzou except for Tsukumo-
juuku in 2003. They switched then.”
“That means Mitamura Saburou debuted twice from winning the same
award and received the money twice?”
“The Mephisto Prize has no monetary award. The story only gets pub-
lished as a novel.”
“Wasn’t NOVELS the name of the label?”
“Well, it is too, but that’s a way to refer to that book format.” Mercury C
moved his jaw to point at the books of Seiryouin Ryuusui, Ehimegawa Juuzou,
and Anbyouin Owaru, Hakkyoku was carrying. Portrait format, one size
smaller than Japanese hardcovers, but one size bigger than pocket paper-
backs.
I returned the conversation to the main topic. “That means not one but
two authors died here last night.” Ehimegawa and Anbyouin. Two mystery
novel authors died at the same time, followed by three great detectives. In
fewer than twenty hours. Wasn’t this a critically dangerous situation? No one
here had noticed, me included, but weren’t we in an outrageous situation?
Maybe being in the sticks, and furthermore, atop a mountain, made us slower
in realizing that?
“Any idea of what Daibakushou’s former nickname was?” Mercury C
asked me.
“It wasn’t Daibakushou?”
“Dumbass. That’s a fake name. He chose it himself. Look closely, can’t you
tell by looking at the picture?”
My eyes were drawn to the three belly buttons.
Mercury C told me the answer. “Orion.”
I nearly burst out laughing, but stopped myself. Mitamura Saburou is a
Scorpio. Mercury C said so earlier. And Daibakushou the Orion. The arrow that
killed Saburou. This was a horoscope.
Mercury C didn’t wait for my thinking to settle down. “According to a ver-
sion of Greek mythology, the giant Orion who was full of his own power was
killed by a scorpion. The two of them were put up in the sky as constellations
due to their respective achievements. However, even so, when the Scorpio
Constellation rises in the West, the Orion Constellation hides under the West-
ern horizon. Thus, to monitor the scorpion and its powerful poison, the Sag-
ittarius Constellation was positioned next to it, with its arrow aiming at the
scorpion at all times. The arrow was fired and the scorpion died, Detective.
Why was the scorpion killed? That’s because it used its poison. The poison
that scorpion possessed was its novels, and he used it on Orion. The name of
the poison: Tsukumojuuku. I don’t know what words were exchanged be-
tween the two, but whatever, the scorpion killed Orion using its poison. Goes
to show you how dangerous it is to model a character after a real person.”
“Hold on.” I was confused. “Daibakushou Curry died after Mitamura
Saburou, you know? How could he have killed him?”
“The estimated time of death for Mitamura Saburou, or Ehimegawa Juu-
zou/Anbyouin Owaru, was between eleven at night and two in the morning.
Daibakushou’s estimated time of death was this morning between 06:15 and
06:18. Daibakushou’s estimation is this accurate because he arrived when the
Angel Bunnies had finished placing the words inside the mountain as ordered
and were acting like nothing had happened, then gathered everyone on this
floor of the Pinehouse, presented his deduction, swiftly saw through the
deeds of the Angel Bunnies, and, while the Angel Bunnies and the police was
still present, was found collapsed on the ground in the room he was attributed.
There were chopsticks next to his body and blood flowing out of his eyes. Dai-
bakushou entered the study around quarter past six and was confirmed to be
dead at eighteen. However, in reality, Daibakushou had already been killed
when Mitamura Saburou was found dead, by Mitamura Saburou, nonethe-
less.”
“By Mitamura Saburou?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mean psychologically by the novel modeled after him?”
“No. Physically.”
I didn’t get it. Hadn’t Daibakushou come to resolve Mitamura’s death, but
got it wrong and died? “Then, are you saying Mitamura wasn’t dead? That he
didn’t die even after an arrow was shot through his back and he crawled
around the hallway, that he waited for Daibakushou to finish his deduction,
then somehow killed him?” But there were many troupe members and the
police. Too many witnesses. Would pretending to be dead even work? The po-
lice might be from the sticks, but they should still be able to tell whether
Mitamura was dead or not.
“Of course not, Detective. He got shot and lost a full hallway loop’s worth
of blood, how immortal do you imagine him to be? Think a little,” said Mer-
cury C. He continued. “Daibakushou was the one who didn’t die, moron.”

My confusion increased. I felt like I was told something surprising but I

couldn’t act surprised. What was he saying? “I can’t follow at all. What?”
 Oblivious to my bewilderment, Mercury C took out his phone and called
somewhere. “Ah, am I talking to the Fukui Prefecture Police? Are you ques-
tioning Angel Bunnies over there? Ah, I am the consultant lawyer in charge of
Angel Bunnies, my name is Mercury C. Yes, the interrogation. Why are you
guys talking to the Angel Bunnies when I’m not there? ...Dumbass, one of the
girls is eighteen, you know? Did you explain their rights? Listen well, if you
didn’t, you guys will face troubles you can’t even imagine. Shut it, pass the
phone to the leader. The Angel Bunnies’. I’ll give them instructions for what
to do until I get there. Of fucking course, that’s their legal rights and a legal
method. Up till now, what you guys have been doing was just acting like ig-
norant blockheads from the countryside, but every second from now on
counts as a crime. For your information, in times like this, you won’t be held
responsible. Your superiors and everyone above will be. I don’t care about
small fries like you, don’t underestimate lawyers!”
...The intimidation at the end must have worked as the interlocutor
seemed to have changed after some time. “Ah, hello? Who is it? ...My name is
Mercury C. Yeah, yeah, who cares about what the police are blathering, an-
swer my question, Fukushima. Why do you think Daibakushou was crying
while exposing his deduction?”
Mercury C increased the volume of his telephone to the maximum. A
young man’s voice mixed with perplexment echoed. ‘Ah, yes, let me see. I
thought Daibakushou-san was crying because he was pretty close to An-
byouin-san...’
“But those weren’t tears, were they?”
‘Indeed, they were not.’
“That’s pretty scary.”
‘...No. It’s sad.’
“Weren’t you surprised?”
‘I was certainly surprised when hearing Judy-san’s story, but even then, I
wouldn’t call that surprise...it only increased our grief.’
“I see. How did Daibakushou look then? Happy?”
 ‘...Um, Judy-san passed away too, no?’
“Yeah. Judy and the next one died. So, how was he? Did it look like Daiba-
kushou’s feelings cleared up?”
‘...’
“Daibakushou must’ve rather looked as if he didn’t care, no? He was cry-
ing, and yet his expression didn’t seem very invested.”
‘...He seemed in pain. He said he “couldn’t express his sadness well,” so
we told him, “you are crying right now,” but he just wiped his tears away and
went on with his deduction. ...’
“Do you think that put an end to Daibakushou’s despair?”
‘...I am not in a position to answer that.’
“The guy standing before you guys was a dead man. But his death wasn’t
your fault, got that?”
‘...’
“It’s his fault for falling into despair that easily.”
Mercury C then hung up without leaving his interlocutor the time to reply.
I couldn’t make sense of their conversation, but that last line of Mercury C
seemed to have instilled complex emotions into that ‘Fukushima’ person.
“Was Daibakushou in despair?” I asked. “Because of Anbyouin’s death?”
However, no matter how close Mitamura Saburou and Daibakushou were,
would he be so much in despair he would kill himself by stabbing chopsticks
through his eyes?
Hakkyoku, seated on the sofa and listening to our exchange, interjected.
“You didn’t have to ask Fukushima-san for something as insignificant as
that. Neither did you have to tell him that.”
“Why is that?” asked Mercury C. “I feel like my words did a lot of work
towards saving Fukushima.”
“It was still too early to tell him that. It’s only effective if you leave them
time to think on their own.”
“That would make them suffer meaninglessly all the more, wouldn’t it?”
 “That’s why you should have only told him the truth. That is the greatest
consolation one can have.”
“That’s what Dollhouse and Choukuuji tried to do, and they died for it.”
I couldn’t help but interject. “Hold on, hold on, don’t leave me behind,
Mercury. What happened to the constellations in the end?”
“I told you to think on your own, Detective. ...But right, yeah, we don’t
have the time for that. Can’t be helped. Okay, listen well. Mitamura Saburou,
the guy who lived in this house and who killed Daibakushou the ‘Orion Con-
stellation,’ was knowledgeable about constellations. That’s why he knew he
couldn’t escape from his fate as a Scorpio. He thought the ‘scorpion’ who
killed ‘Orion’ should be killed by the ‘Sagittarius Constellation,’ so he shot an
arrow through his back with a bowgun and died.”
“Hold on again. I’m repeating myself, but how could Mitamura Saburou
have killed Daibakushou?”
“He’s an author. What else but his novels? Daibakushou really liked Tsu-
kumojuuku. You don’t need to have read it to imagine, right? When a charac-
ter gets modeled after you and appears in a book, it’s impossible not to feel
emotional at the way you were written, no? Especially Daibakushou, since he
was the kind of idiot to call himself a great detective and he was depressive.
So he came here and talked with Mitamura Saburou. Then, though I don’t
know the details, after a harsh exchange, Daibakushou stabbed himself in the
eyes. Did he do it alone or did Mitamura help him; that, I don’t know.”
That’s what I didn’t get. “Mitamura did...? But Daibakushou died after fin-
ishing exposing his deduction, no?”
“His heart was certainly confirmed to have stopped after his deduction,
yeah.”
“...?”
“Daibakushou was dead, in a way, before the deduction, before climbing
the roof of the Pinehouse, before coming here, before Mitamura died.”
“How?”
“As I said, by stabbing himself in the eyes.”
 “Why would he have done that?”
“Your question is slightly off, Detective. It’s not ‘Why would he have done
that?’ it’s ‘Why did he want to do that?’”
“What was he trying to do?”
“A surgery. Treatment. He wanted to get rid of his depression.”
“...”
“Daibakushou tried Walter Freeman’s transorbital-style lobotomy. He
plunged chopsticks through his eye sockets and messed his frontal lobes up.”
“What the fuck...?”
“He must’ve done it on impulse. Freeman used an ice pick, but Daiba-
kushou did it with chopsticks. He went Alright! Bsst blub blub and lost con-
sciousness due to the pain. So when Mitamura Saburou found him he thought
Oh Crap he’s dead! Wait, they’re gonna think I did it, so he started planning
his own death to take responsibility. Though I don’t know if he thought his
novels had killed Daibakushou or if he had performed surgery on himself.”
Hakkyoku commented from next to my dumbfounded self. “No one can
know anymore. Judy discovered traces of blood and spinal fluid in Daiba-
kushou’s dining room. And, on the table, a pair of chopsticks, including the
one Daibakushou-san used.”
“Spinal fluid is transparent,” said Mercury C. “After he succeeded in his
surgery and succeeded at removing the mental troubles he was having, Dai-
bakushou came to the Pinehouse by taxi, exposed his deduction in front of
the Angel Bunnies members, the cops, and the shitty detectives who arrived
after some time, but he wasn’t shedding tears from his left eye, it was spinal
fluid leaking out of his eye socket.”
Eww~. Gross.
It only increased our grief. It’s not like ‘Fukushima’ who said that was
brimming with humanity and that wasn’t the case for me. Anyone would
shiver at that story. It’s just that ‘Fukushima’ was there and saw Daiba-
kushou with his own eyes, while I only heard about it. That made a huge dif-
ference.
 “Though it’s possible that everything was a part of Daibakushou’s re-
venge,” Mercury C remarked. “He instilled remorse in Mitamura by making
it look as if he killed himself and drove him to suicide. That’s another way to
look at it. But we can’t know anymore. Now, having returned to the Pinehouse,
Mitamura planned his suicide. Mitamura could only think about dying from
a bow. Detective, when we made a round earlier, was the decoration for the
Sagittarius holding an arrow? Do you remember?”
I nearly let out a voice of surprise. Thinking about it, it wasn’t. The centaur
was holding a bow and had his right arm and elbow pulled back, but the string
was loose. He had lost his arrow. He had shot it. “Mitamura hid the arrow too.
Obviously, you can’t kill someone with a decoration’s arrow. But he wasn’t
trying to make us think it was the arrow. He took the arrow off the Sagittarius
to make us realize the meaning, died by a bowgun, and probably hid it with a
mechanism of strings and weights. It’s a classic trick in mystery novels.”
“We have yet to find the bowgun,” Hakkyoku added. “It’s debatable
whether strings and weights could hide it so well.”
“Daibakushou could’ve hid it before his deduction. After waking up from
the shock of the surgery, Daibakushou went to the Pinehouse to see his friend
again, but instead found a dead Mitamura who thought himself to pertain to
a Greek myth. Meaning Orion, who the scorpion thought it had killed, was
still alive. Finding grief in his author friend’s lone struggle, Daibakushou
started working towards destroying the constellation metaphor. To be con-
crete, he made Mitamura Saburou’s corpse do a full loop around the hallway,
aligned logs in the courtyard to write a phone number, wrote a ‘will’ to the
Angel Bunnies, snuck into Mitamura Saburou’s old house, and changed the
answering message. That’s how it is, Detective, the message you heard earlier
was Daibakushou’s voice. Then, he pretended to have rushed to the scene
upon hearing the news of Mitamura Saburou’s murder, once again retraced
the events, and exposed a made-up deduction before anyone else. Detective,
Daibakushou chose those twelve terms. Don’t expect coherence out of the
brain of a man who removed part of it. But he was able to solve the case, at
least superficially. His miscalculations came from Mitamura Saburou’s little
brothers calling other detectives, and that the lobotomy he thought had gone
well in fact hadn’t, and he died as a result. I bet a grain of rice or something
was still stuck to the chopsticks and destroyed an important part of his brain.”
“...” I was left dumbstruck. I had to somehow find words. “What was the
horoscope about?”
“That’s, you know, predicting the date when this case will end,” Mercury
C laughed. “That’s tomorrow,” he said, earning himself a glare from
Hakkyoku.
“Why did Dollhouse stab her eyes? This is Dollhouse’s deduction, right?”
I asked. Why would she have imitated Daibakushou and stabbed herself? It
can’t be because she wanted to test the lobotomy on herself, can it? Did she
have a mental disease proper to great detectives? Would the case have ended
if not for that woman’s death?
“Don’t ask me what great detectives are thinking,” answered Mercury C.
“Plus, unlike Daibakushou, Miss Dollhouse might’ve truly been murdered.
You might not want to let out such careless statements, Detective. Because
such a casual mistake might be fatal.”

Mercury C continued. “It seems Choukuuji Keraku only happened to

mouth a suggestion he had thought up. The big brother Choukuuji hypothe-
sized with a smile on his face that maybe ‘Mitamura Saburou went around the
hallway to die faster.’ Not having died by the arrow he was shot with,
Mitamura probably did it partly to ‘end the suffering faster’ and partly be-
cause ‘if the Angel Bunnies found him, they would take him to a hospital.’ But,
after that gossip, yet another idiot had his eyes stabbed in the room he was
assigned.”
Hakkyoku was staring at the grinning Mercury C in silence.
 Mercury C spoke out to him. “We’re now caught up to you.” He checked
his watch. “18:30. It was pretty close, but...” Someone attacked Mercury C be-
fore he could continue, making him pitch forward after a vivid sound echoed.
The one who had dealt him a rabbit punch was a boy as handsome as the oth-
ers. All the great detectives were charming, making me wonder if beauty and
intellect were closely related to each other. But who was this guy, appearing
sexy despite adorning an angry expression? “My brother isn’t an idiot!” he
screamed, letting me know who was standing there. Choukuuji Kiyuu. Who
had been standing there, rather. The instant right after he lost his marbles,
Mercury C sent him flying away with a kick. He fell with his back hitting the
corner of the table of the neighboring sofa set and looked to be in extreme
pain. Mercury C was closing on him to hurt him even more, so I told him,
“Stop it, Mercury.” Needless to say, it was useless. I tried getting between
them, but I recalled the spiky pig in my breast pocket. “It’s dangerous, so wait
here a second,” I told her, then placed it on the side table. The spiky pig nod-
ded from beside the light stand. Good girl. I faced Mercury C anew. No one
should be thrown in the direction of this side table, and I wouldn’t let them
anyway. I stood in front of Mercury C, who had readied his fist and prepared
a punch while waiting for Choukuuji Kiyuu to rise, but Mercury C unleashed
his missile-like punch that grazed my cheeks and continued towards
Choukuuji Kiyuu. But, as I had predicted his movements, I had already thrust
at his chest. I looked behind me to check on Choukuuji; he was standing,
making me wonder if he was alright, but soon enough his nose started bleed-
ing and he fell onto the ground. It did graze him. “Don’t disturb me, Detec-
tive!” Mercury C seemed to have been having fun as he barked at me. “Give it
a rest, Mercury,” I said, then made Mercury C remember other pleasures ex-
isted. “Hakkyoku-kun doesn’t know what to do now. He wants to go home
already.” Mercury C made an ‘Oh, right’ kinda face for a second, then looked
at Hakkyoku. Hakkyoku-kun was seated on the sofa, using the armrest to rest
his cheeks in his hands. “No, go ahead, please, I will send you a fax or an e-
mail later.” Mercury C took the bait at Hakkyoku’s composure. “That’s no
good at all. Do it here. If you leave, I won’t be able to see you stab your eyes,
will I?” Hakkyoku softly laughed. “You have a point. Plus, if I stay here, I
could even get you to lend me some of the anesthetic you are keeping on
yourself.” Mercury C widened his eyes. He was starting to find enjoyment in
this kind of exchange with great detectives. Well, no one could say how long
it would last, and it didn’t mean he had lost all interest in fistfights.
“Mercury-san, are you a great detective?” asked Hakkyoku. Mercury
made a fed-up expression. “Not at all, idiot, I’m a Japanese confection arti-
san.” “But you do have the ambition to conclude this case, no?” “Nope. Not
even an ounce of interest.” “Then why did you come here and participate in
it?” “Participate? I’ve barely done anything.” “But you’re highly standing
out.” “Just ignore me then, it’s not that hard.” “We cannot ignore something
that stands out. After all, you are scary, Mercury-san.” “I won’t lay a finger
on you if you don’t meddle with me, though.” “No, not in that sense. Your
existence is. You are insanely smart.” “Well yeah, I’m not dumb enough to
call myself a great detective, true.” “...I still want to confirm, Mercury-san,
what position you occupy here.” “None really. I don’t have any place here.
I’m merely waiting for great detectives to die for my own pleasure.” “Then,
do you think more great detectives are going to die?” “I mean, not if your
deduction is right, no?” “Certainly. ...” “What are you so fidgety about?”
“Mercury-san, three great detectives have already exposed their solutions...
Well, Keraku-san’s wasn’t really a proper one, though.” “I found Keraku-
tin’s pretty great, you know. It was simple and linear, but it brought in a new
idea. No victim had ever exerted themselves to lose blood more quickly ’till
then, neither in reality nor novels. So even though Choukuuji Keraku was
wrong in thinking the mystery author Mitamura Saburou thought of it, that
new idea is still a great feat, don’t you think?” “...You have a point I guess.”
“Plus, we’re not sure whether the idea is wrong. At least for now.” “True.”
“So don’t make fun of Keraku-tin.” Are you really gonna say that? “...I wasn’t
making fun of him, obviously. What I wanted to get at was, when interacting
with those deductions, how did you feel, Mercury-san?” “I thought ‘Wow,
idiots are thinking idiotic stuff.’” “...” Mercury C stared at Hakkyoku’s face,
then continued. “I thought there was no end to it, for a real answer.”
Hakkyoku replied so fast as if to interrupt him. “Where do you think this feel-
ing of ‘there’s no end’ comes from?”
“From you guys chilling in the back with an unconcerned face.”
“I think so too. It creates this feeling that there are other answers left. Be-
cause great detectives are machines that produce answers. They are the light
of truth itself, the embodiment of intellect. That is why, originally, one great
detective is more than enough. ...Because there is only one truth. To be honest,
for me as well as for anyone present here, this is our first time experiencing
a case with this many great detectives. ...Does this affair really have an an-
swer? Does it have a single truth?”
“What are you spouting out, dumbass. You’re making no sense.”
“What I’m afraid of is being stripped off from my role of great detective
and having the role of carrier of a mistaken deduction bestowed onto me. As
a device to create a twist.”
“Daibakushou, Miss Dollhouse, and the careless Keraku already accom-
plished that role, no? The prelude’s over, so why shouldn’t you feel free to
present whatever you think is the truth? People filling their heads with the
possibility of them being mistaken will be mistaken. Might be better to shut
your trap if you’re not confident in yourself, especially in this place~.”
“...”
“Pfft. What are you afraid of, idiot. To begin with, there’s always been
many great detectives in this world, not just one, am I wrong? Why would this
case be different just because a few of them gathered at the same place by
chance? If a great detective’s wrong, another one will be called to correct
them anyway, that's how it’s always worked. It’s not because many great de-
tectives are invited that they’ll all necessarily accomplish great-detective-
level feats. They might have to go home with a grim face if someone else sub-
mits the answer first, won’t they?”
 “If they let someone submit the answer first, they are not a great detec-
tive.”
“Then they won’t just go home with a grim face. From that day onwards,
they’ll no longer be great detectives. They should even have to write a letter
saying, ‘I will never ever call myself a great detective again.’”
Mercury C seemed to be having fun. I bet he seriously wanted to see that
happen. The contract he talked about should be a win-win game for him. If
the deduction was apt, he would get to look at great detectives losing their
standing, and if not, he might get to witness a grotesque murder.
“...We aren’t so feeble that we need contracts...” Hakkyoku mumbled to
himself. “In the end, context proves to be important.” Context? Hakkyoku
raised his face. “Everyone! Gather in the center of the first floor! The
Hakkyoku Deduction Train is departing!”

Bam, bam, babam, the great detectives came out of the rooms they had
occupied in quick rhythm. First Mame Gen and Nekoneko Nyannyannyan
from the room I was in earlier, then the three men I hadn’t heard the names
of yet, those coming out of their respective rooms; all at once, all almost in-
stantly. As if they were awaiting the signal from Hakkyoku. They were all
well-featured. The remaining two, Choukuuji Kiyuu, who sat on a sofa with
his face deep red from not wiping his nose bleed away, and Dezuumi Style
with his face in the same state, who came out of the reception space making
as little noise as he could manage to, walking in a way as if to emphasize the
fact that he was injured, were both well-featured too. Wait, so Dezuumi
hadn’t returned to the hospital after that. Was he waiting for his turn behind
that door?
“We do need to create the right ambiance for a finale,” Hakkyoku said. The
great detectives were gathering behind him. The spectacle had begun. “The
‘great’ of ‘great detective’ points at their ‘grandiosity.’ On that note, let’s in-
troduce them. I presume you are aware of Mame Gen-san and Nekoneko
Nyannyannyan-san, so I will take care of the remaining three boys. From the
left: Sabayama Nigouhan-san, Kakiuchi Mamajump-san, and Hizuki-san.”
As Hakkyoku presented them while still facing us, each of them raised a hand
upon being called and gave a small bow. The sequence was so smooth I
couldn’t imagine how they could’ve done it without practice. But more im-
portantly, a name I had seen on the news when I was headed to Fukui was
missing. “Where is Hongou Takeshitakeshi?” Kakiuchi answered my ques-
tion from behind Hakkyoku. “Hongou-san is a member of Angel Bunnies. He
should still be in the police headquarters.”
Then, a flood of people started entering from the main entrance. Every one
of them was letting out groans or moans of relief, making the Pinehouse in-
stantly livelier. They were all young. Like college students. A tall man among
them with disheveled hair and an excessively protruding nose bridge raised a
hand and spoke out to us.
“Yop. Still working hard, huh.”
“Speak of the devil, quite comical.” Kakiuchi laughed. “This man is
Hongou Takeshitakeshi.”
“Ah, you’re mid-deduction?”
“We’re about to start. You arrive with perfect timing, so feel free to join
us.”
“Sure~, but can I go take a dump first? My stomach’s been hurting for a
while.”
“You must be tense by nature.”
“I’m a worrywart.”
“...As always, it’s hard to tell when you joke, isn’t it? Hakkyoku-san, does
Hongou-san have time to go to the toilet?”
Hakkyoku didn’t turn back. “Go ahead.”
Hongou walked away, then Hakkyoku spoke to me. “Nice lead-in, Eady-
san.”
 What?
Was he saying I had summoned Hongou Takeshitakeshi? For his sake?
That couldn’t be right. Unlike normal detectives like me, great detectives
had direct connections to police upper-ups. He must’ve used that to get a
rough estimate of when Hongou Takeshitakeshi was gonna arrive.
“18:50,” Hakkyoku was looking at his watch. “If I want to be in Tokyo be-
fore tomorrow, I will have to be done within 20 minutes and take the train
departing at 19:22. If my deduction is correct, so as to not let any great detec-
tive appear after my leave, a certain man should have gotten off his train at
West Akatsuki Station at 18:45 and should be arriving any time now in Iwa-
saki-san’s taxi.”
Hakkyoku talked as if he was getting his information from a divine entity.
That has to be an act. He must’ve heard from the man in question that he was
coming here by taxi... These thoughts of mine were drowned out by a power-
ful noise. Fshh woh wohwoh wohwoh, the sound of propellers closing in.
Through the open door beyond the Angel Bunnies, I could see many cars,
minivans, and sedans surging forward on the Pinehouse’s driveway. The
space in-between the patrol cars got filled instantly by those, from which
many people holding mics or cameras flooded out without even closing the
doors. Through the skylight, a beam from the searchlight of the helicopter
hovering above us shone in. He was here.
The wave of people hit the Pinehouse then split into two, revealing a
skinny kid wearing half-pants and suspenders walking to us. His body was
smooth and silky all over, making it hard to distinguish whether he was a boy
or a girl. He kept the media people at a distance as he reached the main en-
trance, illuminated by the searchlight all the while, then spoke out to us with
a clear-crystal voice. “Good evening! I am Mikami Nils! Sorry to be so abrupt,
but could someone lend me 860 yen? I came by taxi but I don’t have any Jap-
anese yen in my wallet, I’m so sorry!”
Mercury C exploded into laughter. The great detectives and Angel Bunnies
laughed out loud too, but even so, Hakkyoku replied without looking back.
 “Nils-san, please have the taxi driver wait there! I will take it on the way
home!”
“Okay!” Nils went back outside obediently. Now that everyone’s attention
had returned to him, Hakkyoku continued.
“Now, let’s start the finale, shall we. Hongou-san, did you flush the toi-
lets?!”
Eh, everyone looked at where Nils previously was and found Hongou-san
with his back to us, running outside for the second time in a hurry. “This guy
seriously did it again~?” said one of the Angel Bunnies members, making
everyone laugh. “Seems like our great detective is losing to Nils-kun in more
ways than one, huh,” joked another Angel Bunnies, when a young, tall man
among them snuck out of the group and spoke to Mercury C and me. “Good
evening, I am Fukushima Manabu, the leader of the Angel Bunnies.” It was
the same voice as on the phone. He seemed to be doing better than earlier. I
walked up to him and shook his hand. “I’m William Eady, a detective expert
in searching for missing children. Though I didn’t come here with this case
as my main objective.” “Hello there, thanks for being here. Must be tough. By
the way, your Japanese is great. You’re even at native level.” “Thank you.
Here is Mercury C, the man who called you earlier.” Fukushima extended a
hand to Mercury C, but he didn’t grab it. “Sorry, I’m not a fan of skinship.”
He said, despite liking fistfights. Fukushima retracted his hand, then said,
“The police let us go thanks to your call. I can’t thank you enough, you saved
us. Also, what you told me earlier on the phone, well, how to put it, it made
me feel better...it cheered me up. Personally...this liberation saved me more
than the physical one. Thank you very much.” “Shut up, enough of that. Let’s
just watch the show starting now together.” “Is the affair perhaps in its fi-
nale?” “Beats me. We’ll see that soon enough.” That caused further clamor
inside the Pinehouse. Adding the Angel Bunnies, the great detectives, and us,
there were roughly 30 people in here; Mikami Nils joined us. The Angel Bun-
nies applauded and cheered for him. Nils had the charm of a suricate while
coming off as mature. I sensed something at my feet, looking down, the spiky
pig was pulling on the hems of my pants. “Come here.” I picked her up and
tried to put her in my breast pocket, but the spiky pig softly hit my hand re-
peatedly. I put the spiky pig up to my ear to hear Kozue. “Essessneinpinner is here.
I’m scared, Disco~.”

That was a name that had come up when I first spoke to Kozue here, Es-
sessneinpinner, the one who peels off the nails of sleeping people, with an
all-black face.
“Where is he?”
“Here.”

“Where?”
“Here.”

“Can you see him?”

“He’s hiding for now. Run away~, Disco.”

“Is he here to kill?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”
“I don’t know. I’m scared~.”

“Are you on his list too, Kozue? Are you in danger?”

“I’m fine. I don’t know. But I’m scared. Let’s go there.”

“Where is ‘there’?”
“There! There! Anywhere! I’m scared, Disco, so scared!”

I called out to Mercury C. “Hey, I’m leaving for a bit.” Mercury C waved
me away. Should I have taken him along? And maybe everyone present here
as well? Wouldn’t it sound like “Everyone, get out of this plane! It’s going to
crash!”? It might be worth trying, despite the possible embarrassment...but
no, Kozue came first. I didn’t know what ‘Essessneinpinner’ was, but we
should better be sneaky. First step was bringing Kozue to safety.
However, as I was trying to leave, Hakkyoku talked to me.
“May I ask where are you going? Mister Disco Wednesdayyy...and Yamag-
ishi Kozue-san.”
 I stopped in my tracks. Hakkyoku was staring at my face with a composed
look. Then Mame Gen and Nekoneko. These two shook their hands facing me
as if to say ‘It wasn’t us.’
“I didn’t hear about it from them, Wednesdayyy-san,” Hakkyoku said in
a calm manner. “I will tell you who I spoke to later on. But there is an order to
that.”
“Drop that for now,” I said. It was for Hakkyoku’s well-being. “Someone
here is aiming for your eyes.” Would this line serve to keep Essessneinpinner
in check?
“My eyes are in no danger, Wednesdayyy-san.” Hakkyoku didn’t get the
hint. He didn’t know. And I didn’t know the timing for Essessneinpinner’s
attack... No, they’d always waited for the great detective to end their deduc-
tion. But there was no guarantee they would do the same this time.
“I’ve got nothing to do with this affair to begin with. I’m not even inter-
ested.” I said, then resumed my steps, passing by Hakkyoku’s side, headed to
the main entrance...but then, Hakkyoku said.
“I don’t know what this pig told you, but right now you’re being com-
pletely manipulated by it.”
I unleashed a punch while turning back. Gshh, it made a dry sound as my
fist grazed Hakkyoku’s cheeks. He had twisted his neck again. Instead of re-
tracting my fist, I sent him a shoulder blow. There was no stopping me this
time. My elbow connected with Hakkyoku’s forehead. “Ouhh!” The people
around us screamed, and Hakkyoku fell. But that fall wasn’t a way to avoid
the shock. My attack should’ve dealt some damage. “Haha!” Mercury C was
the only one among our audience to be enjoying it. “That was pretty good,
Detective!” I waited a little, but Hakkyoku didn’t seem to be able to retaliate
before some time. I proceeded towards the entrance again... After walking 2-
3 steps, Hakkyoku said, “Kozue-san isn’t the kid you think she is, Disco-san!”
What are you...I turned back, but couldn’t argue back. He had hit bullseyes
on my fears. “What do you mean,” I asked, but should I have thought about
it for myself? Did that disqualify me as a detective? I’d only been asking oth-
ers for answers...though my job revolved around asking people around to
begin with. I wasn’t an armchair detective like these great detectives. I hadn’t
done a lot since I found myself surrounded by these great detectives, but I got
to meet Kozue the moment I arrived, though after that I’d only listened to
Mercury C. There had been no time for me to act. Was I taking it easy? Was I
slacking off?
“I shall explain in order,” Hakkyoku said. “I will stand up now, so please
don’t attack me any further. Listen to me. I won’t waste much of your time.”
I looked at my watch. 18:55. Hakkyoku’s explanation began. I let him do as he
pleased. If he were to get it wrong and have his eyes stabbed by the mysterious
Essessneinpinner, he’d reap what he sowed.
I put a hand on the spiky pig in my breast pocket.
Kozue.
In the end, how much should I believe in something?
Hakkyoku stood up, still looking charming even with his hair in disarray.
“Wednesdayyy-san, hearing what Daibakushou Curry-san, Judy Dollhouse-
san, and Choukuuji Keraku-san had thought of from Mercury-san, didn’t
you feel like something was missing? Didn’t you feel like there was some-
thing more to talk about? Didn’t you feel like there was one more mystery left,
like something was incomplete? ...As everyone here is aware of, when a great
detective solves a case, they have to make even the smallest details fall into
place. However, that wasn’t the case with their deductions. Originally, that
should never happen to a great detective’s deduction. There was something
omitted from their deductions. That is ‘Pineapple-chan.’”
Every piece of information is meaningful.
The three introduced earlier bursted out in laughter.
What was funny?
“What’s with that ‘Pineapple-chan’?”
Kakiuchi was laughing his heart out. Looking around, no one was frown-
ing like I was. The Angel Bunnies members, Hizuki, and Sabayama were all
smiling as if to ask ‘Yeah, he’s right, what’s up with that weird name?’ Even
discarding the Kakiuchi-Sabayama-Hizuki trio as lost causes, I had thought
the Angel Bunnies would know about her. I looked at Mame Gen and Nekon-
eko. Both of them were looking at me with a meek expression. What?
“Exactly,” after replying to Kakiuchi, Hakkyoku continued. “Why was
‘Pineapple-chan’ not included in their deductions, why did they omit ‘Pine-
apple-chan’ from their deductions, Wednesdayyy-san.”
He called my name.
“I heard about ‘Pineapple-chan’ from Muroi Shakuko,” said Hakkyoku
before asking Kakiuchi, “Sorry, Kakiuchi-san, could you quickly bring my
notebook here? The one with AIR-EDGE. 12” Kakiuchi replied with a beaming
“Yup,” then ran to a room. “Who do you think you are to investigate about
that,” I asked. “A great detective,” he answered, then came his turn to ask.
“Have you checked the ‘Pineapple-chan’ news anywhere else?” I hadn’t.
“You’ve not, have you? Well I did.” Hakkyoku took out his phone and pushed
the redial button. “I am calling Oota Katsushi-san from the Kodansha Third
Literary Publishing Department. He is the editor in charge of Ehimegawa-san
and Anbyouin-san, both published by Kodansha NOVELS. ...Ah, sorry to be
bothering you in such busy times. I am Hakkyoku Sachiari, we talked earlier
on the phone. Is now a good time to talk? ...Yes, Anbyouin-san’s body should
be returned to the Mitamura family by the wake two days from now. Yes. Yes.
Of course, I have Disco Wednesdayyy-san next to me right now. He seems to
be proficient at Japanese, so you can talk to him in Japanese with no worries.
Then I’m passing you to him.” Hakkyoku handed me the phone. I took it.
“Hello?” “Hello there, nice to meet you. Thank you for always supporting us,
I am Oota from the Kodansha Third Literary Publishing Department. Erm, as
Hakkyoku-san asked me to, I shall explain briefly about the ‘Pineapple-chan’
from Anbyouin-san’s house. Is that fine with you?” “...Yes, please do so.”

12
A flat-rate wireless service using PHS. More info here: https://en.wikipe-
dia.org/wiki/Personal_Handy-phone_System#Technology
“Oh, you really are great at Japanese. Erm, the female ghost ‘Pineapple-chan’
started appearing in the Pinehouse roughly six years ago...right around the
summer of the year 2000. So ‘Pineapple-chan’ started appearing just after
Anbyouin-san debuted and built the Pinehouse. But, in reality, Anbyouin-san
was the only one to claim that; no one else had witnessed her. Plus, the editors
rarely entered the Pinehouse itself. Most of our communication was through
e-mails. I’ve come to the Pinehouse to pick manuscripts up multiple times,
but he simply handed them to me in the reception space, then I took my leave
after we talked a little. He seemed to hate having others stay for a long period,
so everyone was careful not to upset him...”
Then the rumors I’d seen on the internet about the editors feeling chills
down their spines was really just a rumor...or something the journalist came
up with?
Hakkyoku took his phone back, thanked Oota, then hung up. “What was
the deal with the page you saw then, Wednesdayyy-san?” Hakkyoku turned
his back to me, then faced me again, a laptop in hand. Kakiuchi was standing
behind him. The laptop was open, displaying an article I had seen before. ‘A
girl’s ghost in a mystery novel author’s house.’ “Mame Gen-san, please en-
lighten the Angel Bunnies members about the situation,” despite being
prompted abruptly by Hakkyoku, Mame Gen didn’t falter one bit and was
about to start explaining Hakkyoku's explanation. “In reality...” however,
looking at her back from my side, Hakkyoku cut her off. “As I thought, Mame
Gen-san, you had investigated the same thing as I did. That’s how great de-
tectives work, normally. There is but one answer, so they walk straight to it.”
He muttered to himself. “This page is very well made, but it’s a fake. It imi-
tated the appearance of a news site and created a few pages about the Panda
Lover Case from the ground up.”
“Hold on...so is the Panda Lover Case a hoax?”
“No, it is real. It’s a genuine case. But,” Hakkyoku paused in his words and
looked at my chest. “I wonder how it is for the ‘Shimada Kikyou’ who ap-
peared in Kozue-chan’s body.”
 I put a hand on my chest and covered the spiky pig. The spiky pig rubbed
its head against the palm of my hand.
Hakkyoku looked away from my chest, turned his back to me, then said to
everyone present,
“Well then, for starters, let’s put a term to the Panda Case.”

“Ah, then I’ll do it,” said Sabayama. Kakiuchi and Hizuki started moving
at once as well. Hakkyoku only told them, “Thanks for your help. I’m done
with taking confirmations and dispatching the doctors. Leave Yakushima to
me.” How could they be so smooth in their cooperation? Hakkyoku spoke to
my bewildered self. “I don’t need to tell them anything. They speculate and
understand on their own, so it’s easy on me.” I asked him, “You didn’t ex-
plain anything to them beforehand?” “Nope~, nothing. Everyone is quick on
the uptake. There might even be a few here who overtook me and have gone
further than me but adjust themselves to my pace.” Sabayama, Kakiuchi, and
Hizuki each made a call. “...Can you really solve the Panda Case?” That
should’ve been my job...though I didn’t do much apart from swearing it to
Shakuko. In the end, it looked like strongly wishing to resolve it wasn’t
enough. That’s obvious. But well, if a case was to be solved, I didn’t care who
the credits would go to. As long as Shimada Kikyou could return to a peaceful
life...thinking that, I recalled what Hakkyoku had said. I wonder how it is for
the ‘Shimada Kikyou’ who appeared in Kozue-chan’s body.
What did it mean?
“Sit back and enjoy for now,” Hakkyoku said. “I got through on my side,”
said Sabayama, followed by Kakiuchi and Hizuki, “Here too,” “Same here.”
And “Here too~,” these were the voices of Mame Gen and Nekoneko who had
partaken before I knew it. Furthermore, Mikami Nils said, “I could call Toda-
san’s family myself, but it would be better not to, wouldn’t it? They wouldn’t
take me seriously. Plus, Hakkyoku-san seems to be the leader of this deduc-
tion.” Hakkyoku bowed to Mikami. The Angel Bunnies around us were mak-
ing a commotion of their bewilderment. “Woah, they’re so good, do you guys
understand what’s happening?” “I can’t follow at all.” “Wait, where’s our
great detective gone?” “Huh?” “Is he still in the toilets? (Pfffft~)” Ignoring
the comedic act from the Angel Bunnies, Hakkyoku made a call. “Ah, hello,
sorry to be bothering you. I am Hakkyoku...is Yasuhiro-san around?” That
was the name of Shimada Kikyou’s father. “...Ah, good evening. I am the great
detective who called you earlier, Hakkyoku Sachiari. We are entering the end-
game of the resolution for the Panda Case, yes, if you could cooperate with us.
Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. A doctor named Yomoda should soon arrive
at your house... Ah, he is already there? Then, please, could you pass the
phone to him? ...Hello, Hakkyoku speaking. Yes. We might as well do them all
at once. Haha.” Hakkyoku covered the mouthpiece and checked with the
other great detectives. Sabayama, Kakiuchi, Hizuki, Nekoneko, and Mame
Gen all put their thumbs up. “Then, Yomoda-san, please go ahead.”
Hakkyoku nodded towards everyone. That was apparently the go sign, since
the great detectives all sent directives through their phones. “I’m counting
on you.” “Go ahead!” “Please.” “Gooo~!” “Proceed ahead.” What were they
doing? Hakkyoku spoke to his phone. “Yomoda-san, please pass the phone
to Yasuhiro-san. ...Ah, Yasuhiro-san, it’s Hakkyoku. Please calm down. It’s a
simple blood test. He will inject her with a shot of glucagon after finishing
checking her blood sugar level. That should raise her glucose level in her liver,
so if everything goes well, Kikyou-san should wake up in five to fifteen
minutes. ...No, in fact, Kikyou-chan most likely lost consciousness due to ex-
treme hypoglycemia. I will let Doctor Yomoda explain the details to you, but
for the moment, please tell your daughter to eat three proper meals a day,
without any snacks, and to calculate the nutritional balance from now on.
Also, please stop interpreting the situation on your own and deal with it with
common sense. ...Yes. Sorry, could you give Dr. Yomoda the phone one last
time? ...Doctor, how is it? ...As I thought. Then...right. I already told him the
minimum, but please have a proper talk with the family as well. Especially the
dad, he seems a little eccentric, so take good care in explaining them. Yes, yes,
thank you kindly. I will excuse myself for the moment. I will contact you again
later.”
Hakkyoku hung up the phone, then said,
“Modern diseases are quite a hassle to take care of.”
“Hypoglycemia...? But why didn’t they take her to a hospital?”
“It’s a common case of discommunication between parents and children.”
“Discommunication?”
“Ah right, this is pseudo English. It refers to when there is a lack of com-
munication between the members of a family.”
“I see.”
“In my calls earlier, I had confirmed that in the Horikiri family in Chofu,
Tokyo; the Kawamura family in Ishigakijima, Okinawa; the Shimada family
in Yakushima, Kagoshima; the Tashiro family in Sendai, Miyagi; and the
Konno family in Saitama City, Saitama, the patterns were all similar. A stub-
born father and his equally stubborn daughter opposing him. Which leads the
daughters to eat snacks in their room instead of proper meals because they
don’t want to eat with their father. After all, they don’t have the money to be
eating out. If one doesn’t eat breakfast and skips lunch at this age, their
health will inevitably go awry. They produce adrenaline due to hypoglycemia
and eat snacks because they don’t want to eat with their father... Snacks raise
the blood sugar level too much, so their pancreas secretes too much insulin
and eventually encounters a malfunction. The insulin secretion goes out of
control. When diabetics inject themselves with a wrong amount of insulin,
they and their families are aware of the problem, so it doesn’t end up like this
case. For the case on our hands, it seems neither the people in question nor
their families had an opportunity to become aware of the problem. On top of
that, the Panda Case caused a sort of mass hysteria, so when a girl who fell
into a coma due to hypoglycemia is found with panda scribbles on her body,
the family immediately blames it on ‘Panda Lover.’ Of course, in contrast to
the disproportionate importance placed on appearances and the general ap-
athy from the parents who don’t bring their daughters in a coma to a hospital,
lies children acting on superficial rebellion to their parents as an expression
of their starvation for love. The parents half-kill their children, and the chil-
dren ask for custody moments before committing suicide.”
The Koori daikon and Touji turnip couldn’t be seen because everyone
thought they had disappeared, but in Panda Lover’s case, the victims existed
because everyone thought they did. In other words, ‘Panda Lover’ was an im-
aginary monster created by the widespread Panda Case. The case was created
by the ones who believed in it.
But what about the first victim who was the trigger for it? Why did all six
victims share the same scribbles related to Panda Lover? Hakkyoku continued
his explanation, as if he had been waiting for my thoughts to reach this point.
“Of course, Toda Erika-chan’s case from Kanazawa, Ishikawa, cannot be
looked at in the same way as the five coming after. But Nekoneko-san is more
apt than me to solve this mystery. Do you want to do it, Nekoneko-san?”
Upon having her name spoken out, Nekoneko Nyannyannyan raised her
slender and white arms, then took a guts pose while cheering herself up with
a “Shhhhhhha~!” She then stood up and started dancing, still in her awfully
chest-revealing dress, making her braless boobs momentarily slip out and
visible for anyone to catch a glance. “Yayyy! Can I really?” While she was frol-
icking around, someone from the Angel Bunnies commented “Hey, I think I
saw something that defies all ethics. Was it my imagination?” making every-
one laugh. Even the girls were laughing, one among them saying “Woaaah~,
she’s so pretty.” I guess that’s how this kind of thing worked between girls.
Nekoneko then walked like a model...ah, I get it, a catwalk, eh. She walked
up to Hakkyoku; he moved out of the way. Facing everyone, Nekoneko started.
“Eh~~~~~rm... I have a confession to make, I’m Panda Lover too. I’m
much more of a Panda Lover than most. I might even be the biggest one out
there. First and foremost, the best thing about the Fiat Panda is Guigiaro’s
design. Its comfort and habit of not quite obeying the conductor’s move-
ments give it a certain charm, making it super cute when it’s in a good mood,
at times I even want to get out of the car to pat it.”
I got lost right from the get-go.
Still in her own world, however, Nekoneko said,
“Ah, but the fastest way to do it would be to show it to everyone, right.”
“Eh!?”
Throwing a glance at Hakkyoku and his widened eyes, Nekoneko passed
by Mame Gen’s side then through the Angel Bunnies, headed for the entrance.
She opened the doors on both sides of the reception space then went outside.
With a great detective coming out, of course, a tumult started outside. We
could see the media people and the policemen through the entrance door
moving in a lump. The microphones and flashes were changing directions to
follow something, a mini patrol car...no, a small automobile with a white-
and-black body. It appeared to be closing in on the entrance, but then its tip
passed through the door before entering the reception space fully. “Ehhhh~!?”
The Angel Bunnies let out a reaction, but the awfully squared, old-fashioned-
looking car didn’t stop there. It came out of the reception space at a decent
speed, so the Angel Bunnies were forced to run away while screaming, but
due to the loud engine of the car Nekoneko was driving, these screams were
radically lessened. The great detectives had long evacuated the place and
were now waiting calmly, but the Angel Bunnies continued running around
frantically, somehow enjoying the chaos. Mercury C didn’t budge an inch, he
simply looked at the car with a big grin on his face. The piece of junk finally
stopped roughly one meter before reaching me, who was the only one besides
Mercury C to not run away, though it’s just that I didn’t really know if I should
do anything. To be honest, I knew what Nekoneko wanted to do, but I was
worried whether the worn-out automobile would listen to her. I was so glad
my shins were intact. Nekoneko stopped the engine, making a calm return.
Giiih, the door let out a grand creak, then Nekoneko got out of the car.
 “So? Isn’t it cute? It’s the original Fiat Panda created for test purposes in
1979. Ain’t that amazing? It’s mostly made out of straight lines but doesn’t it
look kinda round? And this white-black body is so reminiscent of pandas! It
has a docile, sorta stupid-looking image. You know, honestly, I don’t recog-
nize anything other than this as a panda.”
...Nobody knew how to react to this proclamation. Mame Gen softly called
out to her, “Neko-chan, everyone’s creeped out, watch out.”
“You got it wrong, Mame-chan, everyone is speechless in admiration,”
maintained Nekoneko. “I contacted Assistant Inspector Sakabe Mitsuru from
the Ishikawa Prefecture Police Headquarters to confirm my deduction, then
advised him to go hear from the salaryman Murakami Tomoya-kun currently
residing in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, at 18:37 today to shine light on his involve-
ment with the case. I had him send me the picture data from Toda Erika-
chan’s phone...” Nekoneko took out her own phone, she accessed something
while making her many nonsensical phone straps sway around. “Ah, here.
This one.” She turned the display towards us, but it was so small and so far
we couldn’t see anything. “This is a couple photo of Erika-chan and Tomoya-
kun with a Panda in the background. Tomoya-kun’s Panda is a 2000 model
painted in blue Hobby Color. It’s not much different from a normal Japanese
car. I have to admit, the cooler and the power windows make me a bit jealous.”
“We can’t see~!” someone from the Angel Bunnies said.
“Ah, then I’ll pass it around later. But don’t look at any other picture
please. And don’t push any button under any circumstance.”
“Then just send it by e-mail. We’ll look at it on our phones.”
“Oh, good idea. Then I’ll send it now!” Nekoneko said, then moved her
fingers. “Done. It’s sent~.”
“Oh, yeah it arrived.” Accompanied by a reception sound.
“...Oi oi, why do you know Kawai-chan’s mail address!?” another troupe
member pointed out, causing them all to start clamoring. Nekoneko joined
them acting all antsy, so Hakkyoku had to pull her back to reality, “Nekon-
eko-san, the deduction, please.”
 “Ah, yes yes. So as you can see, Panda Lover’s panda isn’t from panda bear,
but from the giant Italian automobile manufacturer Fiat’s extremely popular
car. I couldn’t tell you what happened between Toda Erika-chan and Mura-
kami Tomoya-kun in the night from the 4th of October to the 5th, but Erika-
chan fell into a coma and Tomoya-kun fled alone, not bringing her to a hos-
pital, and kept silent to this day. And there are two scenarios I can think of for
those scribbles. The first one would be that, when Erika-chan collapsed be-
cause of her quarrel with Tomoya-kun, she thought she was gonna die and
left a sort of dying message on her stomach pointing at Tomoya-kun, writing
the name ‘Panda Lover.’ But when Tomoya-kun found her, he covered-up
her face in panda-style scribbles to stray the investigation away from his be-
loved car. The other one would be that, in a fit of guilt, when Tomoya-kun
mistakenly thought of Erika-chan as dead, he wrote ‘Panda Lover’ to point at
himself and left. But Erika-chan was still alive, and she applied panda make-
up onto her face with a hazy mind to cover for Tomoya-kun, then lost con-
sciousness. Naturally, I’m wishing for the latter to be what actually hap-
pened.”
But the latter was less likely. Would a girl on the verge of death use her last
bit of strength to scribble all over her face? A fourteen-year-old girl at that?
But I didn’t comment. That wasn’t the main problem.
Did that mean there was no ‘Panda Lover’?
Which meant...as if my thoughts were traced, Hakkyoku spoke out to me
then.
“Wednesdayyy-san, if the soul-stealer Panda Lover doesn’t exist, what
exactly is the deal with ‘Shimada Kikyou’ who visited Kozue-chan?”
Kozue was in my hands.
“Don’t talk about that here.”
“...Then let’s talk about something else.” Hakkyoku took out his phone
and made a call. “Ah, hi, good evening. Is this Yamazaki-san’s residence? I
am the great detective Hakkyoku Sachiari. Is Haruyo-san available? ...Ah,
hello, nice to meet you. I am the great detective Hakkyoku Sachiari. I am at
the Pinehouse currently, solving the case revolving around Mitamura-san. I
have something to confirm with you. Could I borrow some of your
time? ...Thank you very much. Yamazaki-san. You came to Mitamura-san’s
house twice a week to take care of him, right? Yes, for the past six years. I
want to ask about his behavior during your presence...have you ever seen
Mitamura-san’s back? ...Yes, I know it’s natural to assume you’ve seen it, but
have you really? You can take your time remembering it. ...Ah, no? So you ha-
ven’t. Understood. I’m really glad I could confirm that. Ah, I will also ask just
in case, have you ever encountered a girl’s ghost inside the Pinehouse or had
any similar experience? ...Neither. I see. Ah, no no, I’m not saying there are
rumors of that sort. Just an idea on our side. Yes, of course. Oh, right, you have
to prepare the wake. The wake and funeral will take place at the family house,
if I remember correctly. Sorry for the inconvenience when you are so
busy. ...Yes, the case should soon come to a close. ...Yes, that’s...indeed, I hope
it will be a good memorial for Mitamura-san. Well then, excuse me.”
Hakkyoku-san hung up. “Yamazaki Haruyo-san was Anbyouin-san’s second
cousin. She helped him with his groceries and cooking.”
What was that about whether she saw his back? Before I could ask any
question, Hakkyoku stood up and headed for Mitamura Saburou’s office on
the first floor...but Hizuki stood up and called out to him.
“Hakkyoku-san, I have the chair here.”
Hakkyoku came to a halt. “Great anticipation, I expected no less from you,
Hizuki-san.” “Nah, you know how it is, I gotta make a role for myself.” “I’m
sorry for keeping all the best bits to myself this time.” “No worries, in cases
like these we all know the first one to speak gets the win.” “Thank you for
your kindness. Then, can I borrow this chair?” “Go ahead.”
Hakkyoku raised the chair Hizuki had been sitting on in the air. It was a
wooden stool, the kind with a back only up to the hips often found in bars.
The seat had wisteria embroidered on it.
“Wednesdayyy-san, this is the chair Anbyouin-san used in his office.”
 The Angel Bunnies were as surprised as I. “I wouldn’t last a full day sitting
on this~.” “It’s a sure-fire hernia!” “Just looking at this is making my back
hurt.” I internally agreed with their rambling.
Putting down the chair, Hakkyoku came back to my side. “That can’t be
an author’s chair,” I said. Hakkyoku laughed, “There is a reason behind that.”
He then continued. “Well then, next, let’s dive one level deeper into An-
byouin-san’s life, shall we?”
Saying that, Hakkyoku typed something on his laptop and opened a
webpage. “Look at this.”
That’s when Mikami Nils came in. I hadn’t noticed him until he crouched
near me, despite being so on the edge. “It will be much easier for everyone to
see with this,” he said, connecting a cable to the computer. As a result, the
screen I was looking at was replicated on a 50 inch TV screen that had been
set up without me realizing once again, splitting the Angel Bunnies into two
groups: those that gulped at that sight and those who raised a scream.
On the screen was displayed the homepage of a hardcore gay S&M club
apparently located in Fukui City named Shimiya HP. Some pictures showed
men in outfits having the time of their lives with S&M goods. The dark room
was lit by a simple setup of red and blue lights, showing the costumed men
dancing along with the lights...
“Hey, Mikami-kun, come over here.” A few girls among the Angel Bun-
nies took Mikami Nils in custody. “I’m fine with it~,” Mikami tried to argue
back, but he didn’t have a say in this.
Hakkyoku switched us from the members page to the invitation message
page. Three men were lined up. Among the policeman, the body piercing man,
and the bold macho man, Hakkyoku clicked on the policeman. An unfathom-
able picture showed up. “Are these guys Fukui residents for real?” someone
said. I returned my eyes to Hakkyoku and saw he was talking to someone on
the phone. “Ah, yes, Araki-san?” Under the picture of the ‘policeman’ was
written ‘Araki Kazuo.’ Everyone went silent and focused on Hakkyoku. “Ah,
sorry to bother you so many times. Yes. We’re all looking at the homepage
right now. Yes. So, could you repeat what you told me earlier, the name
Mitamura-san went by in this club?” Hakkyoku took the phone away from
his ears and pushed it against mine.
I heard a hoarse voice. “Ah~? I told ya, it’s Yagamo, are ya listening?”
Hakkyoku returned the phone to his ears. “Could the arrow come off?”
He put the phone back to my ears.
“It can’t~, that thing was truly well made~.”
“Thank you very much for your help. Excuse me,” Hakkyoku said before
hanging up.
The Angel Bunnies were asking for answers, “Eh?” “Ehh?” “What the
heck was that~?” so Hakkyoku told them.
“It’s Yagamo. That infamous Yagamo. A duck pierced by an arrow.13”
Hakkyoku got to the main point.
“Wednesdayyy-san, how did you come to know about the Panda Case?”
Because of ‘Shimada Kikyou’s’ arrival. In Kozue’s body.
“Wednesdayyy-san, why did you come to the Pinehouse?”
Because I learned Kozue was here, calling for me.
But that news page was a fake. Who’d created it?
The trigger to open that page was the ‘Pineapple Tunnel.’ Kozue was cry-
ing. She was afraid of the ‘Pineapple Tunnel.’
You can go. I will write you letters.
Mercury C laughed. “Oi, Detective, you can keep quiet all you want, but he
won’t go away. He’s not a hurricane, you know?”
Hakkyoku said. “I think you can see the picture too now, Wednesdayyy-
san. Everything was orchestrated by Kozue-san.”
I responded. “A six-year-old girl can’t fabricate a page or put it online.”

13
Yagamo, literally arrow (ya) + duck (kamo), is also the name of a pintail duck discov-
ered in January 1993 around Shakujii River that was alive despite being pierced by a cross-
bow arrow. After a few weeks of roaming, it was taken into custody in Ueno Zoo where the
arrow was removed from its body. That incident became a social problem in Japan, raising
questions about animal welfare.
 Hakkyoku said. “Kozue-san isn’t a mere six-year-old girl. A seventeen-
year-old Kozue goes in and out of her, doesn’t she?”
I instantly punched Hakkyoku, but this time he wouldn’t twist his neck to
ward my attack off. He caught my fist with a hand he put up before his cheeks
and stopped it. All the while keeping a composed expression and looking at
me in the eyes. “Kozue-san is all right,” he said.
“Oh, in need of backing?” Mercury C delightfully proposed.
“No need, Mercury. Don’t bother us,” I told him, but—
“Not to you, Detective. I was talking to Mister Great Detective.”
I retracted my fist momentarily then unleashed another punch. Sbaam!
This time he couldn’t avoid it. He hadn’t twisted his neck either. Hakkyoku
fell onto the ground and the Angel Bunnies made a racket. Even among all this
noise, I managed to hear Hakkyoku’s voice. “Are the events that happened to
Kozue really due to timeslips?”
“What else could explain it?”
“However, the ‘Panda Kidnapping Case from eleven years ago’ happened
in the ‘Kozue-san from eleven years in the future’s’ ‘present.’”
“Think about the most straightforward solution, Wednesdayyy-san. ‘Ko-
zue’-san doesn’t come from the future. She comes from the past.”
But that wasn’t possible. “The six-year-old Kozue and the ‘Kozue from
the future’ are for sure the same person. I’ve put that in question many times
and confirmed it myself.”
“There is one way for that to happen. And I’m not talking about age re-
gression,” Hakkyoku laughed at that, then went on. “It’s reincarnation.”

10

Hakkyoku stood up. “There are many past examples of reincarnations

scattered here and there. The most famous among them would be the Tibetan
living Buddha, Dalai Lama, but the politification of that reincarnation turned
it into a complex case, so I shall avoid using it as an example. For another
famous example we have the Indian young girl, Shimi. As soon as this girl
learned how to speak, she begged her parents to let her go meet her husband
she was separated from by death. And when they visited that region, she knew
about circumstances that only someone who had lived for many years there
would know. She conversed with her husband and mother from her past life
like an adult woman and remembered things only the family would know. It’s
so mysterious. But at the same time, it’s something we can easily accept. The
idea of reincarnation is a very natural thing for humans. Some people die and
others come to life. Living in such a world, it’s most natural for one to feel
like life is a loop, that it gets recycled. Life exists in a certain fixed quantity.
Those who climbed up to heaven wait for their turn to be reincarnated. They
cannot choose what they will be reborn into. It’s not rare to see that phenom-
enon depicted like roulette in gag manga. We live in a world where the idea of
reincarnation is extremely present. We even have cases tending to demon-
strate its existence. And to be honest, I believe in that. I believe that this is
what happened to Kozue-chan.
“Moreover, it happened in such a surprisingly complex way.”
Hakkyoku was looking right at me. “Let’s talk about Norma Braun-san.”
Norma?
I was startled. Why would Norma’s name come out of this guy’s mouth in
such a situation? How deep had these great detectives gone in investigating
me?
Why had they investigated me this much?
Hakkyoku talked to Mercury C. “Excuse me, could you restrain Wednes-
dayyy-san’s movements?”
“Shah!”
What the heck, Mercury C swiftly went around to my back, stuck both his
arms under my armpits, then locked his hands behind my neck.
“Wait, you got me wrong. I meant, you know, something more normal,
like grabbing his shoulders.”
 “Such a downer,” Mercury complained as he removed his arms before
standing next to me and putting a hand around my shoulders. “Shah!”
“First, take a look at this.” Hakkyoku handed me a certificate of residence
from Shizuoka City in Shizuoka Prefecture. The head of household was
Fuyuno Shinji. The wife was Fuyuno Braun Norma.

My mind couldn’t make sense of anything anymore. Fuyuno? Norma?

Shizuoka was the city Shakuko lived in. Fuyuno was the surname Shakuko
took upon getting married. Her husband’s name was...I forgot. And now I had
a certificate of residence with the name Fuyuno Braun Norma hanging before
my eyes. What did it mean?
“Norma Braun married a Japanese man and started living over here. Three
years ago.”
The class reunion from three years ago. The diamond ring and the cooked
duck on the table. Goddamn Disco, shit. You finally talked to me.
“Since then, you have started accepting requests from Japanese people
more frequently, Wednesdayyy-san. You made yourself a Japanese name and
learned Japanese. And you met Kozue-chan five months ago.
“Mercury-san, please hold his shoulders tight. Bad news is coming next.”
Hold on, why is Norma Fuyuno? Naturally, the screaming of my heart
didn’t reach him, and the bad news arrived.
“Please calm down,” Hakkyoku said while typing on his keyboard. He
opened another page. A news site.

A licenseless truck went on a rampage in Chofu City causing five deaths.

On the morning of the 21st, a truck crashed in the roundabout of Chofu North Station in
Chofu City. In this incident where many employees and students commuting to work or school,
trying to board their bus or cars, got run over, another victim, Muroi Shakuko (22, student),
passed away in the hospital. The cause of death is a blow to the head. The Chofu Police con-
tinues their investigation of the suspect, a self-proclaimed musician (26), whom they arrested
on the scene, changing the charges of accidental infliction of injuries to accidental infliction of
fatal injuries. (July 23rd 2000)

Hakkyoku scrupulously showed me the same news on four different web-

sites, even letting me choose the news sites.
There was no need for Mercury C’s presence. I bet Hakkyoku was wary of
me growing violent or shouting or crying, but I didn’t react that way. I
couldn’t understand. I didn’t understand whether I should go violent,
whether I should shout, and whether I should cry.
Shakuko had died. But she came back to life? As Kozue? Then Kozue didn’t
exist. She never had. But Shakuko did. Even though she’d died.
What should I’ve been doing? Grief? Rejoice? Be surprised? Not knowing
the answer angered me. I headbutted Mercury C. I then stood up and took a
step towards Hakkyoku to punch him. But Mercury C grappled me from be-
hind like earlier. But he didn’t punch me. He didn’t kick me. He didn’t
headbutt me back. He only restrained me. “Let go, Mercury! Move away!” But
Mercury C continued to inhibit me and only told me “Calm down,” so I
screamed “FUCK! Stop that, Mercury! Fuck off!” I hadn’t cried from anger
since I was a kid. Reincarnation? Shit! In the end, I did go violent, shout, and
cry. I was both grieving and rejoicing and surprised. My emotions formed a
whirlwind, swallowing me in. I felt like a tornado was gonna sweep me away,
so I planted my feet on the ground. If I hadn’t done that, I might’ve crumbled
into tears and been unable to keep myself standing. Mercury C held me as I
was on the verge of falling. He was hugging me with his hands around my
shoulders.
“Reincarnation can’t be...” I stopped myself mid-sentence. Reincarnation
can’t be real? That would mean Shakuko’s tragic death would be the end for
her. I would lose Shakuko. If reincarnation was real, I would get Shakuko back,
but that would come along with confusion.
“I cannot confirm if that is really how reincarnation works, but—”
Hakkyoku resumed his explanation in a calm tone. “—supposedly, souls are
more prone to move around when the times of death and birth are close.”
Shakuko died six years ago, in July. Kozue was born six years ago. In July
too. I asked Hakkyoku,
“Is ‘Kozue’ Shakuko?”
Mame Gen had taken the spiky pig in custody.
Hakkyoku answered. “Ultimately, yes.”
“Ultimately?”
“The Pinehouse was built in July of the year 2000. Mitamura Saburou, who
had shut himself in it, almost completely stopped his activities as Ehimegawa
Juuzou and started a new writing career as Anbyouin Owaru. He then started
commuting to Shimiya, took the nickname Yagamo, and started using this
chair.”
The chair Hakkyoku had me sit on was the one that came from Anbyouin’s
office. The cheap, wooden stool.
“I am pretty sure the arrow present through ‘Yagamo’s’ back was present
this time again, piercing his body.”
I looked up at Hakkyoku’s face. “But...Anbyouin began being Yagamo six
years ago, no?” Was this case caused by the same arrow? Or was this a murder
inspired by Mitamura Saburou’s nickname?
“No, you see, I’m imagining that Mitamura Saburou died six years ago.
That he didn’t die from an arrow stabbing him last night, but six years ago.”
“Six years ago?”
“Exactly. The centaur unleashed his arrow six years ago and was long
done in murdering Mitamura-san.”
“But Mitamura was still alive. He even wrote novels.”
“That’s because a new soul entered this body from which one had just left.
Thus, Mitamura-san had resuscitated. But he was someone else on the inside,
so obviously he couldn’t write the same novels. That’s why he chose to re-
debut under a different pen name.”
“Whose soul was...”
“Muroi Shakuko-san’s.”
July of the year 2000.
Hakkyoku continued. “The periods in which Anbyouin Owaru started
writing and Muroi Shakuko-san died match. Okay, from now on, you are the
only one able to confirm the truth from your subjective point of view,
Wednesdayyy-san. I am not more informed about this case than someone di-
rectly involved with it. That is why I will rely on your sensations, Wednes-
dayyy-san. Muroi Shakuko-san entered the body of Mitamura Saburou-san,
who was in a state of apparent death after getting shot at by a bowgun, and
spent six years as the author Anbyouin Owaru. After all, it’s scary to remove
such an arrow, so she chose a chair with a low back and slept on her side or
stomach at night. She then went bold and started frequenting Shimiya, got
the nickname Yagamo, and enjoyed various styles of sex as she wrote mystery
novels. As someone who knew Muroi-san during her time alive, does that be-
havior match with something she would do, Wednesdayyy-san?”
The mysterious woman Shak who taught me part of the kamasutra and
had many rumors circulating about her. It wasn’t a question of matching or
not. “If it’s her...nothing would surprise me.”
“I see. Then, after having lived six years as Anbyouin Owaru, Shakuko-
san died last night from the arrow still stuck in her body. My hypothesis is
that she had fallen in love with the great detective Daibakushou Curry-san,
whom she hung out with as an author. And she fell victim to that. When Dai-
bakushou-san had his eyes stabbed by chopsticks, she committed suicide in-
side the Pinehouse.”
Judy Dollhouse’s deduction almost hit bullseyes. She just couldn’t see the
big picture.
“And in the same July of 2000, Yamagishi Kozue-chan came to life.”
Hakkyoku said so, making me scared all the way down to my bladder.
 July of 2000. Again. Hold on, if Hakkyoku was right then only Shakuko and
Mitamura Saburou had died in July of 2000. And Shakuko had entered
Mitamura Saburou’s half-dead body. Then what happened to Mitamura
Saburou?
That was where my fear came from, and it got confirmed.
“Thinking his body had died from the bowgun shot, Mitamura Saburou’s
soul jumped out of his body and got reincarnated as Yamagishi Kozue. That
is the real reason why the Yamagishis couldn’t love their daughter, Wednes-
dayyy-san. Isn’t it natural? A middle-aged mystery novel author entered
their daughter’s body. But when Oda Kenji was offered to adopt Kozue-chan
after the abduction and refused, that was for a different reason. Wednes-
dayyy-san, when Oda Kenji-san kidnapped Kozue-chan, did he only spoil
her? Was the intent behind the kidnapping purely to spoil her?”
Sssssss. My crotch was hot.
“That should be the case,” I affirm. “He shouldn’t have done anything
else.”
“Would the wealthy Oda Kenji-san kidnap a girl solely to spoil her?”
“Some people are like that.”
“...Then, let me put it this way. What about the man with a black bird tat-
too on his right arm and glasses Kozue-chan talked about as ‘Shimada
Kikyou’? Ah, Wednesdayyy-san, don’t move. Kozue-chan is fine.”
The spiky pig was in Mame Gen’s hands.
“Wednesdayyy-san, focus on the deduction happening here. The tattooed
man, isn’t he perhaps this man?” Hakkyoku returned the screen to the
Shimiya website from earlier, clicked a few times, and reached a certain pic-
ture. It captured a half-naked, bald man with a swastika hanging around his
neck. He was skinny and wore glasses. Despite being clearly Japanese, he had
the neo-Nazi slogan ‘WHITE MEN MUST UNITE’ tattooed on him. Japanese
people would do anything for fashion. He also had a Nazi crest tattooed on his
right arm.
That wasn’t a crow at all.
 It was an eagle.

“The person who had sex with this man was Muroi Shakuko-san who had
entered Mitamura Saburou’s body. And the only two able to talk about this
memory are this man and Muroi Shakuko-san’s soul. I have confirmed this
man’s well-being. I don’t know what you would do in a rush of emotions, so
I won’t let you interact with him, but he is living normally. I also confirmed
with him the sex acts with Yagamo. As well as the four fingers.”
He moved to another page from the same Shimiya website. It displayed
pictures of many gadgets. It was apparently the page to display and sell the
original goods the members had invented. Each and all of them were
haaaaaardcore. Among them was a grotesque finger. It was captioned:

‘Finger from the dead ready to perforate your fucking ass!’

The finger from that picture resembled mine... There was no indication for
the name of the seller. But I could make a conjecture for whose mind had
come up with that adult’s toy.

“These were the fingers you found inside Kozue-san’s vagina.”

Kozue was Shakuko. How was sex with my fingers anything special?
 Who cared. I continued thinking. Kozue would need to have died very re-
cently for Shakuko to enter her.
And the only occasion for that would be Oda Kenji’s abduction. Oda Kenji
had killed Kozue. Kozue’s body should have a wound I hadn’t noticed.
Hakkyoku resumed, probably having read my expression. “That’s why
Oda Kenji-san took Kozue-san far away. And the girl he thought had died was
still alive, so of course he would be scared. There is also the possibility
Shakuko-san did something to him. That said, why is it that hard for
Shakuko-san to enter newborns’ bodies like normal? It seems she can only
enter dead people’s bodies.”
She’s always been a strange woman, I told myself and let on a smile. “But
then, why did Shakuko invite me to the Pinehouse?”
Hakkyoku answered me. “Either to function as reinforcements to us, or
because she wanted none other than Wednesdayyy-san to solve the mystery
she left behind.”
And thanks to having come here, I learned a lot. Like about Kozue’s death.
Should I kill Oda?
But the current Kozue existed thanks to Oda.
But Kozue had been killed once.
I was a missing kid detective. There was nothing more common to me than
finding out the kid I was searching for was dead.
“Then Kozue’s soul stayed in Chofu the entire time...” I raised my face,
talking to myself. Mame Gen. The spiky pig in her arms.
“But then why did Kozue enter the spiky pig?”
Hakkyoku answered my question with another one.
“Then tell me, how did you mistake your beloved Norma Braun as
Shakuko-san?”
Ssssssssss. I was on the verge of leaking out.
Hakkyoku made a diagnosis. “There is a name for those symptoms,
Wednesdayyy-san. It is commonly known as delusional misidentification
syndrome. As for the specific classification, you qualify for the Capgras delu-
sion. The Capgras delusion is a disease of the mind that makes you doubt
whether the people close to you have been replaced by fakes, that they might
be impostors sent in by someone with a dark ambition concerning you.”
Ahhhh, I nearly raised my voice.
“When you thought of Norma-san as Shakuko-san, did you happen to hy-
pothesize whether that ‘Shakuko’ was ‘Norma who came here to deceive
you’?”
Bullseye. A truly great detective.
“But that twist might be justifiable by an occupational disease from being
a detective. Or maybe that disease can only be contracted by detectives. And
your chronic disease also shows in this doll. Mame Gen-san, is there any soul
inhabiting this boar doll?”
Upon being asked, Mame Gen answered in a tone apologetic to me.
“...None.”
“Wednesdayyy-san believes there is Kozue-chan’s soul inside it. Is that
boar really empty?”
“Yes.”
“Not a boar, it’s a spiky pig.” Saying that, I stood up and looked at Mame
Gen. She walked to me. I received the spiky pig, which fell flat on my palms.
Kozue wasn’t there.
She had vanished before I knew it.
“But this spiky pig came running to me. I could even hear it.” I recalled
the name of that disease. Capgras delusion. “That disease makes me think
people around me are impostors, right? Then why would I imagine the people
around me to be where there is nothing at all. That doesn’t fit, does it?”
“That has a name too. In psychopathology, that symptom is called a
Fregoli delusion. It’s another kind of delusional misidentification syndrome.
You must have developed both concurrently.”
“...But Mercury C saw all of it. He saw the spiky pig rush up to me. Right!?”
I looked at Mercury C.
 “No, I didn’t see anything. There was this doll at your feet before I knew
it, and you picked it up looking ecstatic.”
I was astonished. “But didn’t you say it was cute?”
“I mean, that plushie is cute, isn’t it? Wasn’t that why you held it so
dearly?”
“...”
“I wouldn’t judge anyone for what they do in their alone time, you know?”
Was that supposed to be consolation...
My disease might’ve been what made Kozue’s body look to grow or shrink.
So the kind Norma simply went along with my delusions, and Hoshino Ma-
sato was a lolicon to begin with. Then Kozue speaking like a seventeen-year-
old when Hoshino assaulted her was a mistake on Shakuko’s part.
Hakkyoku called out to me as I was dumbfounded.
“I think the important point is not whether you’re showing such symp-
toms but their contents, don’t you think so? Your delusional misidentifica-
tion syndrome is a disease that makes you think of the people around you as
threats under disguise. In your case, Wednesdayyy-san, that manifested as
‘Kozue-chan,’ ‘Kozue-san,’ ‘Shakuko-san,’ and ‘Norma Braun-san.’ ...Why
do the people you cherish look like threats in your eyes, Wednesdayyy-san?”
My breathing had completely stopped, my mind was drawing a total blank.
Hakkyoku went in for the finishing blow with no care for me. “Well then,
let’s conclude this on a happy note. The good points of this case are, erm...”
as he was struggling to think of something, one of the Angel Bunnies mem-
bers spoke out.
“Nekoneko-san’s slip out~.”
Hakkyoku clapped his hands, said “That’s it!” and made everyone laugh.
Nekoneko objected, “Geez~,” and clinged to Mame Gen. Thus came the big
denouement in the entire hall, leaving me behind.
Among all of that, Mercury C said.
“Oi oi, what about the great detectives dying one after the other?”
 That didn’t kill the concluding atmosphere. Hakkyoku looked at Mercury
C, still putting up his usual smile. “I finally understood. These suicides
weren’t a sign of having failed as a great detective. It’s the inverse. They could
realize their mistakes because they were great detectives. And they all chose
the same death as the one the first great detective suffered.”
“Huh, how does that mess work?” Mercury C asked in a bored tone.
Hakkyoku looked at him, laughed, then looked at his watch.
“Ah, it’s already this late. I must hurry! I’m leaving the rest to the remain-
ing great detectives! Send me my luggage by mail or throw it away as you
please!”
After this one-sided request, Hakkyoku ran to the entrance empty-
handed. The people gathered before the door moved away to let him pass,
then the sight of his back, running away, was swallowed by those people and
disappeared. The clamor outside was getting further and further.
I looked at my watch. 19:16. It might be tight to get the 19:22 train, but I
bet Iwasaki would be speedy enough.
Still, these were some dense 20 minutes.
“Mercury C, what are you gonna do for tonight?”
“Maybe car jack this and go home.”
He said, looking at Nekoneko’s Panda.
“That looks really unsteady. Would it last until Tokyo?”
My phone rang in my back pocket. It displayed ‘Shakuko.’
Norma.
I took it.
“Yes?”
“Disco~. Where are you now?”
“Mm? Kozue?” Shakuko. “Still in Fukui.”
“Are you okay, Disco?”
I answered, unable to remember the definition of ‘okay.’ “I’m okay.”
 “But Essessneinpinner is over there.”

I felt dizzy.
For a second, I wondered if I was once again imagining a voice, but that
wasn’t possible. That was clearly Kozue’s voice.
Then the limp spiky pig from earlier was the shell left behind by Kozue’s
soul when it returned to her body in Chofu.
“Disco, run away! Essessneinpinner is dangerous!”

Arriving precisely at 19:22 at West Akatsuki Station, the staff had been
contacted and was to make the train wait for him, but Hakkyoku Sachiari was
found dead in the backseat of the taxi driver Iwasaki Kousuke. With chop-
sticks through his eyes. Of course, the police would conclude it to be a suicide.

Hakkyoku wasn’t the only one to be found dead with chopsticks through
his eyes. Sabayama Nigouhan, Kakiuchi Mamajump, Hizuki, Mame Gen,
Nekoneko Nyannyannyan; all five of them were found dead in the rooms they
were assigned in the Pinehouse. The police would judge their deaths as sui-
cides too, no doubt.
Seeing the corpses of these five, Mikami Nils sharted his pants. You really
couldn’t count on kids to control their crotch.
The Angel Bunnies troupe member Hongou Takeshi (Hongou
Takeshitakeshi) came out of the toilets at 19:19. He got made fun of by his
fellow troupe members, who were in a celebratory mood because of the res-
olution, but their behavior would change once the six great detectives were
found dead.
A call from Yakushima rang on Hakkyoku’s phone. It was Shimada
Kikyou’s dad, Yasuhiro. No one picked up, so the answering machine rang.
“Ah~, Shimada speaking. I’ve been waiting after the doctor’s injection, but
Kikyou isn’t waking up at all? Get back at me at once when you hear this, I’m
waiting for your explanation.”

Then, later that night, I would meet Essessneinpinner. That damn inar-
ticulate Kozue. It was SS Nail Peeler. The one peeling the nails of sleeping
people. It was pretty literal. SS Nail Peeler would tell me that SS didn’t stand
for Schutzstaffel but for Super Sadistic.
Part 3: Resolution and “◯N◯N”
 1

“Why are you asking this? Do you really need to ask that to tell?” Shakuko
said so from the other side of the phone. Of course I could tell. But I had be-
lieved in it thorough — a belief that had upset my world. The bigger a lie is,
the easier it is to believe it; that was true. That upset was denied in less than
ten minutes, but after having my cognition and my old world messed up so
hard, how was I meant to believe that the new world presented to me was a
lie?
Wait, stop that, me! I pulled the phone away from my ears and shook my
head.
‘How was I meant to believe’? ...Who was I, the protagonist of a tragedy? I
was a fool for not putting in question the strange and idiotic interpretation
that shitty great detective (though I shouldn’t talk ill of the dead) came up
with on the spot.
‘How was I meant to believe’? Dude, there’s no manual on how to believe.
Believing means accepting something as is. My world hadn’t changed one bit.
So I only had to believe in that...but what hurt the most is that I couldn’t be-
lieve in myself. I had to get a grip and believe in myself. I don’t have Capgras
delusions. I had to believe in myself anew. Believing in myself enables me to
doubt. To be a detective. To pursue the truth. To ascertain facts. That’s a pre-
requisite to work as a detective. Okay, time to restore my mind. Retrieve
yourself from before that idiot Hakkyoku’s lousy deduction. The 26-minute-
long stunt was now over. These guys spouted out whatever they pleased, then
suddenly pulled down the curtain on the stage and jumped into a coffin. But
life continued for those alive. The case too. Kozue was still in a pinch and none
of the problems had been taken care of!
“Hey, Disco, are you okay?” Shakuko’s voice faintly reached my ears from
the phone in my hand. “I’m okay.” “Get a grip. Don’t lose to the detectives.
There’s the soul of Kozue-chan, Kikyou-chan, and a bunch of other girls on
the line, remember? You’re a child-focused detective, so you gotta do your
best for the children! There’s so many lost souls you gotta retrieve!”
Shaaah!
Shakuko’s scolding was effective in cheering me up. I was only waiting for
such a harsh comment. In reality, I should’ve pulled one from inside myself,
but sometimes it’s necessary to get others to say what you wanna hear.
Right, I was the missing child detective, Disco Wednesdayyy. The enemies
of children are evil, no matter who they are.
I told Shakuko, “The police will surely question you about the fake news
page and fake official documents you made. There will also be judicial conse-
quences. Be sure to prepare a lawyer.”
Shakuko chuckled. “It won’t be such a big crime if I properly explain the
circumstances. Who’s gonna blame a young maiden’s love?”
Did she really think ‘love’ could justify having created 17 different fake
news pages about her death on different websites and getting married under
a fake passport named after Norma Braun?
...She probably did. I let out a sigh. As I’d told Hakkyoku, nothing Shakuko
would do could surprise me. Seriously. Hakkyoku blamed me for only having
checked one news site, but he ended up committing the same blunder by only
confirming four of them...that said, who in the world is skeptical enough to
check a certain news story on 20 different websites?
I looked at my watch. 20:01. That screwed me up for a good 30 minutes. I
stayed in the center hall of the Pinehouse for the whole time, in the driver's
seat of the Fiat Panda. When I unsteadily opened the door of the car 30
minutes ago, I did so thinking someone had to take the car outside since its
owner had died, but once I placed my butt on the fabric seat and closed the
creaking door with a Giiih Blam!, I suddenly couldn’t move anymore. I stayed
there and looked at Nekoneko Nyannyannyan’s corpse being carried out
through the windshield. At that moment, I was the car’s eyes. Not myself. I
had sunk somewhere deep and dark and far. I had become the Panda’s eyes
and gazed at the great detective who’d once loved me taking her leave. The
car had lost its rider, but it was a car, a mere machine, so it apparently
couldn’t feel human sentiments like grief. It seems like it couldn’t quite un-
derstand the fact that no one would move it around anymore. Even when at
an eternal stop, a car was still a car...that experience gave me a deep under-
standing of that. They don’t budge. They’re not like dogs or cats raised by
humans. That’s why they don’t do anything more than stare at their owner’s
death. The stretcher holding Nekoneko passed in front of the Panda...
“Listen well. Disco, I have no idea what’s happening over on your side,
and I have no idea what’s happening over here to begin with, so we’re relying
on you. You gotta clear up your mind!” Shakuko told me. I was already out of
Nekoneko’s Panda. I was standing. That was the first time I had spent a whole
30 minutes worrying over something. And that comes from someone who’d
survived countless amounts of twists. I’d been in a business where being sur-
prised could result in a hole being bored through your chest; not much could
surprise me. But that thing earlier seriously got to me, fuck!
I confirmed with Shakuko. “The six-year-old Kozue is on your side, right?”
Shakuko created a rhythm for me. “Sure she is. We’re in the Princeton Ho-
tel in Chofu. Kozue and I are waiting for you to solve everything.”
“What is Hoshino Masato doing?”
“He’s relaxing in his room. He’s too scared of Mercury-san calling him to
lay a foot outside.”
“Don’t let him come near you.”
“No need to tell me that. Kozue-chan is here, after all. I can’t show her
something so filthy.”
“Pass the phone to Kozue.”
Shakuko gave the phone to Kozue. “Disco~.”
“Kozue, do you remember the Pinehouse?”
“Mn~?”
“Do you remember the spiky pig?”
“Spiky pig I do~. Kozue spiky pig. It’s dangerous Disco so come home fast.”
“It’s okay,” I laughed.
 “Essessneinpinner came.”
“Yes. And I’ll chase it away.”
“You can’t. Don’t fight with Essessneinpinner.”
“I won’t. I’m not going near him. Where is Essessneinpinner usually?”
“Dunno. Somewhere. Shadows.”
“...?”
“Has Essessneinpinner ever spoken to you?”
“No~. Only hiding.”
“Essessneinpinner was?”
“Kozue.”
“I see. Stay hidden, Kozue. If something weird comes out, hide immedi-
ately. You can’t go out at all costs, okay?”
“Yes. Disco too.”
“Got it. I’ll hide and be sure to not put myself in danger, so no need to
worry about me.”
“If you sleep he will peel your nails though?”
“I won’t sleep in the Pinehouse, so I’ll be fine. Kozue, how do you know
Essessneinpinner peels people’s nails off?”
“Essessneinpinner was holding a jar, and there were a lot of nails in it, I
saw it. And he said he peels sleeping people’s nails off.”
“To Kozue?”
“Yes.”
So he had spoken to her. “I see. But that’s bad, you can’t talk with that
thing.”
“Haai.”
“Go sleep now. You must be tired, no? Listen well to what Shakuko-san,
the woman over there, tells you, okay?”
“Ehh~, but what about Disco?”
“Still at work.”
“When are you coming back?”
 “Tomorrow or the day after,” I answered randomly, but at the current
pace things were going, Kozue might’ve gotten blasted to here by tomorrow
or the day after. But at that time the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ would come
back with the truth about the Panda Case Shakuko requested of her. And if she
took the hint, she might’ve even checked the resolution of the Pinehouse Case.
Hm. That would be the end of it. Pretty easy. Maybe I didn’t have any role to
accomplish here...or rather, it might be better not to do anything.
The great detectives who emit a mistaken deduction end up dead with
chopsticks through their eyes. Or...a lobotomy? What was it again? It was too
complex, I forgot.
I wanted someone to solve this fast.
“Where are you sleeping, Disco?” Kozue asked me in a worried voice. She
was seriously afraid of Essessneinpinner. “A hotel far away,” I answered. But
did Yuu Yuu count as a hotel? It had a spa attached to it, but it felt more like a
youth hostel. “Far? Close to Chofu?” “Still far from Chofu, but it’s not close
to the Pinehouse. I’ll be fine. You can sleep at ease. You must be tired with
what happened today.” “But the spiky pig slept a lot.” “Did you eat?” “Yet~”
“Ask Shakuko to get you a proper meal.” “Shakko-chan?” “Yeah, that lady.
Can you give her the phone for a bit? To Shakko-chan.” “Haai. Shakko-
cha~n.” “Yes yes, what is it?” “Yo. Umm, give a good look to Kozue down
there.” “Mm? Down where?” “What’s that question, down there means her
vagina, what else.” “What are you saying...oh, yeah, but it looked like her
menstruations stopped.” “Yeah. But there might be something else, like fin-
gers...” “Of course I’ll be careful about that, but honestly, she said the four
fingers were inside before she knew it, but that has to be a magic trick. Or,
with the atmosphere here, it might even be straight up magic. It feels like the
situation is too dire for me to have any influence, no matter how much I watch
over her.” “But you still gotta watch over her.” “Of course, I’ll do it. I’ll do
anything I can, but there’s not much one can do in here, so I can only hope
you’re doing your best. I’m pretty sure we won’t resolve anything from here.
And it’s been peaceful here ever since you went to Fukui. Though, of course,
the same weird events are still happening. The ‘future Kozue’ stayed inside
sleeping all day today. Looks like all the clamor moved to Fukui along with
you. In the end, it was the right choice to have you solve the case. Because
everything always happens around you.”
“But here I’m just meddling with an ongoing case.”
“That’s wrong. Kozue-chan was there, right? And she was calling for you,
right? You’re being invited to the case.”
It’s your name, Detective. You’re being invited. Though it seems you
didn’t know.
But here I had only listened to Mercury C’s retelling, been fooled by
Hakkyoku’s stunt, and watched the skits of the other great detectives...but
there might be a counterpoint. In a situation where a mistaken deduction
brings death, maybe by murder, acting as an observer might be the right
choice. It might be the proper attitude, couldn’t it?

But great detectives think. They speak their thoughts out. They’re not the
type to shut up when they see the answer hanging in front of them. In the hall
rose Choukuuji Kiyuu, whose existence had been nearly forgotten since he
sank on the sofa set after Mercury C hit him. His eyes were now burning with
passion. Showing his ardent thirst for revenge. Not to get back at Mercury C
or anything of the sort. He was intending to avenge Keraku. With a great de-
tective appearing on stage—or climbing on the stage in this case—with great
fervor, the policemen and other staff stopped moving around the hall and
stayed still together with the Angel Bunnies members to not bother with the
investigation.
“I will now present my deduction,” when Kiyuu declared that, I thought
to myself ‘Do you not value your life? Drop it, it’s stupid,’ and was about to
say it out loud, but the look in his eyes told me it would’ve been useless. He
gave off an aura of ‘Don’t touch me, you’ll only burn yourself,’ but he still
spoke in a courteous tone. “Please proceed with your work. Only the people
with nothing to do may gather in the hall.” However, the policemen only
glanced at Kiyuu and didn’t come. I bet it was because of their indignation,
grief, and half-resignment towards the death of these great detectives. After
all, there had already been nine today. When I was inside Nekoneko’s Panda
Fiat, I could hear some say, “They’ll hear of us if it ends up being all suicides.”
“Huh? Where is Mercury C-san?” Kiyuu asked. “Beats me, I’ve not seen
him for a while,” I answered. Kiyuu thought for a second, then hung his head.
“To be honest, there is something I will need his cooperation for...but there’s
no way he would run away. It should be fine.” “Should I search for him and
bring his ass here?” “No thanks, that won’t be necessary. His help is not ur-
gent...”
? What did he want?
“Well then, I am sure everyone is busy, so let’s commence without further
ado.” The Angel Bunnies protested to Kiyuu’s announcement.
“Stop it, Kiyuu-kun, it’s dangerous.” “Hey, someone go gather all the
chopsticks in this house! We need them all in a safe place.” “Hakkyoku did
that long ago.” “Guys, you can’t leave that job to a great detective. They use
it to stab their own eyes, no? Though someone else might steal them to kill
them.” “Would this deduction count if no one else heard it? Maybe talking to
yourself is safe?” “That was basically the case for Keraku-kun.” “But we
heard it, though?” “What if it was written on paper?” “Or by e-mail? Can’t
that work?”
Even in a grave situation, they seemed like they would drop the serious
talk and return to bantering and fooling around in a second. Six great detec-
tives had died at once, but they recovered from the shock in 30 minutes. Well,
they had already been present when three great detectives died before that. I
had only known them under extreme circumstances. This might’ve been the
Angel Bunnies’ way of showing their confusion, for them so far apart from
the standard Japanese respect. After some time, a hoarse voice calmed down
their neverending clamor.
 “I will arrest all the criminals on the spot.”

All the criminals?

The Angel Bunnies stiffened, stared at Kiyuu, then looked around. The po-
licemen, Mikami Nils, and me. The media people were outside.
Kiyuu continued.
“Well then, let’s start the tour. Everyone, first, let’s take a look at the
ninth room of the first floor, Mitamura Saburou-san’s—AKA Anbyouin
Owaru-san’s—office.” Kiyuu started walking, followed by the Angel Bunnies,
Nils, and me. Nils adorned a worried expression. He had pooped himself not
long ago. He surely wanted to go home quickly. Him being a great detective
didn’t mean it was fine for a kid to be in such a situation. Did no one notice
Nils was a child in those abnormal circumstances? Having thought of that,
maybe I should’ve sent him home. Then I should say so. By bringing that up,
maybe I could stop Kiyuu’s deduction as well.
Arriving in front of room 9, Kiyuu started speaking faster than I could.
“Take a peek inside. My brother and I are quite the clean freaks. We couldn’t
live in a room like that. Even the idea of entering it disgusted us. To be com-
pletely honest, I want to start cleaning it right away,” he laughed. I took a
look from above the Angel Bunnies’ heads; it looked exactly like what I’d im-
agined a writer’s room to be like. The books that wouldn’t fit on the shelves
were lying on the ground in piles, creating mountains and valleys, kind of like
a diorama of West Akatsuki’s mountain range. Beyond that scenery was a
desk, but it was so cluttered with books there wasn’t an inch of flat space. The
only spots not affected by the corrosion of books were the screen of a laptop
visible through the gaps between the books on the desk, and the bar-style
chair Hakkyoku had used in his deduction earlier. “Kimura-san, please sit on
this chair,” Kiyuu said. “Eh, me? What the heck,” saying that, a boy in a jersey
uniform from among the Angel Bunnies stepped inside room 9. “Kimura-san,
head there without stepping on or moving aside any book.” “Sure. But you
know, that’s pretty hard. Hop, hop, hip,” the boy progressed with more agil-
ity than I’d expected from him. “Let’s all move to room 8 in the meanwhile,”
we followed him to room 8. It was furnished with a bed, a closet, a desk, and
a sofa set. Unlike the last room, it was clean and orderly. The furniture was of
great quality, creating a refined atmosphere. Like in Four Seasons hotels.
That was Mitamura’s bedroom, apparently. I couldn’t tell in Mame Gen’s un-
tidy room, but were all the rooms arranged in the same fashion? Kiyuu took a
deep breath, then “Everyone, please go in.” We obeyed and all entered, but
with the Angel Bunnies, Nils, and I, we were totalling 22 people. Even using
the sofa set, the desk chair, and the bed, we couldn’t all sit down. I was stand-
ing too, but I could bear it. “Then, let’s go about it quickly.” Kiyuu went to the
corner of the wall bordering room 9, extended his hand, and started scratch-
ing something with his fingertips. Once he managed to grasp the wallpaper,
he pulled his hand towards himself at once. Zzsss! “Yikes...” an Angel Bun-
nies uttered, but Kiyuu continued to scrape off a wide portion of the wallpaper,
zzzssssssss, eventually making a somewhat big painting hanging on the wall
fall, provoking more complaints. “Ah, hey you can’t mess up the room like
that,” but that wasn’t an attempt to make him stop, that remark was a result
of their surprise from the reveal, in the center of the bare wall, of a square
hole previously hidden by the wallpaper. The hole was of rectangular shape,
one meter vertically ✕ two meter horizontally. And the reason why everyone
stopped their breathing upon seeing that was the bowgun placed inside the
square hole. “Ahhhh!” “That’s!” “Oi oi oi oi!” “In such a place...” A few such
reactions were emitted by the Angel Bunnies, but they soon calmed down
when Kiyuu told them “Shhh,” still holding the wallpaper in his hand. Such
a silence when they were on the verge of screaming moments ago. Great de-
tectives were ruling the stage yet again. I looked at him in a daze. That’s why,
when Kiyuu extended his hands towards the bowgun, picked it up, nocked an
arrow, and fired it towards the other end of the hole, I only stared at him from
start to finish and couldn’t stop him.
 “Ouch!”
Everyone stood up upon hearing that voice from beyond the wall.
“Kim!” “Kimura-kun!” “Wha-, are you okay!?” “What the heck are you
doing!?”
The Angel Bunnies left the room while blaming Kiyuu and headed to the
next room.
“Aaaaaaaahhh!” “Kim!” “Oi!”
As the Angel Bunnies were screaming over there, I walked over to Kiyuu
who was calmly holding the bowgun and leaned forward to inspect the wall.
The surface of the wall was smooth, it didn’t look like something dug. It was
either created this way from the start or the wall had been entirely taken
down at some point and reconstructed with a hole. Which meant, only the
owner could do something like that. Mitamura must’ve been the one who
made this wall. And on the other side of the hole wasn’t concrete but more
wallpaper. It was connecting this room with room 9, where it was probably
covered in wallpaper to hide it. The wallpaper on the room 9 side had a small,
round hole. I approached my face and peeped inside, I could discern someone
with an arrow piercing their back, collapsed on the ground and bleeding.
But that someone wasn’t Kimura.
“Tada~~~h! Muhyohyohyohyo,” laughed Kimura. “Don’t fuck around
dude!” “Eh? Was it staged?” other Angel Bunnies members said.
Beyond the wall, lying on the ground and bleeding, was a mannequin. It
was dressed up with Western clothes and a wig to make it resemble Kimura,
but its white, plastic skin gave it away. But that being found out wasn’t a
problem. This was a great detective-style practical demonstration.
I stood up straight and looked at Kiyuu. He was adorning a smug expres-
sion from having scared the Angel Bunnies, but his eyes brimming with a
hard-as-steel conviction weren't defiled by it.
“Choukuuji-san, do you really think you can do it?” asked Mikami Nils
who had remained in the room.
 “...” Kiyuu smiled but didn't answer. Hongou Takeshitakeshi, who had
seemingly seen through him despite being an Angel Bunnies member—as
expected of a great detective—looked at Kiyuu and told him, “You know, it's
fine to use my buddies, but don't put them in danger, okay?” “It's alright. It's
only possible for great detectives,” Kiyuu answered.
What is?
I was confused, but couldn't find the right timing to ask questions. Kiyuu
placed the bowgun back into the hole and left room 8, so Nils, Hongou, and I
followed him. “Ah, so what was that for, in the end?” Kimura asked. “What
the heck, you helped him without knowing?” A member bickered, but they
shut up when Kiyuu started his explanation. Even the policemen in the hall
stopped moving and gazed at us in silence.
“I apologize for the scare. It’s important in this kind of demonstration to
show it for real,” he laughed. “My aim wasn’t to scare all of you...of course,
that’s a lie, I did want to startle you. But it will also make the coming expla-
nation easier to understand. Now, as you have all been able to confirm, one
can shoot through this hole at Anbyouin-san’s back, working in room 9, from
room 8. As you can see, Anbyouin-san’s chair has a low back, so everything
up his waist formed a relatively wide target. So, last night, the culprit in room
8 shot at Anbyouin-san through this hole as he was working, making him
collapse on the ground. Like this.”
Kiyuu pointed at the bloodied mannequin inside the office.
“But strictly speaking, he didn’t fall on the ground,” he continued. “In-
stead, he fell on a large quantity of open books he was mid-reading. There-
fore, almost all of the blood he shed dirtied the books instead of spreading on
the ground. The floor stayed clean.”
Hearing this, everyone had a premonition and fell silent. Me included. So
the floor stayed clean, woaaah, makes sense. So?
“Then the culprit temporarily repaired the hole opened by the arrow on
the office side, left the bowgun inside the wall, cleanly replaced the wallpaper
they had scraped off, and left room 8. Of course, a few Angel Bunnies were
present in the hall and witnessed them leave room 8. That granted them the
alibi of not having entered room 9. This alibi wouldn’t be needed later on, but
there was no guarantee Anbyouin-san’s corpse wouldn’t have been found
before they got to their next ploy. That was a makeshift insurance. However,
if Anbyouin-san’s corpse were to be found in the office—in a room no one
had left nor entered—the police would have investigated it as a locked room
case, carefully inspected every nook and cranny, and most likely found out
about the mechanism in the wall. With the hole found, the space beyond it
and the bowgun would be discovered, along with the connection to room 8,
and they would be suspected for having purposefully shown their compan-
ions them leaving that room. That’s why repairing the hole in the wallpaper
was really just a temporary measure; they needed to move Anbyouin-san’s
body elsewhere before he was discovered. And luckily, in a sense, no one
would visit their host in his workplace that night. Everyone deserted the hall
and corridors, and went to sleep. After some time, the culprit sneaked out of
their bedroom, then in the office. There, they took some books among the
gigantic amount on the floor out of the room and laid them on the floor with-
out leaving any space; first passing in front of room 8, then climbing the
stairs to reach room 7. They then dragged Anbyouin-san’s corpse onto that
carpet of books up to the second floor without leaving any traces of blood.”
There, the Angel Bunnies caught their breath. “Hmmm?” some expressed
their curiosity out loud. Only Hongou Takeshitakeshi and Mikami Nils kept a
stoic expression.
Kiyuu continued. “Since, for the culprit, this was purely a scheme to clear
off their suspicions, they didn’t find a need to move the corpse further than
that. They pushed Anbyouin-san off to the floor, let him shed blood there,
retrieved the bloodied books he had laid out, and wiped away the little blood
which had still reached the ground. But why use books of all things?”
Kiyuu then stepped foot in the office. He had made Kimura be careful of
the floor, but that guy shamelessly tread on the mountains of books. “They
could have used a futon or vinyl bags. Or even laid plastic wrap and made him
slide on that with a stretcher made out of towels. So then, why books? That’s
because, naturally, the futon or towels would need to be washed, and the vinyl
or plastic wrap would necessitate a huge amount. In short, it would be an-
noying to get rid of it. ...But with books...”
Kiyuu reached one of Anbyouin’s large bookshelves and took out a book
from it.
“Especially with authors, no one else would look at the reference books
they collect. At least for some time after their death.”
Kiyuu threw the photobook he had taken out towards the door we were
gathered at. The shock of the fall caused it to open, but it didn’t go smoothly
because it was partly hardened. Hardened by a red-black liquid.
By Anbyouin’s blood.
“Uwaah...” the Angel Bunnies groaned, but that didn’t stop the books
drenched in blood and glistening an eerie red to pile up before them. Flip flip,
thump, flip, thwop.
Kiyuu’s anger was seeping through and manifesting in the form of sadis-
tic surprises for the Angel Bunnies during his demonstration. That’s not how
a grown up should act, okay? Some troupe members went pale. And even the
cops around us, they got so intimidated by Kiyuu they couldn’t speak properly
when they had so much evidence to collect. “Choukuuji-kun, is this...blood?”
I heard a loud sound of paper moving, so I looked at Kiyuu; he had plunged
an arm deep in the shelf and littered the floor with nearly an entire row in a
fell swoop by pushing them with a lariat move. “Woohoo!” Kiyuu screamed
with much vigor; he might’ve been crying. Even though no tears came out of
his eyes.
He calmed his breathing, then continued. “...The culprit returned the
blood-oozing books to their shelves before going back to their room. Now
they only had to wait for someone the next morning, or simply waking up
during the night, to discover Anbyouin-san’s corpse and alert everyone.
However, the situation didn’t develop as smoothly as they had hoped. The
main cause for the problem growing more complex lies in this building and
arrows.”
Kiyuu left the office while trampling on the books he had thrown onto the
floor.
“Judy was right. This house is a horoscope. It flaunts a centaur stripped of
his arrow. But Judy was wrong. Anbyouin-san didn’t murder Daibakushou
Curry-san the Orion as the ‘scorpion’ he was. The arrow wasn’t fired as a dis-
guise, he was simply shot to death by it. But even so, Judy was right. The arrow
and ‘scorpion’ and Orion concealment did in fact happen.”
Kiyuu leisurely led the confused Angel Bunnies up the stairs headed to the
second floor.
“As Judy indicated, each room of the second floor represents an element.
They are all numbered room 1, room 2, etc until room 12, each respectively
representing, in horoscope terminology, the first House, second House, and
so on until the twelfth House. But at the same time, the objects placed in front
of each door respectively represent Aries, Taurus, and the rest of the twelve
zodiac signs until Pisces. And the rooms 8 and 9 on the second floor, the
eighth House and ninth House, are respectively Scorpio and Sagittarius.
And...”
And, Kiyuu opened the door to room 8.
“Similarly to the wall between rooms 8 and 9 on the first floor, these
rooms are hiding a square hole.”
Looking inside, the painting on the left wall had been taken down, and yet
another blank-faced mannequin was standing in front of it. It wasn’t even
dressed up this time.
“Furthermore, an arrow was fired through that hole as well.” It happened
the moment Kiyuu finished his sentence.
Thunk!
“Kyaaaaa!” I got startled by the many female Angel Bunnies members
screaming at once, but then I looked at it myself and saw that the mannequin
standing there had been shot through its chest. The arrow had pierced its
back and penetrated deep enough for us to see the arrowhead. The energy of
the impact made it shake along with its stand, but that eventually simmered
down to a light swaying.
“This is how the centaur’s arrow shot down the rampaging scorpion.”
“Eh? Hold on,” a boy from the troupe spoke up. I think it was the one who
got teased by his friend for exchanging e-mails with Nekoneko. He wasn’t
particularly handsome, but his smiling expression looked great, so he might
be at a good middle ground. This guy said, “So I’m the ‘scorpion’?” which
made everyone laugh. “I’m the one using this room 8.”
“But Kawai-chan’s alive, ain’t he?” “Who’s in room 9 again?” “Ah,
wasn’t it Nomura Rie?” “Ehhh?” “Yes, it’s me...” a short girl with her hair
done up in traditional style raised her hand. “But I didn’t do it.”
“I know,” Kiyuu said, then let out a faint smile. “Let’s go to the neighbor-
ing room,” hearing this, the Angel Bunnies ran to room 9 without waiting for
Kiyuu’s guidance. The door opened.
“Eh, what?” A few people voiced their confusion. I caught up to them and
peeked inside.
Room 9 was empty.
Earlier, Kiyuu had landed an arrow in the office that was room 9 from the
bedroom that was room 8. But Kiyuu was presently in room 8, so there
must’ve been someone else shooting in his stead. I pushed the troupe mem-
bers to the side and entered room 9. The painting hanging where the hole
would be had been taken down here too. I looked more closely at the wallpa-
per. There, I found two small, star-shaped holes. I peeked through one of
them. I saw a white point amidst darkness. It must’ve been the hole opened
in the wallpaper of room 8. The exit. The arrow had passed through here.
“Careful, Wednesdayyy-san, this might be dangerous.”
Being told that by Kiyuu, I looked back at the door. This head movement
saved me.
Fffwi! A shrill sound grazed the back of my head, followed by a thunk!
from the other side of the wall.
 An arrow grazed me! This time, I looked at the side opposite to the door.
There, beyond the wide open window, illuminated by the light coming from
the house shining onto the grove, unsteadily standing on a cedar tree’s
branch, I discovered the centaur, holding a bowgun and laughing his heart
out.
It was Mercury C.
Fuck. That guy tried to shoot me in the head for fun. I instantly put a hand
to my stomach to draw out my gun, but it wasn’t there, so I checked my pants
too, but still nothing. This was Japan. Possessing guns was prohibited. Shit. I
had to bear with flipping him the middle finger, but that only fueled his
laughter. Whatever. This guy had a pass, but... I glared at Kiyuu, standing at
the door. To hell with his ‘Huh? Where is Mercury C-san?’ To hell with his
‘His help is not urgent...’ That sly bastard. However, Kiyuu brushed my glare
aside and spoke with a composed expression.
“So you noticed, Wednesdayyy-san. Exactly. Kawai-san from room 8
wasn’t aimed at by Nomura-san from room 9, but by another centaur hiding
inside the tree outside the window. Well then, the second arrow has now been
fired. My plans have been slightly disturbed, but shall we go take a look at that
arrow now?”
After saying that, Kiyuu quickly confirmed Mercury C’s presence beyond
the window, then returned to room 8 along with the Angel Bunnies. I looked
out the window, but Mercury C was already gone. I wished he laughed so hard
he fell from the tree and injured himself, but knowing him, he would still be
fine.
I decided to rejoin the group led by Kiyuu. It looked like I was the typical
foreigner unable to go along with the flow of a Japanese group.
I left room 9 then partook in the troupe members’ surprise, albeit late.
What? “The arrow’s...nowhere?” “Where is it~?” I thought of pushing aside
the members on the doorstep looking around, but well, I should be able to see
the strict minimum with our height difference. There really was no arrow.
The mannequin had its chest pierced in front of our eyes earlier, but there was
no second arrow to be seen on it. But I did feel the arrow fly behind my head,
and my ears did pick up the sound of it percuting something hard. Thunk! But
none of the nearly-twenty Angel Bunnies could find that arrow...thinking
that, I imagined a straight line crossing space. The arrow must’ve traced the
path going from Mercury C inside the branches of that cedar to my head, to
the hole in the wall, to the mannequin. I tried to inspect the wallpaper, but it
was so far away I couldn’t discern where the arrow holes were. But I didn’t
need to find them. I only needed the trajectory to find the arrow. The first one
had hit the mannequin. But we weren’t surprised just because it was imme-
diately shot by an arrow with a thunk! We were scared. We found it danger-
ous... I looked at the arrowhead. It seemed to be directly facing us. Right. If
there was no mannequin, that arrow might’ve grazed me. It might even have
pierced me. In the first place, had Mercury C shot that first arrow from the
cedar tree? Aiming at a mannequin beyond a wall? Oi oi. We might’ve been a
few centimeters away from death, then...hold on, don’t be led astray. Mercury
C’s behavior was the epitome of insolence, but the crux of the problem cur-
rently was that, in room 8, the trajectory of the arrow was facing the door we
were standing at. Room 8 was empty when we were in room 9. No one was
near the door either. Then was the door closed?
No, the Angel Bunnies ran there faster than I, and neither Nils, Hongou,
nor I, who went there last, had closed it.
The door was open.
Then the arrow might’ve passed through the door.
 Through the door, inside the hallway... I slowly looked away from room 8
and followed the trajectory of the arrow I imagined. And I indeed found the
second arrow in front of room 7. On a bloodied mannequin lying in front of
room 7, right where the stairs ended. Two arrows were piercing its back. One
was fired through the hole in the bedroom on the first floor, and the other one
by Mercury C.
The Angel Bunnies noticed the arrow after me. One of them said, “Kim,
you bastard, what are you doing...” so I looked for him. Kimura, the same guy
who had helped Kiyuu earlier, was laughing in the shadows of the stairs. “Kim
again?” “Ehehe, sorry.” “Again in our back...that scared us for real, you
know?” “It pierced the exact spot, it was amazing!” Kimura was acting ex-
cited. Then, “Of course,” Mercury C appeared with a bowgun in hand. He was
climbing up the stairs. The policemen on the first floor didn’t seem to do an-
ything other than look up at him with a bewildered look.
“That was splendid work, Mercury-san.” Mercury C ignored Kiyuu’s ap-
plause and laughed at me. “Don’t stick your face in strange places, Detective.
It’s dangerous, ain’t it?”
...Whatever.
“Now, time to conclude my presentation.” Upon these words, all the An-
gel Bunnies and policemen went silent at once. The great detectives too.
However, despite everyone else adorning expressions of expectation and cu-
riosity, Nils and Hongou didn’t. Rather, these two were looking at Kiyuu with
dubious faces. Mercury C was grinning, but that had nothing to do with ex-
pectations or curiosity. It seemed the troupe had forgotten in the fervor of
Kiyuu’s show, but once the explanation was over, if that turned out to be
wrong, Kiyuu’s eyes would be stabbed with chopsticks.
Was Kiyuu wrong? The blood in the books. The holes in the walls. The ar-
row that landed in front of room 7 after passing through the tree branches,
the window, the holes in the wall, and the door. And the explanation that
would continue from there. I felt like the truth would soon be revealed to me.
But when I heard Daibakushou or Judy’s deductions retold by Mercury C
or Hakkyoku’s stunt, at the time, I believed them to be true.
“Be it by chance or destiny, or perhaps by someone’s malfeasance, Kawai
Kazuhiro, a member of the troupe Angel Bunnies, was lodged in room 8 of the
second floor, which is to say, the eighth House, ruled by Scorpio. Judy omitted
that aspect in her explanation, but the twelve rooms, ten planets, and twelve
zodiac signs all have meanings in horoscopes. For example, the first House is
called the House of Self; it indicates the general personality and fates those
with that horoscope will have. Amongst the twelve zodiac signs, the one rul-
ing over one’s first House is called ‘Ascendant’ and is said in Western astrol-
ogy to hold the strongest influence. Those ‘ascendant signs’ are said to form
the fundamental appearance, face, and nature of people. The ascendant sign
in the Pinehouse’s horoscope, by the way, is Aries. Those possessing that
horoscope will have a wide face; a narrow chin; thick eyebrows; good blood
color; a firm, medium build; and will accomplish their work and everything
they undertake energetically. To briefly explain all of them, the first House is
the House of Self, the second one is the House of Value, the third one is the
House of Ability, the fourth one is the House of Family, the fifth one is the
House of Pleasure, the sixth one is the House of Work, the seventh one is the
House of Relations, the eighth one is the House of Death, the ninth one is the
House of Talent, the tenth one is the House of Enterprise, the eleventh one is
the House of Friends, and the twelfth one is the House of Danger.”
When he said the eighth House was the House of Death, the Angel Bunnies
caused a commotion and Kawai was about to say something, but Kiyuu con-
tinued nevertheless.
“And for the twelve zodiac signs, Aries stands for vitality, Taurus for
wealth, Gemini for intelligence, Cancer for maternity, Leo for dominance and
authority, Virgo for purity and order, Libra for equality and harmony, Scorpio
for immortality, Sagittarius for a sacred power, Capricorn for the last stand-
ing, Aquarius for God’s knowledge, and Pisces for the body and the spirit.
Let’s continue with the simplified meaning of the ten planets. They are called
ten planets despite some of these celestial bodies not counting as such, but
that’s beside the point. The Sun indicates dynamism and self-expressivity;
the Moon reactions and changes; Mercury wisdom...”
At that point, I saw Mercury C nodding with all his might in the corner of
my vision, but Kiyuu paid no mind to him.
“...Venus passion and harmony; Mars conflicts and disasters; Jupiter suc-
cess and justice; Saturn bad luck and trials; Uranus revolutions and inven-
tions; Neptune illusions and secrets; and Pluto death and resurrection. That
means there are lucky and unlucky planets.”
“And Mercury is amazing luck,” said in a joyful tone none other than Mer-
cury C, to which Kiyuu answered.
“No, in fact, Mercury doesn’t have good or bad luck. It is meant to be a
neutral planet.”
 Ah, idiot, I reacted, but too late; Mercury C had swiftly readied his bowgun
and shot an arrow at Kiyuu. Twang! Thonk! The arrow missed Kiyuu and
stuck itself in the wall right behind him at a right angle. I bet he didn’t miss
but aimed to miss. Still, I was relieved nevertheless. The Angel Bunnies
screamed a moment after the fact. “Waaaaah!” The policemen finally moved
then. “Hey hey hey hey! What are you doing...” Seeing multiple policemen
climb the stairs, I thought the situation would only worsen, but Kiyuu said,
“I’m alright, let me continue my demonstration.” which made the policemen
stop in their tracks. “Still, you there, hand over that bowgun,” one told Mer-
cury C. He ignored them. Woah, only a Japanese person could ignore cops in
this situation! He wasn’t poking fun at them either. “This is really fine. Please
let us proceed for now.” Being told that by Kiyuu, the policemen took the hint
and retreated. I let out a sigh of relief. I felt like I learned a little. That was a
new way to handle him. Now that everyone had calmed down, Kiyuu contin-
ued. “Look at the chandelier. The lightbulb closest to room 8 is Jupiter.” But
we couldn’t see the Jupiter mark from here. It looked like a normal lightbulb.
“Now, our Suspect X, who had murderous intent towards Kawai-san and
tried to injure or even kill him as some sort of warning, had researched the
Pinehouse ahead of time, took notice of the horoscope, discovered the secret
hole beneath the wallpaper between rooms 8 and 9, found a bowgun, and saw
a great opportunity in Kawai-san occupying room 8—the Scorpio room. To
sum it up, X ingeniously used the myth of the scorpion and the centaur to
disguise their attack. They had taken down the paintings in both rooms,
waited for an occasion where the window of room 9 was open, and shot an
arrow from the cedar tree as we’ve seen earlier to make it seem like it was
shot from the Sagittarius room to the Scorpio room and clear the suspicion
they might receive by turning it towards the occupant of the Sagittarius room.
But as I expect you have all cleverly observed, one cannot look at what is hap-
pening in room 8 from beyond the paper wall; they can only shoot at random.
But I’m sure murdering the target or even injuring him wasn’t important to
X. They simply wanted their intimidation to get through. So, last night, after
having fired the arrow, X swiftly returned to the Pinehouse pretending to
know nothing and headed to their room. ...But X didn’t know. They didn’t
know that the bowgun they had used had served to murder Anbyouin-san,
nor that Anbyouin-san had been murdered using that same weapon in room
8 moments ago.”
Kiyuu took a look at everyone’s face—excluding Nils and Hongou—to
make sure we were properly listening. He then continued.
“...Nine great detectives have already died in this case. Daibakushou
Curry-san showed us that those blood marks were the letter ‘O’ and the digit
‘0.’ Judy Dollhouse-san discovered the horoscope in the Pinehouse. And my
brother...Choukuuji Keraku hypothesized that the blood loss might’ve been
the goal of the victim. Hakkyoku Sachiari-san, helped by Sabayama Nigou-
han-san, Kakiuchi Mamajump-san, Hizuki-san, Mame Gen-san, and
Nekoneko Nyannyannyan-san, came up with an explanation to the truth be-
hind the mysteries freshly brought in by the new participant Disco Wednes-
dayyy-san, the Panda Case and ‘Pineapple-chan.’”
You got it wrong, I thought. I hadn’t participated in anything, I simply
came here to search for Kozue and got dragged into this. This might be the
main case in Kiyuu and the others’ heads, but not in mine.
He continued. “And all of them died in order. In the end, it’s still unclear
whether these were suicides or murders...but we can be certain that their de-
ductions were mistaken or lacking, and that this was the cause for their
deaths. But why did nine people die just because of that? Isn’t that too ruth-
less for mistakes or lackings? Great detectives are meant to attain the truth
of a case at the end. Sometimes they make mistakes along the way. But why
didn’t they wait until the final conclusion? In the first place, why is the Pine-
house killing the great detectives it itself gathered?”
I didn’t know how accurate Daibakushou’s deduction was, but according
to him, Anbyouin himself created this mystery to convene great detectives.
Was Anbyouin scheming for these deaths as well?
 “But it is now the finale. I will solve the mystery no great detective has
ever been able to solve,” Kiyuu claimed, then resumed his explanation. “Why
did Anbyouin-san...Anbyouin-san’s corpse, make a loop around the second
floor? The Pinehouse was already round, so there was no need to draw an-
other ‘O’ or ‘0.’ There should’ve been many other ways to lose blood, too.
Judy Dollhouse-san saw through the disguise involving Sagittarius, Scorpio,
and Orion. But she was mistaken in how it was implemented. And Hakkyoku
Sachiari-san and co. were too obsessed with the new actor in this play, Disco
Wednesdayyy-san. But there was no need to be. They likely lost themselves
in an eternal search for meaning due to the abnormal situation of being mur-
dered after exposing one’s deduction. Both Mikami Nils-kun, Hongou
Takeshitakeshi-san, the nine deceased great detectives, every one of the An-
gel Bunnies present, and needless to say, the police people present here, and
I, have come here with varying circumstances. Those circumstances probably
include mysteries that require a great detective. But there is no such rule dic-
tating that one cannot solve a case without explaining the circumstances sur-
rounding every single person present by chance. This scene is a part of the
world and nothing more. Therefore, I only need to solve the problems pre-
vailing here. No need to explain the entirety of the world. That’s why,
Wednesdayyy-san, you will have to solve your problems on your own. Every-
one from the police too, you will have to investigate the cases you are in
charge of on your own. I am a mere great detective with limited capacity, here
to solve the problem present in this location. And the mysteries I must deal
with are ‘Who murdered Anbyouin Owaru-san?’ and ‘Why did Anbyouin
Owaru-san’s corpse make a loop around the second floor?’”
Bravo!
That basically meant ‘Wipe your own ass yourself,’ but it felt like deliver-
ance to me. Ame~n. You’re fucking right, motherfucker. You’re the messiah
of my soul. I had thought too much about why I came here and assumed it was
vital to solve the Pinehouse affair to bring Kozue home. Despite Mercury C’s
attempts at setting me straight, I ended up reading too much into ‘a weird
context.’ Right. Kozue didn’t wish for me to solve this case. The ‘seventeen-
year-old Kozue’ only told me to ‘go to the Pinehouse.’ Events occur because
of wills and destiny. But by focusing on useless wills and useless destiny, you
end up with useless events. That’s what that was. Useless events. Useless
cases. I didn’t care about the truth behind the Pinehouse Case!
Well, for that, I didn’t need to exert any additional effort. I could just listen
to Kiyuu’s explanation.
“Now, first, let’s talk about why the corpse revolved around the Pinehouse.
While Anbyouin-san was working in room 9 on the first floor, the culprit shot
him from room 8 with a bowgun. They moved him to the second floor using
a river of books, put the books away, then returned to their room. As stated
earlier, at that point, the culprit only had to wait for the discovery of the
corpse to happen. But Anbyouin-san’s corpse, which was only positioned be-
fore room 7, was discovered after making a loop around the hallway. How
could this have happened? ...That’s because the one to discover the corpse
first, after unknowingly taking out the bowgun used to murder Anbyouin-
san and shooting an arrow from a cedar tree outside, through room 9 of the
second floor, to room 8, was none other than Suspect X. When they returned
to the Pinehouse, the hall was silent and in no way in a stir because of the
arrow they had shot. X thought that meant either the arrow had shot Kawai
Kazuhiro and killed him on the spot, or he was still struggling in pain and
calling for help, so they hurried to their room as soon as possible. But! Having
gone up the stairs, X found Anbyouin-san’s corpse. Of all people, Anbyouin-
san had been shot to death. How could this have happened? X looked at room
8, and... Kawai-san, it was so stuffy that night, not only did you open your
window, you also had your door opened, right?”
“Eh? Yes,” Kawai panicked upon being suddenly called out, but he an-
swered. “I mean, the air wouldn’t circulate if I didn’t.”
“Indeed. But when they saw that door, here is what X thought: ‘Not only
did the arrow I shot missed Kawai-san, it passed through the door into the
hallway and struck Anbyouin-san, who was randomly walking by.’ And the
most troubling thing of all, when the culprit who had murdered Anbyouin-
san removed the books from under him or pushed him off the books, his
blood drooled and made it seem as though he had moved ever so slightly on
his own will. In a house filled solely with strangers, the injured Anbyouin-san
could only head towards the culprit. He was a mystery author, but that dying
message was exceedingly simple. Anbyouin-san must’ve used his last bits of
strength to point at the culprit by moving... By the way, the stairs to the sec-
ond floor are between rooms 6 and 7, with the highest point being diagonal
to room 7’s door. So, if Anbyouin-san had left a dying message there, where
could the corpse have moved to? If it had moved towards room 6, that would
be most natural, due to the body being pushed by the impact of the arrow
coming from room 8. But here, X felt Anbyouin-san’s will because that
wasn’t the cause. ...Exactly, Anbyouin-san was pushed towards the left from
up the stairs, towards room 7. That meant X’s room was somewhere in that
general direction. However, rooms 8 and 9 were respectively Kawai-san and
Nomura-san’s rooms. Kawai-san was X’s actual target and Nomura-san was
made into a scapegoat to protect X. Neither of them could’ve been X. Then,
how about rooms 10 and beyond? ...But if we think about it thoroughly, we
start having contradictions about the discovery of the corpse itself. After all,
the Pinehouse has two sets of stairs. If X was occupying room 10, they
wouldn’t have crossed the entire hall to reach the stairs and gone back half
the hallway, they would’ve used the stairs present near the entrance. We can
apply the same logic to rule out rooms 11 and 12. We are now left with a single
room amongst the ones in the northern part of the hallway between the stairs.
Exactly. X is the resident of room 7, Kimura Daisuke.”

Then, Kimura, standing near the mannequin, laughed. “Nyahaha.”

“Eh?” The Angel Bunnies were bewildered. “What is this, another prank?”
“What do you mean? Are you acting?” “We don’t get it Kim, what are you
playing at?” Many members questioned Kimura, to which he answered.
 “Um, for clarity’s sake, you know, I seriously wasn’t trying to kill Kawai-
chan. Okay? Seriously. I just wanted to give him a scare. Are you listening?
This is important. I’m not a murderer.”
“Wait, so you actually did it?” said Kawai. “You shot a bowgun? At my
room?”
“Yes. A bit, ahaha.”
“Don’t ahaha me, Kim! What do you mean by ‘a bit’?”
“Just, you know, a bit.”
“What the fuck, seriously? But why?”
“Well, Kawai-chan, you’ve kinda been on your high horse recently.”
“Ehhh? What do you mean, when someone’s on a roll you gotta shoot
them with a bowgun?”
“That’s why I told you, I wasn’t trying to hit you, I swear. It was a sliiiight
warning. I only wanted to scare you a smidgen.”
“And you used a bowgun for that? From the outside?”
“Yeah.”
“So Kiyuu-san was right?”
“Well, pretty much. But I wasn’t trying to kill you. None of that.”
“Wait, but you couldn’t see where I was, right? So there was an actual pos-
sibility for you to hit me, no?”
“Mm...well, no. That just can’t happen, I couldn’t have shot you even if I
tried aiming. Ahaha, this kind of stuff just doesn’t happen.”
“Yeah, don’t aim at me. Wait no, that’s not what I’m talking about, the
possibility was there. You seriously could have shot me.”
“I’m telling you, I wouldn’t. If I thought I could hurt you, I wouldn’t have
shot.”
“Huh? What’s your problem man, geez~. You’re a real danger.”
“Yeah...sorry. Nihihi, seriously. I swear, I just wanted to scare you a little.”
“Well, there was no scare, I had no idea you did that. I didn’t even know
someone was aiming at me with an arrow.”
“Right~?”
 “Shut up, you asshole.” The Angel Bunnies were bantering, but it was
plain to the eyes they were having fun despite blaming Kimura. He, too, was
saying stuff like, “Sorry sorry, it was on a whim,” while laughing. What was
up with those guys, something so dangerous didn’t cross the line for them?
What were they made of? “Also, hey, were you really trying to pin that crime
on me?” said Nomura Rie. “Geez, no need to call it a crime, it wasn’t that big
of a deal. Just an arrow being shot a bit.” “How in the world is that not a big
deal? I can’t believe it, that’s a serious crime, it’s no laughing matter.” “Kim,
you’re in someone else’s house to begin with. Don’t shoot arrows in people’s
houses!” “Idiot, that’s not the problem here. What if that had hit me?” Kawai
again. “The arrow went out the open door into the hallway, no? Then it
could’ve hit me as well. I would be dead if I was walking around.” “Well, then
we could sum it up as an unfortunate incident...” “Stop screwing around,
Kim~.” “But, you know~. Talking about possibilities and such is kinda...”
“Shut up, attempted murder is a crime of possibilities.” “You keep going with
words like ‘murder,’ that really wasn’t my intention.” “Enough, stop talking.
You’re getting on my nerves.” “Ah, sorry.” “And your arrow actually hit An-
byouin-san, didn’t it?” “No, that’s wrong, Obata-san. It didn’t.” “Eh, what
do you mean?” “You know, Anbyouin-san was killed by someone else.” “Eh?
Ah, right.” “Oh~, right, right. I was confused too. Right, Kim didn’t actually
kill Anbyouin-san.” “Exactly, I haven’t killed anyone,” said Kimura.
“Though there was a possibility,” added Kawai. “Eh, I’m sorry.” “Shut up,
Kim,” someone else said.
“...Now, is that enough of that?” Kiyuu enquired. “Indeed, Kimura-san
could’ve injured or even killed someone. That’s why I had him help me for
this demonstration. So, Kimura-san climbed up the second floor...”
“Hold on,” Kawai interjected. “Tell me one thing, Kim. How was I on my
high horse exactly?”
“Eh, I mean, weren’t you? You got Nekoneko-san’s mail address and all...”
“What? Huh? Just for that? But that was today, it has nothing to do with
yesterday.”
 “But that’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about.”
“What stuff?”
“I mean, it’s not just about that. It’s an accumulation of all sorts of things.”
Another guy cut in. “So, Kim, you shot Kawai-chan because he was popu-
lar?”
“No, I mean...huh? I guess I did?”
“Why are you asking!? But that means that’s it. Geez~.”
They seemed like they were going to start bickering again, so Kiyuu inter-
rupted them. “That’s enough. Let me carry on. After all, we still need to find
who murdered Anbyouin-san.”
There, I—as well as the Angel Bunnies—noticed. That culprit might be
part of the troupe as well.
“Now that Kimura-san was under the impression his excessive prank had
killed Anbyouin-san, what did he do? Did he feel guilty, wake up everybody,
and contact the police? ...No, he didn’t. The room next to his was room 8—
Kawai-san’s room. Kimura-san dragged Anbyouin-san’s corpse up to before
Kawai-san’s room to make it seem like Anbyouin-san had crawled to there.”
“Eh? Oh, so that’s why...” Kawai said. “Huh? Kawai-chan...” another An-
gel Bunny attempted to make a comment, but they went silent as soon as Ki-
yuu continued. “Kimura-san then shut himself in this room and waited for
troubles to befall Kawai-san. The intimidation with the arrow hadn’t gone as
planned. But the next morning, Kawai-san would wake up, find the corpse,
be surprised, then, amidst the chaos, he might have to take responsibility for
crimes he hadn’t committed. ‘That’s divine punishment for you’...Kimura-
san thought as he fell asleep. However, it didn’t actually unfold that way. Here
is what happened: Kawai-san woke up during the night and discovered An-
byouin-san’s corpse. As Kimura-san had planned, he got scared when he saw
the murdered body of Anbyouin-san heading towards his room. He must’ve
naturally thought the same as Kimura: ‘At this rate, I will be suspected.’
Therefore, Kawai-san used the same method as Kimura-san. He dragged An-
byouin-san’s corpse to the neighboring room, room 9.”
 “Ah, hold on a moment. That’s not quite true,” Kawai added. “I wouldn’t
do that to Rie-pon. That would be too cruel toward a girl. I moved it to room
10.”
“Ehhhhhhhhhh?” all the men looked at him.
“You brought a corpse to my door because you felt bad for Nomura Rie!?”
said a pale man with weirdly smooth hair, wearing glasses and the hems of
his pink, tartan T-shirt tucked in his pants; the embodiment of an otaku.
“You’re fine with that stuff, Katou, no?” said Kawai.
“Wait wait, I’m not at all. That shocked me.”
“It’s fine, you’re a fortune teller after all.”
“That has nothing to do with it. Plus I’m not even one.”
“A medium.”
“I can’t contact ghosts. Just shut up.”
“Ehhh... Then, don’t tell me...” said another tall boy. “Were you the one
who dragged the corpse up to my room, Katou-san?”
“...What about it?” the otaku said and bursted into laughter. “I’m sorry. I
know it’s no laughing matter, I apologize. But yes, I did.”
“Ehh, woah. So scummy~~. How could you do that to me~. I was scared
for real~. Wait, so...? Does that mean what I think it does? Everyone moved
the corpse one after the other?”
“So you did it too, Hayashi?”
“Yu~p. I mean, Anbyouin-san came to me leaving so much blood behind,
you know? I went ‘waaah’ then thought I would close the door and leave him
there, but maybe Anbyouin-san looked dead and wasn’t and would open my
door and come inside. Wouldn’t that be mega scary? So I thought ‘Crap, I need
him to go past this room,’ you get it?”
“And so that’s how he landed in front of my room~,” a glass-wearing girl
said.
“Sorry~ Hiraki-san.”
“A sorry won’t get you forgiven, you’re awful. Rie-chan got a pass but I
count for nothing?”
 “Ahhh, sorry, sorry. Plus I didn’t know about what happened with Rie-
san.”
“But Hiraki-chan, you brought it to my door too, didn’t you?” said a
small-framed, energetic-looking girl.
“Well...you know...”
“You traitor. I knew there was some movement in front of my door, so I
went there and saw it.”
“Ah, so you saw me bring it to you, Yukino-san?”
“Nooo~. I went to check on the noise I was hearing, but when I opened the
door there was just a corpse. You realize? In a dim hallway at night, plus with
a long trail of blood spreading from soooooo far away! I was insanely scared.
I was so creeped out I couldn’t go out for a while. But same as Hayashi-kun,
it was even scarier to wait inside my room~. So I went out and went around
the hallway, but no matter how you slice it, Anbyouin-san was dead, the
blood was real—and smelled accordingly—and he crawled all the way around
the hallway to there, so I took his arms and dragged it two rooms further
down with the inertia, geez.”
“Oh, so you skipped a room, I’m glad,” said a woman with her hair cut
short. “I’m in the room next to Yukino, so I was stressing out because I hadn’t
heard about this whole corpse thing.”
“Ehhh, I wouldn’t want to bother you, Hanada-chan, you know.”
“Hey Hayashi-kun, you heard that?” said Hiraki to hammer it further.
Hayashi tried to brush it off with “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” but Hiraki was really
angry, “I can’t believe you, so evil.”
“So that’s how it arrived to me...” murmured with a strange enthusiasm a
man who looked like a mailman from the countryside who got to join the
troupe during his break. “...It was awful for me too...”
“Eh, but Kamimura-kun, didn’t you bring Anbyouin-san to me?” said a
man of average build but somewhat sturdy, while breathing heavily from his
nose.
“Fufufu, yeah.”
 “Ah, so that’s why~. It needed all of that to finally reach my room, eh. I
see.”
“Huh, so what did you do, Kawabe-chan?” Yukino asked. “Weren’t you
scared?”
“Well~, more than scared, I just didn’t get it. But Anbyouin-san did three
quarters of a lap to me, no? So I helped him complete his loop and connected
the blood tracks, haha~,” laughed Kawabe.
“‘Helped him,’ that doesn’t make sense...” said someone while others
were laughing.
“I mean, it already made no sense why he would crawl all the way from
room 7 to me. That was the most mysterious part. Why did he go around for
300° even though he was dead? Even if he was alive until he reached my room,
why didn’t he go for the 60° route? That should’ve been way faster. That’s
why I thought he was trying to go around the hallway and helped him com-
plete his loop.”
“Stop phrasing it like you showed kindness.”
“It truly was kindness, I swear.”
“Well, calm down. So, in the end, I found him in front of my door after the
loop. Nahaha, took me by surprise~,” said Kimura, making the rest of the
troupe laugh. “You’re the one saying that?” “Exactly, you’re the most at fault
to begin with, Kim.” “Eh, did I poke the hornet's nest?” “You’re seriously the
worst, Kim.” “You’re inhuman.” “Nah, you’re exaggerating... But the same
goes for everyone, doesn’t it? Everyone found Anbyouin-san but no one in-
formed the others, right?” “Oh, true. Crap, you guys on the second floor are
real scum.” “So half of the troupe are bastards.” “Um, you guys talk as if you
were innocent, but all of you on the first floor went into the mountains to
write letters instead of contacting the police just because it was written in his
will. The police already lectured us, but don’t you think you should feel more
ashamed of yourselves?” “As he said, you good-for-nothings.” “No, that’s
actual kindness.” “And so was what I did.” “You were just screwing around,
Kawabe.” “No no, I really...” “But you know, everyone—except Kim—
thought Anbyouin-san had killed himself. That’s because we found a will,
right? But if someone had killed him, what was that about...?”
Kiyuu provided an answer. “That’s as Daibakushou-san said. The mystery
author Anbyouin Owaru-san had prepared a will for the puzzle of his death
that would attract many great detectives. And with the case now in its finale,
can’t we say that plan succeeded?”
“I guess...” another man said. “But many great detectives died.”
“They are used to jumping into the tourbillon that is a case. They are all
prepared to face death, no matter the situation,” Kiyuu said with a fire burn-
ing in his eyes. “Now, at last, I will reveal who actually shot Anbyouin-san in
the back.”
With that line, the clamoring bunch of good-for-nothings went silent
again.
“By the way, do you know the name of Anbyouin-san’s brothers?” Kiyuu
asked the Angel Bunnies, who all answered on their own. Kiyuu nodded. “Ex-
actly, Kento-san and Kanji-san. But those are his little brothers. Does anyone
know about the two big brothers he had?” However, nobody in the troupe
could answer. “Anbyouin-san’s real name is Mitamura Saburou. But what
kind of parents would name their eldest son ‘Saburou’? ...That means, natu-
rally, an ‘Ichirou’ and ‘Jirou’ exist.14 And as we can deduce from Kento-san
and Kanji-san’s names following a different pattern, that ‘Ichirou’-san, ‘Ji-
rou’-san, and ‘Saburou’-san had a special relationship. In reality, ‘Ichirou’-
san, ‘Jirou’-san, and ‘Saburou’-san were triplets. Take a look at this,” Kiyuu
took out Mitamura Saburou’s family register from his breast pocket. ‘Ichirou’
and ‘Jirou’s’ names were on it. But in the column for the deceased. “This
hasn’t been falsified.” That sentence was probably addressed to me. Having
probably noticed my gaze asking ‘But Kiyuu, how can you be sure it hasn’t
been falsified?’ Kiyuu added. “Er~~~~, but, I received it from the West

14
Saburou is written 三朗 (3 + rou, a standard suffix for names), which is part of a
common naming scheme for triplets, quadruplets, or higher, with Ichirou, the eldest,
being named 一朗 (1 + rou), and Jirou, the second eldest, 二朗 (2 + rou).
Akatsuki Town Hall as a great detective, plus I confirmed with the locals, and
I have the maternity records notebook of Mitamura’s mother in my posses-
sion. But I guess if Anbyouin-san was truly trying to fool us and used every
means available to him, there is still a possibility he is fooling me. But that is
unlikely enough that it can be ignored.” Still, I’m not convinced. Shakuko
would’ve probably complained about that, but I was satisfied. “Let’s just pro-
ceed ahead for now,” I told Kiyuu. He took a breath then resumed his demon-
stration. “According to this family register, 24 years ago, in the autumn of
1982, when those three were all 14 years old, Ichirou-kun and Jirou-kun dis-
appeared simultaneously. Seven years passed without them reappearing, so
the court declared them legally dead and they were moved to this column. It
seems some family members hypothesized it was a runaway, but it was un-
likely for the two of them alone to go somewhere and leave Saburou-kun be-
hind, so they ended up leaning more towards an accident. Saburou-san es-
pecially seemed to think that way after he became an adult. One year later,
Mitamura Saburou-san debuted under the name ‘Ehimegawa Juuzou.’ Two
years after re-debuting under the name ‘Anbyouin Owaru,’ Mitamura
Saburou-san published the long book Tsukumojuuku as ‘Ehimegawa Juuzou.’
‘Triplets’ were an important motif in that book, but literary analysis isn’t the
role of a great detective, so I will set that aside. We can at least imagine the
abyss present inside Mitamura Saburou-san’s heart. Having his two triplet
brothers disappear, not to mention they might have purposely left him—a 14
year old boy—out of the group; didn’t he feel a peculiar yet deep-rooted sol-
itude? And at seventeen years old, when Mitamura-kun disappeared, wasn’t
that in actuality Saburou-kun chasing after Ichirou-kun and Jirou-kun four-
and-a-half years later? Saburou-kun came back after 71 days. How did he feel
then? At that time, did something happen that made Mitamura-kun give up
on Ichirou-kun and Jirou-kun? Mitamura-san has never been married, there
are no rumors about a romantic story, and after having become an adult, he
solely wrote mystery novels. However, after building the Pinehouse in 2000,
he barely met even his editors. He wrote his will before the Angel Bunnies ar-
rived three days ago, and yesterday, as Judy Dollhouse-san pointed out, he
met with one of his rare friends, Daibakushou Curry-san, and witnessed his
reckless lobotomy operation. Not knowing the goal of that operation,
Mitamura-san believed he had lost Daibakushou Curry-san—real name Sa-
kai Tsutomu-san—and instead of calling the police or a doctor, left the Sakai
house, returned to the Pinehouse, and shut himself in his office. Then, later
that night, Mitamura-san passed away. But was this death really a homicide?”
That’s ironic, I thought. He said not to assume things just from the situa-
tion, but he was using context to force this story about Anbyouin’s solitude
growing stronger. Just spit out the damn culprit’s name, Great Detective.
Kiyuu continued as I had thought.
“Is it possible to randomly be murdered with a will and the actors neces-
sary to put it into action ready, on the night one loses their friend they had
written a novel after? ...That is...impossible. Exactly. You are right to feel con-
fused. Earlier, I did talk as if the person in room 8 shot Saburou-san through
the wall and murdered him. I apologize for sounding as if I’m contradicting
myself. But a homicide would be impossible. Last night, only Mitamura
Saburou-san and the Angel Bunnies were present in the Pinehouse. If
Saburou-san was murdered, the culprit should be a person from the troupe.
However, they didn’t have enough time since meeting him three days ago to
suddenly develop murderous intent, nor to come up with a scheme as intri-
cate as using a bowgun to create themselves an alibi. But Saburou-san was,
in fact, killed. What does this mean? ...Exactly, this is, in a way, an accident.”
The troupe members swallowed their breaths.
“Then why did the person in room 8 shoot an arrow to Saburou-san in
room 9, despite having no murderous intent? ...For that, I will borrow Ka-
wabe’s words from earlier.”
Upon being mentioned, Kawabe let out a voice of surprise. “Mine? Haha,
did I say anything?”
“It was by kindness,” Kiyuu said.
 “Ahh...huh? But how is firing an arrow kind?”
“...Before answering this, let me read aloud Mitamura Saburou-san’s
will—though this is just a copy. Although this is redundant for the Angel
Bunnies...”
Kiyuu put the family register back in his breast pocket and instead took
out a sheet of paper from the same pocket. He unfolded it.
“...Mikami Nils-san, Disco Wednesdayyy-san, and Mercury C-san still
haven’t read it.”
He then started reading.

“‘The time has come for my alone time to end and new encounters to
flourish. I apologize for the troubles this will cause everyone from Angel Bun-
nies, but please, accept this as the last request of a fellow human and act out
the instructions I wrote in this envelope. I will kill myself, but that is how I
will keep on living. The scorpion that I am will receive the arrow of the cen-
taur that I am and reach the other side of eternity by going further than the
myth which will never occur in constellations. Farewell. Let us meet again.
July 15th, 2006, Mitamura Saburou’”

To put it briefly: it felt bizarrely jovial. It even seemed overflowing with

hope. Was that how Japanese people viewed life and death? Samurai are said
to yearn for death and Buddhists think they will reach Sukhavati after death,
but even so, did they welcome death with a feeling as light as ‘bye bye’?
Or, to think along with the context Kiyuu created, was Anbyouin feeling
overjoyed because death would reunite him with his brothers and put an end
to his solitude, and that’s why he couldn’t write a lengthy and poetic letter
about his departure from this world?
Mm?
July 15th?
 I looked at Kiyuu’s face. I see. Kiyuu made eye contact with me and nodded.
“As is written at the end of the will, the date Mitamura Saburou-san was
planning to commit suicide was tomorrow. He was likely going to carry it out
tomorrow night, at 23:26. Yet, a troupe member happened to discover this
will and learned about Saburou-san’s feelings. But that person could sense
how hard it would be to prevent Saburou-san’s suicide from the text. If it
were someone attempting suicide out of sadness and despair, they could try
to clear that sadness and despair away. But to someone resolved to commit
suicide brimming with hope, what could they do? How could they deprive him
of the greatest happiness he could imagine, one that he was yearning for from
within his solitude? That person gave up on persuading Saburou-san, and in-
stead decided to simply inform Saburou-san they had noticed their feelings.
They thought that might perhaps stop his suicide. But it could also reinforce
Saburou-san’s feelings and increase the happiness he would gain from kill-
ing himself. Or maybe knowing that someone was aware of his intentions
might influence Saburou-san’s resolve. In a way, that might trample over
Saburou-san’s happiness. But ruining someone’s happiness might be al-
lowed as an act of kindness. Therefore, setting aside the result, the compas-
sion and affection of the person in room 8 pushed them to fire at room 9.”
“...Eh...so they killed Saburou-san themselves?” “Is that really kind-
ness~?” “What’s the point in killing him when they should be stopping him?”
Various Angel Bunnies members voiced their thoughts.
Kiyuu explained.
“No, that person was merely trying to shoot an arrow into room 9 and
make him aware of their presence. They had noticed the horoscope and the
usage of the myth before Judy Dollhouse’s deduction took place. The passage
‘The scorpion that I am will receive the arrow of the centaur that I am...’ in
the will, however, couldn’t be understood by them, not being a great detec-
tive. Now, the reason for the difference in what actually happened lies in the
text. On the second floor, since Kimura-san was knowledgeable about the
myth of the twelve constellations—even though he hadn’t noticed the horo-
scope aspect of the house—he aimed at Kawai-san in room 8 through room
9. In other words, he shot at the ‘scorpion room’ from the ‘centaur room.’
However, on the first floor, the arrow was fired from the scorpion room, room
8, to the centaur room, room 9. That person didn’t do it on purpose, but by
chance, they destroyed the disguise. Exactly. That person’s ‘kindness’ un-
knowingly ruined the few years Saburou-san had spent building the Pine-
house in order to erect this myth-based disguise and kill himself. Tomorrow,
July 15th, Saburou-san would most likely have set the bowgun somewhere in
the office, used a mechanism to make it fire automatically, and shot himself
on his bed in the bedroom. But that person had discovered the bowgun and
it’s mechanism. They had also found the hole beyond the wallpaper. That is
natural; after all, that person was in charge of the stage setting for the play
the Angel Bunnies were going to act out for Saburou-san’s eyes only on the
15th, The Pinehouse Dead. Only this person had looked at every nook and
cranny of every room of the Pinehouse for the stage setting. Isn’t that right,
Tanaka Masatsugu-san?”

Oh, so it was just an Angel Bunny. A guy I didn’t know, too. No way I would
get surprised by that name, but that wasn’t the case for his friends.
“Ehhhhhhhhh!?” they were bewildered. “Seriously, Tanaka?!”
“Ah, sorry. Yeah,” said an Angel Bunnies member, a medium-built young
man who hadn’t had many lines.
“Why didn’t you ask us for advice——!”
“Well, you know, that’s someone’s privacy. I didn’t want to make a big
deal out of it and I had time. Of course I would’ve talked about it if the situa-
tion turned dire, but I figured I had to do something by myself...”
“But Kiyuu-kun, doesn’t that mean our Tanaka killed Saburou-san in the
end? Even if it was an accident.”
“...”
 As Kiyuu wouldn’t answer, Tanaka himself spoke out.
“Yes, I did. I’m sorry, I couldn’t get myself to confess.”
“That can’t...Tanaka...”
“Yep...I give up.”
“Don’t... I get you couldn’t say it, but man, just say it...”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to be with everyone as much as possible.”
“What the heck...” “Choukuuji-san, how heavy a crime is this?” “Oh right,
he didn’t intend to kill anyone, it can’t be that bad, right?”
Kiyuu answered. “To begin with, when shooting an arrow through a wall
into a room where someone is present, one should know there is a possibility
for the arrow to hit that person. Shooting regardless of that could be inter-
preted as ‘They were suicidal anyway, I don’t really care if they’re shot,’
which might lead to a judgement of willful negligence. Plus, there is the
abandonment of the corpse and the fact you lied to the police during the in-
vestigation. That’s not a light crime, obviously.”
“...That can’t...”
“But please, hold on a little more before thinking about your crime and
punishment,” Kiyuu asked, then continued. “When Tanaka-san used the
bowgun from room 8 after removing the wallpaper on his side, he was hoping
to make Saburou-san give up on suicide by notifying him of his presence, not
for the arrow to hit him. I assume that is true. Saburou-san would be awfully
surprised at the arrow that came flying, but Tanaka prayed for him to under-
stand the intent. However, when he fired the arrow, Tanaka-san didn’t hear
a cry of surprise nor a sigh following a tension that made Saburou-san freeze
nor a cry of sadness or anger from having his plans ruined. He heard either a
low scream or a groan, right?”
I didn’t get why he needed to check this kind of detail, but Tanaka an-
swered nevertheless. “No, neither, just the sound of someone falling on the
floor.”
“I see, so that was sufficient. Then, Tanaka-san peeked through the wall-
paper to check the sound that happened in room 9. There, he found that the
arrow had stabbed Anbyouin-san, causing him to fall on the floor and bleed
on top of books. But Anbyouin-san was still alive. Wasn’t he? And didn’t he
tell you not to make a ruckus?”
“Yeah, he did. He said ‘Don’t panic.’ Oh, and he also called me by my name.
‘Tanaka-kun, don’t panic.’”
“That’s when you broke the wallpaper on the other side and entered room
9. It was Saburou-san’s orders to sneak through the wall, right? Didn’t he
order you not to go around the hall, but to pass through the hole?”
“He did.”
“And you obeyed him. Now that you were in room 9, Saburou-san gave
you additional instructions.”
“Yes.”
“‘I will soon die. I have a will. But I’m sad I won’t be able to die according
to my will, so could you help me move from here?’ Is that what he said?”
“Approximately.”
“Then, in-between painful breaths, Saburou-san left you with a single
sentence: ‘Transport me to the scorpion room,’ didn’t he? Not ‘to room 8’
nor ‘to the next room.’”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m impressed you figured that out.”
“It’s only natural. I’m a great detective. So, after that, Saburou-san told
you how to create an alibi for yourself by being witnessed by the people in the
hall, how to move him using books, and how to not dirty the floor with blood,
right? He said he would probably be dead by the time you came back to room
9 after everyone deserted the hall, so he told you most of what you needed to
know then. Did that actually happen?”
“It did.”
“And about the way to repair the wallpaper?”
“That too.”
“Where did you hide the bowgun?”
“Ah, well, at that time, I had other things to worry about, and Saburou-
san didn’t talk about it, so I do not remember.”
 “Is that so? In reality, how much time passed before you returned to room
9?”
“Ah, the people in the hall went away pretty quickly, so about 15 minutes.”
“After that, you returned to room 9. How was Saburou-san looking then?”
“Very pale. He was dead.”
“Did you check?”
“Yes, I did. I put my hand on his throat just in case.”
“When you fired the arrow, I bet you were pretty confused at first, but af-
ter leaving some time and coming back, didn’t you consider contacting your
friends or the police?”
“No, not really.”
“Why is that? Were you scared?”
“No~~, more than being scared or confused, how should I put it...I
thought ‘Huh, so it’s the same either way?’”
“Mm? What do you mean by ‘the same’?”
“You know, you were right in that I tried to save him but failed. But he was
planning on dying by shooting himself to begin with, so the pain was pretty
much the same. More like, ‘He was ready for it, so maybe it’s actually fine?’”
“...”
Angel Bunnies members commented on that in the stead of Kiyuu, who
had fallen silent. “No, it being the same or not isn’t the problem, Tanaka~.”
“Geez, so Tanaka is fucked up too? Why?” “How can you stay so calm in the
first place?”
“Sorry, sorry. But I don’t really think suicide is a bad thing. From the bot-
tom of my heart, seriously. I don’t really care, people can kill themselves as
they want, it’s not my problem. I think people deserve that right. Like choos-
ing when your life ends. But this time it happened in front of my eyes and I
knew about it, so I figured I kinda had to help... That’s the level of motivation
I had, to be fully honest.”
That made even the Angel Bunnies fall silent. Only Mercury C adorned a
big grin.
 Kiyuu pulled himself together. “...No need for morals or lectures about
ethics here. Let’s only focus on facts.”
Just facts. He was on a good track.
“To obey Saburou-san’s order of transporting him to the scorpion room,
Tanaka-san started laying out books towards the second floor. Despite there
being another ‘scorpion room’ right next door. I brought it up earlier, but be-
fore Judy, Tanaka-san thought the only scorpion room was room 8 on the
second floor. After all, the first floor doesn’t have the objects representing
the twelve zodiacs. So, with no one to point out that error, Tanaka-san laid
out many books to leave the office and go through the hall, all the while pay-
ing particular attention to the shelves and the stairs. But, when he had
reached the top of the stairs, he ran out of books to use. He had to place some
undirtied books back in the office, so he couldn’t use every book in the room.
When transporting large rocks to build the pyramid, they moved the logs be-
hind the rock in the front again...but he didn’t do this task of moving the used,
blood-drenched books in front because that would accumulate too much
blood and it would spill out...not. Tanaka-san, maybe you couldn’t be both-
ered to do it?”
“Yep, you got me,” Tanaka answered on the spot. “I got bored. But as you
said, people had seen me go in and out of room 8, so I couldn’t leave An-
byouin-san in room 9. I wanted to transport him as far as possible. So when
I got up the stairs and was close to the goal, I figured it was good enough. He
was dead anyway.”
That caused a turmoil of criticism from the Angel Bunnies, so Tanaka
bowed to them and went, “Ah, sorry, sorry.”
Then, Kiyuu said:

“It’s alright, Tanaka-san. I will save you a little. ...That said, you don’t
seem to be tormenting yourself with it much, but regardless of the amount of
guilt you are feeling, that should lessen the criticisms.”
 While saying that, Kiyuu got away from room 7’s door and started de-
scending the stairs. “Please, come along with me.”
I let the Angel Bunnies go ahead. Mikami Nils, Hongou Takeshitakeshi,
Mercury C—who was still carrying the bowgun on his shoulder and grinning
like crazy—and I followed after them.
Kiyuu entered room 9 on the first floor, Anbyouin-san’s office. He once
again stepped on the blood-drenched books he had scattered on the floor.
Ahh, not the evidence, not the crime scene...since I had a lot of friends in the
police back in the States, I could empathize, but in Japan, great detectives
acted like arrogant kings or emperors. They had no professionalism and only
thought about their own convenience...and that was permitted because, like
this, “Okay, now, look here. Can you see the little hole in this wall? And this,
the spare bowgun arrow, look at the arrowhead, can you see the white at the
tip? That’s the bit of wallpaper and the fragment of concrete left on it after it
passed through this hole. In reality, this is the arrow Tanaka-san fired to no-
tify his presence last night,” they were good at surprising people.
“Tanaka-san, you didn’t kill Saburou-san. You were simply unable to
stop him,” the Angel Bunnies couldn’t talk back, but Kiyuu wasn’t over.
“Remember what Hakkyoku Sachiari-san made public earlier in his de-
duction. Saburou-san commuted to an S&M gay club and was called Yagamo
there. Look here to confirm this...except Nils-kun.”
Kiyuu said as he tapped the keyboard on the desk and displayed a picture
showing Saburou = Yagamo. It had probably been taken at Shimiya. Many
men in black leather attire were standing in a windowless, dim room, and
among them was Anbyouin, standing in front of the camera, the flash expos-
ing his pale skin. He was smiling and had an arrow piercing through his
chest. ...But he wasn’t bleeding.
“Ah, yes, Araki-san? Choukuuji speaking.” Looking at him, Kiyuu was
talking on the phone. Araki? ...Oh, it was the policeman-cosplaying dude
Hakkyoku had called earlier. “Oh, really? Then please upload that on the
server. Oh, we can already see it? Thank you very much.” He moved the mouse
and changed pages as indicated by the person on the other side of the phone.
Araki was blunt towards Hakkyoku, but it seems he had taken a liking to
Kiyuu. On the page with Anbyouin’s picture was written ‘For Kiyuu-kun ♡.’
He was lying face down on a bunk. Looking at the skulls and neon lights and
all the other decorations scattered on the floor like trash, he didn’t seem to
be in a respectable hospital. He was being operated on. The area around his
scapula had been cut open with a scalpel. The tiny knife lacerated his skin and
made blood gush out. The op wasn’t respectable either. Kiyuu hung up the
phone and said, “Mikami Nils-kun, you mustn’t look at this. Even if you’re a
great detective, that’s too much.” Nils shrugged his shoulders. “It’s an im-
plant, right? I know what it is.”
“Exactly. A type of body remodeling. This is a picture from 1996 when
Saburou-san was operated on in a place for people with that kind of hobby in
Kanazawa. This is the apparatus implanted in Saburou-san’s skin,” he said
as he switched to another picture of two metallic sockets. The base of the
sockets was flat. “These were implanted in his back and his chest with the
opening exposed. And they both came with an attachment he could insert in
that opening.” Kiyuu clicked. An arrow broken off in two in the middle was
displayed. ...No, it wasn’t broken. The middle of the arrow had a threading on
both ends. So he achieved a perfect Yagamo cosplay by screwing those into
the sockets in his back and chest. “Saburou-san enjoyed his fantasies with
that contraption for the past 10 years. He probably sometimes wore it in his
residence as well. He was alone in the Pinehouse, so he could even go on with
his life with that on. That’s why the back of his stool was so low, and why he
only met his editor in the reception space. I couldn’t tell you when he devel-
oped the dream of being pierced by an arrow, but he had it for the last 10 years
at the very least. And finally, Mitamura-san died according to his fanta-
sies...at least, he pretended to.”
 Right. He’d pretended. Tanaka’s arrow had only opened a small hole in the
wall next to the desk; it hadn’t pierced Anbyouin.
“Starting when the arrow got shot from room 8, Saburou-san put on the
tail and head sides of the arrow, sprinkled blood clots on the books, then pre-
tended to collapse on them. ...No, he was probably already wearing the arrow.
After all, there was no guarantee Tanaka-san wouldn’t immediately peep
through the hole to check on the suspicious silence devoid of agony. He might
even have been done sprinkling the blood by then.”
“Eh...but...” Tanaka was confused.
Kiyuu put in the final nail. “He had seen through it all and used you,
Tanaka-san.”

“It was easy to foresee you would discover the will, the set up for firing
the bowgun, and the hole, being the stage setter. But maybe the most praise-
worthy insight was his ability to discern people’s personalities, which he had
honed by writing mystery novels for 16 years. Saburou-san met Tanaka-san
and talked with him for three days, observed him, and likely had him pass
some tests. He concluded that if he wrote that exact will and created a certain
mood, Tanaka-san wouldn’t contact his friends, and instead would feel
forced to act out of his kindness. If he shut himself in his office, the only thing
Tanaka-san could do was fire an arrow from the bedroom. If he made you
think that arrow ‘accidentally’ hit him, he would be able to make you do an-
ything. It was all an act. That will was designed after Tanaka-san’s person-
ality. It was a tool to manipulate Tanaka-san. Another stage setter would
have acted differently. And Saburou-san would’ve acted out his own death in
a different way.”

“...But Anbyouin-san was dead. His body was cold and bleeding,” Tanaka
tried to argue.
 Kiyuu replied.
“That was someone else’s corpse.”
“Whose?”
“Either Mitamura Ichirou-san or Jirou-san, who had gone missing.
Saburou-san captured one of them beforehand, killed him at the right time,
placed it on the ground in the office in his stead, and escaped the Pinehouse
before Tanaka-san returned.”

Kiyuu continued, paying no heed to the bewilderment and stupor around

him.
“The one who found Saburou-san’s triplet older brothers was his best
friend, Daibakushou Curry-san. Two days ago, 30,000 yen was deposited in
Daibakushou-san’s account under Saburou-san’s name. That must’ve been
his reward. But Daibakushou-san passed away before using that money.
Right before ‘acting out his suicide’ Saburou-san murdered Daibakushou
Curry-san since he knew too much. Ultimately, Daibakushou-san probably
stabbed his eyes with chopsticks himself, but the bizarre idea of the lobotomy
to cure depression must’ve come from Saburou-san. That operation had no
chances of success. But, to Saburou-san’s surprise, Daibakushou-san suc-
ceeded and lived on. He was alive to rush to the crime scene of the Pinehouse.
Then, being a great detective, he saw through Saburou-san’s suicide, and,
being his friend, he didn’t speak out the truth. He then passed away.

“So Daibakushou-san didn’t hinder Mitamura Saburou-san’s plans, let-

ting him escape from his solitude. Everything was a scheme to get there. The
Pinehouse wasn’t the stage for a suicide. It was a mechanism to shoot himself
free of this world. The corpse looping around the Pinehouse wasn’t planned
by Saburou-san. That was accidental. Completely unrelated to the original
case. But we great detectives all tried to read into useless context. We were
too used to answering all the mysteries. But that’s impossible to begin with,
so we were merely too used to pretending to solve all the mysteries. That’s
what strayed us...especially in this Pinehouse Case. And many great detectives
died due to having read into that unnecessary context. Daibakushou-san’s
death was the trigger for it. The notion of death for the wrongs is inherent to
great detectives. We live amongst perpetual metaphysical danger. That’s why,
when presented with a case like this one, events that happened merely on a
physical level, we get mired in context. That...might have been the last trap
set up by the mystery writer Anbyouin Owaru, or alternatively Ehimegawa
Juuzou. I couldn’t say how far ahead the mystery novelist Saburou-san read
and planned things, but this is now the end. I will now leave the Pinehouse
and go search for Saburou-san. ...If I find him...I’m unsure if I will contact the
police. But I still want to talk with him. We both lost a brother in the Pine-
house, maybe we could have a discussion about that.”
Kiyuu laughed. The Angel Bunnies were all silent except for Tanaka Ma-
satsugu. “Ah...still, I can’t thank you enough for saving me. ...I’m relieved
now, to be honest. I was scared. Thank you so much.”
His friends then slowly came back to themselves.
“He’s right~~, seriously. I’m glad for you, Tanaka. Well, it’s not entirely
alright, though, I bet the police have some problems with what you did.”
“Yeah~ I’m glad for you Tanaka.” “There’s clearly something wrong with
your brain so we’ll take you to a hospital later.” “That goes for all of us. Take
the ones who moved Anbyouin-san’s corpse along.” “You got it wrong, it
wasn’t Anbyouin-san’s.” “That’s not the problem here, Kimura-kun.” “Ah!
Kim, go see a doctor too! You’re the worst of us!”
Then, Kawai said:
“Umm~~, I bet everyone else forgot, but in the end, where’s Kim’s arrow?
It didn’t hit me, nor Anbyouin-san...his brother, right? Where is it, then?”
“Go search around the room, Kawai-chan. It must be somewhere.”
“It’s not that big of a room and I didn’t bring much stuff in, I would’ve
noticed if an arrow hit something.”
 Kiyuu raised a hand to Kawai.
“I can easily tell you where it is, of course. If it’s not in room 8, then...”
“Oh, room 9?” Kawai proposed, but Nomura Rie said “Eh, hold on, no ar-
row came to me either?” so Kiyuu continued.
“If it’s not in room 8 nor in room 9...nor in the hallway, then...”
“Oh, outside.” Kawai exclaimed and rushed up the stairs. “Isn’t it stuck to
room 9’s window?” “Ahh wait a minute, don’t enter on your own again!”
Nomura Rie followed him up the stairs. Once on the second floor, they barged
into room 9.
“...These two are getting along pretty well, eh.” “Aren’t they going out~?”
“They got neighboring rooms too.” “Kawai-chan sure is popular, huh?”
“Crap, Kim will shoot him again.” (laughters) “Drop it, Kim.” “Don’t ever let
him get near weapons again.” “Yeah, Kim’s too dangerous.”
Listening to the Angel Bunnies bantering as usual next to me, to be honest,
I felt a sense of liberation too.
We read into useless context; that didn’t only apply to the great detectives,
but me too. I came here for Kozue. Murders coincidentally happened then, but
I could have come here when the atypical mystery author was living here in
solitude, or after the case, when the house was left vacant after its owner went
away. The Pinehouse Case and Kozue’s Pineapple Tunnel existed in different
dimensions. For a second, I considered searching for Anbyouin Owaru along
with Choukuuji Kiyuu and observing their conversation from afar to witness
the true end of the story, but I had no reason to do so, nor meaning to gain. I
didn’t have time for that. Kozue’s soul was still in the same state; that was
my top priority. Had this affair been mediatized outside the Pinehouse to in-
dicate what I should be doing?
“We looked at the window and outside, but there’s no arrow?” said Kawai.
Another troupe member told him “Isn’t that enough, Kawai-chan? Can you
leave it be?” but Kiyuu headed to the second floor. “If it’s not in room 8 nor
room 9 nor outside room 8 nor outside room 9, it should be somewhere nei-
ther inside nor outside rooms 8 and 9...” Hearing Kiyuu say that as he climbed
the stairs, I found myself pulled in by the mood of a great detective’s mys-
tery-solving. I followed after Kiyuu. So did the other Angel Bunnies, Nils,
Hongou, and Mercury C. We were like ducklings following their mother.
Though we weren’t that cute.
Somewhere neither inside nor outside?
“The hole,” I muttered. Kiyuu must’ve heard me since he then said, “Haha.
Wednesdayyy-san, you peeked at the hole in the wallpaper from the second
floor’s room 9, didn’t you?” “Yeah.” “How many holes did you see on the
other side?” “Eh?” “In the darkness. You must’ve seen holes of light. How
many?” “...One.” “That is the arrow Mercury C-san fired at room 8’s man-
nequin for the demonstration, alright. There should now be a new hole from
when Mercury C-san yet again shot through the hole, though this time onto
the mannequin standing in for Anbyouin-san that Kimura laid out. But then,
why is there no hole from the arrow Kimura-san shot in Kawai-san’s room
last night?” I already knew the answer. However, Kiyuu continued the great
detective protocol. He entered room 8—Kawai’s room—stood facing where
the hole connecting to room 9 should be, and put both index fingers through
the holes present through the wallpaper. “See, there are only two holes. Then,
Wednesdayyy-san, could you peek once more, this time from room 8 to room
9.” Invited, I entered Kawai’s room and walked up to Kiyuu next to the wall.
“Please peek through this hole. What do you see? How many holes do you see?”
I obeyed and looked through one of the holes. Three stars should be glowing
inside the darkness. Two from Mercury C during the demonstration, and one
from Kimura. From the arrow that passed through room 9’s window into the
hole, but encountered an obstacle there, or couldn’t break through the wall-
paper, and ended up staying inside the hole. Somewhere neither inside nor
outside rooms 8 and 9.
But inside the hole I could not see three lights. Nor two nor one.
There’s no hole on room 9’s side?
“Choukuuji,” I said to him.
“What is it? What did you see?”
 “Nothing.”
“There can’t be nothing. Or is room 9 currently dim?” Kiyuu said and
looked through the other hole. “...Huh?”
Then, we heard ‘Choukuuji-san, over here~.’ It was Kawai’s voice coming
from beyond the wall. ‘What are you doing?’
“Well, we’re looking through the holes...”
‘Same here.’
What? It was pure black. It didn’t feel like someone was looking from the
other side. The voice felt close. But we couldn’t see Kawai.
“...Kawai-san, you’re looking through a hole as well?”
‘Rie-pon too.’
‘Ya~y. I’m Nomura Rie~. I’m looking, but there’s nothing? Do you really
have holes on your side?’
“We’re looking through them now, though?”
‘Oh my, that is strange.’
“Yeah...I will peel the wallpaper off then.”
‘Eh, you won’t be scolded?’
“There’s no one left to scold me.”
Saying that, Kiyuu got away from the wall. I did the same. He took a knife
from his pocket and stabbed the wall. Bsh, the blade penetrated the wall. The
hole in the wall. He lowered the knife straight down to cut vertically, pulled
out the blade, then put it in again at the top, this time to cut horizontally. The
triangle formed in the wallpaper drooped, letting us peek into the square hole
as well as freeing the odor trapped inside it.
I knew this odor.
I knew this odor because I was a detective.
I knew this odor because I was a detective who had braved many dangers.
“What’s this smell?” the troupe members behind me didn’t know.
That was the smell of a damaged corpse. Even the members who had come
into contact with the freshly-dead Anbyouin didn’t know about it.
Corpses normally aren’t left out in the open long enough for them to rot.
 I looked at Kiyuu’s stern face from the side.
He kept peeling the wallpaper off in silence.
Bshhhhhh, bshah!
The naked corpse with its back pierced by an arrow, sitting with its head
between its knees in the square hole connecting the centaur’s room and the
scorpion’s room, was Anbyouin Owaru = Ehimegawa Juuzou = Mitamura
Saburou.
Since he was naked, we could see the metallic implant on his chest and
back. But we could also tell the arrow was piercing a different spot. Right next
to the metallic implants. He was also bleeding. He was dead.
But his face didn’t indicate agony.
He looked as if his feelings had cleared away.

The time has come for my alone time to end and new encounters to flour-
ish. I apologize for the troubles this will cause to everyone from Angel Bun-
nies, but please, accept this as the last request of a fellow human and act out
the instructions I wrote in this envelope. I will kill myself, but that is how I
will keep on living. The scorpion that I am will receive the arrow of the cen-
taur that I am and reach the other side of eternity by going further than the
myth which will never occur in constellations. Farewell. Let us meet again.

Anbyouin had come back.

“Hey!! Whatcha doin’ in people’s houses ya

hooligans!!?”
 The Angel Bunnies all jumped in surprise as chills ran down their spines
because of that scream from Mercury C, making him burst into laughter.
Hooligans?
Hearing Mercury C’s laugh, I reverted my gaze towards Kiyuu.
He was looking at Anbyouin Owaru inside the hole, but his eyes were com-
posed.
No surprise. No confusion. As if he had foreseen it...was that even possi-
ble?
He knew of his mistake? ...No, Kiyuu seemed to genuinely believe in his
deduction until the moment he flipped the wallpaper. He thought this would
be the conclusion.
But it wasn’t.
The same thing that happened with Hakkyoku’s deduction. The moment
they believe to have the resolution in their grasp, it slips through their hands
and disappears.
Why was Anbyouin’s real corpse in there? Who put him there? Who had
the chance to hide him in there when the Pinehouse was packed with cops,
great detectives, and many Angel Bunnies members?
No, more importantly, I had peeked at the hole from room 9 earlier. I could
clearly see the holes in room 8 then.
But Anbyouin was sitting naked while bleeding in there, blocking most of
the view.
The corpse was set and the wallpaper repaired sometime between when
Mercury C had nearly shot me and now.
Who could’ve done it?
Kiyuu let out a sigh next to me. But it wasn’t a sigh of someone giving up.
He smiled at Mikami Nils and Hongou Takeshitakeshi who had joined us be-
fore I knew it.
He could smile?
“The world changed,” Kiyuu said. “I can’t believe it.”
 “Will you be alright?” Hongou asked. “You’re such an idiot, geez. You
should’ve done it tomorrow morning, after getting some good sleep. But now
there’s sleepiness to fight off.”
“Yeah. But sleepiness isn’t my enemy,” Kiyuu let out another smile. “I
won’t be able to sleep anyway.”
Hongou smiled too. “No, idiot. I’m not talking about you. It’ll be a pain for
us not to sleep.” He was probably jesting.
It seemed Kiyuu was moved by Hongou’s words. “...Thank you...”
“Oh, gonna cry?”
“I won’t.”
“Haha. But Nils-chan, you can sleep. It’ll soon be curfew time for the kids.”
“That’s mean, Hongou-san,” Nils was smiling too. “Sti~ll, color me sur-
prised once more.”
“Did ya poop yourself again?” Hongou teased him.
“I’m alright. I was certainly surprised, but I’ve now registered that these
kinds of things happen here, so I’m fine. Though my brain still has trouble
accepting it.”
What was happening here?
“Hey, Great Detectives.”
I turned back along with them.
That voice came from Mercury C. He threw something at Kiyuu which he
caught.
“Keep it. I bet you’re gonna need it.”
Kiyuu was holding Mercury C’s eye drops.
Epinephrine with 2% of lidocaine.
The same anesthetic Keraku had used...or tried to use when stabbing a
chopstick through his left eye.
“It’s your big bro’s wisdom. Be grateful to your beloved onii-sama,” Mer-
cury C laughed. Kiyuu glared at him in silence.
With a cold, dark, pure hatred.
I understood.
 Choukuuji-san, do you really think you can do it? Mikami wasn’t asking
about his confidence in his deduction. He was checking his resolve for what
would come after.
I didn’t know whether the deduction just now was genuine or an act, but
it was clear that the great detectives were planning on intercepting the per-
son who would stab Kiyuu’s eyes.
That’s the resolve one must have when they realize their deduction was
wrong. Hongou and Nils seemed to want to protect him.
But on my side, I should better protect Mercury C. There was no guarantee
Kiyuu wouldn’t try poisoning him.

That said, Kiyuu didn’t give the eye drops back to Mercury C, nor threw
them to the floor.
A part of me thought that they might come into use. And that this might
truly be Mercury C’s kindness.

“Kozue, since ‘Owaru-chan’ died, many people came, and a few others
died, no? Do you know who the culprit is?”
“... (the spiky pig nods)”

“Who is it?”
“Essessneinpinner.”

“Who’s that?”
“He peels off the nails of sleeping people.”

Would Essessneinpinner come? To stab Kiyuu’s eyes?

“He has no face. It’s all black.”

Apparently Kozue could see it...then, was it a soul-like existence similar

to Kozue? How could we stop it if that was the case? ...Worried about that, I
asked for advice from the Angel Bunnies’ great detective. The other members
were flabbergasted by the nature of Kozue and Essessneinpinner, but the
great detectives were composed. “Well, surprises often reside on a deeper
level than the superficial one,” laughed Mikami Nils. “The real surprise has
yet to come.” About an hour had passed since the re-discovery of Anbyouin’s
corpse; it was nearly ten in the evening. Three hours had passed since Kozue
returned to her own body. The intervals between the swaps with the ‘seven-
teen-year-old Kozue’ were getting shorter, so Kozue might return to the
Pinehouse pretty briefly. In case she were to come tonight, I will wait for her
here instead of going to Yuu Yuu. I didn’t want Kozue to ever feel sad again.
Though in reality, I didn’t want her to ever come here. I had to urge the con-
clusion.
It had been confirmed that Anbyouin’s corpse disappeared from the
morgue in Takefu City. It had been sent back there for a second autopsy a few
minutes ago. Relative to Daibakushou, Dollhouse, Keraku, and the
Hakkyoku’s group of six, who all died five to fifteen minutes after exposing
their deductions, Kiyuu had survived the longest among the great detectives.
We moved the traveler’s tree previously in the middle of the hall to near the
wall along with its pot and arranged the sofa sets in a circle. The Angel Bun-
nies—including Tanaka after he came back from the police interrogation—
the great detectives, and I were sitting as if to surround Kiyuu; all of us were
watching him, except for Mercury C, who had disappeared somewhere again.
If anyone were to stab Kiyuu’s eyes or if he did it himself, someone would be
sure to have seen it. We had borrowed cameras from the reporters waiting
outside and set them at various angles to capture Kiyuu. However, these re-
porters had been driven outside by the police, except for the people necessary
to operate the ten-or-so cameras. That was fine. If we had to bother with the
many questions of these slowpokes, we wouldn’t get anywhere. Purely wait-
ing would get us nowhere. The great detectives had to think. “To be frank, up
to now,” said Kiyuu, “great detectives have always brought in new ideas to
explain the inexplicable, like Hakkyoku-san earlier. In other words, our
stance has been that nothing is unexplainable. Our job consisted of grounding
people to reality. Well, there were also cases where the hidden truth was even
more inexplicable than the original incident, but—and that goes for ‘Kozue-
chan’s’ ‘timeslips’ and sudden changes in body size and the Panda Case, not
to mention Essessneinpinner—the events we are dealing with here are hard
to accept as truths of this world for great detectives. But...” Kiyuu made eye
contact with me. “Right now, I can feel a great change that our current selves
cannot even come close to measuring.” His eyes were as calm as ever. That
change had already taken effect inside Kiyuu. Inside Nils and Hongou too.
They still had that flashy, highschool aura to them, but the color in their eyes
had slightly changed. Of course, part of it was because many great detectives
had died, so they couldn’t stay carefree, but that wasn’t all of it. They had
become more stoic upon noticing an anomaly in the world. That change was
proof of their intelligence and rationality.
“Though, of course, we have no guarantee the Panda Case and all that
stuff about ‘Kozue’ are related to the Pinehouse Case. I agree with what Kiyuu
said earlier, I was reading too much into ‘unnecessary context,’” I said. “But
I admit there must be a connection in the fact that ‘Kozue’ said Owaru-chan
killed Anbyouin Owaru and Essessneinpinner is killing the great detectives.”
“Hm~~~m, well, let’s accept just that at face value. But then, what can we
do about it?” asked Kiyuu. “Souls, huh... If I’m gonna die soon, I might get to
understand everything in the other world, though,” he laughed.
“We have a fortune teller in the troupe, but I don’t know how useful he’ll
be,” Hongou said. Oh right, the Angel Bunnies were joking about that earlier.
It was one of the guys who had been part of the ‘moving Anbyouin’s corpse
little by little on the second floor’ thing, if I remembered correctly.
“Oh, let’s have him divine who the culprit is,” Nils exclaimed in delight.
“That would make us fail as great detectives, but I’m okay with it if that
means putting a lid on this case.”
“No, let’s not mix that kind of element in,” Kiyuu said. “I mean, we’d end
up analyzing every single element. Like, take this sofa; we’d think about its
maker, product name, designer and their history, location of its factory, and
even other manufacturers in the city and check the semiotics of every single
aspect, wouldn’t we? And that’s just for one sofa, imagine how endless it
would be for something as deep and meaningful as fortune-telling.”
“Ehh, I’m fine with it though,” Nils replied. “I’m quite on the intuitive
side of things.”
“All great detectives are,” Kiyuu again. “We only need the required
knowledge to make use of those intuitions. Though you might not have been
too conscious of it yet.”
“Oh~, I see~. It’s my first time being on a case with other great detectives,
so it’s all fresh to me~. I’ve never done anything quite like this.”
“I’ve done it twice in the past. Both were with the same great detective. Do
you know of Pariya Choumaru?”
“Yep, I do. I heard a bit about him in Italy~. I heard there was another
amazing great detective from Japan. Pariya-san is a chef, right?”
“Yeah. After that last case, he went to Spain, while I returned to Ja-
pan. ...What do you think, should we call him over?”
“Mm~~~~m. But calling a new great detective means they would come
after the present ones. It presumes that there is a possibility for Kiyuu-san,
Hongou-san, and I to be wrong. Even ignoring us dying, is it really fine to
invite friends into such a dangerous situation?”
“We’re not especially friends. Plus, it’s unimaginable for great detectives
to stay away from mysteries because they’re scared. Worrying about one’s
life just indicates a lack of confidence in their abilities. That alone disqualifies
someone from being a great detective.”
“Hm~m, well, maybe. You have a point. Then how does it feel to have two
great detectives? Does it end up as a confrontation? Like Holmes vs. Mitarai
Kiyoshi.”
“No, it’s like what Hakkyoku-san and co. did. Everyone reaches the same
answer at approximately the same time, and they instinctively split the role
of explaining the truth with good timing. Well, ‘splitting the role’ is basically
sharing the workload, to put it in business terms. This is a business after all.
But you already know about that, don’t you, Nils-kun? That it’s an industry
of popularity and trust.”
“Yeah~.”
“When I was exposing my deduction earlier, Nils-kun and Hongou-san,
you two already knew what I was thinking about, didn’t you? You were ready
to partake in the explanation if the situation called for it.”
“Yes. It’s like we’re constantly in the present continuous, like we’re al-
most in sync.”
“Same for Hongou-san, right?”
Upon being called out, Hongou awoke from his daydreaming and said, “Eh,
yeah? What is? Ah~ crap, I’m hungry. Have you all had lunch already?”
“Now that you mention it, we haven’t.”
“Manabuddy~~, I’m hungwy~,” Hongou said to the leader of the Angel
Bunnies, Fukushima Manabu. The kind-looking, tall, and slim Fukushima
replied, “Oh, right, my bad, no one’s eaten yet. I was so tense I couldn’t get
hungry so I didn’t notice, sorry.” He stood up and left the hall along with a
few girls. They probably headed to the kitchen in the detached building.
I just hoped they wouldn’t bring chopsticks with the meal. “Say, have all
the chopsticks really been collected?” I asked for confirmation with the great
detectives. “Even the throwaway ones?”
“Yes,” Kiyuu answered. “We only left forks and knives behind. After all,
we can’t really eat with our fingers.” “Spoons alone should be enough, no?
Aren’t knives and forks dangerous with how pointy they are?” “Well, they
have always been here, but up till now it’s always been chopsticks. If I die
from a knife or a spoon, please collect all of those,” Kiyuu laughed, but all the
other great detectives and I could do was raise the corner of our lips. Kiyuu
continued, “Don’t forget that this is an author’s house. There could be pens
or pencils anywhere.” “Well, true,” I conceded, then enquired about some-
thing I was wondering about. “Do you great detectives have absolute confi-
dence in your ability to conclude a case? Always?”
 Kiyuu answered. “Yes, always. If that wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t be
great detectives.”
“Nils, you too?”
“Eh~? Well. I’m pretty good at solving them. I’ve never been wrong.”
“Hongou-kun, you too?”
“Ehh? Heck if I know. I’m not calling myself a great detective to begin with.
That’s too idiotic.”
“Eh,” Kiyuu laughed, and pulled out a business card from a card holster
in his pocket. On it was written ‘Great Detective Choukuuji Kiyuu’. “So I’m an
idiot...”
“Yep, you are,” Hongou said. “Aren’t you embarrassed, using that?”
“Ehhh, but if I don’t write something of that level, I won’t get requests.”
“Well, I never head to a specific case. I bet you have an agency, a great de-
tective agency.”
Yeah, it was written on the card. I pointed at the title on the card Kiyuu had
placed on the sofa. ‘Great Detective Choukuuji Kiyuu: Vice-representant of
the Choukuuji Brothers.’
“Damn, you really have no shame,” Hongou bursted out in laughter. “You
get clients with that?”
“I do. A lot of them, actually.”
“But are those requests of great-detective level?”
“They are. I’m always taken aback by that. None of the cases I get are nor-
mal. That’s probably why they come to our office in the first place, but it’s
always surprising seeing how full of mysteries this world is. A lot of them
don’t seem too mysterious once solved, but it’s surprising just how many
seem mysterious at first. So Hongou-san, are you the type to get dragged into
cases?”
“Don’t say ‘type.’ That’s not the kind of thing you can classify or analyze.
Also I don’t consider myself a great detective, it’s just that others are dumber
than me.”
“Ah, so you’re the coincidentally-in-that-position pattern?”
 “Listen to what I say and drop the ‘pattern’ talk.”
“I call myself a ‘great detective’ though~,” Nils joined the conversation
as he seemed eager to get back to the main point.
“Yeah, I mean, you’re a star, after all~,” Kiyuu said. “You’re on a different
stage from us.”
“Don’t lump me with you,” complained Hongou. “You and I are com-
pletely different.”
“Haha. But we probably get cases at the same frequency, don’t we? Ha-
ven’t you been involved in a lot of cases, even though you never set up an
agency?”
“Yeah. But that’s just because our members are all stupid. They always go
where they shouldn’t, like this place.”
“Same for you, Nils-kun, right? A lot happens worldwide, after all.”
“Can’t be more right~~. The cases in Europe or North America often end
up on TV, but that almost never happens for those in the Islamic world or Af-
rica. Same for those involving drug kings or some secret royalty. Sometimes
it really feels like the key to world peace is in my hands. Either that or a switch
to destroy the world.”
“Whichever it is, a kid shouldn’t be made to hold it,” Hongou commented.
“Tell me about it in secret later, ‘kay? Your stories seem fun.”
“No can do. During my time in South America I apparently got operated
on in my sleep. They made me drink sleeping medicine and implanted some-
thing in me. You realize? Now I can’t board a plane without the machine going
beep.”
“Just remove it with another surgery.”
“No, it’s most likely a robot that moves across my body. So even if I man-
age to pin it down, it’ll be somewhere else the next instant.”
“Uwaa~~h, that sucks. Is it a bomb?”
“That, in addition to a wiretap, I suppose.”
“Don’t you sit next to me!”
“Don’t be like that~~.”
 “But Nils-kun, is it okay to talk about the robot like you just did? Aren’t
you being listened to?”
“It’s alright. I can talk about pretty much whatever I want, only the core
of the matter is restricted. I can say the name of the client and give a gist of
the case without problem.”
“Eh? Really?”
“The core is reaaaally personal, so I wouldn’t talk about it anyway. That’s
why it’s not such a bother except for the beep. I barely mind it.”
“Huh, I see... As expected of a star, we live in different worlds...”
“Still, that’s scary! I’d rather die than have that.”
“I’m telling you, It’s alright. Joaquin Joseph Styron~. Big shots of the
Mederica Cartel~. Inverted hanging~~. It’s fine, see?”
“What was that?”
“Some keywords. The safe ones.”

Styron?

JJ Styron was Sharon ‘The Snake in the Sun’ Styron’s brother-in-law.

They are 17 years apart in age. Sharon called him Double J, Baby Brother, or
Lil J. “Did something happen to Styron?”
Nils and the others stared at me. “Ah, of course you know about them,
Wednesdayyy-san. After all, America is always at war.”
“The boss of the Mederica Cartel should have been Antonio Juanes
Elderama. Why does the name Styron come up there...”
“Styron massacred Elderama’s family, relatives, friends, acquaintances,
associates, and even the servants and their families. He even had the support
of some governments. Well, that had nothing to do with the case since it’s
just personal things about Styron. But I won’t tell you any more about the case,
okay?”
 “What was the inverted hanging thing about?”
“Some of Styron’s underlings were found hanging upside-down in a short
lapse of time. So I went there and solved the mystery.”
“...When was that?”
“Eh? About two weeks ago.”
Nothing about the crowning of a new drug king or the serial killing of his
underlings was talked about in Japanese news. I bet it wasn’t talked about
much in America either. Moreover, I didn’t hear about it because of how busy
I was taking care of Kozue. When was the last time I’d met Sharon? It had
been quite a while. Over two years ago. That Sharon who swam in money and
free time without having to work. Did she still live in that stupidly luxurious
mansion of 15 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms?
...No, if Nils wasn’t lying, there must’ve been some kind of desire for ret-
ribution against JJ’s family. Sharon could have left the States if JJ had
preemptively informed her, but considering JJ was keeping his distance from
her, had he done that?
That said, I returned to the core of my confusion. Why did Styron’s name
appear there?

Hold on, hold on. I was about to read into a new context, but was that one
I should pay attention to? Was there even a context there? Wasn’t I yet again
trying to justify random events?
Don’t read into weird contexts, I had to engrave that in my heart.
Mikami Nils coincidentally got involved with the Styrons, and coinci-
dentally came to the Pinehouse. That was amply possible. After all, if JJ really
became a drug king, and some kind of murder occured afterwards, he
wouldn’t be able to call the police. They have an investigation branch inside
the organization, but if they find themselves in need of a great detective, they
wouldn’t pick up one on the street. They would ask a star.
 And such a star, Mikami Nils, was present here because he got intrigued
by the case. Mysteries murdering great detectives one after the other
shouldn’t be all that common, no matter how vast the world was.
It was all logical in a world I was unfamiliar with.
Even the name of Styron I’d found unnatural was following the flow of
things for Nils. There was a start, an end, and another start. The events were
unrelated.
For instance, if I were to suggest the Styron Case and the Pinehouse Case
were related only because I knew the sister of the Styron mentioned by Nils,
everyone would throw me weird glances and think, “He went crazy, he dealt
so much with the bizarre he started spouting out unrealistic stuff, he’s no
good anymore.” And I wouldn’t get any more information, everyone would
stop listening and talking to me. Can’t blame them.
What was I thinking about?
It seemed like I was hellbent on sticking sophism to my surprise. Surprises
scared me, so I tried to justify them in a twisted way.
How weak.
“Is something wrong, Wednesdayyy-san?” Nils asked me. Kiyuu and
Hongou were looking at me too.
Pfft, I blurted out a laugh. So stupid. “You know, I’m acquainted with Sty-
ron’s sister,” I told him. That wasn’t something to examine as if it were im-
portant information. “Though we’re not friends or anything.”
Then Nils said, “With Sharon-san?”
“Yeah.”
“My apologies. It might not be ideal to hear this from me, but...Sharon-
san passed away.”
A heavy blank came rushing towards me, stealing my surroundings of all
color, then turned into a stream and traversed through me from my forehead
to the back of my head. The Snake in the Sun had died?
“...How did it happen?”
 “She got kidnapped and cut into pieces. I think it was retribution from
survivors of the Elderama case. Since Styron’s methods were horrible when
he killed the people related to Elderama.”
“...”
“It seems Styron’s underlings caught the culprit, though.”
Then it was already over.
“...I see. Thank you for telling me.”
“...Still, I’m sorry, even though I couldn’t have known.”
“No, it’s fine.”
It’s not like she was a saint the world would regret losing. You could say
it’d even become better because of her death. She had meddled with so many
dangerous people as a way to kill time, she wouldn’t have lived long whether
JJ intervened or not.
“...Do cases need great detectives or do great detectives need cases...”
muttered Kiyuu, probably trying to get back to the original topic. “Why are
there so many bizarre cases? Nils-kun, when you’ve done this job for some
time, don’t you start to feel like the cases happen because of you?”
“Eh, nah~, it’s all fun to me. I might get scolded for saying that, but I mean
it. I get that everyone involved are real people that lead lives of their own, but
I just deduce, get it right, conclude the case, and feel happy and delighted be-
cause of it.”
“Idiot, that’s because you’re still a kiddo,” Hongou said. “Your life goes
places it should never normally have and greatly influences the lives you in-
teract with. You should be more humble.”
“I am, of course. That goes without saying. My point was that there was
an undeniable enjoyment in that act. Don’t you feel it too, Hongou-san?”
“Not a speck. It’s nothing but a hassle to me.”
“Really?”
“Obviously.”
“Then it might only be me, but it’s still free from any form of logic.”
“As if there’s anything humans do that isn’t ruled by logic.”
 “There is. Isn’t that the case for art?”
“Of course not. Let’s say you wanna draw an illogical manga. You’d con-
sciously try to come up with something illogical, wouldn’t you? Then there’s
a logic to decide what’s illogical. People have different forms of logic, but
nothing is free of it.”
“I disagree. To take on the same example, there are people writing illogi-
cal manga without awareness, and some people even write things because
they like it, without worrying about logic.”
“Knowledge doesn’t matter for logic. It’s the foundation for actions and
conceptions.”
“Isn’t that just your view of logic, Hongou-san? We see things differently.”
“That’s because you’re a kiddo who doesn’t understand anything.”
Just then, when the conversation was heating up over useless debates
about ideology, the light of the chandelier went off and the hall fell into dark-
ness. Screams. Crack! Something got broken.

It came!
Essessneinpinner!
“Kiyuu, lie down!”
I grabbed Kiyuu’s body next to me—probably by the shoulder—pushed
him down, and looked around. Kiyuu was pressing on his left eye with a hand.
“Don’t cover your eyes yet, look around.” “I’m getting an eye used to the
darkness, in case I need to run outside.” He was calm. How wonderful intel-
ligence is. There was still light beyond the hall, but there might’ve been an
ambush in the brightest place. The first and second floor had lights set up
above the doors, so the hall wasn’t completely dark. We could distinguish sil-
houettes. “Don’t move, Angel Bunnies! Keep the circle formation while fac-
ing outside!” My order silenced the troupe members who were acting up. It
showed they were used to group activities.
Where would it come from?
 A laughter echoed from somewhere. It was an eerie, high-pitched voice.

“Ufufu, I see, I see. So that is how it is.”

I looked at the silhouette from where the voice came. It was on the second
floor, around room 8. I only had a phone on hand I could throw. I missed my
guns.

“Huh, it’s you, Katou?” Hongou immediately said. “Turn on the lights,
dumbass.”
“Sure, right away. Sorry, sorry.”
The chandelier lit up and light returned. Just about time for the sand-
wiches prepared by Fukushima and co. to scatter on the floor along with bro-
ken glasses.
The guy who pulled off that prank was the long-haired otaku wearing a
pink T-shirt. Katou Something.
“Hongou, I figured it out, yaaay,” he directed a fist at us with his thumb
pointed up.
“Figured out what?”
“The truth behind this case.”
“Ahn? What are you saying dumbass, stop screwing around.”
“I swear I got it. Listen to me.”
The Angel Bunnies threw a barrage of complaints at him, ignoring his
merry pleads, so he tried to brush them away with, “Sorry, sorry, haha,” but
that only added fuel to the fire. “Come on, be happy, another mystery has
been solved,” Katou said. ...Was he serious?
Hongou stopped him. “No, seriously, can you drop it? We aren’t joking
here.”
 “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine I tell you. After all, I’m not a great detective.”
“But we don’t know whether that logic works.”
“It will, it will. Also it’s not like I got the identity of the killer.”
“Huh, so what did you figure out?”
“As I said, the truth. The undeniable truth. It’s fine, I assure you!”
Katou joined us in the hall while saying that. A notepad in hand. A big grin
on his carefree face. Narrow eyes beyond his glasses, and a smile showing his
teeth. But underneath that, his chin wouldn’t stop moving left and right, so
looking at him was unpleasant. Katou then said:

“We really are loved by God.”

Pfffft, the Angel Bunnies burst into laughter. “What are you on about
Katou-chan (hahaha) did you go crazy?” “Geez, I can’t~, it’s too stupid al-
ready.” “I guarantee God never loved you,” Katou got insulted but, how
should I put it...he deserved it. “Come on, what is it with you all~?” he said
while flapping his arms like a penguin, making me want to shoot him in the
head. “I’m serious, believe me~,” his monotone voice didn’t convey any of
his feelings and made his words sound vain. Was that how he sounded when
talking normally? I wondered when someone would finally come and assas-
sinate this guy.
“Drop the act and step down, Katou. It’s nothing but dangerous,” Hongou
warned him a second time, but Katou continued his monotonous line reading,
“Shut up and stay on the side, dolt detective.” “Don’t complain about what-
ever happens,” apparently that made Hongou give up on him and lean his
back against the sofa.
“It’s bad news, Hongou-san,” Nils was agitated. “What could he have fig-
ured out when we don’t have the slightest clue?” ...He probably didn’t mean
it was bad news that someone outdid great detectives, rather, since the
chances of that happening were nil, he was assuredly wrong. What a world
these great detectives lived in.
 “Hang in there, Katou!” I cheered for him. “Tell us the truth!” I didn’t
care for whether it was right or wrong. Nor did I care for whether Katou had
outdone great detectives or whether he would end up with his eyes stabbed.
“Kiyuu-san, do you have a clue?” Nils asked, but Kiyuu shook his head.
“None for the moment.” “See? That man is in trouble. Hongou-san, this isn’t
the time to be spectating!” “Calm down. This guy is a tad special.” “Eh? How
so?” “He’s the fortune teller I was talking about earlier.” “Oh, I see. But how
does that help? Is he going to divinate for us...? Or has he already found the
culprit through divination?” “...Beats me. Well, let’s only stop him if it starts
looking shaky.”
As I started criticizing the prideful great detectives with “You guys act like
it’s clear you’re the smartest people alive, but...” Nils cut me off in a firm
voice and said “We don’t think that. We know by experience.” How uncute.
Was his face his only cute aspect?
Katou, who didn’t even have a cute face going for him, entered the circle
we were forming.
“...Euhegh, pretty embarrassing.”
Looking at him squirming around made me pray for Essessneinpinner to
come and get him, but I exerted self-control. On his notepad were a bunch of
confusing scribbles. He had new information. We ought to listen to him.
Katou moved the traveler’s tree we had put away back in the middle of the
circle by sliding the flowerpot onto the marble floor, then took a deep breath.
“Phew. Okay, before we start, can you all tightly close the gap between
your chairs? Then, please, under no circumstance let go of these hands until
I finish explaining everything. ...Hey, Fukushima-kun, no time to act abashed.
You too Hongou. Hold your hands, no complaints allowed.”
I abided and held hands with Kiyuu on one side and Nils on the other.
“I see everyone is now connected. Okay, let’s keep our feelings tightly to-
gether and go on this journey in a merry mood.
“I’m hella embarrassed to use this name in front of so many great detec-
tives, but you see, on Saturdays, I work as a fortune teller in Odaiba, and I use
the name Sakurazuki Tansetsu over there. Erhm~~~m, ehehe, ahhh, I’m so
not used to this, I dunno what I should start with so I’ll just take a stab at it.
Well, first, you see, what should I say first...OK, got it, chronologically it is.
Erhm, first, this hall, everyone is sitting in a circle here, but it originally had
this traveler’s tree at the center, didn’t it? And you all pushed it aside before
sitting, didn’t you? That’s what led me to finally see it. And seeing that be-
stowed me knowledge. Please, can everyone look at the center of the hall?
Under the flowerpot of the traveler’s tree was in fact hidden the Tree of Life.”
We all stood up and gathered in the center, but with our hands all held to-
gether it looked like we were dancing the Mayim Mayim. Mayim mayim
mayim mayim, hey, mayim b’sason! We all looked at the floor in the very
center of the hall while pushing on each other’s shoulders. It was covered in
dust and sand due to the flowerpot hiding it for the longest time, but there
indeed was a shape with numbers and lines.
 “It represents the entire wisdom of the Kabbalah, called the Tree of Life,
Arborvitae, or Tree of Sefirot. Have you all read the story about the Garden of
Eden recorded in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament? ...Indeed. It is the
place where Adam and Eve were created on the Sixth Day. God planted two
trees in that paradise, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Wisdom. Anbyouin-san
declared the Pinehouse to be the ‘center of the world,’ and indeed, it was the
origin of this world, the Garden of Eden. And it had a Tree of Life and a Tree
of Wisdom.”
Katou pointed at the traveler’s tree he had brought with him.
“Give a good look at this tall traveler’s tree. There is a rod extending up in
the middle. This thing. Look at this central rod. It’s made out of two entwin-
ing snakes. Exactly, this represents the serpent who instigated Eve to eat the
Fruit of Wisdom. Eve made Adam eat that fruit and obtain wisdom, causing
both to be exiled from the Garden of Eden and reduced to mortals. Exactly.
That is why death exists for us, living outside the Garden of Eden.”
“Yo Katou, you’re killing it. You kinda look the part,” Hongou said.
“Thanks. Shut up,” Katou laughed before continuing. “So, having found
the Tree of Life representing the entirety of the universe, I wondered where
the Tree of Wisdom could possibly be, and found it. So, I wandered around,
thinking the Pinehouse was designed after the Garden of Eden, but it turns
out the hint this Tree of Life gave us wasn’t going for that. The core of this
hint was the Kabbalah. Does everyone know what the Kabbalah is? Ah, oops,
no need for the great detectives to answer. I wouldn’t know what to do if par-
ticipating led to your death. Leave it all to me. ...So, you guys, do you? I don’t
have all day,” he asked his fellow Angel Bunnies members.
“The difference in treatment...” Kawabe complained.
“Shut up, that’s all you guys deserve,” Katou maintained. “So what, you
don’t know about Kabbalah? Pfft, so lame,” he mocked them. “Kabbalah is
uhh...”
“See, even you don’t know,” remarked Kawabe.
“Shut up, I know, shut up. Kabbalah refers to...hunh? Hold on a second.
You guys stressed me too much.”
“Kabbalah is a school of thought in Jewish mysticism.” That was said by
Kiyuu. That guy was basically as good as dead. “It harbors the belief that an-
yone able to decipher a certain piece of writing considered to describe the
world with the 22 Hebrew letters will solve all the mysteries of this world.
Sorry for butting in. Katou-san, please handle the rest.”
“Ohhh, great detectives really are amazing,” Katou said, impressed.
“Okay, the rest. So, as I was wandering around the house with the word ‘Kab-
balah’ spinning in my head, I noticed the secret hidden in the paintings dec-
orating the rooms. That secret was hidden in ten of the twelve rooms from
the second floor. All the paintings in the other rooms seem to be abstract art,
but only these ten differ. Those are not paintings, they are text. Of course, it
is tedious to read. In addition to being hung upside-down, they were written
with a combination of Hebrew and Japanese. I took a memo on this, give it a
look.”
Katou went around, showing us the notes he had taken.
 “The heck?” “We can’t read shit, Katou.” “What is this language~?” “As
if I knew how to read Hebrew.” Many members complained to Katou.
“Well, I guess it’s too much to expect you to get this at first glance, but
this is basically all in Japanese, you know?”
 “Ehhhh, how so?” “This is japanese?” “Mm? Upside down? Should we
look upside down? Tell us, Katochin~.” “Is it like a trompe l’oeil?” “Nah, this
just looks like incomprehensible scribbles. It’s a coincidence it kinda looks
like Japanese,” the Angel Bunnies went merry once again, causing Katou to
sneer at them.
“Wrong. This doesn’t look similar by chance. The foundations for this also
serve as the roots of Japanese. Anyone heard of the book The Japanese and
The Lost Tribes of Israel—released in Japan under the title The Yamato Peo-
ple Were Jewish—by the researcher in Jewish languages Joseph Eidelberg?”
“In your dreams. What’s that insane book?”
“It’s not insane at all. The Japanese-Jewish common ancestry theory has
been advocated for not only by Japanese people, but also by some Jews, you
know? The first person to suggest it wasn’t even Japanese nor Jewish, it was
a man from Scotland. Even if the similarities in the shapes of the Kagome
crest and the Star of David and the presence of 16-petal chrysanthemum in
Jerusalem temples can be coincidental, there are between one and three
thousand words with similar pronunciations and meanings between Hebrew
and Japanese, and some Japanese katakana and hiragana’s shapes are imag-
ined to originate from Hebrew letters. Plus, there are similarities between
Shintoism and Judaism, but more importantly, look at this. Here’s a sheet Ei-
delberg made matching Hebrew letters to Japanese ones.”
Katou showed us the stuff he had written on his notepad.
“Now don’t tell me you can’t read it.”
 “Ehh? I still can't. I mean, it’s hella hard to read!” said one of the girls.
Most of the members only threw a glance at it and didn’t bother trying it
themselves.
They could understand through the context alone.
Undeniably.
“You guys aren’t even trying, are you? These ten paintings are hiding
text...well, words. Just...geez, you leave me no choice~. I’ll tell you how it’s
read.”
 “Still doesn’t make sense to me, though...” Kawai complained, so Katou
started explaining.
 “Casmaran, Gargatel, Tariel, Gaviel, Tubiel, Festativi, Athemay, Armatus,
Anael, Anael. In the Kabbalah, Casmaran represents the season name of sum-
mer, Gargatel, Tariel, and Gaviel are the angels of summer, Tubiel is the gov-
erning angel of summer, Festativi is the earth name of summer, Athemay is
the sun name of summer, Armatus is the moon name of summer, and the two
Anael are respectively the angel of 1 PM on Fridays and the angel of Fridays.
If you want more info, do like me and go pay a visit to Anbyouin-san’s office.
It also has Eidelberg’s The Japanese and The Lost Tribes of Israel and Aleister
Crowley’s Liber 777. Both were spared from the blood spurts. Feels inten-
tional.”
“I don’t get what you’re saying, but it seems like mystery authors only
read weird books, huh,” commented Kawabe. “Can’t they read business
books like normal people?”
“Haha. Didn’t expect any less from a twenty-one-year-old trying to be-
come a salaryman. Yeah, Anbyouin-san left behind a certain tenacity or con-
viction, though calling it an obsession would be weird...but anyway, isn’t the
Pinehouse hella weird?”
Uhihihihi, Katou laughed gleefully.
Nils, Hongou, and Kiyuu all stared at Katou; all three of them adorned se-
rious faces.
“Remember how Judy said the Pinehouse was a horoscope? But since
there are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Wisdom, it must also be the Christian
Garden of Eden, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t ask us. As if we knew. And so?”
“But Western astrology and the Old Testament are based on completely
different texts, aren’t they? They’re unrelated. They’re both just old. So at
some point I started to think anything goes in this house, but after noticing
the secret in those paintings and deciphering it, I figured it out. Both the hor-
oscope and the Garden of Eden were cover ups. Anbyouin-san’s true aim was
elsewhere.”
 Katou gave a look at the audience surrounding him, then pah, he clapped
his hands once then started rubbing them while continuing in a delighted
tone.
“Everyone, this is where the magic show begins! I will turn the chande-
lier’s lights off one more time. Make sure to stay still and keep your hands
connected.”
Katou passed under the hands of Kawabe and some other girl, headed for
the light switch on the wall.
“I’m doing it then. Ta-dah~!”
Darkness returned. I looked at Kiyuu again. Our hands were connected. He
was alright.
“Now please focus your eyes on the skylight.”
I followed Katou’s instructions and looked up.
I joined the Angel Bunnies in letting out remarks of astonishment.
“My goodness...”
I could see what had been hidden.
Golden patterns reflecting on the skylight.
Crosses and letters.
Katou said:
“The floor of the Pinehouse’s hall forms a Chinese magic mirror.”

Katou turned the light back on and re-entered the circle.

“Now we no longer need to stay in the hall. Let’s all move with your hands
still connected. Shall we enter room 7 on the second floor?”
“Eh, why? No way. My room’s kinda messy~,” Kimura raised an objection,
but Katou didn’t care for it.
“Shut up, Kim. That’s your punishment for being such an idiot.”
We all went up the stairs without breaking the circle and entered room 7,
the nearest room. Katou then told us “Okay, that’s all for that. No need to hold
your hands anymore. Everything is fine now. Look forward to what’s to come,”
so we all sat or leaned against the wall where we could find a spot free of junk
in Kimura’s room, which was as messy as advertised.
“Now, about the magic mirror; originally they were fabricated by creating
tiny cavities and bumps on the surface of mirrors, with the concave parts fo-
cusing light rays and the convex parts scattering them, to create a pattern of
light when lit. But the one we have here in the Pinehouse is a special version
with a complex build. The marble has been faintly carved after precise calcu-
lations of the incoming light so that it only reflects on the skylight after turn-
ing off the chandelier while the other lights of the hallway surrounding the
round hall are still on. And so, combining this circular pattern with the twelve
rooms surrounding it and the ten words hidden among those, we get a giant,
upside-down magic circle. That is why the paintings containing the ten
words were hung upside-down, to hint at the patterns reflecting on the ceil-
ing because of the magic mirror.”
 “Akin to horoscopes, the contents of a magic circle differ depending on
the day and hour. The one in the Pinehouse is the circle of summoning at 1
AM on a Friday. Exactly. One o’clock on a Friday is last night...well, more like
today before dawn; the time at which Anbyouin-san passed away. Now look
at this.”
Katou took a small tray filled with ashes out of his pocket and showed it to
us.
“This is unusual incense made with cress Anbyouin-san was burning in
his office last night. Another name for it is pepper cress, which means the
‘incense of Fridays’ in Kabbalah. It is used for good manners on Friday.
Tanaka-kun, as you were rummaging around the room next to his office last
night, how did Anbyouin-san seem? Did you hear or see anything?”
“Me?” Tanaka panicked. “No~~, he just seemed to be working normally.
Eh? What do you mean by that?”
“Was he mumbling something?”
“Oh. Now that you mention it...but I couldn’t make out what it was. Plus it
was through the wall...well, through the wallpaper.”
“Mmm~~~...well, I guess so.”
As Katou was about to give up on ‘Anbyouin’s mumblings,’ Kiyuu started
mumbling next to me.

“‘Conjuro & confirmo super vos Angeli fortes, sancti atque potentes, in
nomine On, Hey, Heya, Ja, Je, Adonay, Saday, & in nomine Saday, qui creavit
quadrupedia & animalia reptilia, & homines in sexto die, & Adæ dedit
potestatem super omnia animalia: unde benedictum sit nomen creatoris in
loco suo: & per nomina Angelorum servientium in tertio exercitu, coram
Dagiel Angelo magno, principe forti atque potenti: & per nomen Stellæ quæ
est Venus: & per Sigillum ejus, quod quidem est sanctum: & per nomina
prædicta conjuro super te Anael, qui es præpositus diei sextæ, ut pro me la-
bores,...’”

“Woah! Scary!” screamed Katou.

“Great detectives have some insane memory...” commented another
member, but Katou corrected him. “No, no, I’m not scared because he has it
memorized, it’s because he recited it here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I will explain that now.”
“Ah, that...” Tanaka butted in. “That was kinda it! Woaaah. The heck is
that?”
 “This is...” Kiyuu started answering, but Katou cut him off.
“It’s the summon incantation of Fridays, Tanaka~.”
“The what?”
“He was burning the incense of Fridays, the pepper cress, inside the circle
of summoning on a Friday while reading aloud the summon incantation of
Fridays. Obviously, Anbyouin-san was trying to summon something.”
“Summon...”
“He invited something that isn’t from this world.”
“Eh, what exactly...?”
“Of course, that’s the most important question. Ah, if you find it too scary
to talk about it in the dark, I can turn the lights on...”
“We’re fine, hurry up and continue.”
“But I’m scared.”
“You should be fine with supernatural stuff. Now get to it.”
“How terse... So, Tanaka probably shot Anbyouin-san as he was chanting
the incantation. Tanaka, did you hear up to causa mea?”
“I did, I so did...probably.”
“Then the summoning was over. That means something came to the
Pinehouse.”
“...”
“Normally though, magic circles work with the help of angels, so of course
something benevolent would come forth. The Ghost of Friday is a bizarre case,
however. It makes people yearn for luxuries or marriage. ...Shut up, as if eve-
ryone should pursue marriage! Whatever, so that Ghost of Friday bestows
people riches or affection towards women, and can heal diseases. It’s a mish-
mash, but of good things. However, clearly, nothing good came to the Pine-
house. Anbyouin-san died, followed by nine great detectives, and here we are
doing all this stupid stuff...right? Plus, just look at the circle. It’s showing in
the skylight, isn’t it? So that skylight is used as a mirror. But the floor is a
mirror too, isn’t it? A magic one. In other words, these are opposite mirrors.
 “Since the dawn of time, opposite mirrors were seen as being bad luck and
rumored to attract demons. Setting aside the truth of the matter, it’s im-
portant that it’s being said. That it’s being turned into words. This house is
Kabbalah-esque, so symbols hold big meanings. So, the magic circle of the
opposite mirrors summoned something bad...a demon, which angered the
angel in charge of helping with the summon, Anael, who swiftly proceeded to
kill the betraying summoner, Anbyouin-san. ...That’s what happened. I be-
lieve Tanaka-kun’s arrow he fired at random hit the unlikely probability of
killing Anbyouin-san due to a miracle the governing archangel Anael pro-
voked. And beliefs like that are probably essential in this house.”
The Angel Bunnies were speechless. Tanaka had frozen in surprise, but I
could discern some relief in the deep sigh he let out. Must be tough for him,
being a killer then not a killer then finally back to being a killer but it was in
fact the miracle of an angel.
“So what was that demon? There’s not just us, the great detectives, the
police, the media people, Wednesdayyy-san, and Mercury C in this house, is
there? There are ‘Kozue’-san and ‘Essessneinpinner.’ The ‘all-black face
who peels off the nails of sleeping people’ guy ‘Kozue’-san is so afraid of.
‘Kozue’-san also testified he was responsible for the deaths of the great de-
tectives. Exactly. He is the demon Anbyouin-san summoned.

“‘Essessneinpinner’ doesn’t appear in any demonology lexicon. His name

might actually be Essaunien, also known as Shivven, a demon in Persian my-
thology. He is one of the eight demons said to preside over the eight sides of
the world. Perhaps the six-year-old ‘Kozue’-san couldn’t properly remem-
ber it or just had trouble pronouncing it. You could argue the ‘pinner’ part
might have originally been ‘hydra’ she mispronounced, but the hydra, now-
adays called The Immortal Monster, possesses a physical body, so I don’t
think it is possible to summon it. We don’t necessarily have to obsess over
‘Essaunien’ either. In demonology, demons are attributed various names,
classes, jobs, appearances, characteristics, and plenty of other details, but
those are just something a few demon otaku randomly decided on in their re-
search and are equivalent to thinking of a name for a fictional character, so
there is no need to think concretely about them. Our ‘demon’ is a brand new
addition no one knows about yet: ‘Essessneinpinner,’ with an all-black face,
who peels off the nails of sleeping people. And as I’ve repeated many times,
this is a Kabbalah house, so it is of extreme importance for ‘names’ to be pre-
sent.

“The next point we must clarify is why the demon Essessneinpinner

brings death to the great detectives, and why it doesn’t do so to others. And
why, when the summoning ended and it found no summoner, it didn’t return
to where he previously was. Let’s start by answering these. It’s simple.
Though the truth is surprising. First, we know yesterday didn’t only see the
summoning of a demon through a magic circle and the assassination of the
summoner occur, don’t we? As Kiyuu-san pointed out earlier, the sum-
moner’s blood has been dragged around the second floor by the Angel Bun-
nies members who were sleeping there. In other words, his blood drew a cir-
cle. Thus, in this Kabbalah house, that circle drawn on a night when magic
had been used held a strong meaning. That circle was a magic sigil in its most
basic form possible. I have a belief: that the newly drawn circle became a
guardian circle, sealed the demon Essessneinpinner inside the hall, and pro-
tected us, outside beings, from it. I also believe as follows: the miracle that
the guardian circle has been coincidentally drawn upon the apparition of a
demon is due to us calling ourselves ‘Angels.’ The name ‘Angel Bunnies’ be-
came a form of strength in itself in this Kabbalah house. However, even
though that guardian circle we unconsciously drew could protect the Angel
Bunnies, the barrier’s effect was hardly noticeable on people who arrived af-
ter it was erected. Thus, when the great detectives exposed their deductions,
the demon Essessneinpinner trapped them inside the house and preyed on
them.”

“Essessneinpinner is here. I’m scared, Disco~.”

That name had come up as soon as I reached the Pinehouse, when I was
talking with Kozue. Essessneinpinner, the all-black face who peels off the
nails of sleeping people.
“Where is he?”
“Here.”

“Where?”
“Here.”

“Can you see him?”

“He’s hiding for now. Run away~, Disco.”

“Is he here to kill?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”
“I don’t know. I’m scared~.”

“Are you on his list too, Kozue? Are you in danger?”

“I’m fine. I don’t know. But I’m scared. Let’s go there.”

“Where is ‘there’?”
“There! There! Anywhere! I’m scared, Disco, so scared!”

He had been in the hall back then.

“Even the mistakes in deductions might be the work of that demon. So we

shouldn’t be talking about them here...I say, while doing exactly that, but we
have no time to be lazing around. We should all exit the Pinehouse right away,
forget about this cursed house of mass death, and let it rot away. The guard-
ian circle drawn with Anbyouin-san’s blood sealed the demon Essess-
neinpinner in the house, so we should be fine as long as we get out of it. How-
ever, we can’t really do that. Especially Wednesdayyy-san.”

Right. I had an obligation to stay here...

“The demon Essessneinpinner wasn’t the only thing summoned by the

magic circle then trapped by the guardian circle. ‘Kozue’-san, who was nei-
ther in this world nor the other world, too, had been drawn and enclosed in-
side the Pinehouse. Every time the poor six-year-old ‘Kozue’-san gets ex-
pelled out of her body back in Tokyo, she gets thrown into this house inhab-
ited by a demon in Fukui.”

Everyone went silent at Kozue’s misfortune.

Katou continued.
“That is why Wednesdayyy-san must retrieve ‘Kozue’-san before we
leave the house. It seems the demon Essessneinpinner has yet to notice ‘Ko-
zue’-san’s presence, but...”

“Essessneinpinner was holding a jar, and there were a lot of nails in it, I
saw it. And he said he peels sleeping people’s nails off.”
“To Kozue?”
“Yes.”
So he had spoken to her. “I see. But that’s bad, you can’t talk with that
thing.”
“Haai.”
 “No, Essessneinpinner knows about Kozue,” I said. “I told her to stay hid-
den, but...he has already found her.”
Katou’s expression turned grim. “...The demon Essessneinpinner might
be using ‘Kozue’-san as a hostage to keep all of us in the Pinehouse. But for
the time being, ‘Kozue’-san seems to be back in her body, so...”

Then, my phone rang.

Shakuko talked:
“Ah, Disco? The ‘big Kozue’-chan came here. Unfortunately she couldn’t
figure out the truth behind either the Pinehouse Case or Panda Lover. Seems
like she didn’t have enough time. I told her to continue her research the next
time she goes back...”

I hung up one-sidedly.
Kozue was here. Where was the spiky pig? In the hall. Shoot! We’d left it
behind!
I jumped out of room 7 and looked at the plushie we had abandoned on the
sofa set down in the hall.
“Kozue!”
The spiky pig didn’t move.
“Don’t cross the blood marks!” Katou screamed from behind me. “The
demon Essessneinpinner must’ve become bolder after listening to our con-
versation. He no longer needs to hide himself. Wednesdayyy-san, the ‘sev-
enteen-year-old Kozue’ visited ‘Kozue’-san’s body again, didn’t she?”
I ignored Katou and continued to scream.
“Kozue! Come over to me! Run as fast as you can! Come over here!”
 But the spiky pig stayed still, the plushie giving no sign of heading to here.
“Given this provocative timing, the demon Essessneinpinner might no
longer choose his means,” said Katou while rushing over to me. “Now, let’s
hurry, Wednesdayyy-san. Let’s depart to search for ‘Kozue.’”
“I’m not an exorcist.” Not even a fervent Christian.
“We have no guarantee Essessneinpinner is a demon in the Christian
sense of the term, you know? There is no way all the different types of Good
and Evil in this world can be accounted for by a single religion. Not like we’re
in need of an exorcist anyway. The person with the most influence here is you,
Wednesdayyy-san.”
“What in the world can I do!?” I was a mere detective. “Kozue!” But I loved
Kozue. “Kozue! Come over here!” Had Essessneinpinner already caught her?
“Don’t lay a hand on Kozue!”
“No need to scream, Essessneinpinner cannot do anything to her,” Katou
said.
“And how would you know that!?”
“There is one thing I know,” Katou said in a calm tone. “Both ‘Essess-
neinpinner’ and ‘Kozue’ are present here, but they aren’t really here. They
are away from their physical forms, on the frontier between this world and
the other world. That is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Let’s go
search for ‘Kozue’-san there. To be honest, I was merely planning on scout-
ing out Essessneinpinner, but given this turn of events, we don’t have the lei-
sure to appraise his strength. Let’s head out there immediately, find ‘Kozue’-
san, and hide her from him. If he already has her captive, we’ll think of a way
to get her back.”
“How the hell do you intend on doing that...”
“Wednesdayyy-san, you are going to head to a Pinehouse that is neither
in this world nor any other. I will tag along and help you. I have the strength
to help you. My name is Sakurazuki Tansetsu. That’s the kind of job I get from
time to time. However, I can merely help. Only you can accomplish the crucial
parts. You are bound to find something only you can do.”
 “Why...” can you say that?
“Because ‘a great power’ dispatched you nearby ‘Kozue’-san, the same
kind that coincidentally drew our guardian circle. That miracle had been pre-
pared ahead of time. For you. Exactly. Everyone is calling for your name,
Wednesdayyy-san.”

You’re being invited. Though it seems you didn’t know.

Get a grip. Don’t lose to the detectives. There’s the soul of Kozue-chan,
Kikyou-chan, and a bunch of other girls on the line, remember? You’re a
child-focused detective, so you gotta do your best for the children! There’s
so many lost souls you gotta retrieve!

Why was everyone saying that?

“By ‘everyone’, I mean the great detectives who died due to Essess-
neinpinner’s scheme. Why did they stab one of their eyes? Why did they die
by stabbing their eyes, out of all the ways to go out... They were all calling for
your name. By crushing one of their eyes.”

What did he mean?

“It’s etymology. The origin of your name. The origin of ‘Wednesday’ is

‘Odin’s day,’ ‘Woden’s day.’ In Norse mythology Odin is the god of war and a
magician. And the god of knowledge. In his insatiable quest for knowledge,
Odin lost one of his eyes in exchange for wisdom. The deaths of the great de-
tectives are symbolically calling for your name. Odin, the one-eyed god, has
already been called nine times. Don’t you think it’s time to answer them? For
‘Kozue’-san’s sake too.”

I was trembling. Chills running down my spine. I would never hesitate for
Kozue’s sake. I’d do anything for her, motherfucker! Anything.
“Please calm down,” Katou...Sakurazuki Tansetsu said. “Everything’s al-
right. We know for sure we will retrieve ‘Kozue’-san, don’t we? After all, ‘Ko-
zue’-san lives at least to be seventeen years old.”
His carefree attitude couldn’t ease my worries.
I had no guarantee the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ was really Kozue.
But I had no time to painstakingly explain every single detail.

I first flipped Kimura’s futon to get his T-shirt, underwear, manga, iPod,
etc on the ground, then set it back up while ignoring his “Ah~~,” and laid on
it.
“Sleep normally. I will join you later,” Sakurazuki Tansetsu said.
As if I could sleep on command, I thought, but my head was sinking into
the bed. I fell asleep in no time. I was desperate for Kozue.
The last thing I heard was Sakurazuki’s voice.
“I had Mercury C-san go ahead and wait for you. Stay still until I join you...”

...What!?

4
 I heard a voice in the darkness. It was a familiar voice. An intimidating
woman’s voice. It was Sharon’s.
“Mizutarou.”
I opened my eyes. I awoke.
I was taking a nap on the sofa in my office in San Diego; the noisy Sharon
Styron and an Asian boy I didn’t know were standing there, looking down at
me with a vacant expression. Was he of middle-school age? No sign of Lazullo,
who always accompanied Sharon. “Hello,” the boy said to me and smiled.
“What is it, kid? Are you in trouble?” I could tell he had a problem from his
hollow expression. And since Sharon brought him to me, that problem must
have been tremendously big. “How long are you gonna sleep like a sewer rat
in front of this kid, Mizutarou? Hurry up and get up,” Sharon said. “Yo Sha-
ron, don’t tell me this is your kid.” Hunh, Sharon sneered at me. “A bitch like
me doesn’t have kids. That’s better for the world and for the people.”
“Couldn’t agree more. So, what’s the deal?” I asked the boy as I raised my
upper body. “Are you maybe Japanese?”
“...I am Mitamura Saburou,” he said in Japanese.
I answered in Japanese, “I’m Odoriba Mizutarou. The only Japanese miss-
ing child detective in the United States. Go on and sit on the sofa. So, how
come you found yourself being with that questionable lady?”
“No need to diss me,” Sharon said but I ignored her. I asked Saburou.
“How old are you?”
“...Seventeen.”
“Where do you live?”
“In West Akatsuki in Fukui Prefecture.”
“Fukui? Where’s that?”
“It’s in the Japanese—”
“Are you in San Diego for tourism?”
“No. ...I was probably kidnapped. By someone.”
“Someone? Who?”
“I don’t know.”
 “But you got freed, now, didn’t you? Then go home. Call your family. You
can use my phone if you want.”
“No, I didn’t come here to borrow your phone. There are people I want you
to find. Two people.”
“Who?”
“My triplet brothers, Ichirou and Jirou.”
“What happened to them?”
“They were kidnapped too.”
“Mm? And only you managed to escape?”
“No, Ichirou and Jirou were kidnapped four years ago. They disappeared
all of a sudden and have yet to be found.”
“Disappeared? Then it might not be a kidnapping.”
“...Indeed. But I got abruptly kidnapped as soon as the radio calisthenics
were done, so I’m thinking the same happened to them...”
“Radio calisthenics? How nostalgic. So, when Ichirou-kun and Jirou-kun
got kidnapped, was there a ransom?”
“I don’t think so. It would have been a big deal at the time.”
“Hmm. At any rate, call your family.”
“...I think Ichirou and Jirou might be close. If I don’t seize this chance, I
feel like I will never see them again... I don’t want to go home yet.”
“Why do you think they might be close?”
“It’s a sort of sixth sense triplets have...it might sound flimsy, but that’s
how it feels. Moreover, neither their abduction nor mine was anything nor-
mal. I was playing near them when they disappeared. We went home from
school after our club activities and were playing in our bedroom. As we were
playing the Arale-chan Game board game, I looked up and they had disap-
peared.”
“You said you were kidnapped ‘abruptly’ too, didn’t you?”
“What is today’s exact date?”
“25th of July 1986.”
“And the time?”
 “3:35 PM. Look at the clock on the wall.”
“...There is a 17-hour time difference between San Diego and Japan. 16
hours during summer time, so it should be 7:35 AM in Japan. On the 26th of
July. Odoriba-san, take a look at this.”
Saburou showed me two radio calisthenics cards. The name column had
‘Mitamura Kento’ and ‘Mitamura Kanji.’
“Those are the cards of my two little brothers I accompanied to the radio
calisthenics. Look, here.”
Saburou pointed at the ‘July 26th’ square; it had been filled with the ‘at-
tended’ stamp.
“I went with my two elementary-schooler brothers to do the radio calis-
thenics this morning at half past six, we exercised for ten minutes, and re-
ceived this stamp. But that was merely an hour ago. I’m in San Diego, aren’t
I? In America. What kind of abduction could have instantly teleported me to
America?”

I didn’t fall silent on the sofa simply because I was surprised at the inex-
plicable phenomena surrounding Saburou’s arrival. When you’re in this in-
dustry for some time, most things stop surprising you. I was thinking. First,
about the authenticity of the attendance card Saburou presented. It might’ve
been a fake. But what point would there be to orchestrate a large-distance
teleportation through such petty tricks? And if it turned out fake, was the
seventeen-year-old boy before my eyes trying to deceive me? Or was some-
one else deceiving him and trying to drag me in their scheme? ...Could that
someone be Sharon?
But if that Snake wanted to deceive me, she wouldn’t show up directly be-
fore me herself, she would use the people around her. She had enough free
time and money to plan something like that. Sharon was bored. If she wanted
to do such a thing, she would think of a much more elaborate trick to stave
off as much boredom as possible. But Sharon shouldn’t have been interested
in me enough to want to deceive me.
“Why are you here, Sharon?” I asked her. She laughed in the expensive
prostitute-like clothes she purposely wore loosely.
“Because that kid was unconscious on my poolside.”
That made Saburou agitated. “I absolutely don’t remember how I got
there, I swear. I was with my little brothers and the neighborhood kids in a
shrine in West Akatsuki, Fukui, Japan, but the next moment I was uncon-
scious next to a pool.”
“...Hmm.” I observed Saburou’s body. He was wearing a gray, sporty T-
shirt and green shorts. He was barefoot with sandals...wait no, those were
slippers.
Then, I heard a knock on my door.
It made me realize that Sharon and Saburou had entered my office without
knocking and watched my sleeping face to their hearts’ content. “Learn from
them, you two,” I told them, then addressed to the customer: “Come in,” but
the silhouette behind the frosted glass door didn’t move an ounce. I stood up
from the sofa and opened the door.
Behind it was a tall man with an all-black face. Not that his face was cov-
ered in black paint or anything like that. There was a sort of flat darkness
where his face should be, bubbling and squirming, and though I doubted my
eyes, I couldn’t discern his expressions. But his clothes alone made it clear he
wasn’t your average Joe. No, could you even call those clothes? He was wear-
ing an all-leather bodysuit tightened with bondage equipment; none of his
skin was visible barring his face. Well, not that I could see that either.
I joked by reflex. “Say, aren’t you hot wearing that?”
But I quickly realized I had no time for that. I couldn’t waste my time with
perverts. I tried closing the door but he stopped it by moving an arm in the
way with the squeaking sound of leather.
“So you are Odoriba Mizutarou.”
His voice sounded oddly musical.
 “...And you are?”
I asked back. He answered:
“My name’s SS Nail Peeler.”
“SS?”
“Mind you, it’s not Schutzstaffel. It stands for Super Sadistic.”
Pfft, I laughed out loud. “Well ain’t that quite literal...though if you walk
in town dressed in that hot-looking attire, shouldn’t you rather be called Su-
per Maso?”
“Shut your witty asshole, Odoriba. I’m here to return you to the Pinehouse.
This world is mistaken. You must head to the Pinehouse to correct it. That is
your duty and what you wish for.”
Pinehouse?
I tilted my head; moments later Saburou raised a scream from behind me.
“Waaaaah!”
I looked back and got surprised, despite being stoic to most things.
Even though she had been sitting across me just a minute ago adorning a
lazy smile, Sharon’s body had been cut into pieces, her torso rolling in the
newly-born sea of blood around the sofa, and her limbs, cut off at the elbows,
knees, and crotch, were piled up like firewood.
I reflexively pushed Nail Peeler away and closed the door.
Saburou was standing near the redesigned, bloodied Sharon.
“What happened!?”
Saburou was too shocked to answer.
Nail Peeler screamed from beyond the closed door.
“Run away, Odoriba! You must return to the Pinehouse!”
I looked around the room, but there was no one to be seen apart from
Saburou. Could he have done it? No way. Normal people can’t tear humans
apart in a second. Nor can they travel ten thousand kilometers in a second.
The person who’d teleported Saburou to San Diego was behind Sharon’s dis-
memberment. While I was standing at the door!
 “Don’t run away from the Pinehouse! You must escape into the Pine-
house!”
I looked through the window. That was the only other way in, but I had
closed it and lowered the blinds to block the summer daylight. I also checked
the ceiling. The building was cheaply-built and inhabited by many people.
Someone might have removed some planks and gotten in and out that way.
But there were no blood traces up there. There’s no way Sharon’s murderer
wasn’t covered in blood from dismembering her. There must have been some
blood where the culprit exited. But I couldn’t see any. Then the exit must have
been hidden in the floor that was already covered in blood. After all, they
knew a technique to cut someone into pieces at lightning speed. Staying
around wouldn’t lead me anywhere.
“Odoriba! Only you can correctly save the world! Only think about Kozue!”
What should I only think about?
I tackled the trembling Saburou by putting an arm around his stomach and
continued in my impetus to crash into the window and break the glass. Hav-
ing repeated action scenes of the sort many times, I was prepared. I had my
roofless Cadillac parked beneath my office’s window on the third floor. We
landed on the backseats as planned, so I hurriedly jumped to the driver seat.
Engine on! As it did, the radio started playing K Billy’s Super Sounds Of The
70s. I made my tires screech against the concrete along with a mellow song
from The Supremes and flashed away from the parking lot.
“Kozue is positively the only one you must save!”
Hearing SS Nail Peeler’s voice fading in the distance, I started thinking.
Cozue? Kozue? What was there at the end of branches?15
What was a Pinehouse?
What did he mean, saving the world?
I had been peacefully napping on my sofa five minutes ago, but now I was
completely lost. Anyhow, Saburou would go crazy with all this blood on him

15
The kanji for Kozue 梢 means ‘tip of a branch’.
so I stopped at a car wash. Would be bad to scare the other customers, so I
didn’t force the frozen Saburou out of the car and used a hose to directly spray
water on him. Blood was sullying my car’s insides once again, but that wasn’t
that big a deal.
“Saburou, what the hell did you bring to me!?”
He answered without moving, this time frozen lying on the seats with his
back rounded due to the cold water.
“...What was that creepy man about?”
“Heck if I know! You sure you didn’t bring him with you?”
“But he didn’t care for me. Didn’t you hear him say only you can save the
world?”
He’d said correctly save the world, though.
“Maybe you are actually the cause of all what’s happening, Odoriba-san?”
But I had no clue what was happening. What to do? That was obvious. In
chaotic situations like this, the best course of action is to involve someone
even more crazy. And I knew the perfect guy for that. Aaron Riggs. The
Dogwalker. Nothing could surprise that guy, he was stoic to no end. I’d have
him judge the situation.
“Pinehouse...”
“Mm?” I focused my ears on Saburou’s mumbling.
He sat up and stole the hose from me. “He said ‘Pinehouse,’ didn’t he?”
“The big black condom from earlier?”
“No, just now, the guy on the radio.”
“What?”
I was too focused on my thoughts and the shower to notice, but the music
had ceased and was replaced by K Billy reading the news with a voice akin to
a white, apathetic Barry White.
“...To solve the last trick left behind by the mystery novelist Juuzou
Ehimegawa, many great detectives rushed all the way from Japan to Point
Loma, pushed away the mystery nerds who were gathered around, and en-
tered the Pinehouse Theater. ...”
 Pinehouse!
“Okay, wash your own blood now,” I told Saburou. I went inside the car
wash shop to pay the bill and buy a towel and new clothes for the teenager
who started screwing around as soon as he got hold of a source of water.
When I returned to the car, Saburou had finished washing himself and was
now scrubbing the Cadillac.
“Don’t bother. Leave that to later. Dry yourself and change clothes.”
I got in the driver seat, started the car, and took road 8 headed West. Point
Loma was a steady hill; once we reached the top, we saw a flood of people.
They were surrounding a flat, cylindrical building. We could see some broad-
casting vans, but most of our field of view was filled with Japanese tourists.
That was apparent from their characteristic black hair and the way they were
tightly stacking against each other like energetic middle-school girls.
Saburou was done changing into his new shirt and pants. “I don’t read
mystery novels,” I told him. “I’ve never heard of this Juuzou Ehimegawa guy.
Have you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m a fan of mystery novels. It’s Ehimegawa Juuzou,
right? Of course I know.”
“What kinda stuff does he write?”
“The kind with great detectives.”
“Pretty old huh. Is that still trending in Japan?”
“The boom is probably just at its start. A hell of a guy debuted recently.”
“Hmm.”
“He’s called Shimada Souji.”
“Who asked? I’m a detective, okay? I couldn’t care less about fiction.”
“But The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is a masterpiece.”
“Who cares... Seems like your hair's dry now. Shall we visit the Pinehouse
for starters?”
“...Shouldn’t we not? The man from earlier might have passed us and is
preparing an ambush for you in there, you know?”
 “But after what happened, coming across a ‘Pinehouse Theater’ with
great detectives gathered there, how could I not take a look?”
“Can’t you search for my brothers instead of taking such risks? That was
my request in the first place.”
“Got it. OK. Then I’ll get to work on your case once I’m done checking on
what’s happening in the Pinehouse Theater. What, you teleported from Japan
to San Diego or something? Huh, must be a stupid trick somewhere in there.
You’ve probably been fooled. Or maybe I am. But everything’s alright. I sur-
vive stuff like that on the daily.”
We passed in-between the tourists and onlookers, then got stopped by the
police. Maybe civil cars weren’t allowed. “Disco Wednesdayyy,” I named my-
self. That was the English name I used whenever possible. It often made my
jobs go more smoothly. Plus, it being weird made it memorable. I knew quite
a lot of people in the San Diego police by name. This time a black cop ad-
dressed me. “Yo Disco, what’s up?” “Smoking great.” “Heh heh. Your car’s
awfully wet. Are ya in a pinch?” “The usual stuff, just a bit different.” “Got it.
But I can’t let such a monster truck in, park it over there. I’ll let you walk in.
Who’s that kid? A relative?” “A friend’s kid. He’s my new assistant, Koba-
yashi-kun.” “Yo.” “Konnichiwa.” “Konichiha. Can’t you speak English?” “...”
“Disco, is that good enough to be your assistant?” “He’s my inspiration.”
“Haha. 10-4. See you down the line, kiddo.”
We parked on the side of the road, got off, and passed under the yellow
tape. Someone from the media screamed “You! You there! What’s your
name!?” at me. Must be a chump to not know of the missing child detective,
Disco Wednesdayyy.
“Odoriba-san, we really shouldn’t,” Saburou said. “I have a bad feeling
about this. I couldn’t see the face nor even sense the presence of Sharon’s
murderer. And I was sitting right next to her. This isn’t normal. It would be
another thing if she died by poison, but being torn into pieces like that rules
any possibility out.”
I agreed. “Saburou, wanna wait in my car?”
 “That sounds even scarier.”
“Well, we won’t stay long anyway. If I feel we’re in danger, I’ll escape god-
speed.”
“But it really took no time for Sharon to become like that.”
“Yeah, let’s be careful.”
“How can you be careful against that...”
The two of us passed through the Pinehouse Theater’s entrance. Another
cop who knew my face let us in. After getting through the reception space, we
got to the stage. The Pinehouse Theater was a circular stage. Audience seats
were surrounding the round stage on two floors. Upon setting foot into the
windowless Pinehouse Theater, I instantly sensed I shouldn’t have come here.
No policemen were to be seen on the dim stage, only a group of Japanese peo-
ple setting a strange mood. They were all staring at me looking scared. But
there’s no way great detectives would feel fear, no matter how bleak a case
they were dealing with. However, the ten-odd great detectives looking at me
all seemed like bunnies surrounded by starved dogs in a cage.
I shouldn’t have gotten out of my Cadillac.
I shouldn’t have come anywhere close to the Pinehouse.
I had let the timing to escape go by.
It was too late now.
The door behind me closed, removing all exterior light, then the ceiling
light got turned off, leaving the entire theater in pure darkness. I grabbed
Saburou’s shoulder positioned behind me on the left.
I had to save him at the very least.
However, the shoulder I grabbed wasn’t Saburou’s. Squeak, I heard a tight
leather bodysuit. It was SS Nail Peeler.
“You’re finally back.”
The moment he said that with his melodic voice, the light for the audience
seats got turned back on. Twelve doors had appeared amidst the audience
seats during the few seconds of darkness. I was the only spectator in this the-
ater. Would the second floor be used as another stage? Suddenly, a spotlight
pointed at Saburou, who had come up to the second floor. He was stained with
blood again. He had already ruined the new clothes, I thought, but then I
looked up and realized the ceiling functioned as a giant mirror. I could see
what was happening on the second floor by looking at it. Saburou’s blood had
made a loop around the space leading to the seats.
“The tragedy The Pinehouse Dead can now begin!”
Music started playing on the all-black-faced SS Nail Peeler’s signal. I was
the only spectator. The circular stage in the middle got lit up. One great de-
tective was standing there. His wimpy and nervous attitude causing him to
squirm on the floor from earlier had left place to a real detective’s charisma.
“My name is Sakurazuki Tansetsu. I’m a great detective.” Said an absurd
looking Japanese otaku wearing a pink T-shirt and...chemical-washed jeans.
“The detective novel writer Ehimegawa Juuzou looped around the Pine-
house’s hallway to set up a barrier.”
Drrrrr! Go-gon! SFXs rolled in.
“The detective novel writer Ehimegawa Juuzou was shot with an arrow
from the first floor by the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. I don’t know the motive, nor did Ehimegawa-san. But that
only makes this murder more frightening. Since he had no clue why he was
killed, there was no guarantee he wasn’t aiming to kill someone else...think-
ing that, Ehimegawa-san created a circle around the hallway with his blood
in a desperate attempt to at least protect the people on the second floor. That
way, even if FDR gave up on sniping and came over to him, he wouldn’t be
able to break the blood barrier.”
Timed with Sakurazuki’s line, spotlights shone onto the slope of the pas-
sageway connecting the circular stage to the seats of the second floor.
“Indeed, not many Americans knew about this fact, but FDR caught polio
at age 39, and ever since had to move by wheelchair. If he were to cross
Ehimegawa-san’s blood barrier, his tires would leave traces behind. There-
fore, FDR had to give up on his goal.”
Go-gon!
 Don-drrrrrrr, don-drrrrrrr, don-drrrrrrr...Eerie sound effects followed
the short act as the light turned dimmer and dimmer, until Sakurazuki was
but a silhouette.
“The verdict will now be delivered.”
Said SS Nail Peeler with his melodic voice from the dim stage, when he
should’ve been standing behind me.
Gon-bumbum, gon-bumbum, gon-bumbumbumbumbumbum-boban!
Sakurazuki was suddenly lit from above. He was standing in the white
light, dead. SS Nail Peeler was standing behind him, his latex-covered index
finger passing through Sakurazuki’s left eye socket; he soon collapsed onto
the ground.
A chorus echoed from around us.
“A sacred death. A sacred death. The fool perishes for new knowledge. One
crushes one of their eyes to observe a new light.”
Darrr-garr-darr-garr!
The light vanished again. The next time it returned, SS Nail Peeler and Sa-
kurazuki Tansetsu’s corpse had disappeared from the stage, leaving the place
to a handsome boy.
“My name is Choukuuji Kiyuu. I’m a great detective. I do know. Ehimeg-
awa Juuzou made a loop around the hallway due to a coincidental joint work
from twelve mystery fans behind the doors. Ehimegawa Juuzou had died by
chance in front of room 7 when he was found by the inhabitant of room 8,
who dragged Ehimegawa Juuzou’s corpse up to their door. They did so ex-
pecting that, the following day, the corpse’s movement would be interpreted
as a dying message from the victim, that he had used his last bit of strength
to crawl to the room 8 door to show that the inhabitant of room 8 was the
culprit... But that idea was shattered by the inhabitant of room 9 who got the
same idea and moved the corpse up to room 9’s door. Then the inhabitant
from room 10, the inhabitant from room 11, the inhabitant from room 12, the
inhabitant next to them from room 1, the inhabitant from room 2, the inhab-
itant from room 3, the inhabitant from room 4, the inhabitant from room 5,
and the inhabitant from room 6 all had the same idea and each stole Ehimeg-
awa Juuzou’s corpse from the other in order until the inhabitant from room
7 noticed this and moved the corpse a final time to their door, completing the
loop around the hallway and connecting the large circle of blood. The mystery
had thus diverted from the question of which door was Ehimegawa aiming
for.”
Go-gon!
Drrrrrr...the stage darkened again, SS Nail Peeler announced “The verdict
will now be delivered!” Gon-bumbumbumbumbumbum-boban! When the
light returned, Choukuuji Kiyuu too had an eye crushed by Nail Peeler.
“A sacred death. A sacred death. The fool perishes for new knowledge. One
crushes one of their eyes to observe a new light.”
Darrr-garr-darr-garr!
This was a show to execute great detectives. The ‘verdict’ was probably
about whether the deduction was right or wrong, but apart from killing the
great detective, he didn’t provide any explanation on what was wrong. That’s
because there was someone next in line.
Next appeared six men and women. All good-looking. “My name is
Hakkyoku Sachiari. I’m a great detective.” “My name is Mame Gen. I’m a
great detective.” “My name is Nekoneko Nyannyannyan. A great detective.”
“Am Sabayama Nigouhan. I’m a great detective.” “I’m Kakiuchi Mamajump.
I’m a great detective.” “My name is Hizuki. I’m a great detective,” they each
said. Hakkyoku said the rest. “The arrow that goes through Ehimegawa-
san’s back had been lodged in there six years ago. At the time, he was lucky to
have suffered little internal damage, no infections, and no complications,
and almost no blood loss as he didn’t remove the arrow. Thus, Ehimegawa-
san has lived with the arrow going through him for all this time. But Ehimeg-
awa-san’s soul was in fact not there. He had kept writing mystery novels, but
he was dead. Akin to a boxer continuing his match even after losing con-
sciousness. Ehimegawa-san’s burning passion for mystery novels kept him
working for the past six years. However, on that night, a new soul began in-
habiting him. It was the soul of another mystery novel writer who had died
on the same night, Anbyouin Owaru-san. Anbyouin-san was stunned upon
discovering his new body. Of course he would be. He had been shot with an
arrow and had an arrowhead coming out of his chest. Thus, he abruptly laid
on the floor. That happened to be in front of room 7. But soon after the mira-
cle, it was time for a calamity to occur. The arrow had stayed in the perfect
place in Ehimegawa-san’s body during the last six years, but Anbyouin-san’s
sudden action made it rupture an internal organ and caused it to hemorrhage.
As Anbyouin-san had come so abruptly into the Pinehouse, he didn’t notice
the circular nature of the hallway he was in, and moved forward with a hazy
mind in an attempt at escaping the presumed assaillant behind him. And so
he made a loop around the round hallway thinking he was going straight, and
met his death in front of room 7, just when his blood trails reconnected.”
Go-gon!
Drrrrr... Nail Peeler crushed all six’s eyes at once.
“A sacred death. A sacred death. The fool perishes for new knowledge. One
crushes one of their eyes to observe a new light.”
Darrr-garr-darr-garr!
“I am Choukuuji Keraku,” the newest guy must’ve been Kiyuu’s brother.
They looked identical. That boy said “Erm, it’s a really simple idea, but didn’t
he just want to take a last look around his beloved house before dying?” That
was all. Nail Peeler crushed one of his eyes right after.
Darrr-garr-darr-garr!
The next person was a white woman. Judy Dollhouse, she called herself.
“This Pinehouse, furnished with twelve rooms, decorations representing
the twelve constellations, and ten light bulbs with patterns representing the
ten planets on the central chandelier, is in fact a giant horoscope. Horoscopes
outline a certain moment in time by drawing that sky in a geocentric model,
that is to say, with the Earth as the center. Therefore, Ehimegawa-san
showed us there was something revolving further away from Earth than Pluto,
a new planet which had yet to appear in any horoscopes...exactly, that was
2003UB313. He revolved around the Pinehouse so dramatically in hope of that
new discovery being named after him.”
Eye crushed. Darrr-garr-darr-garr!
Daibakushou Curry then appeared. I knew him. He was the only one of the
bunch I had met before. He was a world-class celebrity. Though I remem-
bered him using the name ‘Tsukumojuuku’ back then...? I thought of calling
out to him, but Daibakushou started his act without taking notice of me.
“It’s simple. Upon being shot and finding himself on the ground, there is
no way he would coincidentally crawl all the way around the hallway. If he
crawled a whole loop, that would be to crawl a whole loop. To draw a circle.
Could it be an ‘O’? Could it be a ‘0’? ...Either is possible. Both ‘O’ and ‘0’ can
mean ‘nothing’ = ‘nil.’ Ehimegawa-san might’ve gotten an urge moments
before death to express himself about the vanity of living and dying. Every-
thing is for naught. But we can also interpret it positively. Ehimegawa-san
might’ve wanted to say the fear towards death—a fundamental fear humans
possess—equates to zero. There is nothing to be afraid of. It’s not scary.
However, I personally believe Ehimegawa-san’s message to be even more
positive. That circle was neither ‘O’ nor ‘0,’ it was ‘◯.’ Exactly. ‘◯’ as op-
posed to ‘╳.’ It means ‘correct,’ ‘just,’ and ‘good.’ That is what Ehimegawa-
san wanted to tell us before parting. ‘Everything is good, everything is correct,
everything is just.’”
Having finished the short speech he was entranced by, SS Nail Peeler
crushed one of his pupils in the darkness.
“A sacred death. A sacred death. The fool perishes for new knowledge. One
crushes one of their eyes to observe a new light.”
Darrr-garr-darr-garr!
It seemed all the great detectives had died. Nail Peeler stood in silence for
some time at the center of the stage.
Bombumbombom, Bombumbombom, Bombumbombom...backed up by
drum sounds, Nail Peeler slowly raised his all-black face.
 “Well, Odoriba Mizutarou, it’s your turn next. Has the situation entered
your head yet? You must discover the truth for Kozue’s sake.”
He said as he pointed one of his bondage-wrapped arms at me.
I froze.
“Hold on, I’ve got no clue what this play is about. No idea about the plot
or the characters.”
And what was that ‘Kozue’ he kept repeating?
It seemed like I was the only spectator to this absurd play, but what point
was there in showing it to me?
I took one step forward while thinking that. Followed by another. Straight
from the dim spectator seats to the stage. Had Nail Peeler hypnotized me
without me realizing? That must’ve been it.
I got set up by Saburou, who was busy playing the Ehimegawa role on the
second floor. It was all a trap to lead me to this Pinehouse Theater. I looked
up to send a glare at him, but he was lying on his stomach so I couldn’t see
his face.
I stepped up on the stage.
Nail Peeler said with his all-black face:
“Now, it’s time to announce your deduction. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
But there was no spectator. No traces of the dead great detectives either.
Who was that ‘everyone’?
As I knew nothing, I could only stay still in silence.
SS Nail Peeler moved behind my back and let out a sigh.
“You’re a disappointment, Odoriba. You’re not even trying to think, are
you? Everyone’s telling you to think, so why aren’t you doing anything?”
“What is there to think about?”
“Didn’t you see a bunch of stuff? Submit an answer explaining all of it.
Aren’t you a detective?”
 “I’m a missing child detective. I don’t get what’s happening here, but
murder cases are outside my expertise.”
“We’re literally searching for children, but you can’t even understand that.
Hm. Maybe you’re really so stupid I gotta crush one of your eyes for you to
understand? Then you’ll be like the other great detectives.”
Black latex fingers passed above my shoulder and touched my temples.
They made a squeaking sound near my ears.
“Stop it.”
I told him, but SS Nail Peeler was determined to do it. His index had arrived
above my eyelids.
“I bet you even forgot about Kozue. The surprise before your eyes makes
you lose sight of what’s important. You’re really no good. There was no point
in waiting. I’m starting to feel bad for the great detectives. Shall I crush your
eye, then?”
“Stop it!”
“What other option do I have? Well, not like crushing an eye from a guy
who doesn’t think will amount to anything.”
“Stop. Please.”
“Shut up.”
His index started crawling towards my right eyeball when the doors to the
theater were blown open with a bam!

“Wahahaha! The hero arrives to save Mister Shitface’s day!”

Spoke in Japanese a well-built man I didn’t know; he barged into the Pine-
house Theater and rushed up the stage. He jumped before me, and in the next
moment had blown SS Nail Peeler away.
“Stop wasting all your goddamn day playing with a fictional pervert in
such an emergency!”
I turned back to see he had kicked SS Nail Peeler’s all-black face with no
hesitation. I blankly looked at him, thinking he was capable of amazing feats.
 “Hey, we’re going!”
That man grabbed my shoulder and got me off the stage. I wasn’t sure, but
I’d been saved. My right eye was intact!
After exiting the Pinehouse Theater and enjoying the breeze in Point Loma,
I said to the man:
“I dunno who you are, but you saved my life. Thanks.”

Bam!

He hit me in the face, making me collapse onto the sand.

The man turned to the sky.
“Hey, can I leave this idiot here?”

“You can’t.”
A voice came down from the sky.

I woke up on Kimura’s bed in the Pinehouse’s room 7.

Mercury C was standing next to me. Oh, so that man was Mercury C. Sa-
kurazuki Tansetsu was here too. The ‘You can’t’ from earlier was him talking.
And the spiky pig was clinging onto my face.
Kozue.
I jumped up.
AAH!
I’d gone to search for Kozue but completely forgot about her!
Ashamed to no end, I covered my face with my hands...but they were
weirdly wet and sticky and dirtied my face.
Looking at them, all the nails on both my hands had been peeled off.
 Kozue was crying inside the spiky pig.
“Stupid stupid Disco! I told you to run away!”

“I found Kozue-san standing in the corner of the hall but I couldn’t spot
you, Wednesdayyy-san. I’m sorry. Mercury C-san found you. It was a close
call...though it seems he observed you for a little while.”
“What was that place? The other world?”
“That would’ve still been better.”
“A dream?”
“If it was, how could Mercury C-san have joined you?”
“...” I understood nothing about what was happening.
But it seemed Sakurazuki didn’t either.
“It wasn’t this world, it wasn’t the other world, and it wasn’t even some-
where that was neither of those...so where did you two venture to?”

My nails had been peeled off during my sleep, and Choukuuji Kiyuu had
died by having an eye pierced with chopsticks in the toilets.
And as my fingers were being treated, Sakurazuki Tansetsu...Katou Junichi
from Angel Bunnies had been found with chopsticks through one of his eyes.

“A sacred death. A sacred death. The fool perishes for new knowledge. One
crushes one of their eyes to observe a new light.”

Katou had said the king of the gods in Norse mythology, Odin, lost one of
his eyes in return for wisdom.
How could a loss lead to the acquisition of new knowledge?

6
 “Don’t ask me that...you led me there,” I quipped Sakurazuki. “Where did
you send me?”
“Well, I wanted to bring you somewhere that’s in-between this world and
the world beyond, somewhere that’s neither of them, somewhere neutral.
That’s where everyone goes normally.”
“So what happened?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I mean, I went there right after you, but only
Mercury C-san was there. You hear? Mercury C-san was there, exactly where
I thought he would be. So we were wondering what happened...then suddenly,
Mercury C-san disappeared, so I started searching for him, then he gave me
a call...”
“A call? Why are there phones over there?”
“By chance. Say, do you believe in ‘this world’ or the ‘world beyond’?”
“Of course not.”
“But you believe in life and death, right? Humans live and die.”
“Yeah.” What was that argument?
“What do you think happens to people when they die?”
“...They disappear. Snap. Lights off. Dead silence.”
“But ‘Kozue’-san is inside the spiky pig, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you still believe that when looking at her?”
“Kozue isn’t dead.” Her soul simply left for a walk.
“If you recognize ‘Kozue’-san’s case, you cannot deny that souls remain
even after one’s physical body rots away...does that make sense to you?”
“That sorta stuff might happen from time to time. But it should be rare.
Not a guarantee.”
“Everyone has a different idea on life and death. And they each influence
each other. You do know a lot of people have images in their mind of what the
world beyond or this world looks like, no?”
“...”
 “And knowledge is part of one’s consciousness. Even having gone there
multiple times, I couldn’t tell you what the world beyond and the neutral
place that is neither this world nor the other world are like. That’s because
their shapes differ for everybody. Everyone goes somewhere that’s exactly as
they imagined and live in the world they believe in, Wednesdayyy-san.”
“What’s that crap? Then if you believe in a heaven with angels you’ll be
able to go there?”
“People don’t fully believe in those artificially-created representations,
at least from what I’ve seen. Your own doubts and original ideas intermingle
with other people’s thoughts to form a single mishmash of a world. I’ve yet
to see a picturesque after-death world. Well, the people trying to forcibly be-
lieve in a heaven-like representation simultaneously open a hole to hell for
themselves. Trying to believe in something is probably synonymous to
doubting it. If your ideas are tangible and impassive, that’s not called believ-
ing, but knowing. In short, your image for this world becomes the base for
your image of the world beyond, which then gets inflated by your personal
experiences.”
“But that’s just your experience. It could even all be events inside your
head.”
“I can retrieve people from their after-death world, you know. As long as
their body isn’t gravely injured or ill, and I can manage to persuade them.”
“...”
“I guess I shouldn’t talk too lengthily about that kind of stuff. Else it will
influence your views.”
“Influence? No matter what someone like you spouts out, my world won’t
move an inch.”
“It will. Other people are really big. And the world is constantly wavering.”
“But if there’s a world after death, don’t we simply go there? Then it
should be a singular, definite space, no?”
 “As I said, even the same place holds different shapes for different people.
Also that doesn’t only apply to the world after death. There’s no way of veri-
fying this, but going from the multi-facet aspect of the world after death, I
believe that even this world, the real world, is of many different forms, de-
spite all of us sharing it. It is as we believe it to be, but I think it is different
for each person depending on the way they believe. It matches everyone’s
worldview. To put it another way, an extreme example I often use is that long
ago, when people believed the world to be a big table, the world then might
have really been one. But some people started doubting it, and that started
the roundification of Earth.”
“Hm, sounds stupid alright. The Earth was round from the start.”
“But even if the world is made out of people’s consciousness, who’s gonna
prove that?”
“That's just your axiom. I don’t believe one bit in that, okay?”
“You don’t need to believe in axioms. As long as you can understand the
meaning in my words.”
“Certainly, if you go so far, I can’t deny you outright. But if consciousness
reigns, everything should be on the table. But that’s not actually the case, is
it?”
“That’s because there are other people. If you were alone in the world,
that’s how it might work. But there are others. That allows ‘common under-
standing’ or ‘common sense’ to exist, which binds the world. In short, alt-
hough other people sway the world, they also fix it in place...that said, hasn’t
it kinda been ‘anything goes’ recently? Concerning what’s happening to ‘Ko-
zue’-san. Concerning what’s happening in the Pinehouse. The Panda Lover
Case. Don’t you think so? We’ve been subject to many strange events.”
“That’s why your ‘consciousness fabricates the world’ is wrong. Whose
consciousness is causing this? If consciousness shapes the world, we would
never get any new events, would we? There would be no discovery. But this
world’s full of stuff we would never have thought about, isn’t it?”
 “Can’t the mind create brand new things? Like in art. Not every stroke
moves as the painter foresaw. Not every novel progresses along the plot au-
thors planned. And that leads to paintings one would never have thought of
or unexpected developments, doesn’t it? That’s how we find totally original
paintings or stories with never-before-seen tricks or settings. To begin with,
I believe that the original impulse for creating images or writing novels pops
into existence out of nowhere. That making or creating something isn’t just
a mishmash of knowledge gained by experience, but that there is something
that was born from zero. Perhaps all the discoveries happening in the real
world are the same as painters or writers’ creations. We don’t find something
that has always been there, we create something new. Columbus might’ve
created the American continent while crossing the ocean; and many elements,
bacteria, celestial bodies, or physical laws might’ve been created by the peo-
ple who believe they discovered them. If our consciousness creates the world,
many discoveries might actually be inventions. People go around inventing
and broadening the world they live in like how they create art pieces. That
might even be the essence of living.”
“Stop making up stupid crap. I’ve got no time for your poetry.”
“...What if these bizarre events, too, were someone’s creations?”
“Idiocies. If the world’s really created by the consciousness of the people
living within it, then what, am I creating the events happening to me?”
“You are not alone, Wednesdayyy-san. Your consciousness interacts with
that of the people around you.”
“That just cannot work. As if events like murders could happen just by
someone thinking about them. That someone must have done something.”
“But their world is quite different from yours or mine, I bet. That’s why
they can create something so bizarre.”
“Stop wasting my time with your thought experiments.”
“Isn’t thinking the main job of a detective?”
 “If it’s accompanied by actions, yeah. What point is there in defining de-
tectives now, though? Let’s go back to talking about things that actually hap-
pen. What did you see after closing your eyes earlier?”
“I saw Mercury C-san’s after-death world.”
“What was it like?”
“That’s a private matter...I mean, it’s the most core part of a person, so I
would never talk about it. Well, it was surprisingly meek considering how
Mercury C-san seems like. Just beautiful scenery. Though it certainly had that
eerie and edgy feeling.”
“How was it compared to yours?”
“I purely cannot enter my own after-death world. Because I am conscious
of the fact that consciousness rules over the world beyond and the neutral
place that pertains to neither worlds. I would be peering at that place from
the outside while being inside. So the world would close on itself and disap-
pear, like a snake swallowing its tail. That world would shrink and warp hor-
ribly until it ejects me out and leaves me gazing at it from the outside. But in
that situation, I would realize, ‘Oh, this too is my after-death world,’
wouldn’t I? Next, that outside world would warp and shrink and eject me out.
But then, as that repeats itself, that repetition itself would become my after-
death world, causing the world to molt at an ever-accelerating pace, conse-
quently creating a big hole in which I would fall. I’m afraid there would be no
coming back once I’m down the hole, so I would quickly leave my after-death
world and never try coming back to it. I can only enter other worlds. People
are afraid to die. But since I know where people go once they die, I become
unsure of where I would go. I’m scared of what’s on the other side of the hole.”
“...Hm. If consciousness really creates the world, hasn’t what you just said
transformed my world into that ouroboros-like structure too?”
“Oh.”
“Don’t ‘Oh’ me, dumbass!”
“No, by that I meant I didn’t expect you to believe my story, Wednes-
dayyy-san.”
 “I don’t. I simply learned there are people who think that way.”
“That might’ve influenced your worldview. It’s kinda moving my heart.
To have connected with someone.”
“And what is it that created your gross personality?”

Had Sakurazuki Tansetsu been able to reach his after-death world he was
so worried about? Had he passed through the ‘hole’ birthed from the repeti-
tive molting of the world?

As I was having gentamicin and bandages applied to all my fingers in room

7 of the second floor of the Pinehouse on Kimura Daisuke’s bed, Hongou
Takeshitakeshi barged into my room.
“We found Katou dead.”
“Ehh?” I tried standing up in my confusion, but Hongou Takeshitakeshi
stopped me.
“Stay sit. Please answer me. You said you went to the ‘Pinehouse Theater,’
didn’t you? Where was that?”
“Nowhere.”
“Not that. Katou put you to sleep and brought you somewhere. I’m asking
you where the ‘Pinehouse Theater’ was over there.”
“At Point Loma in San Diego.”
“OK. And great detectives were gathered there, right?”
“Yeah. Can’t you sit down a bit?”
“No time for that. I must end this case as soon as possible.”
He said, moving towards the exit with tears in his eyes. I wished he would
take some rest alone or amid his comrades with whom he shared the same
grief, but focusing on deductioning might be the greatest distraction there
was for a great detective once they got serious on a case. I wasn’t gonna stop
him.
 Still, I had one question for him.
“What was the deal with Sakurazuki?”
Hongou halted at the door with his back facing me. He was shaking.
“Katou...worked as a sorta medium under the name Sakurazuki Tansetsu.
But it’s not like he could see ghosts, sense their presence, or get possessed by
them like a shaman. He could go to the world beyond by himself and some-
times even send others there. There, he could meet the people on their way to
the world beyond, people wandering there, or the ones he sent there. I don’t
believe in the existence of the world beyond, but I believe in what he was do-
ing. So like...I thought it worked only on people believing in the world beyond
and stuff.”
Hongou half-turned his face to see me. “Where do you think people go
after they die?”
“I talked about that with him.”
“...”
“...Nothing happens. They’re faced with darkness and that’s the end.”
Snap. Lights off. Dead silence.
How much did I actually believe in what I’d just said?
“Don’t ignore your precious ‘Kozue-chan’,” he said before leaving room
7.
I’d forgotten Kozue’s name when SS Nail Peeler spoke to ‘Odoriba Mi-
zutarou.’
The spiky pig was resting on my knees. “I’m not ignoring you, Kozue.”
The spiky pig looked up to me upon hearing that. Kozue was here.
So Sakurazuki had died too, huh, I sighed.
Had Sakurazuki Tansetsu been able to reach his after-death world he was
so worried about? Had he passed through the ‘hole’ birthed from the repeti-
tive molting of the world? How did it feel to get plunged into the place he was
too afraid to approach on his own?
 If humans simply faded away upon their death, souls wouldn’t move away
from one’s body, thus Sakurazuki’s fears and Kozue’s incidents would be im-
possible. The Pinehouse Case likely wouldn’t have happened either...well, it
might have, but neither Kozue nor I would’ve gotten involved with it.
Humans are such irksome living beings...actually, dying beings.

But the Angel Bunnies were betting on that defiance. Even as Hongou had
been talking to me with teary eyes, the Angel Bunnies were delivering CPR
and artificial respiration to Sakurazuki Tansetsu without removing the chop-
stick in his left eye. They even brushed off the police asking to hand over the
body to them for an autopsy and connected him to an artificial respirator as
soon as it got delivered from the West Akatsuki Clinic.
I left room 7 when my fingers had all been bandaged and saw Mikami Nils
standing in the hallway. He was gazing at Katou’s room a few doors away on
the right, room 10, where the troupe members had all gathered.
“Sakurazuki-san might manage to come back if his brain and heart stay
active,” Nils said.
“Do you believe in stuff like that?” I asked him.
“It’s not about that. ...I’m unsure what I should be doubting here, so I gave
up,” he answered without looking at me. “I believe in everything. Rather,
even if I can’t bring myself to believe in something, at this point whatever
happens, I just accept it.”
“What about deductions? Are you gonna give it a try? In this context.”
Nils looked back to look right at my face.
“Of course. There is nothing to be scared of for someone who knows the
truth. Context doesn’t have its say. Also, Wednesdayyy-san, what context are
you reading into? You probably meant the context of ‘Great detectives will get
it wrong and die no matter what,’ but that is quite the misreading. The cur-
rent context would actually be ‘We won’t get anywhere if Wednesdayyy-san
doesn’t do anything.’”
 Nils’ tone and look hinted at him being annoyed with me.
“I heard it all. You came to the Pinehouse with ‘Kozue-chan’s’ guidance,
didn’t you?”
The small Kozue was calling my name from here and the ‘seventeen-
year-old Kozue’ told me to come here.
“You can go. I will write you letters.”
“One of the twelve words written around the house was ‘wednesday,’
wasn’t it?”
‘onsdag’
“And didn’t Sakurazuki-san say something about the great detectives
stabbing one of their eyes to call for your name?”
“Odin, the one-eyed god, has already been called nine times. Don’t you
think it’s time to answer them? For ‘Kozue’-san’s sake too.”
“Moreover, actually, I noticed one thing,” Nils said. “Though it would
deny part of Sakurazuki-san’s deduction.”
“...Have at it.”
“Over there.”
Nils looked at the central hall.
“Let’s go together.”
I instinctively looked at my feet. Before them was Mitamura Saburou’s
bloodtrail. The guardian circle.
“I don’t know if that part of Sakurazuki-san’s deduction was right or
wrong, but it’s alright, it won’t take long,” Nils reassured me. “I was in the
hall for a while until just now.”
I thought of returning Kozue back to room 7, but the spiky pig hugged me
by sticking its face against my cheeks.
Noticing my hesitation, “Then wait where you are,” Nils began talking as
soon as he started descending the stairs facing room 7.
“The tree at the center of the room was indeed the Tree of Life. However,
he considered the rod with entwining snakes in the flowerpot to be the Tree
of Wisdom, but it is more common to represent the devilish serpent who
lured Eve as one animal. Yet that rod had two snakes rolled around each other.
This is it!”
He gradually raised his voice until he reached the traveler’s tree, then ex-
tended his arms towards it, gripped the long rod stuck in there, and pulled it
out.
At the bottom end of the double-snake rod measuring twice Nils’ height
was a pair of wings.
“This is more like Caduceus than the Tree of Wisdom! Wednesdayyy-san!
This is Hermes’ rod! The divine messenger and protector of travelers!”
 Nils returned to me with that staff in hands.
“Hermes was also known as a god of death leading the deceased to the
underworld. So, Wednesdayyy-san, he is sometimes regarded to be equiva-
lent to the god of war and death in Norse mythology, the one gathering heroes’
souls in the Valhalla Palace and making them fight: Odin.”
Having climbed the stairs, Nils handed me Caduceus. The wings were still
dirtied with grime. It had been buried upside down.
Nils resumed his scolding. “If we equate the great detectives working on a
crime scene to heroes, would the Pinehouse they were gathered in to fight
and die be the Valhalla Palace? Wednesdayyy-san, are you going to enjoy
yourself spectating our deaths like Odin?”
With Caduceus in hands, the thought of beating this tiny, arrogant brat to
death crossed my mind.
What could I do?!
However, I couldn’t blame them for pinning all those overlapping coinci-
dences on me.
I was here. A detective. A specialist in finding missing children. And Kozue
was still lost.
I knew I had to do something.
Still, what was there to do with my power?!
Seeing me unable to even brandish Caduceus, Nils continued with a peace-
ful voice. “Still, I’m glad I was able to point that out, at least.”
...?
“I’m glad we are in the Valhalla Palace. Wednesdayyy-san, in the Valhalla
Palace, any hero who died in battle comes back to life. They can then partake
in battles once more.”
I looked up from the staff in my hands and stared at room 10, which was
on my right beyond part of the hall. These guys were all waiting for the res-
urrection of the great detective Sakurazuki Tansetsu.
Even though he had chopsticks plunged through his brain?
Thinking that, I realized.
 We couldn’t be sure whether the destruction of his brain had completely
killed him.
Walter Freeman’s transorbital-style lobotomy
I wouldn’t bet on that guy being depressive or trying out that reckless sur-
gery, but one fool had survived that recklessness. Humans won’t die by re-
moving a little of their frontal lobes. Sticking chopsticks through it might not
kill them. Then Sakurazuki’s soul had snuck away without him dying...? It
might’ve gone to his after-death world and hadn’t come back yet.
Recalling that, I asked Nils, “...What about Kiyuu?”
“It was too late. His body was already rigid by the time we found him in
the toilets. So, since over 30 minutes had passed after his death, his brain was
beyond saving, regardless of whatever machine we could plug him into. The
brain starts dying after only a few minutes deprived of oxygen.”
“I see...”
“Wednesdayyy-san, what kind of person is Mercury C-san?” Nils asked
abruptly.
“I don’t really know,” I answered. “I’ve only known this guy since noon.”
“Hmm...”
“I only know he’s as good-for-nothing as he seems, and that he’s a Jap-
anese confection artisan.”
“Really?”
“But why?”
“Well, I was just thinking Mercury C-san was destined to come here as
well.”
“Him? His only purpose is to make a ruckus.”
Though he was the one who’d saved me in the Pinehouse Theater.
“Why?”
“Greek mythology’s Hermes isn’t only likened to Norse mythology’s Odin,
but also to Roman mythology’s Mercurius.”
Mercurius...his English name was...
Mercury!
 “Stop it with that bullshit,” I turned back to look at the source of the voice
coming from behind me and found Mercury C. “What did I do to deserve being
likened to that dumbass?” he said, then swiftly stole Caduceus from my
hands, went “Hah!” and broke it in half with his knees. Snap!
“Ah!” Nils and I exclaimed.
“Shut up with your ‘Ah,’ idiots. The symbols in this house have nothing to
do with me.”
He said as he threw the broken parts of Caduceus on the floor. The winged
staff and the snakes.
“Don’t be afraid, Detective!” he said. “You can’t fight with fear in your
mind,” that must’ve been addressed to me. “Going home now?” “Where to?”
“Chofu.” “As if I would.” “You will. I mean, you haven’t done a single thing
here. Plus, SS Nail Peeler is clearly after you.”
Ooh, I thought. I’d made sure not to ask myself, but we really did share our
experience at the Pinehouse Theater. It wasn’t a dream. It seemed like part of
me wanted to brush it off as something that only happened in my head, but
that wasn’t the case.
“Mercury, how did you find the Pinehouse Theater back then?”
“Huh? Nothing crazy. I went to your office in San Diego and saw a pool of
blood and a dismembered woman, so I looked out the broken window and saw
your car speeding away. Then I took a taxi to go after you.”
“If that’s all it took, why couldn’t Sakurazuki come?”
“Ask him if you’re that curious. He turned into a voice at some point,
though it seemed like he could see me. Anyway, you won’t do a damn thing
here, so go throw some chaos in. Don’t be surprised people are requesting
whatever they want from you when you come to the negotiation table with a
lazy attitude. If you’ve got no plan or ambition, stop hanging out with that
weird pervert. Ignore him, that’s all. Let’s go back. I wanna take a long bath
at Yuu Yuu. Plus, this is starting to bore me. There’re still so many great de-
tectives left in the world. They won’t stop dying anytime soon, you know?”
“...But I can’t leave this place.”
“Because Kozue-chan is here? Dumbass. Stop using a six year old as an
excuse to run away.”
“I’m not running away.”
“Then fight!”
It might’ve been better to let his punch blast me away, but I dodged at the
last second and threw a left hook at Mercury C’s face. I’d seen through his
movements. I realized that.
Mercury C looked up at me from the floor he’d collapsed onto and smiled.
“It’s the same as brawls. You might get bested a lot at first, but the more
you do it, the faster your body will react. Though if you’re afraid the whole
time, you’ll never learn how to not get punched.”
I took short breaths.
Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah...
“But in here...one punch and you’re out.”
You get an eye stabbed and die.
“Aren’t we in the Valhalla Palace? That kid said it, no? Believe in that and
you’re good. The einherjar present here fight through many deaths and res-
urrections. If you fall, I’ll move that useless Sakurazuki out of the way and
plug you in his stead. You already went there once and came back. Shouldn’t
be that hard to do it another time, right?”
“Do the people who die go to the Pinehouse Theater?”
“Don’t they? Looked like it to me, at least.”
“And you, Mercury C-san,” Nils asked, “can’t you go to the Pinehouse
Theater? Please, go there and retrieve Sakurazuki-san.”
“Not my job.” He stood up. “Wasn’t that the case earlier too, Detective?
Weren’t these guys showing off their deductions just for you? They were
showing you the way. It was your turn. Though you couldn’t do shit when you
got up on the stage. Manage something this time. Even I’m not confident I
can beat up SS Nail Peeler every single time.”
SS Nail Peeler’s rubber-covered fingers might once again reach my face
and squeak as they pass my ears.
“You’re really no good. There was no point in waiting. I’m starting to feel
bad for the great detectives. Shall I crush your eye then?”
That melodic voice. My legs were frozen.
“You know,” Mercury C said. “You don’t need to fight on the path pre-
pared for you, okay?”
I looked into his eyes.
“Believing in the Valhalla Palace is fine, as is not believing in it. What’s
important here is choosing one of the two. You hesitate and fall into thought
at every single thing because your mind isn’t clear. Get it together!”
I thought I had dodged Mercury C’s left fist, but turns out that was a feint.
He easily avoided my right punch he had lured out and plunged a heavy right
in my solar plexus.
I fell to my knees.
“That’s all it takes to beat the current you. But if you stand up, you might
react better next time. But those refusing the fight won’t ever learn. What’ll
you do, Detective?”
What could I do?
No idea. But hadn’t all the cases I’d taken part in been a series of twists,
all the while giving no hints as to where they were headed? Yet I’d overcome
those.
I should act as usual.
What did I usually do when searching for children?
I collected info on their surroundings.
Parents. The neighboring situation. School situation. I took a look at it all.
I asked people. I dug into that kid’s history.
 I knew everything that had happened to Yamagishi Kozue. But I was in the
Pinehouse atop a mountain in the middle of nowhere in Fukui Prefecture.
Neither Fukui nor the Pinehouse came up in Kozue’s history.
So how did I find my way here? I was searching for the Pineapple Tunnel,
and Mercury C and Shakuko recalled the Pinehouse Case. Through the key-
word ‘Pineapple.’
Then, as for the Pinehouse...I didn’t know anything. I’d arrived in the
evening and did nothing but listen to the deduction warfare that had already
begun. The great detectives chose from a large selection of information to
construct their deductions, but I had no idea as to what information had been
left by the wayside.
“Wanna fight?”
Mercury C asked. My answer was obvious.
I’d fight. It was for Kozue.
I recalled what SS Nail Peeler had told me.
I bet you even forgot about Kozue. The surprise before your eyes makes
you lose sight of what’s important.
He was right. I’d been too preoccupied by the surprises to do anything for
Kozue.
The spiky pig was on my shoulders, clinging to me. “Disco~,” Kozue’s voice
seemed teary. I stood up. “I’m fine, Kozue. It’s not like we’re fighting.”
“It hurts?”

“I’m fine.”
“Let’s go home~.”

“Yeah. Soon, I promise.”

“How many minutes?”

“Just a bit.”
“No~.”

“Kozue, stay with this mister some more,” I pointed at Mercury C with my
eyes. “With him, SS Nail Peeler won’t go after you.”
“You mean Essessneinpinner?”

“Yeah.”
 “And Disco?”

“I have work to do.”

Kozue went silent for a few seconds.
Then,
“Okay, be careful,” she said.

Those were the words she always used when seeing me off to work. Every
time, she’d tell me ‘Be careful’ despite how lonely she felt.
I handed the spiky pig to Mercury C.
“Alright! Kozue-chan, aren’t you sleepy? Let’s take a good nap while
Disco-kun is working.”
The spiky pig in his arms looked up at me.
“Hurry up, Detective. Ragnarök is near.”
Ragnarök?
“It’s the ‘end time’ in Norse mythology,” Nils explained to me, then
looked at Mercury C. “Are you referring to the date tomorrow indicated in the
Pinehouse’s horoscope? The 15th of July 2006 at 23:26.”
Mercury C let out a grin.
Nils told him, “I thought you would be the kind to ignore that kind of con-
text, Mercury C-san.”
“Are you too stupid to get it? It’d be unfair for someone on my level not to
fight with the opponent’s rules. I enter their battlefield, let them have the
first move however they want, and even so, still come out ahead. Shee shee
shee.”
“That’s quite the confidence,” Nils said before adorning a troubled smile,
but then Mercury C spoke.
“Oh, hey, idiots. Another idiot will die while you guys are dallying around.”
We followed his eyes and saw Hongou Takeshitakeshi come out of room
10 on the second floor. He shouted at us.
“Guys, guys, I solved it! I figured out the secret of the Pinehouse! The
Pinehouse wasn’t a Pinehouse at first! It’s been rebuilt!”
 Rebuilt...if that was the case, that meant, had I started acting and searched
the history of the Pinehouse, I might’ve gotten there.
And the deduction Hongou was about to start might’ve been mine.
I found myself in a hurry when Mercury C rebuked Nils and I, but looking
at Hongou’s eyes made me understand.
I should leave this one to him.
Hongou Takeshitakeshi had a plan.

But the Angel Bunnies had their feelings too, and wouldn’t let Hongou out
of room 10 to start yet another reckless act. Nils, Mercury C, and I descended
into the central hall and sat on the sofa sets as we waited for Hongou. It’s not
like I didn’t hesitate when entering the magic circle outside of the guardian
circle’s range, but seeing Mercury C head for the hall with no care probably
gave Nils and I the courage to go. Part of me also felt like Sakurazuki’s magic
circle deduction became invalid along with his death.
“Rebuilt, huh~. That would explain a lot,” Nils said. “The extreme density
of meaning in this house was bothering me. After all, it manages to mix hor-
oscopes, myths, magic circles, the Genesis, the Kabbalah, cyphers in Hebrew,
and magic mirrors. Though they might all share the same roots if we trace
them back all the way to Mesopotamian civilization.”
Nils was adorning a very childish expression while saying that, but he
quickly retrieved his imposing, great detective-like face.
“Mercury C-san, you mentioned Ragnarök earlier, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you believe in that?”
“I’m expecting something Ragnarök-esque to happen here. More like, if
it doesn’t, I’ll do something about it myself.”
“...But the Pinehouse indicated tomorrow around this time… Oh, what
good timing. It will be in a whole day plus 20 minutes. But is there really a
meaning behind the date of the ‘15th of July 2006 at 23:26’? Aren’t we pushed
to give it importance simply because it’s near for us? After all, this house’s
master died a day before it.”
“Who cares, let it happen tomorrow. It’ll be fun for me.”
“It’s not the time to be having fun! We’ve already seen eleven people die.
Twelve with Anbyouin-san, and thirteen if Hongou-san dies.”
“Hongou might not die. Aren’t you the only one worried about tomor-
row’s ‘deadline’?”
Petting the legs of the spiky pig I had gotten back from Mercury C, I
thought Nils was reading too much into context again. He was trapped by it.
“Shatter it all, Mercury.”
“Huh?”
“You took that ‘Mercury’ lampshade out earlier, didn’t you?” I told Mer-
cury C. “Don’t stop there, go ahead and break all the lights on the ceiling. You
already broke the staff from the traveler’s tree. Won’t all the meanings pre-
sent here disappear if you total the house?”
“Haha. Interesting idea, but you do it, Detective. I can’t be bothered. Ra-
ther, I wanna see what everyone will do in this situation. Plus, meaning
doesn’t have a shape to begin with, so would breaking objects erase the fact
they had been there?”
“We can interpret it as they ‘disappeared’.”
“Not getting me out of my seat either way.”
Realizing once again that this guy just wouldn’t act as I wanted him to, I
turned towards Nils, and saw him looking up at the ceiling like he did when
talking about horoscopes moments ago. His expression, far grimmer than
during our previous conversation, unconsciously pushed me to follow his
eyes up. I felt like someone might be up there. I was apprehensive of the
black-leather man being there. But I could only see the Pinehouse’s chande-
lier with its arms of various lengths extending out.
Nils had lowered his gaze as if I had taken his place, and stood up.
 “Oh, what’s up kiddo?” Nils ignored Mercury C’s poke and spoke to me.
“Wednesdayyy-san, come with me.” Eh, Nils had already started running in
the time it took my eyes to leave the ceiling and reach his level. I went after
him. Once we got up the stairs, Nils crouched in front of room 7’s door. He
picked up the remains of Caduceus with both hands and handed them to me.
“Hold onto that, and please come over here,” he said before returning to his
crouching position and now almost crawled on the hallway’s floor, observ-
ing...rather, searching for something. He first passed the rooms 7 and 8’s
doors, then stopped before reaching room 9, and stuck his face against the
right side of the wall. “Found it. Wednesdayyy-san, please confirm. I will
hold onto that,” he said and took Caduceus back. I crouched on the floor. In
the border right in-between rooms 8 and 9’s wall, about ten centimeters
above the ground, was a hole. “Did you see it?” “I did.” “Then let’s return to
the hall.” I stood up as ordered and followed after Nils down to the hall, flab-
bergasted.
He was going too fast! I thought. Nils had yet again come up with some-
thing. Was it a new truth? It must be it. Nils had that great detective-like ex-
pression on his face. It was because these great detectives were finding truths
so quickly that I kept being surprised and had no leeway to do anything my-
self. And this is what happened right after I resolved myself to do something
and fight. I couldn’t escape from my position as an observer. Still, we had
been looking at the same things, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I’d
seen the ceiling, Caduceus, and the hole. But no idea came forth. Was my brain
bad? Stupid me. Do something!
“Ahhh...crap.” Seemed like Nils had his own troubles too. “It’s my first
time being in such a situation.”
“What?”
“No, I’m still holding off on saying it. ...Say, you two, do you believe in the
existence of God?”
It took me so off-guard I couldn’t answer on the spot, but Mercury C said,
“I do. Though I don’t believe in religion. But divine intervention does happen.”
 “A miracle happened. It has already begun occurring, is occurring as we
speak, and has finished...”
“Drop the poetry,” Mercury C rebuked the ecstatic Nils. “You great detec-
tives are too in love with the idea of aligning flimsy lyrics like this.”
“...Then, do you think God attributes us a role?”
“...”
As I was still thinking, Mercury C answered, “Yeah.” I looked at him, find-
ing it odd how he had suddenly become more talkative. He was adorning his
usual grin. He was enjoying this. Not the topic of God, I thought. He was get-
ting a kick out of observing Nils’ internal conflict. Though I couldn’t tell what
it was about yet...
“I do feel like a great power bestows me with tasks to accomplish,” Mer-
cury C said.
“Exactly. I’ve always felt the same way. Like a calling, I guess. You can’t
stay a great detective for long if you don’t feel this way.”
“So?”
“But I just questioned that for the first time.”
“Ahaha!” Mercury C was showing his enjoyment. “How scary for it to
happen now.”
Nils was looking up at Mercury C’s face with his eyes peeled open. “...Even
more so now.”
“No need to fear my existence, though. I don’t give a shit about how
Mitamura Saburou died or why he looped around. I simply wanna witness
how this giant farce concludes.”
“If so, you won’t have to be patient for much longer.”
“Oh, so I don’t need to wait for tomorrow’s Ragnarök?”
“Ragnarök isn’t tomorrow, Mercury C-san. It’s beginning now.” Nils
paused for a second. “...But I guess this timing is the key, eh.”
I couldn’t make sense of Nils and Mercury C’s conversation for the last few
bits. At least I could tell Nils was afraid of Mercury C. Nils mentioned roles
earlier, and no role was more unclear than Mercury C’s. He seemed to be
merely grinning from the sidelines while enjoying the sight, but maybe he
had seen through it all. He might be the one who’d reveal the final truth, after
all the great detectives go extinct. His presence here might’ve been turning
every great detective coming to the Pinehouse into a side role in charge of the
prelude to Mercury C’s grand denouement...Nils was probably thinking along
these lines. But that reasoning was abnormal. Great detectives solve cases
through mental labor, not through a vague mood or because they stood out
more than others. There was no doubt the case of the Pinehouse had made
Nils delude himself into thinking he was a character in a story. I guess ‘great
detectives’ who ‘(ultimately) never err’ are quite prone to falling into that
kind of egotistical trap. If a normal person fails at something and cannot re-
cover from that error, they still have a tomorrow. However, great detectives
don’t. Especially in this Pinehouse Case. Since screwing up meant getting
your brain stabbed.
Nils overcame his internal fear through an interpretation worthy of the
great detective he was.
“I see, this timing is actually the best. I will invoke Ragnarök now and save
Hongou-san.”
He raised his face with determination brimming through his eyes.
“Woah, good one,” Mercury C poked fun at him.
Wise as he was, Nils ignored the provocation and started.
“I need to hurry up, then. We only have fifteen minutes until Ragnarök.
You two will be the witnesses, so listen carefully. ...Where should I start…
Whatever, for starters, let’s talk as we fix Caduceus.”
He said, then headed to Mitamura’s office. I looked at the broken Caduceus
on the floor. The staff and the two snakes coiling around it were split in two
around the middle, for a total of six pieces. Fixing this would mean bringing
back the meaning behind Caduceus. Would resurrecting the meaning of Odin
= Hermes be equivalent to calling for my name? ...Seemed like an idea a great
detective would propose.
 “Found it all!” Nils came back from the office with packing tape and a cof-
fee cup in hand, passed by us, and disappeared in the reception space. After
some time he returned with only the packing tape. “What happened to the
cup?” I asked. He simply said, “That’s for later,” and started working on fix-
ing Caduceus.
“Earlier, I said this staff wasn’t the Tree of Wisdom as Sakurazuki-san
pointed out, but Caduceus. However, that was wrong… Well, no, I don’t mean
that this isn’t Caduceus. It not being the Tree of Wisdom was wrong, this is
both the Tree of Wisdom and Caduceus. The point is, meanings can overlap
in the Pinehouse. No, meanings do overlap constantly to begin with. It’s the
same as Odin being assimilated to Hermes or Mercurius, one thing may hold
multiple names or meanings. So this was Caduceus and the Tree of Wisdom
and an ouroboros...”
He said as he positioned the two snakes he’d fixed upside-down to one
another and combined them. Their tails fit perfectly into the mouth of the
other.
“This is the Pinehouse’s ouroboros.”
 “An ouroboros is a snake swallowing its own tail. Therefore, these two
snakes are simultaneously two and one. Then this snake being ‘one and eve-
rything’ would symbolize God. It’s nothing new, snakes have been revered as
gods since ancient times. In Japan we have Yamata no Orochi, in India they
have the Nagarajas, and in Gnosticism, believing the ouroboros to be a sym-
bol of the creation of the world, the serpent which handed Eve the fruit of
gnosticism in the Garden of Eden is revered as a benevolent god. They prob-
ably saw eternity in the repeated molting of the snake, death in its poison,
and miracles in it moving on the earth despite having no limbs. Well then,”
Nils lifted the two assembled snakes up. “Thus ouroboros became a symbol
for ‘infinity’, a motif for ∞. And in my hands I have the Pinehouse’s original
version of ∞.” Looking at the two snakes from above:

“The formerly two-dimensional ouroboros has been turned three-di-

mensional in this ouroboros, Pinehouse version. Now, please recall the yin-
yang taijitu everyone knows about.”
 “The Pinehouse version of ouroboros preserves the original graph of hav-
ing the white Yin on the left go upwards and the black Yang on the right go
downwards, with both of them swallowing each other. And that explosion of
meaning sealed in these two snakes indicates to us its concrete role.”
Role? Paying no heed to my puzzlement, Nils took the ouroboros apart and
continued.
“Just like how Judaism had the Tree of Life and the Tree of Wisdom in the
center of the Garden of Eden, Norse mythology has a big tree in the center of
the world. That giant tree is called The World Tree or Yggdrasil, and is viewed
to be the world itself. And that tree has snakes too. Two of them. Jörmungandr,
lying in wait at the bottom of the sea in Yggdrasil with its tail in its mouth,
and Níðhöggr, gnawing on Yggdrasil’s roots. One of the snakes that had been
part of Caduceus until earlier is Jörmungandr, swallowing its tail...”
Nils snuck one of the wooden snakes’ tail into the mouth of the other
one—this time aligning them vertically—and screwed it in. The throat of one
snake was apparently threaded as the two snakes became one solid, long ob-
ject. The two snakes were one.
“And this other one is Níðhöggr, gnawing on Yggdrasil’s roots...”
 Nils then screwed the staff inside the mouth of the snake which had its tail
swallowed by the other one. Thus, the ‘roots’ snugged in the snake’s throat,
became one with the snakes, and formed a rigid, straight shape.
 The roughly three-meter-long Caduceus had been taken apart, rear-
ranged, distorted and twisted, but still formed a single, long rod.
“Since Níðhöggr is eating it, we can put it another way and say that Cadu-
ceus is Yggdrasil. And the wings present at the end of the staff would then be
the wings of the eagle Hræsvelgr said to reside atop of Yggdrasil.”
Nils said with a smile. He hadn’t practiced any of this demonstration yet
had nailed it on the first try… Who else but a great detective would be capable
of something like that?
They’re all amazing, I admitted.
“Now, we finally have our giant Yggdrasil measuring nearly ten meters.”
Nils put down the long, twisty rod on the floor and stood next to it. “Please,
look at the chandelier above us. Can you see the button there?”
Mercury C and I looked up. Indeed, there was something resembling a but-
ton under the dark support for the silver arms holding the planet light bulbs.
Nils continued. “Judy Dollhouse said… Well, I didn’t get the chance to
meet her myself, but according to what I heard from everyone, her deduction
entailed that this Pinehouse was a horoscope for the 15th of July 2006 at 23:26
in West Akatsuki, Fukui Prefecture. But think about it some more. Horoscopes
are tools to search for the fortune of someone born at a certain time and place
through the position of stars. Only Mitamura Saburou-san lived in this house,
and he didn’t have a wife, let alone one about to give birth. He didn’t, I assure
you. When researching to confirm Ichirou-san and Jirou-san’s existences, I
also considered many possible family structures and investigated them all.
There won’t be any more family-related surprises. Mitamura Saburou-san
didn’t have a child meant to be born tomorrow. To begin with, someone like
him frequenting hardcore gay S&M clubs wouldn’t get the chance to have
child-making sex.”
Said the elementary schooler. Shouldn’t having a child perform a great
detective’s job count as a form of abuse?
 “Then why does this horoscope exist? Whose fortune is being divined?”
Nils asked, of course, as a rhetorical question. “Exactly. No one’s. This is ac-
tually a coincidental horoscope. It points at the 15th of July 2006 at 23:26 by
chance, and wasn’t made to divine anything. Obviously, it doesn’t indicate
the time for Ragnarök’s commencement either, Mercury C-san.”
Mercury C looked at Nils with elated eyes.
“The Pinehouse is still a giant horoscope, but not tomorrow’s. Nor is it the
horoscope for someone’s birthday. Please raise your gaze. The ceiling of the
Pinehouse is a skylight. And showing through that window is the current sky.
Exactly. The skylight shows us the current sky because the Pinehouse’s hor-
oscope is meant to represent the now. This horoscope isn’t meant to hint at a
specific moment, it is constantly moving along with the current sky. And now,
we are a button push away from restarting the frozen Pinehouse. And the way
to press it is Yggdrasil.”
Nils picked up the long rod made out of a snake, another snake, and a tree
from the floor, turned it upside-down, and aimed for the ‘center of the world’
with the tip of the screwed-in snake’s tail.
“The frozen time will now resume.”
Not knowing what would happen, I stood ready, then Nils yelled at the An-
gel Bunnies in the hallway of the second floor.
“Excuse me! People on the second floor! It’s a little dangerous so please
go inside a room and be careful not to go out in the hallway for the time being!”
The Angel Bunnies didn’t turn back.
“Excuse me! Go inside the room!”
No response. No one paid heed to Nils. Everyone was focused on the center
of room 10 and none dared move their eyes away from it.
Something was happening there.
Nils realized too. “Don’t tell me... Hey! Hongou-san! Let’s keep it to one
deduction at once!”
 Nils threw Yggdrasil on the floor and ran. I followed him. Mercury C too.
We rushed up the stairs and pushed aside the members standing in front of
room 10.
“Please please, Hongou-san! You can’t do that!” Nils was protesting, and
it seemed the other Angel Bunnies were trying to stop him too. Kawai and Fu-
kushima were pinning Hongou on the floor with his arms behind his back.
But the overwhelming silence in the room told us everything was already over.
Both Kawai, an arm around Hongou’s neck, Fukushima, pressing on his hips,
and the three other members surrounding them were in a state of stupor. And
the sweet scent of trance permeating through the room. I had already tasted
it many times that day; the privileged feeling of seeing absolute harmony
dominate the universe right after a great detective’s demonstration. There
was also a man I’d never seen, wearing a white blouse and a vacant expres-
sion. Then, finding an opening in their vacancy, trance, and our observation;
in a smooth motion, Hongou swiftly yet carefully enacted his operation.

Psh—

Looking at the source of that small sound, Hongou had a chopstick stuck
on the side of his left eye, aligned with his big nose, making me wonder for
an instant if his nose had suddenly grown like Pinocchio. But I was the only
one thinking of such fairy tales. “Ahh!” “Hongou!” “Hongou-san!” Many
screams and yells mixed together as everyone gathered around Hongou, still
lying on the floor. He then turned his hands into fists. Hongou did. He was
alive!
“Don’t panic… Kinda weird, it did hella hurt for a second, but I can’t really
tell now...”
 Half of the chopstick was crammed into his eye socket. There was no way
it hadn’t reached his brain. A clear liquid was flowing out of Hongou’s eyes,
and those weren’t tears.
Spinal fluid.
“Pull that out, pull that out,” a girl said to Hongou in a trembling voice.
“Idiot. What would that accomplish...” Hongou replied. “Wooh...it’s ringing
so loud. Wait, I shouldn’t be staying conscious, right. I gotta be on the brink
of death...Fukushima-kun, can you stir this around a bit? I wouldn’t know
how to adjust my strength myself...” He asked Fukushima, who freed
Hongou’s hips then jumped up at his feet and peeled his eyes, then stood up
himself and faced Fukushima with the sticky spinal fluid dripping from his
eyes; Fukushima took three steps back at once. “No no, as if I knew how to.”
“It’s fine, just a bit, okay? Looks like it doesn’t kill us that easily, no need to
stress.” “Nooo, nowaynowaynoway! Hey, why don’t we stop it now? Katou
died and there’s nothing we can do about it.” “There is, I’ll get him back here
no matter what.”
Mercury C butted in their exchange.
“Oi, I’ll give you a hand.”
He said, approaching Hongou and his tall stature.
“Ehhh, you...?” Even Hongou couldn’t keep his apprehension hidden in
his weakened state.
“Don’t fret it.”
Hongou looked at me...I thought he looked at me. His right eye was facing
me, but his left eye was barely moving. How was his vision then?
“Yo, you do it,” Hongou said to me.
“Eh, no way in hell. It’s gross.”
“Dummy. It’s not.”
“Just leave it to me man,” Mercury C said.
Giving in to Mercury C’s tenacity, Hongou’s face—except for his left eye—
turned into an expression of resignation. “Ehh? Geez... Ah, then please, at
least make sure not to hurt my brain stem.”
 “Fuck if I care.”
Quick on the jump, Mercury C gripped the chopstick in Hongou’s left eye
and went Weeeeeeenh kla-kla-klack, clunk! stirring it in all directions like a
gear handle, and finished by giving it a vigorous push up.
“Uahh”
“Oh, he’s dead. Hey, CPR, now. You’re not trying to kill him for real, are
you?” Mercury C said to the man in white blouse who was as baffled as us.
“Don’t let your empty brain make me a murderer.”

After temporarily putting him next to Sakurazuki on the same bed where
he received a heart massage and CPR while we were setting up the respirator,
we moved Hongou to room 11’s bed along with a second machine. He had a
pulse and his brain was working. The man in white blouse was a doctor, and
he moved between room 10 and 11 to check on both Sakurazuki and Hongou’s
states.
“So?” said Mercury C. “Hongou’s deduction is over, no? How was it?”
The Angel Bunnies were at a loss for words for this unusual thug, but after
some time, the leader Fukushima started explaining.
“Er~m, it’ll take some time. Unlike Hongou I’m not used to doing things
like this, so I might go back and forth in my explanation, but I’ll try to keep it
concise. First, we should start by inspecting this question: ‘Why do cases al-
ways meet great detectives?’

“Actually, us Angel Bunnies often encounter murder cases or strange

events during our travels. The cliché pattern in mystery novels. A university
club or a specific group runs into a case every time they go out, and the great
detective from the group solves and concludes it. That’s happening to us for
real. So, since that occurred once again with the Pinehouse, we were all talk-
ing about why that happened to us, and got an answer. We...it might also be
the case for other great detectives, but at least in our case, we didn’t encoun-
ter these cases by chance.”
Behind Fukushima’s back, half of the Angel Bunnies surrounded Hongou
in silence. I bet the other half were in the other room surrounding Sakurazuki.
Fukushima continued.
“Okay, Nils told me to not take too long, so I’ll hurry. Well, not like I can
explain the details myself. Seven years ago in March, in Yunou, West Akatsuki,
the Angel Bunnies ran into their first ever murder case as they were practicing
in a child center. This is how the victim looked when we discovered him.” Fu-
kushima took out one photograph. It was showing a naked man sitting with
his head between his knees on a big, white plate atop a table. A knife was
placed next to the plate, giving off an undeniable culinary vibe.
 “This picture was taken by the Angel Bunny Kawai Kazuhiro, the first per-
son to discover the corpse. That plate with the corpse was sneakily brought in
from the outside during winter. At first, we thought it was a trick to cheat the
estimated time of death, but according to Hongou, that was a feint, and in
reality it was to stick a disc-shaped ice block under the plate and make it slide
on the frozen outside like in curling and move the corpse at high speeds. In
other words, it wasn’t put in the wintery outside to delay rigor mortis, but the
inverse: it was put inside the warm building to melt the ice.”
He paused in his explanation for a moment, but there were still a lot of
pictures and documents next to Fukushima to go through.
“The next case happened in April of that year. There was a corpse-moving
trick in the twin towers called West Akatsuki Condo in the outskirts of West
Akatsuki Town. Someone committed a murder on the fourth floor of one of
the seven-floor condo towers, and moved the corpse to the fourth floor of the
other one. Of course, the goal was fabricating themselves an alibi and make it
seem as if the murder couldn’t have taken place, so they wouldn’t carry the
corpse there themselves. The culprit used poles, wires, a pulley, and a rocket
belt to move the corpse through the air.”
He said that as if it was nothing, but I was gaping at the scale of the trick.
Wasn’t there a simpler way to do it?
Or maybe it was the manifestation of a fetish proper to Japanese people...
Fukushima continued, not showing an ounce of enjoyment.
“They first erected a pole on each roof and connected them with a wire.
Then they used a pulley and another wire to connect that apparatus with the
corpse on the fourth floor, and made it wear the handmade rocket belt. By
‘rocket belt’ I mean the type you wear on your back, like what had been used
in the opening ceremony of the Los Angeles Olympics. It works by decompos-
ing hydrogen peroxide and expelling the resulting oxygen and steam to fly.
With that belt on, they were able to drop the corpse from the veranda without
it crashing into the wall, since the combination of that and the pole made it
form a conic trajectory. In addition to that, the pulley would start sliding on
the wire inclined downward at the same time as the corpse was launched,
leading it to the neighboring tower. ...Of course, it was vital to know the speed
it would take, the position of the pulley when the corpse was in-between the
towers, and how much acceleration they needed to give the pulley then; well,
the culprit probably took their time to scrupulously calculate all of that. Their
plan functioned and the corpse reached the other building with an S trajec-
tory passing between the towers. Only thing left was to pull the pulley up so
their accomplice waiting on the other veranda could receive the body and
move the corpse to the room that had been camouflaged to look like a murder
scene.”
Fukushima showed us a sketch explaining the trick.

“Now that these two had created themselves an alibi, the accomplice
changed the gas cylinders and used the exact same method to work their way
back to the original tower. Though they drew an inverted S trajectory to avoid
the eyes of those who the rocket noise made curious and were looking
through their windows.”
Hmm, it kinda seemed amazing but I didn’t really get it, I thought. Did it
feel lacking in surprise because I wasn’t familiar with these kinds of physical
tricks?
Fukushima moved onto the next case.
“The third one happened during our Summer camp of that same year. A
murder occurred in the camp we were staying at, a community center in Yao-
tome, West Akatsuki, commonly called the Cube House. A weird building,
nine cubic rooms arranged in a three-by-three pattern. And well, they’re
kinda used like bungalows, but the corridor between each room had a ceiling
so it technically formed a single building. They had likely been nine inde-
pendent bungalows originally until they started getting rented in groups
more often and got added a ceiling to make it easier to move between them.
So, on a certain night, someone was killed and a linesight trick was used. The
Cube House’s corridor is two vertical lines and two horizontal lines crossing
at a right angle, with doors at the end of each line...”
He said while adding notes and arrows to a drawing of the nine square
buildings.
“...For practical reasons, let's call these doors—starting from the North,
going clockwise—North A, North B, East A, East B, South A, South B, West A,
and West B. Kawabe was outside of the building, in front of North A, where he
saw through the door’s window that South B, at the end of the corridor, was
open, along with the victim bleeding on the ground and the shadow of some-
one appearing to be the culprit. So, seeing the culprit flee towards his right—
that is, the West doors—with the victim on their shoulders, Kawabe headed
West as well. But he found neither the culprit nor the victim’s corpse there.
He walked, not comprehending what was happening, then reached West B
and saw through its window, at the end of the corridor, that East A was open
and the corpse he had seen earlier was lying beyond it, though the culprit had
vanished. Kawabe thought that meant the culprit feinted escaping West but
in fact went to the East, but that theory was negated by the testimony of mul-
tiple Angel Bunnies standing behind South A inside the building. None of
them saw someone passing before South A with a corpse on their shoulders,
and one of the members was right next to the door, so sneaking below the
window without being seen wouldn’t have been possible.”

“Hongou Takeshitakeshi saw through that trick which used a giant mirror.
You see...numbering the rooms from the upper left, there was a mirror reach-
ing up to the ceiling placed diagonally between room 4 and room 8. Yeah, so
when Kawabe saw the victim and the culprit at South B from North A, they
were in fact in East B. And the culprit moved towards East A, to lead Kawabe
to West B.”

“The careless Kawabe didn’t realize the door he thought was South B had
its door hinges mirrored until Hongou’s explanation of the trick.”
When Fukushima said that, Kawabe, who had been at Hongou’s side, re-
plied, “Oi oi, I repented for that enough, okay?” making the other members
giggle.
Fukushima let on a slight smile too and continued his retelling.
“The fourth entry in Hongou Takeshitakeshi’s case file happened in early
Autumn of that year, at the start of September. The victim was found with
their neck, abdomen, and crotch totally removed. We do have a picture, but
it’s too graphic so look at this sketch instead.”
 That sketch was enough to convey how gruesome a state this corpse was
in.
Fukushima continued.
“Hongou searched through the organ selling groups hiding in West
Akatsuki but to no avail; the missing neck and abdomen had been removed
for another purpose. The culprit themselves wanted to camouflage their
chest and genitals. The culprit simply dismembered the victim after they’d
committed suicide to grant them that wish. They also removed the neck to
hide the traces left when the victim hung themselves, and to hide the true
intent behind the dismemberment. I will omit talking about the reason for
that wish here.”
 Fukushima moved on to the next case without losing a second.
“Then, the fifth one. It was a quadruple killing in Tanokura, West
Akatsuki.”
Quadruple?
Not four serial killings...so four had been killed at once at the same spot.
West Akatsuki was a rural town, right?
All these cases were too flashy, same for the Pinehouse’s.
Fukushima’s monotone explanation continued.
“They were all found with a diagonal slash going through them; to explain
in the order they were discovered, for A it was from their armpits to their
stomach, for B it was from their hips to their buttocks, for C it was from their
stomach to their hips, and for D it was just their neck. The peculiarity was that
all four of them had been split in two by a sword. As that is brutal too, look at
this illustration instead.”
Fukushima flipped to a different page of the sketchbook and showed us
another messed up sight. Dismembered corpses yet again...but this time four
of them. Cut in half by a sword? ...Because it was the samurai’s country?

“As the police were endlessly debating whether the culprit was a righty or
a lefty, Hongou Takeshitakeshi skipped that and found the irregular among
these four.” There, Fukushima took a short break, then continued. “That was
victim D. Hongou noticed neither A, B, nor C had their arms cut off. Meaning
these three had been hung upside down when their bodies were severed. D,
on the other hand, couldn’t have been cut upside-down as the arms would
have been an obstacle to reach their neck. Despite how orderly the bodies look
when arranged D→A→C→B like in the illustration... In short, the sections
looked to be gradually descending to create a single line, but if we remove D
from the equation, it could very possibly have been a coincidence. They cut A.
Then they cut B, but the section had moved. And when they cut C, it had
moved even more...that is amply imaginable. Maybe the culprit had an obses-
sion with cutting people in half and adjusted their strike for B and C to attain
their ideal cut. The order in which they were aligned had been changed when
D was discovered to show the diagonal line, but Hongou said ABC should re-
main in the original order of discovery...he then pointed out, naturally, that
D was the work of a copycat. He hit the bullseye, and managed in extremis to
save the copycat from the original serial killer, who had captured them, had
them hung upside down, and was about to cut them down, by capturing the
culprit himself...great detectives are such incredible people.”
Fukushima glanced at Hongou’s bed while saying that last line.
“Though sometimes they go too far to act cool. Maybe being a little dumb
is the right middleground.”
The great detective who’d plunged a chopstick through his left eye himself.
Fukushima returned his gaze onto us.
His expression was bright. I couldn’t tell if he was forcibly boosting his
morale or if that was his usual tone.
“Well well, let’s go to the next case, shall we. During that Winter seven
years ago, a certain murder that occurred deep in Yunou, West Akatsuki, was
about to become a social scandal and be broadcast in the national news. How-
ever, Hongou managed to solve it before that happened. Here is the gist of the
case: A certain man was killed, and later found next to what seemed to be a
dying message written with his blood. The bizarre part was that these words
didn’t fit what someone on the verge of dying would leave behind.”
 Fukushima showed us a photograph. It was a black-and-white shot of a
man lying sideways in a pool of blood. Next to him was drawn the red ribbon
logo and ‘STOP AIDS.’ The red ribbon was an international symbol used in
AIDS prevention campaigns.
“The autopsy revealed the victim had HIV, so the media were about to re-
port how this murder was an example of discrimination towards AIDS pa-
tients. That is, until Hongou discovered the hidden message. These letters
were hiding にしの, the hiragana for the name Nishino.”

“Of course, that was the culprit’s name. They saw the victim had written
their name, so they hurriedly modified the dying message. Nishino knew
about the red ribbon not because of discrimination, but because they admired
the fight against AIDS. Nishino didn’t even know the victim had HIV. So
Hongou’s quick resolution avoided problematic news articles.”
Fukushima stopped to take his breath.
 “Phew~, denouements are quite tough to pull off. Hongou always does it
seamlessly, so I thought I could do a decent job, but I guess not. I’m exhausted.
Well then, the year rolled over and six years ago, in 2000, the Angel Bunnies
moved their base of operations to Tokyo. So neither Hongou nor us were in-
volved in the cases I’m going to talk about now. Instead, the main character
will be Daibakushou Curry-san. The first case is about an exchange murder
that occurred a few days after the new year. When A, who wanted to kill B,
met C, who wanted to kill D, they decided that A would do D and C would do B
to allow the other one to have an alibi for the murder, and hid their connec-
tion. Right after Daibakushou-san resolved that one, yet another copycat...is
that appellation even correct? Well, another double murder that took inspi-
ration from the previous exchange murder occurred. Exchange murders are
originally planned because A would be the first suspect if B were to be mur-
dered, and C would be the first suspect if D were to be murdered. In other
words, when the motives of both killers are apparent. However, for the cop-
ycat one, A’s bloodthirst for B and C’s bloodthirst for D were kept secret. What
they did was simply having A do B and C do D, so killing according to their
bloodthirst, yet they let on the possibility of an exchange murder. When B was
murdered, A clearly had no alibi, yet C had a solid one; and when D was mur-
dered, the inverse happened. A’s alibi was suspiciously strong, and C pur-
posely didn’t get one for themselves. In short, they went double or nothing
on the bets of ‘There’s no way someone would use an exchange murder when
one happened just before,’ and ‘But no fool would commit a murder without
preparing an alibi, plus their motives aren’t clear.’ Well, it was what great
detectives often call a ‘misdirection.’ Daibakushou-san opened the eyes of
the policemen who were losing their heads over A and C’s provocative lack of
alibi. And, during the denouement, he drew a Ghost Leg graph comparing the
first and second cases.”
 Fukushima let out a laugh seeing how odd what he himself drew was.
“Hahaha. The vertical bars are the motives and the connections are to de-
termine the actual perpetrator. He has pretty good ideas. But the case imme-
diately following these double murders would see Daibakushou-san himself
becoming the victim.”
Fukushima lowered his tone and took a grim expression.
Daibakushou himself?
“Naturally, that murder wasn’t carried out until the end. It ended as an
attempted murder. And in fact, it happened here...though not in the Pine-
house. It was in the Cottage Natsukawa, a cuboid house, before it got remod-
eled. It had twelve rooms on both its first and second floor, and a passage like
the kind that connects apartments... Natsukawa is a big landowner and a pol-
itician, and he builds weird buildings all over West Akatsuki. Actually, the
Cube House is one of his creations he donated to the city. But only Mitamura-
san found use in renting the Cottage Natsukawa for work, so he purchased
the building along with the land for cheap in March of 2000. Soon after, Dai-
bakushou-san was hit in the head in the Cottage Natsukawa. Obviously, Dai-
bakushou-san remained alive until today, but that head injury was the cause
for his depression. A so-called post-concussion depression. The one who
rushed to the Cottage Natsukawa back then and healed Daibakushou-san was
none other than this doctor.”
Fukushima said as he pointed at the middle-aged man wearing a white
blouse commuting between Hongou and Sakurazuki.
“He works at the Akahoshi Hospital in Takefu City, but also has a shift in
the West Akatsuki Clinic twice a week. He was in the same school grade as
Daibakushou-san—real name Sakai Tsutomu-san—and Mitamura-san, and
friends with them. Taniguchi Tooru-san.”

10

“I’m not really friends with Sakai nor Mitamura though,” said Taniguchi
Tooru with a dejected face. “But I’m gonna say it once more just to be clear, I
didn’t kidnap Mitamura nor kill him.”
“You became Taniguchi-san after getting married, but you were née
Aoki-san, yes.” Fukushima filled us in.
“Though thinking back, maybe I should’ve killed him myself,” Taniguchi
spouted out.
“Let’s calm down. So, here is how the scene of the Daibakushou Curry-
san concussion case looked according to Taniguchi-san’s testimony. ...At
first glance, it’s similar to the one we’re dealing with currently. Daiba-
kushou-san crawled from one end of the passage to the other end, drawing a
straight line passing before the doors of the twelve rooms, and left a trail of
blood.”
Fukushima opened the sketchbook again and showed us another page.

“Mitamura was crazy,” Taniguchi said. “After hitting Sakai in the head,
he continued kicking him on the ground as if shooing him away.”
“But that was to leave the straight line of blood in the Cottage Natsukawa.”
Fukushima took over. “Okay, let’s take a break and go back to the original
question. Why do cases always meet great detectives? The answer is simple.
Because they want the great detectives to solve them. That’s elementary. Why
did all these cases come over to where Hongou was? That’s because there was
a mystery to solve. And Hongou finally solved it. The mystery had been hang-
ing in front of him for the past seven years, but he only noticed it just earlier.
All nine cases I just explained were part of a bigger, singular problem.”
 Fukushima said as he aligned all the photographs and illustrations he had
shown us. Then Nils immediately uttered,
“Oooh, I see. Urashima Tarou, huh.”
So fast! What’s his deal? And what the fuck is an Urashima Tarou?!
“...Oh, Urashima Tarou, I see,” Fukushima understood a moment later.
“Didn’t expect any less from a great detective like you, Nils-kun.” I still
couldn’t make sense of it.
“Exactly. We are all Urashima Tarou.”
“What do you mean?” I asked by reflex.
“Look at the photos and drawings arranged here,” Fukushima said in a
kind tone. “They form a trompe l’œil.”
A trompe l’œil?
“They are hiding digits.”
I stared at them. Digits? Digits… Really? Where!?
After much desperate thinking, I managed to find the 2 and 3 in the Ghost
Leg. They were the Roman digits II and III sideways. Ehhh? I said it out loud,
and Fukushima nodded.
“You got it right.”
He then explained the rest of them.
“Let’s go through them in chronological order. The corpse-ridden plate
and the knife form a 9. The next one formed the digit 8 through its aerial tra-
jectory. Kawai’s line of sight in the Cube House drew the kanji 七, 7 in Japa-
nese, and the dismembered corpse coming after formed the kanji for 6, 六.
Next, the four bodies slashed diagonally make...this,” Fukushima turned the
four bodies into a symbol. It made a 5 in my head in a way I was deeply famil-
iar with, being American. Japanese people would use the kanji 五, but here’s
how Americans do it.
 A tally mark.
Fukushima continued without lowering his pace.
“The red ribbon from the dying message wasn’t a symbol, but the former
shape of the Arabic number 4 around the 15th century. Then the Ghost Leg’s
III and II. Finally, the 1 ( 一) Daibakushou-san left behind in the Cottage
Natsukawa. Let’s lay these nine digits on a map of West Akatsuki according
to where each took place.”
Fukushima proceeded to write the digits on a simplified map. They kinda
seemed to form three rows of three digits each...I thought, but then Fuku-
shima confirmed that suspicion by drawing the grid of three by three squares,
with one digit in each of the nine boxes.
 “Yes. These nine digits draw a magic square. When the sum in each of its
three rows, its three columns, and both diagonals are all 15, a magic square is
exceptionally called ‘Lo Shu.’ In ancient China there was a legend about a big
turtle that had a magic square engraved on its shell. Nils-kun compared us to
Urashima Tarou because West Akatsuki is the turtle bearing that magic
square, and we are riding it. ...Ah, I guess Wednesdayyy-san doesn’t know
about Urashima Tarou. It’s the main character of a folktale who saved a turtle
being bullied on the beach, and as a thanks received a ride on the turtle’s back
to the Dragon Palace beneath the sea. If we compare West Akatsuki to the
shell, would the turtle be the world itself? As Daibakushou-san pointed out,
the twelve words expanding from the Pinehouse can be replicated on the
world map, so on the turtle’s shell. China, India, Korea, and others shared the
idea that the world was resting on a turtle’s back in their myth for the crea-
tion of the world... Though I’m just repeating what Hongou said earlier. Let’s
go back to the main point. The magic square that had been engraved for the
past seven years on the turtle’s back that is West Akatsuki started a count-
down: 9, 8, 七, 六, 5, 4, III, II, 1 (一). But countdowns don’t usually end at 1, do
they? Exactly. The Cottage Natsukawa was rebuilt into the Pinehouse to add
the 0. And right when the Pinehouse was finalized, Mitamura-san started us-
ing a new name, ‘Owaru,’ meaning ‘to end.’ In other words, the maestro be-
hind this countdown which also drew a magic square was, of course,
Mitamura-san. Mitamura-san orchestrated all the cases from the shadows,
both by manipulating others and dirtying his own hands. That makes the ut-
most sense. Not many people can come up with mystery tricks so high-level
they require the presence of a great detective. Mitamura-san provided origi-
nal tricks to convict wannabes who showed up at the Cottage Natsukawa, and
when necessary gave them a hand. He helped getting the ice and rocket belt
for the corpse moving tricks, suggested how to correctly use the mirror in the
Cube House, ordered the neck and abdomen to be snatched away, abetted the
copycat for the slashing incident, rewrote the dying message on the fly, or-
ganized the exchange murders, proposed another set using them as a motif,
and finally attacked a great detective himself. And not only did he carry out
the crimes he had devised, he drew out Hongou Takeshitakeshi to solve them,
and built up his old classmate, Sakai Tsutomu-san, into a great detective af-
ter Hongou was gone. Indeed. Daibakushou Curry-san isn’t a great detective.
He was just a friend of his. Mitamura-san filled Daibakushou-san in on how
the cases worked, and ordered him to draw the Ghost Leg graph. After all, he
had created every aspect of all these cases. Talk about a charade. Other people
bring in cases they wanted to have a great detective solve, but for a mystery
writer, great detectives are mere tools. For them, cases aren’t something to
bring on the table, but to fabricate from A to Z. Mystery writers don’t just
think of a puzzle, they always have to solve it themselves as well. I bet the idea
of having both the culprit and the detective act out a scenario wasn’t unnat-
ural for him.”
“He’s just stupid,” Taniguchi Tooru sneered.
“Your anger is perfectly understandable, Taniguchi-san. To concretize
the name of ‘Taniguchi Tohru’ that Mitamura-san had mouthed after his
disappearance twelve years ago, he introduced Taniguchi Minako-san to you
when you were still Aoki Tooru-san, and got you involved in both the case six
years ago and the current one. He turned you into material for the deduction
of great detectives. Mitamura-san prepared all of that because he wanted
great detectives to solve the mystery behind his death. So, here is what actu-
ally happened yesterday. Mitamura-san went to visit Daibakushou-san for
the first time in six years, since the time he inflicted the injury that made him
depressive, and cured him through the lobotomy. Exactly. Mitamura-san was
the one who stabbed Daibakushou-san’s eye. Mitamura-san then prepared a
final mystery and deduction for Daibakushou-san’s revival as a great detec-
tive. Mitamura-san likely didn’t die from Tanaka Masatsugu’s random arrow,
but from Daibakushou Curry-san’s arrow he had set up himself. I mean, to
begin with, Tanaka Masatsugu didn’t fire any arrow, and the Angel Bunnies
on the second floor didn’t drag Mitamura-san’s corpse around the hallway.
That was just some ad lib Choukuuji Kiyuu requested to lure out Essess-
neinpinner by acting out a superficial resolution of the case. Well, I guess liv-
ing with a great detective loosened some screws in our heads for us to come
up with something like that on the spot. We’re hopeless. In actuality, either
Mitamura-san forced himself to go around the hallway after receiving Dai-
bakushou-san’s arrow to emphasize on the 0, or Daibakushou-san dragged
him around after his death to respect his will. But Daibakushou-san passed
away due to Mitamura-san’s reckless surgery, then many great detectives
rushed to the Pinehouse containing an abundance of meanings reflecting
Mitamura-san’s tastes. Hongou Takeshitakeshi suggested the deaths of the
great detectives that would follow might have been within expectations. Isn’t
it scary? Personally, I think there’s no way, but honestly, I couldn’t tell you.
Just for completion’s sake, Hongou pointed out that Mitamura-san’s death
served as revenge for Daibakushou-san, so it’s possible that Daibakushou-
san kicked the corpse around, or even that Mitamura-san’s hazy mind on the
brink of death deluded itself to be in the incident six years ago and crawled
through the passage of the Cottage Natsukawa. On the floor with his vision
turning dark, he might’ve gone around the circular hallway while trying to go
straight to escape from Daibakushou-san. With his intermittent conscious-
ness calculating the derivative of the circular hallway. Well, anyhow, that’s
as far as Hongou went before stabbing himself in the eye. He must’ve realized
his deduction wasn’t perfect when he saw Nils-kun put together that snake
rod in the hall. In the end, Hongou performed this deduction just to get it
wrong. Let’s leave the truth to Nils-kun while that guy’s bringing Katou
Junichi back from the world beyond or wherever they are.”
Fukushima finished, and took one step back. Nils started,
“It is currently 23:25. Barely safe I guess. Let’s start Ragnarök in the re-
maining one minute, then. We have no time to all move to the hall, so please,
everyone, stay here!”
He rushed out of room 11 like a ball of energy, descended the stairs, picked
up Yggdrasil he had left lying in the hall, and shouted in our direction.
“Make sure to stay inside the room! The frozen time inside the Pinehouse
will resume!”
When the tip of the upside-down Yggdrasil pressed the button at the cen-
ter of the chandelier, at the center of the world, the Pinehouse started moving.

11

“Ooooh!” The Angel Bunnies raised their voices. I was surprised too. The
floor was moving beneath our feet. But this was an illusion. In reality, the
scenery around us was moving.
 The object representing the Aquarius Constellation in front of room 11
moved to the right, and the Capricornus object came from the left along with
its table. The whole floor between the wall and the handrail was revolving
counterclockwise. After the Capricornus object passed by, the centaur came,
followed by the scorpion, then the scales, the little girl, the lion...they all came
and left in that order. Beyond the hallway, the ceiling was revolving too. No,
only the chandelier was. The chandelier adorning the planet lightbulbs was
revolving counterclockwise as well. They were going at the same speed and
the light and shadows of the chandelier were reaching us, so no wonder I felt
like we were the ones revolving. I took a wider stance by reflex. Even though
the room wasn’t moving a bit. Objects were passing before my eyes like at a
fair’s minigame. After the crab, twins, cow, sheep, and fish, it looped around
to Aquarius again, and both the chandelier and the hallway stopped still.
“The Pinehouse is now tuned to the current time.”
Laughed Nils, holding Yggdrasil in his hands.

“Oddly enough, the theory of the world standing atop of a giant turtle
came up earlier, but the Pinehouse has everything. The Pinehouse is the uni-
verse,” Nils said. I had already understood too. The Pinehouse was a mobile
horoscope. In reality, even now, the chandelier on the ceiling and the hallway
on the second floor were moving to imitate the celestial bodies and time. The
synchronization had been theatrical, but even after it was done it hadn’t
completely stopped and continued moving extremely slowly like the stars in
the sky. 0.2 degrees a minute, 15 degrees an hour. We were lowering our eyes
on the floor as if gazing up at the sky.

Nils continued his explanation.

“By default, it moves according to the current sky. And when someone
wants to create a horoscope, they abruptly switch to Norse mythology and
form Yggdrasil, push the button on the chandelier, and stop the Pinehouse.
Which enters its divination mode. You input the day, time, longitude, and lat-
itude of when and where that person was born, and the chandelier and hall-
way automatically move to match it. To type the numbers out, you use the
Tree of Life on the floor. The ten sefirot act as ten buttons, with the tenth
sefira, Malkuth, being the 0. The traveler’s tree and its flowerpot were placed
here because Mitamura-san didn’t want everyone to step on the buttons and
break the machinery. Once the divination is over, a single push on the button
at the center of the world with Yggdrasil would revert it to its normal mode
with the synchronization you witnessed earlier. Very ingenious. But it’s a
shame Mitamura-san hogged this magnificent mechanism to himself in-
stead of showing it to other people. He even let the Tree of Life gather dust.
And so, when Daibakushou-san arrived here after overcoming his depression
with the chopstick lobotomy, though in a fragile state due to the recklessness
of the operation, he devised a plan to murder Mitamura-san; not using the
bowgun, but using this divination mechanism. Of course, with how few
friends Mitamura-san had, Daibakushou-san would be among the first to be
suspected. Even more so with the visit he received from Mitamura-san the
day prior. That’s why he needed to disguise it as a suicide. But how did he do
it, concretely?”
Having all gathered into the hall, with the exception of Taniguchi Tooru
still traveling between rooms 10 and 11, Nils took a look at our faces.
“Let’s start by stating the evident facts. The first one: Last night, the
Pinehouse had been switched from the synchronous mode to the divination
mode, and created the horoscope for tomorrow’s 23:26. In other words, the
Pinehouse had been sent almost two whole days forward. So the chandelier
and hallway moved two days forward as well. That means they both looped
around twice. When that happened, nine of the chandelier’s celestial bodies
looped back to the same position, but one of them greatly moved. That is the
Moon. All the other ones moved mostly along the Earth’s rotation around it-
self in clockwise direction, but being a satellite of the Earth, the Moon diverts
about 12 degrees counterclockwise in its orbit every day. 24 degrees for two
days. The second fact: Mitamura-san’s corpse was found in the hallway with
a blood trail indicating he looped once around it. Third: Mitamura-san died
from the arrow piercing his back. Fourth: the centaur’s arrow had disap-
peared from the objects representing the constellations. Fifth: As I showed
Wednesdayyy-san, there is a hole slightly above the floor of the hallway be-
tween rooms 8 and 9 on the second floor. You can check the last one for your-
selves later. I will proceed with the solution.”
Nils said to stop the merry Angel Bunnies from rushing to the second floor.
“Then, our sixth important truth I will reveal now: The contents of the
coffee cup found in Mitamura-san’s office.” Nils took out his phone, called
somewhere, and gave out his name, said, “How was it?” then, “...I see, thank
you very much,” and hung up. “It has been confirmed. Mitamura-san’s cof-
fee cup from yesterday contained zolpidem tartrate.” Sleeping drugs in his
coffee! This revelation straight out of a mystery novel was surprising in itself,
but Nils continued with, “The zolpidem tartrate had been prescribed to Dai-
bakushou-san as he was having trouble sleeping due to his depression,” es-
calating our surprise one level higher. “That is all, let’s now combine these
six points into a deduction, shall we. First, as he wanted to make it look like a
suicide, there is no way Daibakushou-san would shoot Mitamura-san from
behind. Yet, we cannot deny the arrow going through his body. That means
an incident Daibakushou-san hadn’t foreseen occurred. And that incident
caused the arrow to pierce Mitamura-san’s back. Common sense would seem
to indicate that the arrow came from the centaur’s hands. But there is no way
a dummy arrow would be able to pierce someone. Yet it did. Then we should
assume a great force was at work and pushed it through his back. And such a
great force was precisely present around Mitamura-san. The horoscope’s re-
adjustment. The handrail and wall surrounding Mitamura-san revolved
twice at a great speed, and the Moon moved back 24 degrees. Given the diam-
eter of the hallway being roughly 20 meters, he traveled a total of about 120
meters for the two loops. On the other hand, given the arm of the Moon meas-
uring about 4 meters, moving 24 degrees back only made the lightbulb move
short of 2 meters. Okay, let’s check the positions now. The Moon before and
after the calibration forms almost a straight line with the centaur. Therefore,
moving counterclockwise, the Moon moved about 2 meters away from the
centaur. Therefore, by positioning Mitamura-san before the centaur after
putting him to sleep and connecting his neck to the Moon with a rope,
Mitamura-san would be pulled 2 meters towards the hall. And by passing the
rope above Pluto’s arm, positioned basically above the centaur, it would be
able to go over the handrail and hang Mitamura-san. Daibakushou-san
probably aimed to put that into action. But with his frontal lobe destroyed in
the lobotomy he was unable to think logically enough. Between Mitamura-
san and the handrail he was pulled towards by the Moon was the centaur, and
its arrow stabbed Mitamura-san’s back. Mitamura-san woke up due to the
searing pain and removed the rope from around his neck. That is why no trace
from the rope was found on his neck. Mitamura-san, however, decided
against escaping the revolving hallway and instead left a vestige of Daiba-
kushou-san’s crime. How so? He hazily staggered to the scales, removed the
arrow from his back, and stabbed the wall with the arrow in hand as he fell.
That is the cause of the hole in the wall between rooms 8 and 9.”
 Everyone else didn’t seem to quite get it, but having seen the hole myself,
I swallowed.
“Clinging onto the arrow planted perpendicular to the wall, he was able to
leave that trail of blood, then ran out of strength, let go of the arrow, and
landed in front of room 7 along with the scale. Because he had coincidentally
left exactly one loop’s worth of blood, that proved very meaningful in this
Pinehouse and led to numerous interpretations and deductions from many
great detectives. Daibakushou-san retrieved the rope, got rid of the dummy
arrow and instead inserted a bowgun arrow in Mitamura-san’s back, wrote a
will for the Angel Bunnies, pretended to be a great detective who had rushed
to the scene of the crime, seemingly solved the mystery he had created him-
self, and later died because of the lobotomy, bringing a whole new meaning
to the Pinehouse, making the following great detectives die by stabbing their
eyes. All of that happened in this residence overflowing with meaning. And
the owner of such a residence was a mystery novel author and a trickster who
also was the mastermind behind numerous cases preceding this one:
Mitamura Saburou-san. In fact, there is one more fact I have been hiding
from you. None of the zolpidem tartrate found in Mitamura-san’s coffee cup
has been detected in his body.”
 Everyone went silent from shock.
“Mitamura-san likely predicted that, if he pretended to have fallen asleep
on the second floor surrounded by Angel Bunnies members, Daibakushou-
san would think of using the structure of the Pinehouse. Great detectives then
arrived and stabbed their eyes with chopsticks. ...But Ragnarök is now past us.
It started not long ago, and is now over. Many warriors died, but this is a
house of ouroboros. The Pinehouse sports samsara and eternal return, so of
course an end means a new beginning. This is the Valhalla Palace, so the dead
will resurrect. Welcome back, Hongou-san, Katou-san.”
We followed Nils’ gaze and turned back. Hongou Takeshitakeshi was
standing in front of room 11. Room 10 was open too, and Sakurazuki Tansetsu
was standing inside.
The Angel Bunnies were at a loss for words for a while, but eventually
shouts of joy echoed.
Most of the girls cried. Some of the boys too.
As Hongou Takeshitakeshi descended the stairs with the support of other
members, he spoke to me.
“Hey, listen, Wednesdayyy-kun, Nail Peeler was so mad, you can’t imag-
ine. Start doing some effort, okay?”
Sakurazuki Tansetsu spoke to Nils.
“No need to be scared. We’re all going there anyway.”
Nils started shaking.
Haha, Mercury C laughed next to me. “Looks like the finale of this case is
left to you,” he said, but not to me. He was speaking to the man trying to hide
behind the door to the reception space; Dezuumi Style.
“Ahaha. You found me?”
I’d forgotten he existed. Where had this idiot been?
“Mercury C-san, I’m so sorry. All the convenience stores in West Akatsuki
are closed, so I couldn’t buy the bread you requested. But I made this in the
kitchen instead...”
 He said and brought a plate with rice balls to Mercury C. Seemed like De-
zuumi had fallen so low as to become Mercury C’s bitch.

12

“Eh, you made these?” Mercury C was startled.

“Yes.”
“With your own hands?”
“Exactly.”
“Ew.”
“Don’t say that~.”
“I’m joking, thanks,” Mercury C received the plate. “Okay, show us your
deduction now.”
“Ehh!? I thought it was over, though?”
“Of course not, idiot!”
Said Mercury C, but we still didn’t know whether Nils was mistaken, did
we? I, as well as Nils and the others, interpreted what Sakurazuki had said in
the context of ‘Sorry, but turns out your deduction was wrong and you’re
gonna stab one of your eyes like all the other great detectives and go (to where
Nail Peeler was? Probably the Pinehouse Theater),’ but there were infinite
ways of looking at it. It’s also possible Sakurazuki had misunderstood some-
thing. What ground did he have to say that? I wanted to ask him directly, but
Hongou and Sakurazuki were surrounded by the overjoyed Angel Bunnies and
I couldn’t get anywhere near them; plus, although they were smiling, it was
clear to the eye that they were still on the brink of death. Of course they would
be, they had both received a good deal of brain damage. Taniguchi Tooru
made his way among the Angel Bunnies. “Make some space~, I need to check
on their states.” Being told that by a doctor, the Angel Bunnies swiftly moved
away. He took a look at Hongou and Sakurazuki’s pupils, made their eyes fol-
low his finger, then said, “Huh, you’re looking good. Still, go to a hospital and
get an MRI. No way there’s no damage after stabbing your eyes like that,” and
tried taking them away, but Hongou refused.
“Ah, no need, we’re fine. The world’s gonna end soon, so I wanna witness
it here with my own eyes.”

Hearing that from Hongou, who had left this world once and returned,
creeped Taniguchi and the Angel Bunnies out, but I wasn’t surprised. Nothing
crazy about great detectives who got their frontal lobes destroyed and were
still hung on ‘Ragnarök.’ It just sounded important because of the timing it
was said at, but that was an illusion. As if the world could end. The case un-
folding in the Pinehouse was indeed special, but one mystery writer dying or
a dozen great detectives dying wouldn’t shatter the Earth. Hundreds of thou-
sands of people are massacred throughout the world, and one kid disappears
every few seconds in America. The serial killing we were dealing with was but
a drop in a lake. Well, the simplest possibility was that Hongou metaphori-
cally compared the ‘end of the world’ to the shocking conclusion this case
would see...I was vaguely thinking, when Nils started going off.
“It’s useless. This case won’t ever end. The truth keeps running away. My
deduction should have been perfectly correct. It had that same usual feel as
when I’m right, and yet the moment the deduction ended, the truth morphed.
You know that too, Hongou-san, don’t you? We confirmed it during Kiyuu-
san’s deduction, didn’t we?”
Hongou sneered.
“I know. That’s why I was purposefully mistaken in my deduction. Well,
more incomplete than wrong. Anyhow, being wrong is the right choice, in
theory.”
“I bet you were mistaken because you aimed for it, but I didn’t do any such
thing. I even nailed the timing. That should have stopped you from doing
something so reckless...”
“Nothing could’ve stopped me anyway.”
 “Even if I couldn't, I might've been able to end it all.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Aren’t you forgetting that the truth keeps
running away?”
“...”
“You thought you were special and could do it, didn’t you? Just shows
you’re still a kid. Well, it’s not that big a deal. Being mistaken once doesn’t
strip you of your right to be a great detective. You’re too scared, calm down.
In the end, you’re just a side character here.”
“...That can’t be...”
“You’re just up on your high horse because you’ve always been treated like
a star. That once again shows you still need to grow up. Hurry up and put these
egocentric thoughts past you.”
“...By stabbing my eye with a chopstick...?”
“Nail Peeler’s gonna do it if you don’t.”
Tears came up to Nils’s eyes as he went silent.
“Hongou, who’s Nail Peeler?” I asked.
“You mean his identity? That, I don’t know...”
“He’s wearing all-black leather attire, right?”
“Yeah. You already met him once, so no need to check these details. More
like, don’t doubt that kinda stuff. It’ll eat up all our time.”
“Why though?”
“I’m telling you to hurry up and solve this damn case.”
“...You don’t seem to be doubting your own experience. In my eyes, you’ve
been living like a great detective for too long too, Hongou.”
“...What do you mean?”
Hongou was mistaken too...because he read too much into the context.
“Hongou, you came to ask me about the Pinehouse Theater, didn’t you? Right
before dying.”
“...”
“You simply saw a weird dream while at the doors of death because that
was still in your head.”
 That seemed to have taken Hongou by surprise as he went quiet for a few
seconds before fighting back. “...It’s because you keep grumbling and getting
it wrong with that kind of bullshit logic that so many died, ain’t that true?
Look at your own damn hands. Do you still not get it after getting all your
fingernails peeled away?”
I shut up. Nail Peeler did exist. I knew that too. Therefore, I might’ve been
lining up sophisms indeed… No, but hold on? What even was Nail Peeler to
begin with? Kozue said he was the one who stabbed the eyes of great detec-
tives. The one who peeled the nails of sleeping people. Why would we believe
what such a guy said?
“...Maybe we’re both being tricked by Nail Peeler?”
Hongou opened his eyes wide and laughed.
“Ooh, wow. I hadn’t thought of that one. Honestly, I take off my hat.”
Sakurazuki had his eyes wide open too, and said something while looking
behind my back.
“Seems like there’s a lot more to think about? At any rate, the truth keeps
running away from us, that’s for sure.”
Hongou and I followed his eyes and turned back.
We were once again struck with awe.
Nils, who was as shocked as us, seemed to have deeply accepted that sit-
uation. “The end is the beginning. The beginning is the end. I see, I hadn’t
fully grasped the meaning behind what I said myself. For the end, we have to
wait for the beginning. Everything that happened was for this single moment.
Haha. Did you give him the cue, Taniguchi-san?”
“Don’t joke… as if I would turn to him.”
“Yet he came. He was meant to and properly came here. You can count on
a great detective to know his timing. You were right, I still have a lot to learn.
No wonder I’m a side character this time around.”
Was he talking to Hongou or to himself? Whichever it was, once Nils was
done murmuring the line he could never have heard, he dramatically deliv-
ered this line from the reception space:
 “Behold, I will renew the world. The culmination is upon us. I am the alpha
and the omega. The first one and the last one. The beginning and the end.”

The man standing there was wearing white briefs under his pallid stom-
ach decorated with three belly buttons, and was dripping a transparent fluid
from his left eye.
It was the first great detective to have died, Daibakushou Curry.

Pfffft, Mercury C exploded in laughter behind me. “The dead coming back
to life and walking at the end of the world? Hah, is it Night of the Living Dead
tonight?”
The Angel Bunnies were once again lost in yells and couldn’t align a proper
sentence.
“Did you really keep him alive, Taniguchi-san?”
Sakurazuki asked.
“Yeah...” answered Taniguchi. “But dunno if he properly died then came
back to life like you two. At least, he was alive when he arrived for the autopsy.
But the troupe members thought he was dead, so maybe he really kicked the
bucket then resurrected, or he was in a state of false death. Why the ‘really,’
though?”
“...Well, there’s a possibility our resurrections broadened the world.”
“...? What does that mean?”
Hongou would be the one to answer. It still made no sense to me. “Means
we showed that kind of thing was possible. None of that matters yet, though.
There might still be stuff we don’t understand,” Hongou looked at me, then
back to Daibakushou. “We can only watch for the moment.” I felt his tone was
blaming me. What did he expect from me? What could I do? It made me want
to put up both of my fingernail-less middle fingers, but Daibakushou inter-
rupted that thought.

“I am the son of God, God, and the God Killer; the one who prevailed, pre-
vails, and will forever prevail; Tsukumojuuku.”

Had he gone crazy, I wondered, but I then recalled what Mercury C had
said when retracing Dollhouse’s deduction. Mitamura Saburou had written a
novel titled Tsukumojuuku after Daibakushou. My god. With his frontal lobe
as destroyed as Hongou and Sakurazuki’s, though he managed to come back
to life, he had now confused fiction and reality and thought himself to be a
character Mitamura created.
A female Angel Bunny brought a blanket from a nearby room and made
Daibakushou wear it. He wrapped it under his left arm and over his right
shoulder and ended up looking like an ancient philosopher, so he said, “Rev-
elation to John again, eh,” in a sigh as if it was routine to him. None of it made
sense to me either. ‘Again’? ‘Revelation to John’? Daibakushou continued.
“Mitamura really likes this. I guess most mystery novelists do. Moreover, it
might make the utmost sense for the fetishism around Revelation to John to
peak in this era that has truly accepted mass murder, even more so in this
house that has seen it up close. God has returned to His Divine Throne. You
have nothing to fear anymore, for the seven bowls have subsided. I, who was
bestowed rights upon the Arborvitae, will conclude this case.”
‘Divine Throne’? I looked around. The ‘seven bowls’? Was Arborvitae the
Tree of Life?
“Ahh, I understand,” said Fukushima. “It’s the same as the Cross House.
The Pinehouse has 24 rooms too, which are akin to the seats for the Four and
Twenty Elders before the Divine Throne.”
 I looked at Fukushima in confusion at his cryptic explanation. Kimura
picked up on this and explained to me. “We Angel Bunnies got the chance to
appear in Anbyouin-san’s book Tsukumojuuku, and in that novel a certain
case occurs inside a mansion called the Cross House. And there was a scene
where the Cross House was compared to the Divine Throne from the New
Testament.”
Hunh, it still sounded clunky to me, but then I realized what the ‘seven
bowls’ symbolized. Following Daibakushou’s death, Dollhouse, Choukuuji
Keraku, Hakkyoku Sachiari and co, Choukuuji Kiyuu, Sakurazuki Tansetsu,
Hongou Takeshitakeshi, and Mikami Nils, these seven (groups) showed
seven deductions and invited death. He must’ve called them bowls to sound
holy. And he chose this timing to reappear in the Pinehouse in which the Tree
of Life was literally central. Was that a coincidence? He hadn’t been waiting
behind the door for his moment to shine, had he? I couldn’t put that past the
eccentric great detectives.
Daibakushou staggered to the closest stairs and started going up when
Hongou told me, “Engrossed in listening to others' deductions again? Why
are you even here? If you’ve got nothing to do, go home. I’ll look after ‘Ko-
zue’-chan for you.”
This guy was relentless, huh, I thought on the spot, but I wasn’t any better
for instinctively trying to go against him. I should instead consider running
away at the first opportunity. He’d hit the bullseye. Anyone could walk around
with the spiky pig in hand. Plus, it was getting late. Kozue would soon fall
asleep. Or she might already have been asleep in my breast pocket. She never
woke up until morning, so it didn’t matter who stayed by her side at this point.
Also, I was rebelling against Hongou, but he was far from the only one
asking me to do something. Everyone was telling me to think. Even the fishy
and cryptic Nail Peeler.
You must head to the Pinehouse to correct it. That is your duty and what
you wish for, Nail Peeler told me. Also Only you can correctly save the world!
and You’re a disappointment, Odoriba. You’re not even trying to think, are
you? Everyone’s telling you to think, so why aren’t you doing anything? Why
did they say that to me? I returned to this question once again, but this time I
recalled my internal convictions. I had already set myself on acting many
times. I had decided to think. Doing so should help Kozue. Nail Peeler
screamed Only think about Kozue! at me, so there must be a reason for her to
be in the Pinehouse. I’d come here to find that out, to begin with. I couldn’t
let myself be blinded by surprise. I had to think about Kozue. Though at every
instance of me thinking that, I was met with new discoveries, new deductions,
and new surprises all hindering me from even taking the first step forward. It
was seriously no time to scatter my feelings. If Sakurazuki was right in his
theory of the great detectives crushing their left eyes to symbolize Odin and
call upon Odin’s day = Wednesday—though I couldn’t believe in something
that stupid—I didn’t want to be a target for that absurd plot any more.
I softly put a hand on the spiky pig on my chest. Kozue was residing in it,
and she pushed her flat nose against the palm of my hand. Was she still
awake? Or did she turn over in her sleep by chance...anyhow, Kozue was in my
pocket.
I would act for Kozue.
I took a step forward, then two, then broke into a jog and went after Dai-
bakushou who was still climbing the stairs. I arrived right behind the wobbly
great detective. “Yo, Daibakushou, are you okay?” I called out to him and he
turned back.
“My name is Tsukumojuuku. I am the God of Detectives.”
Don’t you mean Curry? Well whatever. “Where are you going?”
“To confirm the flaw in Nils-kun’s theory.”
“You were listening?”
“Kind of. From the outside.”
My god. He really was waiting for the right timing. “With just underwear?
Must’ve been tough dealing with the media.” I couldn’t imagine how he could
keep the media people quiet when a detective thought to be dead showed up
in this getup.
 Daibakushou replied, still climbing the stairs. “Not really. I was investi-
gating something, you see. The reporters and cameramen were all breathless
when looking at me working.”
“And you found something?”
“Yes. Blood traces.”
“What? Where?”
“Outside. In a corner of the garden near the entrance.”
“Huh. Whose?”
“The forensics team is currently investigating, but it’s probably
Mitamura Saburou-san’s.”
He said that nonchalantly. What the hell!? “Why would it be there...”
“Because that’s the crime scene.”
“Is it? So you’re saying the culprit moved Mitamura’s corpse?”
“Indeed.”
Then how did we get these blood traces? If the victim bled on the crime
scene, that blood should continue dripping and spill inside the Pinehouse,
shouldn’t it... As I was thinking that, Daibakushou arrived up the stairs and
immediately crouched.
“Tsutomu! Are you okay!?” Taniguchi screamed, fearing his condition
had worsened, and started running to us, but he was mistaken. He hadn’t
staggered. He’d crouched to investigate. Like a great detective.
Daibakushou was checking the carpet of the hallway, so I flipped it over
too and noticed. The carpet, huh. It was furniture like any other, so of course
it could be moved around. And the blood had spilled on it, but that could be
moved along with the carpet too...!
Daibakushou spoke to me as I was stunned by the fabric trick and my ex-
planation of it.
“Look at this.”
Daibakushou was peeling generous portions of the carpet off. I finally no-
ticed the transparent boards under the carpet.
“What’s this?” I asked; Daibakushou already had his answer ready.
 “The Stairway to Heaven. To think it was hidden here.”
I leaned forward and touched them. They were thick boards of probably
reinforced plastic, had a central angle of about five degrees to form the giant
baumkuchen, and had threaded holes on the edges so they could be fixed with
other boards with screws. Under both arc portions were a set of small casters.

These boards were without a doubt laid out all around the hallway, with
the carpet, the tables, and the ‘twelve constellations’ sitting on them. 0.25
degrees per second couldn’t be observed easily, but I could feel some move-
ment when touching them directly.
Daibakushou called them the Stairway to Heaven, what did he mean by
this... I thought for myself.
In its current state, it wasn’t connected to Heaven. It was plainly forming
a flat circle around the second floor hallway.
 But there wasn’t just one board. There were dozens of these long planks.
Making a stairway out of this...was probably possible.
The screws holding them together were short, but if we could obtain
longer rods...made out of some other metal...I looked around the dozens of
planks and saw hundreds of metallic rods. The fence of the handrail.
Wouldn’t these proportions be perfect for screws? I thought, and instinc-
tively reached for the nearest part of the fence. A part of these rods I’d
thought was merely decoration twisted upon me touching it, and after mak-
ing it revolve a few more times it revealed a threaded metallic rod hidden in
the middle of the fence. These decorations ranged anywhere from three to
five between each vertical rod and would divide the fence into long, threaded,
aluminized steel rods upon twisting them.
You could do anything with these rods and boards.
 Daibakushou glanced at me and the rod in my hands, and said,
“There is no doubt Mitamura arranged these in a staircase-like shape in
the hall to climb to Heaven. The planks are transparent and the batons’ sur-
faces reflect light like a mirror. Standing on it might make it seem like one is
floating in the air. But in reality, this is just a utility for when changing a
lightbulb without using a ladder. It is merely one of many ridiculous tricks
the Pinehouse hides.”
Daibakushou, Mitamura’s former classmate, stood up. They were appar-
ently friends as a mystery writer and a great detective, so it wouldn’t be weird
for him to have seen Mitamura using these transparent boards. Plus, using
and putting them away must’ve been a colossal amount of labor.
I returned the rod to the fence. “Tsutomu, sit here and lemme check on
you,” said Taniguchi to Daibakushou from behind me.
“I am Tsukumojuuku. I have no time for leisurely sitting around. I have
already sat and thought sufficiently in the morgue. I’m sick of sitting now. I
shall walk, go downstairs, and resolve this case.”
Eh?
“You spent the whole day in the morgue?” I asked, to which Taniguchi
answered.
“Well, having this goof loitering around would take more than one by sur-
prise, no? Plus he said ‘Hide a corpse among corpses’ himself, and also that
he wanted to stay there.”
So, in a way, Daibakushou had stayed dead instead of resurrecting for that
whole while.
Resurrected...that’s not quite right. His death brought about a new life,
this idiot ‘Tsukumojuuku’ calling himself God. But his claim of being the
‘first one and the last one’ was appropriate for him to say, at least.
That said, he was still the same person, so he kept his memories. He was
acting as if he’d discovered the planks under the hallway for the first time,
but in reality he was simply remembering it, and hadn’t realized that he was
doing so.
Following Daibakushou down the stairs, I was slightly excited.
Having discovered the rods hidden inside the fence brought me joy.
I’d thought a little.
I’d found a little.
 I’d progressed a little.
I could go forward.
I felt like I was getting closer to the truth. I thought a bit more.
A bridge to connect the blood Daibakushou found outside and the fact that
Mitamura was found on the second floor in the Pinehouse...
I might’ve attained the truth too, if no great detective were nearby.
Daibakushou solemnly started his explanation.

“To the servants of all gods, to those fearing divinity, to the puny as well
as the grand, let us extol our gods.”
Daibakushou raised his voice, flabbergasting everyone present, then con-
tinued.
“I am the ruler of rulers. The lord of lords. The great detective of great de-
tectives. The S-rank detective, Tsukumojuuku. Now, follow me.”
Seeing Daibakushou showing his back in a motion making his blanket-
manteau flutter and marching majestically, an Angel Bunny said, “Oi oi, he
changed personalities?” Other than that, they followed him without even the
usual chatter. I noticed Mercury C and Dezuumi Style, who had basically be-
come his right hand, remained in the hall. Same for Nils, who was making
himself smaller and smaller, so much his faint presence felt like a ghost’s, as
well as Hongou and Sakurazuki, whose complete revival was still doubtful,
and Taniguchi checking on these two. So I decided to wait for everyone to
come back along with the great detectives. They would merely be confirming
the blood’s existence and position anyway. The current me already knew that.
Mercury C prompted Dezuumi, “Hey, it’s not too late to spit out some random
deduction and outwit that living-dead,” trying to instigate him, but Dezuumi
had seemingly lost all will to fight. “No way~, I mean, everyone kinda dies.
I’ll pass, it’s scary,” he said. “More like, coming up with something on the
spot is bad news in this house. I don’t wanna have some guy making me lose
an eye. Not that I want to do it myself either. I can’t even use eye drops, it’s
unthinkable to me.” “Huh, really? I kinda liked skewering that Hongou guy
though.” “Ehh?” “Hahaha,” I checked on the other group beyond the recep-
tion space while listening to these two’s banter. Daibakushou marched on the
path in front of the entrance, paying no heed to the reporters’ flashes or the
storm of questions he was receiving, then turned right and I couldn’t see him
anymore. The Angel Bunnies followed him, but I could still see the last mem-
bers, so they hadn’t gone that far into the courtyard. Dezuumi’s flattery
laughter was starting to get on my nerves, when Mercury C spoke out to me.
“What’s up, Detective? I see you’re not fighting one bit, did you finally give
up?”
“I’m trying. But the great detectives are going too fast.”
“You won’t get any better if you keep making excuses for yourself.”
“But I can picture the gist of Daibakushou’s deduction this time.”
“Then expose it in his stead.”
“Look, this is his show.”
As expected, the troupe led by Daibakushou quickly came back and were
now heading up the stairs. He was about to show the transparent boards and
solve the puzzle hiding in the fence. I was interested in that, so I took one step
forward, but then Mercury C yelled.
“Yo, Daibakushou!”
Daibakushou turned back midway on the stairs.
“My name is Tsukumojuuku!”
“I don’t see anyone else reacting when I call out ‘Daibakushou.’”
“...”
Mercury C pressed further, looking determined to make the great detec-
tive swallow his words.
“The great detective right here, Disco Wednesdayyy, will solve this mys-
tery in your stead!”
Oi oi oi oi.
Daibakushou and the Angel Bunnies looked down at me. “Finally, huh...”
a troupe member said, and another started clapping. What? That was how it
would go down? I’d thought they would ignore the crazy foreigner, but at
least the Angel Bunnies seemed happy.
They were contaminated by the context the great detectives had created.
Shit, what to do, I thought, but being all modest and refusing now like a
Japanese person wouldn’t get me anywhere. Should I just let it ride for the
moment? I was about to let myself be engulfed by inertia, that was a close one.
A lousy deduction won’t simply bring you shame here.
I was about to retract my step when Daibakushou exclaimed with disdain
from the stairs.
“Fall back, O Beast exuding words of pride and blasphemy, pacify your in-
tent.”
Oh~~fuck~~. He was picking a fight.
I was about to take another step forward by reflex, but I had no deduction
prepared. How could I outwit Daibakushou when he already had formed his?
But I still closed in on that bastard Daibakushou with no plan in mind, making
Mercury C laugh out loud.
“That won’t do it. Drop it, Detective. We’re ‘beasts’ and Curry is ‘God,’ so
all the Bunnies around him are ‘angels,’ aren’t they? Then we’ve got no
chance of winning. ’Cause you know, we’re apparently in God’s territory, the
Divine Throne. It’s an away game.”
Mercury C said in a tone so agreeable it was a real letdown to me compared
to his provocative and aggressive behavior from a moment ago. He might’ve
gotten bored of it. Whatever. I had nothing in reserve anyway. Much better to
think for myself while listening to Daibakushou’s deduction.
Mercury C followed me with pleased eyes as I stepped back, then Daiba-
kushou said.
“For these two to be here might be part of the charade arranged by
Mitamura-san. Then I mustn’t let my guard down... Now, let us hurry and
throw Satan into the lake of burning sulfur.”
It was evident the Angel Bunnies had no idea how to react to this cryptic
hip hip hooray.
 Daibakushou went on.
“I shall peel away the soil that sullied me to pass on the last judgment,”
he crouched, flipped over the carpet, and showed the transparent boards hid-
den under, but since he was checking them in front of everyone earlier, the
Angel Bunnies weren’t much surprised. Some guy murmured “Oh, the car-
pet...” but even he could relatively quickly figure out that meant the corpse
had been moved.
Daibakushou then descended the stairs, told the representative of the
troupe, Fukushima, “I asked the policemen for an estimate of the blood’s po-
sition. Could you go grab it for me,” and led the rest of the troupe in the mid-
dle of the hall. Since Daibakushou had his frontal lobe destroyed (maybe by
himself?) and kept swaying left and right, unable to stand straight, I told him,
“Sit on the sofa,” but he ignored me. It was doubtful whether he would sur-
vive long enough to finish his deduction. But Fukushima made it in time, run-
ning from and to the hall, coming back with a clipboard in hand. Clipped to
the black board Daibakushou received was a report of the inspection and a
map of the Pinehouse with the position of the blood.
“Mmh, good,” he murmured, then took the pen out of the clip holding the
document and started scribbling on it at a frenetic pace.
“Aaah! Daibakushou-san, you can’t!” Some Angel Bunnies tried to stop
him, but they only got a yell from Daibakushou saying, “It’s Tsukumojuuku!”
After finishing his drawing in no time, he presented it to everyone.
The round Pinehouse was stabbed by a semi-circle made out of the planks
arranged like a baumkuchen.
 “Here is the proof and words of God.”
“Oooooh...” the Angel Bunnies were taken aback, and I found myself
agreeing with it, too.
“This ‘S’ points at the S-rank detective from the Japanese Detective Club,
the Detective God, Tsukumojuuku. The culprit accidentally called me here. No,
last night, Mitamura Saburou-san might have drawn an ‘S’ with his blood,
which then turned into an ‘O’, and created yet another ‘S’ right at this mo-
ment to call for rescue. In reality we should probably rearrange the carpet to
recreate the ‘S’, but I assume most can comprehend with this drawing alone.
The culprit killed Mitamura outside the Pinehouse, arranged the carpet in
this S shape, dragged him to the front of room 7, returned the carpet to its
original state, and left.”
Kimura from the Angel Bunnies then asked the obvious.
 “But doing all that is a handful, right? There was no time for this with us
around.”
Daibakushou answered as if that question was a bore.
“There was a time when you were all absent. You all went into the moun-
tain and wrote these letters to fulfill Mitamura-san’s will, didn’t you?”
“Eh? But that was after we found his corpse before room 7?”
“Therefore, Mitamura-san was still alive when you found him.”
“Ehhh...?”
“Listen well. In reality, Mitamura-san wished to use his death to restart
his life anew. His missing brothers he’d kept secret probably have to do with
that wish...”
“Ichirou-san and Jirou-san, right?” A girl from the Angel Bunnies said.
“Two of the three triplets disappeared, and Saburou-san felt lonely...”
“Exactly. I’m impressed you knew.”
“The great detective Choukuuji Kiyuu informed us.”
“I see. So humans are still trying to get closer to God. Has that person
passed away?”
“...Yes.”
“God’s ire. Thou shalt not attempt to equal the Lord thy God.”
This phrasing shook the Angel Bunnies. A few were even calling out loud
how he was being nasty, but Daibakushou paid no heed to it.
“With this escape from the world in mind, Mitamura-san became a mys-
tery novelist and studied tricks and great detectives, then at last felt ready to
put his plan into action. Mitamura-san purported a switching trick. Naturally,
he would try to obtain one of his brothers to act his part. Mitamura-san thus
sought help from his childhood friend, Sakai Tsutomu-kun, commonly
called Daibakushou Curry. However, Daibakushou-kun had hidden resent-
ment in his heart. You see, six years ago, before the Pinehouse was built, there
was a building called the Cottage Natsukawa...”
Having said this much, Kimura interrupted him.
“And Mitamura-san hit Daibakushou-san on the head.”
 “Then kicked him numerous times, making him crawl from one end of the
passage to the other!” Daibakushou snapped. “Daibakushou-kun even suf-
fered from depression as a result!”
“...”
Daibakushou glared at the troupe members who hadn’t done anything
wrong and silenced them with his misplaced resentment.
“Daibakushou-san falsely reported he had captured one of the brothers
but was unsure which one, received the million yen from Mitamura-san, and
headed to the Pinehouse last night. That’s when Mitamura-san’s acting
started. He prepared a will, rubbed his own blood he had conserved in his
freezer on the carpet around the hallway, pretended to have been shot by an
arrow, fell onto the floor, and waited for the Angel Bunnies to discover him.
But Mitamura-san wasn’t dead at the time. Nor had he actually been shot.
You see...”
“He simply attached the front and back of the arrow to the socket im-
planted in his body,” an Angel Bunny completed for him yet again.
“Yes. Mitamura-san saw something special in being pierced by an arrow,
that is because...” Daibakushou continued, but since it seemed it’d take ages,
someone sped up the process, “Yes, the myth between the Orion and Scorpio
constellation. We know about that too. So?” Daibakushou resumed. “After
the Angel Bunnies found the will and headed outside to fulfill it, Mitamura-
san woke up and left the Pinehouse, as planned. He was meant to meet up
with Daibakushou-kun, receive either Ichirou or Jirou from him, and have
him die in his stead. However, Saburou-san ended up being the one murdered.
By the hands of the friend he had used, beat half to death, and inflicted post-
concussion depression upon: Daibakushou Curry-kun.”

...Daibakushou had finally confessed his crime as Tsukumojuuku. He

paused for a few seconds to check everyone’s reaction, but everyone was
more shocked about the bizarreness of the confession than what had hap-
pened the previous night. Though Tsukumojuuku wouldn’t pick that up him-
self.
Unable to bear the pressing silence, Tanaka from the troupe spoke.
“Well, but out of all the ways to kill him, he chose to shoot him, so despite
all the resentment he might’ve been carrying, as a friend, Daibakushou-san
gave Anbyouin-san the death he had always dreamed of, in a way. I mean, he
could’ve stabbed his chest with a knife or anything. We’re used to seeing
corpses, so nobody touched the body. Even if that came up in the investiga-
tion, the arrow would be seen as a toy and the actual murder weapon would
be the knife...”
Tanaka finished, then gaped at Daibakushou’s face. I looked at him too.
The middle-aged man’s eyes and mouth were wide open as he stared at
Tanaka. He was probably shocked to hear something he hadn’t even thought
of.
“Ah, no, but I’m just speculating,” Tanaka added in a panic.
“Don’t butt in like that. This ain’t your deduction,” Hongou rebuked him.
“Sorry,” Tanaka apologized to Daibakushou. “Please, go on.”
Daibakushou slowly resumed. “...Thus, Daibakushou ‘Orion’ Curry-kun
shot Mitamura ‘Scorpio’ Saburou-kun, arranged the carpet in an S shape,
dragged Mitamura-san up to before room 7...where he was originally wit-
nessed ‘dead’ to match the blood traces, reverted the carpet before the Angel
Bunnies came back—reconnecting the circle of blood—and pretended to
have come to the Pinehouse after hearing the news to solve the mystery he
had created himself. But the amateur lobotomy he had attempted to get rid of
his depression hadn’t worked well, so when he tried to sneak in a second at-
tempt, his brain couldn’t handle it and he died.”
 Unsure of how to express their surprise and confusion, the Angel Bunnies
decided to fall back, only Dezuumi said “Hmm” without appearing particu-
larly lost. “But isn’t that too irrational? I mean, Daibakushou-san didn’t find
either of the brothers, did he?”
“He didn’t.”
“But Anbyouin-san was scheming a switching trick, right? He must’ve
confirmed their presence with his own eyes then. Their stature or face might
have diverged when growing up, or they got injured or gained some charac-
teristic that would be a dead giveaway. He wouldn’t have paid Daibakushou-
san a million yen just with the report he captured one, to begin with.”
“Yet the money has been paid. Which means Mitamura had received con-
firmation. One definitive enough to be worth a million.”
“What kind?”
“Mitamura-san saw someone looking like his spitting image.”
“...A look-alike?”
“He was a mystery novelist. He knew a mere look-alike wouldn’t fool an-
yone. They were as alike as two peas in a pod.”
“But Ichirou and Jirou were...”
“Not there. In reality, Mitamura-san had literally seen himself.”
“...?”
“Daibakushou-kun heard it from Mitamura-san himself. According to
him, Mitamura-san could see himself standing in front of himself.”

“Though surprised by that crazy revelation, Daibakushou-kun instantly

thought of using that, and told Mitamura-san that was his long-lost brother
he had captured for him. Daibakushou-kun knew. If he said that, Mitamura-
san would act according to his will. ‘I see, thank you,’ as expected, Mitamura-
san believed him. They then talked about the switching trick. Two days ago,
one million was deposited in Daibakushou-kun’s account. And yesterday,
Mitamura-san visited Daibakushou-kun’s house, and hurriedly planned out
the trick and made preparations for it.”
“Why would he...”
“Because both Daibakushou-kun and Mitamura-san could foresee their
fates. You see, the double Mitamura-san had seen was none other than a dop-
pelgänger.”

“A ‘double-walker’. The mystery novelist Mitamura Saburou had experi-

enced the same visual hallucination of one’s self that Goethe, Maupassant,
Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, and other authors claimed to have experienced. In
the medical world it is considered a symptom of schizophrenia, or something
that might occur when one has a brain tumor between their temporal lobe
and their parietal lobe, but in popular culture the legend is that someone who
witnesses their doppelgänger will soon die. Naturally, since it manifests un-
der serious injuries, that legend is mostly justified, but I’m not a doctor so I
won’t pry further in that aspect. Hearing Mitamura-san’s confession, Daiba-
kushou-kun understood his bloodthirst would soon be satisfied. However, he
also knew his condition would be an obstacle in laying out the complex plan
he would need, so he needed to retrieve his full brain capacity and initiative
as soon as possible. He used the little time he could manage being alone when
Mitamura-san went to the bathroom, stabbed a chopstick through his left eye,
destroyed part of his frontal lobe, succeeded in his lobotomy, and then dis-
cussed the trick with Mitamura-san all night. But on the other side,
Mitamura-san, too, had realized his death was drawing near. Needless to say,
not because of a disease. Many can lead a long life even with schizophrenia or
brain tumors; even Goethe, who claimed to have seen one, lived up to 82 years
old. Mitamura-san had instead foreseen his fate of being killed by his friend
Daibakushou-kun. He deduced it from Daibakushou-kun’s sudden confes-
sion that he had captured one of his brothers upon hearing about the doppel-
ganger. As one would expect from a mystery novelist. He instantly under-
stood there was no other corpse to replace him. That is why he purposefully
didn’t ask to confirm the state of his brother. He finished his preparations
along with Daibakushou-kun on that night, accomplished his role, pretended
to believe he was going to be free from his solitude, and arrived before Dai-
bakushou-kun—waiting for him alone with a bowgun in hand—with a smile
on his face.”
Daibakushou’s voice cracked, followed by a little silence.
“...He resigned to his fate. In fact, before the incident in the Cottage
Natsukawa...” Daibakushou drew the ‘III’ and ‘II’ of the double murder ex-
changes’ deduction Mitamura had arranged for him and the ‘1 (一/I)’ of the
Cottage Natsukawa incident, and explained both cases with his voice trem-
bling all the while, but no one interrupted him even though we knew about it.
“...He then drew the ‘◯’ with his own blood to end the countdown. At first
glance, it seems like a great-detective pretend-play between friends ended
up in them killing each other, but it was all a charade using friendship as fuel
a mystery novelist had arranged alone. However, thinking about it now...the
doppelgänger claim might have been a fabrication. Maybe he made up that lie
to test Daibakushou-kun. Well, I have no way of knowing that, and it’s not
that relevant. Everything is over; the seven bowls who became a martyr to end
the end have subsided, and the God of Detectives Tsukumojuuku came in and
concluded this case à la Revelation to John.”
Silence reigned in the hall.
Doppelgänger? I thought. If Mitamura himself hadn’t made that up, then
who else could’ve known that a recluse living alone atop a mountain, never
leaving the Pinehouse, almost never meeting his editor, and having for only
friend a depressive person had hallucinated a double of himself? Only Daiba-
kushou could’ve solved this case. Yet Daibakushou couldn’t. Then was it in-
evitable for the great detective modeled after him, Tsukumojuuku, to appear?
 “Hmm, well I don’t get all that doppelgänger stuff, but mhmm, hold on a
sec,” said Dezuumi, who then walked towards the stairs nearest to the recep-
tion space, went up to the second floor, slowly walked in a counterclockwise
direction all the way around while looking down, came back, and told us, who
were watching him do all of that in silence, “Yeah, as I thought. Tsukumo-
juuku-san’s deduction is flawed.”

“I think you were too obsessed with the letter S. An elementary mistake.
You just said what came to your mind after going upstairs and flipping the
carpet a bit, that’s why you failed. Anbyouin-san’s corpse rotated counter-
clockwise starting before room 7. We know that because the shape of the
blood when it was rubbed indicates a counterclockwise motion, with less and
less blood as it went on. Blood runs out gradually. In your deduction, Tsu-
kumojuuku-san, Anbyouin-san rubbed the blood he had preserved—one
loop’s worth—on the carpet starting before room 7 and pretended to be dead,
got killed by Daibakushou-san waiting outside, who then returned the corpse
before room 7 on the S-shaped carpet to match the blood traces, right? But
then, the blood on the carpet would go clockwise starting at room 1. The op-
posite direction. Of course, he could’ve dragged the corpse from the outside
until room 1, then left it alone while he reverted the carpet, and go over the
same carpet portion in a counterclockwise direction until room 7; that would
indeed pose no problem in the direction of the rubbing, but then the northern
half would only have the initial amount of blood Anbyouin-san himself left
behind, while the southern half would have seen the corpse pass two addi-
tional times. To put it simply, the amount of blood would be 1:3. Too unnatu-
ral to camouflage. This would also require the corpse to make a 180° before
room 1, which would leave suspect traces too. But I just checked the whole
trail, and none of this came up. The blood starts before room 7, goes coun-
terclockwise, and, pardon the phrasing, goes ‘straight’ without ever losing
its way. Sorry.”
 “You’re sorry...” Daibakushou said with his face bright red, now was he
embarrassed or angry? “You needn't apologize.”
“But...” Dezuumi started, but Daibakushou cut him off.
“This was inevitable. God is destined to die once, then resurrect.”
Mercury C laughed. “If Tsukumojuuku’s the ninth deduction since Daiba-
kushou’s first shitty deduction, it’s normal for Tsukumojuuku to be the tenth
one as well; is that it?16”
“No, not really...”
“Shut up Dezuumi. Let Tsukumojuuku think. Right, God?”
Looking at Mercury C say that with a giant grin, I wondered. Had Mercury
C stopped me from taking Daibakushou’s spot because he wanted to see him
fail? Did he know he would fail? Had he expected a tenth deduction to come
because his name was Tsukumojuuku? ...Was I stupid for thinking that way?
Not letting on whether he noticed Mercury C’s provocation, Daibakushou
laughed.
“Exactly. The perfection of the name Tsukumojuuku was once again
proven. Now, I don’t see any chopsticks around. Well, I heard in India people
eat with their fingers since their right hand is a clean present from God, then
the pinky finger shall suffice...”
Daibakushou erected his pinky finger.
“Eh, wait...”
Dezuumi’s words were in vain.
Daibakushou readied his pinky finger on the inner corner of his left eye,
then chucked it all the way in.

13

16
Play on Tsukumojuuku’s name, 九十九十九, being written with the character for 9 and
10 repeating.
 Dezuumi looked away, Hongou and Sakurazuki didn’t budge, Nils had his
eyes locked on it (it’s really not something kids should see), and Mercury C
laughed, but the Angel Bunnies and Taniguchi and I couldn’t hold it in and
screamed. “Ooooohh!” “Wha- Daibakushou-san, are you okay!?” “The fuck
are you doing, moron!?” “Eww~! Fucking nuts! So gross!” Though mine—
the last one—might’ve been a bit cold.
“...Even in Revelation to John, with the millennium and God’s reign over,
Satan needed to be liberated for a little while...yet, the moment he defied
Heaven, he was thrown into a lake of fire where he shall be tormented for
eternity. Now is the time. Awaken, Satan! Beast, false prophet, witness the
second death! My name is Tsukumojuuku. Look, I shall return in no time.”
Tsukumojuuku then bent his wrist with his pinky still deep in his left eye
socket, had a sort of spasm, but then just fell on the floor while spinning.
“Dumbass!” Taniguchi screamed as he rushed over to Tsukumojuuku’s
side, crouched, and confirmed his pulse and breathing. “How many times is
this moron gonna stir his fucking brain!? Come on, carry his legs. We’ll move
him to the bed and connect him,” he told me, so I bent to grab his legs, but
then Mercury C said, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
“Daibakushou has three belly buttons so he’s fine to die twice.”
“Drop the jokes, idiot!”
Taniguchi got rightfully angry at him, but when Mercury C tried to punch
Taniguchi by reflex, Tsukumojuuku spoke out to undermine Taniguchi’s
rightfulness.
“Don’t slur in God’s Divine Throne.”
I looked at him. On his right pinky he had removed, was some mucus
mixed with white natto. No. Brain sushi.
Tsukumojuuku tried getting up, still with a transparent liquid and blood
shedding from his left eye, but his legs were too shaky to do so. Taniguchi
offered him a shoulder, but he couldn’t even grab it. I helped him too, but
since I carelessly gave him my right shoulder, Tsukumojuuku’s brain and
spinal fluid was leaking on my arm. I pretended not to notice.
 “I now know.”
Tsukumojuuku whispered. Shut up, you talked enough, I thought, but
saying that wouldn’t stop him. Daibakushou had already resurrected twice
just to continue talking. I mustn’t interrupt him.
“Bring me the drawing from earlier.”
Fukushima handed the inspection report to him, but Taniguchi and I were
occupying both shoulders, so he couldn’t receive it. We dragged him to the
sofa and made him sit. However, he still couldn’t muster enough strength to
maintain the clipboard or hold the pen.
“Aah, I can’t.”
He then addressed to me,
“Draw it in my stead.”
He said, then reached to his left eye with his right hand, scooped some of
the fluid, and drew a half circle on the drawing.
Tsukumojuuku’s spinal fluid and blood started before room 7, passed
through room 8’s door, then through the wall between rooms 8 and 9,
through room 9’s window, through the detached building, and finally
reached the blood traces.
“A hole at first glance unrelated had been dug upper-left of the boards to
allocate for them, all to draw this exact trajectory. This is the truth. How uni-
versal. The insides and outsides were reversed,” Tsukumojuuku said with an
ecstatic expression. “The boards that were on the left side inside the Pine-
house were then arranged on the right side, and connected to a hole bottom-
left of them that was specially dug for the occasion. The planks slightly over-
lap each other, and draw a half circle of blood on the carpet about twice the
diameter of the original one.”
 He even gave meaning to the hole we hadn’t even considered. Nothing was
unused, truly.
“You there, could you check the wall between rooms 8 and 9? There should
be a big hole in it. Though it’s probably hidden with wallpaper, so...”
Fukushima cut off Tsukumojuuku’s request.
“We know. There is a square hole. That too, we learned from Choukuuji
Kiyuu-san.”
“Then please check room 9’s window. There should be a tree’s branches
right outside the window functioning like a roof.”
Fukushima and I ran through the hall, rushed up the stairs in the back,
and headed to room 9 on the second floor; then, I recalled. During Choukuuji
Kiyuu’s deduction, Mercury C was hiding in the cedar tree facing that window
while laughing at us. The way that branch was shaped... It certainly felt like
Mercury C was near the Pinehouse, but...
Fukushima opened the door to room 9, and we saw it. The cedar’s
branches were indeed extending out as if to cover the window frame. Fuku-
shima made a circle with his arms over the handrail in the hallway, and yelled,
“You were right~~.” “I mean, my room’s so dark even during the day~,”
Nomura Rie laughed from down the hall. I looked at my right, at the hole con-
necting with room 8. The wallpaper had been peeled off on this side too, likely
to bring out Mitamura’s corpse, and revealed the entirety of the square hole,
creating a window to room 8. Had the transparent boards passed through this
hole...I tried imagining that scene, and realized something.
I left room 9 and checked the width of the hallway. There was roughly two
meters between the handrail and the door. The hole in the wall was about
two-meters wide too. On the drawing the boards drew a smooth arc for the
large half circle starting before room 7 and ending at the blood traces, but
would it go that well in practice? No, there’s no way. Going through room 8’s
door wasn’t so easy. The drawing conveniently ignored the wall. It needed
some fixes and the boards to be set diagonally in some parts. For the hole,
couldn’t the bridge be split before and after it? It would be hidden by the wall-
paper, so who cared if Mitamura passed through it, no? The window was large
enough, so with the hole in the wall passed the rest should go smoothly...hav-
ing thought that far, I finally realized the reason Mitamura’s corpse had been
stolen from the morgue and placed in the hole.
I see...! It wasn’t to scare us nor to prove Choukuuji Kiyuu’s deduction
wrong.
I hurriedly stepped back into room 9 and inspected the hole.
There was a perfect motive someone had needed to camouflage.
With the first rush of adrenaline since I arrived at this house rushing
through my veins, I left room 9 temporarily, just in time to hear Tsukumo-
juuku.
 “But the hole was too narrow to fit the Stairway to Heaven. So he moved
the corpse off the carpet to pass him through that hole. However, naturally,
that would leave some blood inside it. And wiping it away wouldn’t be enough
to fool the forensics. Therefore he stole Mitamura-san’s corpse and put him
inside a second time. Once again the idea of hiding blood amongst the blood.”
The fuck, Tsukumojuuku! You’re too discerning! I thought, but that was
wrong. Tsukumojuuku was merely remembering the memories of back when
he’d been Daibakushou. He wasn’t making a clever point in his deduction. He
hadn’t been sitting still at the morgue. He was the culprit who’d stolen
Mitamura Saburou’s corpse from the hospital.
Hearing the Angel Bunnies applauding down the hall and chanting the
name of Tsukumojuuku instead of Daibakushou, I walked along the hallway
and down the stairs.
I took out the spiky pig from my chest and spoke to it.
“Kozue. Are you awake?”
I heard a tiny voice answer.
“Sleeping~.”

“The case is nearly over. I’m not sure what to do, but something will soon
change.”
Really?
“Disco~. Let’s go home~.”

“Yeah. After checking everything’s fine.”

Saying that, I reached the hall, then looked for Mercury C’s beaming smile
as we had entered the denouement, but he wasn’t amongst the people sur-
rounding Tsukumojuuku; he was in the back, shoving Dezuumi’s back. De-
zuumi was acting like ‘Nope, please, no way I’m doing that,’ so I figured he
was getting bullied again, but a moment later chills would run down my spine.
I caught Mercury C’s voice among the cheers.

“Then lemme say it in your stead. Ooooi. Ooooi!”

Stop it.
However, the Angel Bunnies took notice of Mercury C’s overjoyed voice.
 “Dezuumi-kun has another complaint~.”
The cheers died down, and everyone stared at Dezuumi.
“Tsk tsk tsk. Spit it out. Isn’t it your responsibility?” Forced by Mercury
C’s playful stickling, Dezuumi opened his mouth.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve realized during the previous deduction...even be-
fore that, I should’ve stuck with everyone when you went outside. The blood
Daibakushou-san found, I think it’s probably mine...”

The Angel Bunnies gulped.

Everyone remembered the incident they had forgotten. Right, that mo-
ronic great detective got injured during the evening and was transported to
the hospital.
He jumped off the second floor and landed on Mercury C’s kick.
It was right after we’d arrived at the Pinehouse. I’d met Kozue inside the
spiky pig, talked with her around the incinerator, then Dezuumi unneces-
sarily exhibited his eccentric behavior by jumping off the second floor, and
Mercury C sent him flying away right before he reached the ground. Thinking
back about it, he’d been sent flying precisely in the spot indicated in the re-
port! I should’ve noticed from seeing the drawing. Mercury C and Dezuumi
too...hm, but had these two really not noticed? I looked at Mercury C, which
cackled and said, “No, I swear. It totally slipped by me. I wasn’t withholding
information. I wouldn’t do something that cruel.”
“See?” Nils said. “In the Pinehouse, the closer you are to the truth, the
further it gets. Like a water mirage.”
Then what the fuck was that deduction!? I was thrown into confusion once
again. Daibakushou should’ve been talking from memory, so... I looked over
at the sofa set. Tsukumojuuku’s eyes were closed, his back bent, his head
leaning forward, and overall not moving an inch.
Mercury C said.
“My. Did he drop dead from the shock?”
 14

Tsukumojuuku’s breathing had stopped, but Taniguchi brought him to

room 11, connected him, and it turned out he still had a pulse and brain activ-
ity.
“Good for him. Now he’ll be able to come back for the 19th and the 99th
deduction.17”
Mercury C alone was laughing in the hall counting everyone but Tsu-
kumojuuku and Taniguchi Tooru. Nobody else dared speak. They were all sit-
ting on the sofas or the floor. Even I thought he was going too far. But he
might not have been joking. If Nils was right and the truth was eluding from
our hands, great detectives might endlessly continue to die...
Mercury C’d said he was bored, but his interest had peaked again. “So the
tenth deduction, too, ended up being in vain. For the eleventh... Oh, is there a
detective named Juuichirou18 or something?” he suggested. We then heard a
girl from the Angel Bunnies tell another girl, “There’s Runbaba 12, no?”
“Oh, then let’s call them up.”
“Ehh~, but that’s a great detective from Ehimegawa Juuzou-san’s nov-
els~. He’s sooo cute~.”
“Who cares.”
“Eh~, I’m a Nishimura Yukio stan.”
The girls ignored Mercury C and started chattering, making me recall
something. If I remembered correctly, Ehimegawa Juuzou had debuted with
Smokestack Runbaba Inexplicable. Could it be that Runbaba 12 had been
modeled after a real person, just like how the great detective Tsukumojuuku
had been designed after Daibakushou Curry? I suggested that, and Mercury C

17
Same play on his name 九十九十九, with 19 written 十九 and 99 written 九十九.
18
Following the same naming scheme as Ichirou, Jirou, and Saburou, this time using
the number eleven.
agreed. “Good idea. Hey, you’re a detective, go search for him at least. You’re
fucking useless here.”
“How would I do that in the middle of the night? First of all, we don’t even
know if he exists. Don’t ask for miracles.”
“Can’t be helped. You seein’ how unreliable our eleventh detective is?”
“Mm? Who’s that?” saying that, I once again remembered something I’d
forgotten. Mercury C glanced behind him, at Dezuumi who was acting awk-
wardly, making him overreact. “...Ahh.”
When he’d jumped off the second floor, he’d screamed something.

“Wahahahaha! I solved it! Uwahahaha!”

Shoot. That injury made us forget about Dezuumi’s deduction. Plus, he

kept getting hit afterward and barely got any chance to speak. That’d caused
many great detectives to die, and Tsukumojuuku to revive and re...well, rere-
die.
This is a house of ouroboros.
Beginnings are ends and ends are beginnings.
Did that mean the first deduction we were meant to listen to when arriving
at the Pinehouse would wind up being the last one?
...I was again thinking of myself as the center of the world, but it couldn’t
be helped given how everyone was telling me to do something. Or did that
simply show how numb my reason had become? Is reason meant to keep in
check how deep one’s thoughts go? Is it bad to overthink? Is reason basically
a means to balance ourselves? The great detectives didn’t show any sign of
wanting to stop their thoughts there. These guys’ dearest wish seemed to be
to touch, taste, and drink all knowledge there was to get, and appropriate it.
They then look at it from a much, much deeper, and much, much wider, and
much, much bigger perspective, and process it… There is no such thing as
great detectives knowing or thinking too much. The process to get to the
truth knows no bound nor limit.
But not for me. Being a missing child detective, my cases didn’t have
words radially arranged to fit on a planisphere, giant horoscope mansions,
myths, magic… Well, okay, sometimes there was magic, but no physical tricks,
locked room tricks, psychological tricks, nor complex arrangement of carpets.
I only had unexpected secrets and unexpected developments. Someone
turned out to be someone else’s sibling, someone had in reality died some
years ago, someone was secretly forming an alliance with someone else, all
that shit. Something that was hidden came to light because of someone’s
greed, it was all so, how should I put it, bloody. Corrupt. Nothing to do with
myths or constellations.
But I was currently inside the Pinehouse filled with great detectives and
Kozue was inside the spiky pig.
Anything was possible. Nothing was unrelated. Instead of thinking what
meaning the ouroboros had in this case, it might not be all that crazy to think
that what it meant for me was more important.
Right. I was a detective. But if reality broadened to encompass what had
previously been abnormal, I had to adapt to this new version of reality.
Believing Dezuumi’s role coming now had to do with the ouroboros must
mean something to me. And me believing that this meant something must’ve
meant something for reality and the world too.
Therefore, I said:
“He’s right, Dezuumi. No matter how you spin it, it’s your time to shine.”
“Eh~!? That...but...” he was afraid of his deduction being wrong.
“It’ll be okay. Nils is still alive, isn’t he? And Tsukumojuuku has yet to die
again. I dunno what happened, but it seems great detectives learned and now
only stab their eyes themselves.”
“...Really? Sakurazuki-san?”
“Eh? Nah~ in my case SS Nail Peeler killed me.”
“Ehhh!? The fuck is that!?”
 I clicked my tongue.
“The one who peels off the nails of sleeping people,” Sakurazuki said.
“It’s a delusion,” I insisted. “Just a sorta dream you saw on the brink of
death. He doesn’t exist.”
“But aren’t you injured yourself, Wednesdayyy-san?!”
“Ah.” I’d forgotten again. “But you’ll be almost dead, it won’t hurt.”
“Nononono, that’s not reassuring! I won’t say anything no matter what!”
“The fuck are you saying, idiot. It’s your fault Tsukumojuuku wasted his
deductions,” Mercury C rebuked him, but he was the last one I wanted to hear
that from. But I couldn’t tell him off. Because I wasn’t entirely sure these de-
ductions were for nothing. Are deductions canceled just because they’re
wrong? Had all the deductions up to this point been for naught?
I had no idea. But they’d brought us many discoveries and new pieces of
information. If Nils was right in saying the Pinehouse was an overlap of
meaning, knowing all of those must be worth something.
Would Mercury C tell me not to read into useless context again?
But he proposed the idea of searching for an ‘eleventh’ great detective and
for ‘Runbaba 12’ because he was reading into the context of the deductions
forming a chain, didn’t he?
Is it wrong to pick up on a context when we see a pattern being formed?
What even is context? Is it merely a bunch of conjectures past experiences
lead you to believe in?
Then how are great detectives’ deductions any different? They rearrange
knowledge to create a story, just like how everyone does in their everyday life,
no? How is it different? The absolute gap in knowledge? The validity of the
story and context they create?
Great detectives are originally meant to never err.
Yet they were always wrong in the Pinehouse.
It was almost a foregone conclusion for them to be wrong.
As set in stone as other great detectives being right anywhere else in the
world.
 What could it mean for the great detectives, meant to never be wrong, to
always be wrong?
In the Pinehouse, the closer you are to the truth, the further it gets. Like a
water mirage, Nils had said. Was that just his impression? Or was that really
happening?
Truth shouldn’t have a will of its own. It’s just something that exists.
Why were great detectives unable to attain it? Was it even possible for ten
of their deductions in a row to all be wrong? How likely was that, statistically?
But it did happen; something fundamental must be amiss.
Leaving Dezuumi alone, still making a fuss, and Mercury C, teasing him to
no end, I went to check on something that was bothering me.
“Yo, Nils.”
Seeing him not moving an inch on the sofa, I got worried he might’ve
stopped breathing like Tsukumojuuku.
“...Ah, yes? What is it?”
He was alive. But he looked half-dead. He was afraid of stabbing his
eyes...or getting stabbed. Couldn’t blame him. But I didn’t think that was all.
Was that lethargy, or a product of that in addition to the feeling of being be-
trayed by the world? Having grown up pampered by the world and never
knowing failure, had he lost confidence upon learning he could err like any-
one else?
How insolent, I thought. I’d screwed up so much I lost track of how many
times it happened, sometimes resulting in hopeless bad endings, and still got
over it. Finding your thinking was slightly off is no reason to get that de-
pressed. Move your ass to find a way not to get your eyes stabbed! Sneak in a
second deduction before getting stabbed. Even if you get stabbed, come back
like Daibakushou and challenge it again...I thought, but that wasn’t the point.
I still didn’t know if he was for sure wrong.
“Say, was your horoscope deduction wrong?” I asked.
“...Probably,” he answered.
“Probably? How so? What was wrong?”
 “Who knows.”
“You must know.”
“I don’t. But it was wrong. I mean, I totally hadn’t expected Sakurazuki-
san’s line.”
No need to be scared. We’re all going there anyway.
“Huh? Just for that? That’s totally besides the point.”
“Great detectives should foresee everything.”
“Isn’t that just your obsession?”
“It might be, but it’s a sort of rule for us. That thought never occurred to
me. Same for the carpet trick.”
“But that was totally unrelated to the truth behind the case.”
“In situations like this, nothing is ever unrelated. Everything has some
meaning. And I’d always managed to pick up that meaning correctly, yet...”
“...”
“If you haven’t predicted everything, you were wrong. I...don’t like this...I
don’t want to die. I’m still eleven...”
“Ehhh!? You’re that young?”
“I am...save me please...”
“...If you ever get lost, sure I can help, but here...”
“How come?”
“What?”
“How come you can search for missing children, but you cannot solve this
case.”
“I mean, it’s outside of my expertise and all...”
“I’m not blaming you, by all means. I’m simply trying to get my message
across. Wednesdayyy-san, are you able to find the lost children every time
without fail?”
“No? Some I just can’t find. Like because they’d been killed or died.”
“Is there any kid you’re still searching for?”
“Not currently. I’ve only gotten involved in one case on this trip to Japan.”
I’d only found Yamagishi Kozue.
 “You came from America, right? Is there any case left pending over there?”
“None. It’s my work. Of course I’ll see it through to the end.”
“Has there ever been a case you gave up on halfway through?”
“Yeah? Many times.”
“Then are these still unresolved?”
“No, time naturally brought new findings and developments, and I even-
tually resolved most of them.”
“See? That’s how it works. It’s the same for us. No matter how much time
it takes us, we always solve cases in the end. Missing children detectives and
great detectives are one and the same.”
“Sure.”
“But why does that happen?”
“...?”
“Why do we great detectives always find the truth, and you, Wednes-
dayyy-san, always find the child you’re searching for?”
“...? Dunno, maybe it’s talent?”
“Everyone is talented at something in some way. But not everyone can
achieve something every time without fail. Humans are bound to err and fre-
quently fail. But you and I and other great detectives are exceptions, we solve
cases one after the other. What makes that difference?”
“God’s protection or something?”
“I’d always felt something vague of the sort… that is, until yesterday. To-
day’s events urged me to think, and I finally understood. God has nothing to
do with it. We weren’t created by somebody. Sometimes you see great detec-
tives like that, thinking they’re nothing more than characters from a mystery
novel. That kind of thinking is interesting in itself, but someone living their
everyday life just cannot be a character. We were never attributed roles, nor
are we a device. We are normal humans, but we attain the truth without fail.”
“How come a normal human could be capable of never erring? If it’s not
talent or God’s blessing, what is it?”
 “Our wills. Strong, iron wills can bend destiny. That is the only possible
answer. We great detectives shine truth upon mysteries with our strong wills,
and you find missing children with your iron will, Wednesdayyy-san.”

This world’s events are all decided by the interactions between destiny
and wills, they say. Did you know?

If a strong will can bend destiny, then an iron will alone can provoke an
event.
“Lemme know if I got this right,” I said. “You great detectives don’t attain
the truth with your strong wills, you fabricate it, right?”

Nils then replied:

“Exactly. That’s how we great detectives feel. Wills create results. Every-
one knows that. Therefore, when someone gets the result they wanted, they
inevitably feel all-powerful. ‘I can do it if I try.’ ‘I can manage if I do my best.’
That’s the true meaning behind these words.”

The world is made out of people’s consciousness.

Sakurazuki’d said that.
Perhaps all the discoveries happening in the real world are the same as
painters or writers’ creations. We don’t find something that has always been
there, we create something new.

Humans are living beings that create and reproduce. I’d inadvertently
added meaning to Sakurazuki’s words. He had influenced me.
 Sakurazuki had said this too:

Other people are really big. And the world is constantly wavering.

The interactions between consciousnesses. If Sakurazuki was right, Nils

was influencing my worldview. Did that mean Nils’ will was stronger than
mine? It’s natural for a will attempting to convey something to surpass one
listening. That means the world broadens due to communication between
people.
Could that explain the expansion of the universe...I thought, but shook my
head. I was getting too mystical.
“Then why did you fail this time? ...Or rather, why did you not attain the
truth?”
The great detective answered my question in a flash.
“Because there is a will stronger than us at work.”
“Whose?”
“That’s my question. It’s now clear to me. You are being sought after,
Wednesdayyy-san. Everyone has been telling you, haven't they? I don’t be-
lieve in the world after death or the likes, and I’ve yet to experience it so I
don’t need to believe in it, but Sakurazuki-san, Hongou-san, you, and Mer-
cury C went there, so it exists. The Pinehouse Theater exists. And SS Nail
Peeler over there, too, exists. Nail Peeler is seeking you. I simply found it odd,
so I didn’t belabor the point, and that’s probably what displeased him. That
must’ve been the motive to brand me as wrong.”

Odoriba! Only you can correctly save the world! Only think about Kozue!
 Could my will to love Kozue bring about some sort of event? Was that even
possible?
“I had never thought about it much, but it’s likely that wills can bend des-
tiny,” Nils said. “I hadn’t noticed as I only ever knew how to win with my will.
When you lose to another stronger will, destiny bends according to that per-
son’s will, and a brand new will appears within you, I’m sure. That’s why I
will eventually stab my own eyes. That is my destiny, so I will act to make it
real. ...I see. It makes sense. I’m a great detective. It has to be true. We were all
mistaken for the sake of it, we stabbed ourselves for the sake of it. There has
to be meaning in stabbing our eyes.”
“Drop it, dummy. Don’t stab yourself. If you don’t wanna, you don’t need
to.”
“But I’ll surely get the urge to.”
“You’re overthinking it.” But maybe that overthinking had just birthed a
will within Nils. “Don’t think.”
“There’s no way I could do that. I’m a detective.”
But I hadn’t thought that much.
Nail Peeler had told me to think. I had told myself many times I needed to
think. Even then, I still hadn’t thought much. As soon as I started to do so,
great detectives started moving and talking. So I couldn’t escape my role as a
listener.
Did I not want to think? Was I lying about my willingness to think?
“You still seem confused,” Nils said. “I will certainly destroy my left eye
because of your confusion, Wednesdayyy-san.”
I couldn’t keep getting scared at Nils’ threats. I couldn’t let a kid stab him-
self.
“Sakurazuki,” I called out to the plump great detective. “So, in the end,
did you end up in the Pinehouse Theater?”
Sakurazuki smiled. “I’m not sure if we share that same experience, but
didn’t you see my acting on that circular stage? Didn’t you see me say the
culprit was the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roose-
velt? A sacred death. A sacred death. The fool perishes for new knowledge.
One crushes one of their eyes to observe a new light.”

Darrr-garr-darr-garr!

“And I died and lost an eye for this...”

I gulped.
“Of course, FDR isn’t the culprit. That’s why Nail Peeler crushed my eye.”
My legs started shaking.
“...Do you know who the culprit is?”
“Isn’t it your job to find who it is, Wednesdayyy-san?”
Was it? “Isn’t it Nail Peeler?”
“Nail Peeler is merely the one who peels off the nails of sleeping people.”
“But Kozue said Nail Peeler was the one who was killing the great detec-
tives.”
“She’s a child. Of course she can lie,” said Dezuumi who was now making
a serious expression. “Children lie without much meaning to it.”
“How would you know,” I told him.
“Because I was a child,” he said. “Wednesdayyy-san, may I talk with Ko-
zue-san?”
“Kozue’s sleeping. It’s late already.”
“It’s an emergency. Could you please wake her up?”
“Why.”
“I want to confirm something.”
“Confirm what exactly?”
“I’m thinking that Kozue might be the one who made Anbyouin-san’s
corpse loop around the hallway. Aaah~, I finally said it, I can’t take it back
now.
 “It’s the same principle as the spiky pig. Kozue entered Anbyouin-san’s
dead body, and slowly crawled around the Pinehouse’s second floor. But I
want to confirm something first. The last people to be in the hall last night
were Mizorogi Fumie-san, Kawabe Keisuke-san, and Miyazaki Natsue-san,
right?”
The trio of boys and girls called out by Dezuumi said “Yep.” “That’s right.”
“Yeah?”
“Mizorogi-san, you reside in room 4 of the first floor, right? And Kawabe-
san in room 4 of the second floor, and Miyazaki-san in room 6 of the second
floor.”
“You got it right~.”
“Were you conversing last night?”
“A little meeting for our performance~.”
“You returned to your respective rooms at around one in the morning,
went to bed, and soon after, the corpse was discovered, right? About 30
minutes later, is that correct?”
“All green~.”
“That’s when someone found Anbyouin-san’s corpse; an arrow through
his back, and having made a loop around the second floor. And everyone as-
sumed that the case happened after you three called it a night, yet that’s in
fact mistaken. But I don’t mean it like Tsukumojuuku-san, I’m not saying the
arrow through his back was a decoration and he was alive or any of that. An-
byouin-san had died before that, when you three were still talking in the hall.
Then Kozue-san entered his body. Traveling from Chofu, Tokyo, to the Pine-
house in West Akatsuki, Fukui. Arriving here, she found a vessel for herself.
That was Anbyouin-san’s corpse. He was already dead by that point. Unlike
Hongou-san or Sakurazuki-san or Tsukumojuuku-san, nobody connected
him to a machine, so his bloodstream was at a halt and he had become an
object. Therefore, Kozue shouldn’t have felt any pain during her time inside
his body. The arrow had simply pierced flesh without breaking any bones, and
his death was still fresh so the rigor mortis hadn’t started yet, meaning Kozue
could freely stand, walk, and talk with Anbyouin-san’s body just as well as
she could with the spiky pig. But she instead chose to crawl around the hall-
way. Why is that? That is because she was a small, frail child, and had no one
to rely upon other than Disco Wednesdayyy-san.

“Having been suddenly thrown in an unfamiliar environment, it is natural

she would search for Wednesdayyy-san to appease her loneliness and fear.
But she couldn’t just stand up and call for him out loud. After all, she could
hear adults she didn’t know in the hall. Mizorogi-san, Kawabe-san, and
Miyazaki-san were chatting that evening as they had always done since com-
ing to the Pinehouse. Therefore, the cautious and brave Kozue-san laid down
to avoid being seen by these dubious people, and silently went around the hall.
Searching for you, Wednesdayyy-san.”

“Dubious...?” Kawabe complained, but it was just a murmur and no one

quipped at him.
Dezuumi continued.
“However, not seeing Wednesdayyy-san anywhere around, Kozue-san
gave up after looping once—or maybe she had a sort of time limit—and came
back to Wednesdayyy-san in Chofu.”

“Idiot, you’re wrong,” I told him. “Kozue never transformed last night.”
I’d been waiting for her on the sofa. I fell asleep, but if the ‘seventeen-
year-old Kozue’ had come, she’d have woken me up.
Yet Dezuumi didn’t falter.
“Then, Wednesdayyy-san, go ahead and ask Kozue-san directly.”
 “Kozue’s sleeping. I’d feel bad about waking her up.”
“Sigh. Then please contact the ‘older Kozue-san’ back in Chofu. If Kozue-
san is here, that means the other one is in Chofu, right? If the ‘small Kozue-
san’ visited the Pinehouse last night, the ‘older Kozue-san’ must’ve come to
Chofu.”
“And I’m telling you she didn’t.”
“But wouldn’t it be plausible that she came for a brief period while you
were asleep, and returned to the future without waking you up?”
I maintained my silent resistance a bit more, but I couldn’t ignore that
forever.
I took out my phone and called her.
Dring dring dring... Someone picked up and answered.
“Yes, Disco? Are you done with the case?” It was Shakuko.
“Not yet.”
“I’m keeping up on the net. It’s so crazy. So many great detectives died,
but are you okay Disco?”
“I’m doing alright.”
“You know, I told you to do your best and all, but don’t die. If you’re ever
in risk of dying, give up and come back.”
“Sure. I’m not gonna die.”
“Don’t do anything dangerous either. Want to talk to Kozue-chan? She’s
really worried too.”
I’d have hung up if she was asleep.
“Yes, please.”
“Kozue-chaaan! It’s Disco,” Shakuko called her, then I heard the phone
changing hands.
“Yes yes? Disco? Good evening!”
“Good evening. You were awake?”
“Of course~. I’m looking out for the latest news. I’m always super worried
your name might come up any time. You know, you can come home if you
want. Wait no, I guess you can’t. I’m still over there. Right. Can you really not
get around it? Staying there is bad news. Shakko-chan already told you, but
don’t try anything dangerous. I’m so sorry for even sending you there in the
first place.”
“It’s fine. I gotta keep Kozue company over here.”
“But I want you by my side too.”
“I know.”
“...”
“Kozue, say, did you come there last night?”
“Eh? Where?”
“To Chofu. Of this era.”
“...Yeah? You remembered? I was sure you were sleeping too deeply to re-
member.”

“So you did?”

“Yeah. Huh? Do you remember or not? Decide once and for all! If you don’t,
let’s just forget about it.”
“Forget? What?”
“What we did that night.”
“What did we do?”
“Ehhh~~, you want me to say it? Naaaah, I can’t. Don’t you remember a
dream you had or something? Remember it for yourself, Disco. Any memory
of me asking about Norma-san?”

But Norma got married, I thought, and went to continue. If you don’t care
then it’s fine, Kozue said. But if you love me, then do so perfectly. Don’t leave
me alone, love only me for the rest of your life, forget about Norma-san, col-
lect stickers for my enormous cards, gather all the backs I want to ride and
make them bend, lick my butthole, call me pretty all the time.
 I had sex with Kozue inside my dream.

It hurts, but don’t stop! she said as she held onto my shoulders. It hurts,
but I’m fine! Do it more! Harder! she said before biting my shoulders. I told
her I love you, baby. Those weren’t mere words, I truly was about to burst
from my love for Kozue.

But wasn’t that a dream?

“I remembered,” I said as I pulled on my shirt and revealed my left shoul-

der she should’ve bitten. It had a red mark shaped like teeth.
“We...”
“Did nothing. Calm down. Of course we didn’t. You’d have woken if we did.
I just gave you a kiss and felt your body.”
“Ehh...? Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I gave you the kiss. Then I asked you many things to confirm
your true feelings, but you just muttered nonsense so I bit your shoulder. I
think I bit you pretty hard but you didn’t move an inch. Do you have a mark?”
“I do.”
“That’s my teeth. Ahaha. Sorry ‘bout that. You remember now?”
“Yeah.”
“So what did you say in your muttering?”
“...As if I could remember these details.” What had I said except ‘I love
you’?
“I see, then forget. Sorry for intruding in your sleep. Ah, Shakko-chan’s
glaring at me. Ahaha. Aren’t you blessed to have two pretty girls going after
you? Or do you still prefer Norma-san? I mean, yeah, mines and Shakko-
chan’s boobs aren’t that big. Ouch! She hit me~. Ahaha. Anyway, Disco, make
sure you come back in one piece. Last time I was useless and couldn’t find
anything about the Pinehouse Case, but next time I return to the future, I’ll
seize that truth for you!”
What if it hadn’t been solved even eleven years in the future and great de-
tectives kept trying to solve it and die...
Would I ever be able to return to Chofu? Along with the small Kozue?
I hung up and put my phone away.
“It looks like the ‘older Kozue’ did pay you a visit. Which means the ‘small
Kozue’ came here. Now, Wednesdayyy-san, this is the last move. If I’m wrong
on this, I’ll end up with a chopstick through my eye. I’m talking to you with
that fear lingering on me. I know Kozue-san must be sleepy and I feel bad for
her, but could you wake her up and let me talk with her?”
I took out the spiky pig from my pocket.
“Kozue.”
The spiky pig raised its face.
“Yes?”

“Were you sleeping?”

“Yes~.”

“You were awake, no?”

“...Yes.”

I knew her, she wasn’t a good riser. She always lamented ‘I’m sleeeeepy’
and didn’t open her eyes.
Okay, Dezuumi was right so far.
“Kozue, tell me, did you come here last night?”
“...”

“Did you enter a man’s body and search for me?”

“...Disco...was nowhere.”

I felt tears welling up in my eyes.

“Sorry for leaving you alone, Kozue. You must’ve felt lonely.”
“Where were you Disco?”

“I was far away. Sorry again, Kozue. I couldn’t be there for you.”
 “Disco, I went all the way around but you were nowhere. I called out ‘Disco’ but you
didn’t hear maybe. I was scared and couldn’t talk big.”

“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. I came back to Disco just after. I woke up, I was sleeping on Disco. Kyaaah~. I
went back to the bed, okay? You were sleeping and said you loved me~.”

“I love you, Kozue.”

“I know~.”

I knew too. When I discovered Kozue in this house, the first thing I did was
ask her who’d killed Mitamura Saburou. At that time Kozue answered:
“Owaru-chan.”

With her tiny voice.

Beginnings are ends. Ends are beginnings. I’d heard the answer at the very
start but couldn’t believe it until the very end.

When Nail Peeler told me Only think about Kozue!, did he mean to believe
in what Kozue had said?

The spiky pig still in hand, I asked Dezuumi.

“So Mitamura Saburou killed himself, right?”
“Indeed,” Dezuumi explained. “It’s most obvious. Otherwise he couldn’t
have been so thorough in his preparations. I bet Tsukumojuuku-san told the
truth, and Anbyouin-san visited Daibakushou-san and told him about the
doppelgänger he’d seen. He then suggested the reckless lobotomy using a
chopstick to Daibakushou-san. That couldn’t possibly have been Daiba-
kushou-san’s idea. After all, he was a fake great detective Anbyouin-san was
controlling. In reality, he was a normal former classmate with three belly
buttons. As if someone like that would know anything about Walter Free-
man’s transorbital-style lobotomy. Anbyouin-san carried out the operation
himself and made a mess of Daibakushou-san’s frontal lobe—which may
have caused Daibakushou-san to forget or misremember the events—and
cured his depression. After reviving Daibakushou-san as the ‘great detective’
he had been, Anbyouin-san directed him to head to the Pinehouse. His aim
was, naturally, to complete the countdown that had started with Hongou
Takeshitakeshi-san and the Angel Bunnies. He could’ve left it to Hongou
Takeshitakeshi-san, but perhaps he wished for his friend Sakai Tsutomu-san
he had raised to be the detective Daibakushou Curry to hold the decisive role.
It might also have partly been an apology for the serious injury he’d inflicted
on him six years ago and the hellish lifestyle he’d made him bear ever since.
Therefore, it’s natural to think Anbyouin-san told him the contents of the
case and gave him orders on how to act, isn’t it? Something like ‘After I die, I
will have the Angel Bunnies follow my will and write the letters, so come to
the Pinehouse early in the morning and pick up the twelve words.’ In other
words, Anbyouin-san hadn’t planned on looping around the hallway. For the
Cottage Natsukawa case from six years ago, he had kicked Daibakushou-san
again and again to draw the ‘1 (一/I)’ on the floor, but this time it would be a
suicide, so there wouldn’t be anyone around to kick him. There was no guar-
antee he would be able to crawl all the way around on the brink of death. We
can observe traces of him firing an arrow into the wall of the second floor,
and holding onto it as he sent the horoscope forward to test whether he could
handle the motion. But either that didn’t bear fruit or he felt unsure whether
he could pull it off. Not many feel confident they can achieve something like
that after getting shot in the chest. Therefore he gave up on leaving the circle
of blood behind and settled with merely being found in the hallway. Indeed,
he had given up on the circle by that point. So Anbyouin-san waited for the
right timing in Mizorogi-san, Kawabe-san, and Miyazaki-san’s conversa-
tion, left his office, and climbed on the roof. Please remember the drawing
Tsukumojuuku-san showed you earlier. There were cedar tree branches be-
hind the house extending very close to the space between rooms 7 and 8, and
to the window of room 9, weren’t there? He most likely climbed up the tree
near rooms 7 and 8, and climbed up to the Pinehouse’s roof by progressing
from branch to branch. After all, if he’d chosen the tree near room 9, there
was a big chance Nomura Rie-san could’ve spotted him. He could’ve chosen
to climb the gutter, but that requires more stamina. Though that didn’t stop
Daibakushou-san, Miss Judy Dollhouse, Mercury C-san, and Disco Wednes-
dayyy-san; climbing up a cedar tree is much easier, isn’t it, Mercury C-san?”
“Yup,” Mercury C confirmed. Right, that guy had climbed it with a
bowgun in hand for Choukuuji’s deduction.
“Then may I ask you to trace Anbyouin-san’s route for us?”
He must’ve briefed him on the gist of it beforehand. Mercury C said,
“Leave it to me,” in a forced tone, and headed to Mitamura’s office.
“Then let’s wait in room 7.” The Angel Bunnies all stood up to follow De-
zuumi Style, and started commenting. Troupe members sure are tough, eh.
“Shiiit~, I left my underwears hangin’,” Kimura Daisuke panicked, which got
him comments like “We’re used to seeing them everywhere now,” “It’s rou-
tine,” “Ew, you’re still the worst, Kim,” or “You’re done for, Kim,” from the
others, so he grumbled “Geeeeez~. You guys sure aren’t forgiving,” but then
added “Oh! Could it be that you guys are jealous?” like the fool he is, and the
others started hitting him. These guys’ banter could keep going forever, I
thought as we reached room 7; the conversation about underwear and all got
cut short by the window in the back opening.
“Oh, Mercury C-san is down there.”
The moment Dezuumi pointed out his presence, Mercury C suddenly
rushed and disappeared in the dimly lit tree beyond the window...moments
after, we heard the branches shaking.
“Wah hah hah! Wah hah hah!”
He was climbing at a frenetic pace all the while letting out this bizarre
laugh; the shaking of the branches and the laugh was getting closer and closer,
and the frightened Angel Bunnies took a few steps back.
“Wah hah hah!”
 His face in profile suddenly popped up on the cedar tree’s summit. I
couldn’t discern his expression as the moonlight only let us see his outline,
but he was solely looking at us in silence, so even I got a little scared.
“...Ehh? Geez...he’s so whimsical.”
Whispered Dezuumi, seemingly as scared of him as us, then Mercury C
started moving...well, running. He was sprinting along the branch extending
to the window of room 7 with no care in the world.
“Aaaaaaah careful!” an Angel Bunny screamed, but apparently Mercury C
managed to pass above us and disappear on the roof.
“Pheeeew. What’s his deal...that was risky,” Dezuumi, whose knees had
failed during that stunt, stood up; he leaned over the window, said, “Please
give this a look,” and cleared away some small branches to show us a iron-
made staple-like object fixing the cedar branch Mercury C had crossed onto
the Pinehouse. “Seems like it has been there for a while. The iron’s already
quite rusty. That just shows how long this had been planned.”
Then the female Angel Bunnies who had stepped back yelled, so I turned
back. Beyond them, before the door to room 7, was Mercury C.
“Ahaha. I’m back.”
“Ah, geez Mercury-san, that was too fast.”
“Not a problem, I left the window wide open.”
“Argh...it’s not that theatrical now... My name Dezuumi Style stems from
how much emphasis I place on Style, but you ruined it all, Mercury-san...”
Seeing how Dezuumi was voicing his complaints with a smile on his face, it
looked like Mercury C’s training was going pretty well.
We all left room 7. Part of the window above the door to room 7 was main-
tained open with small branches.
“This is the only part of the Pinehouse’s skylight that can be slid open or
closed. It’s a tad heavy, though. It’s set up diagonally so that it closes on its
own. It must have been an access to the skylight, as it needs frequent mainte-
nance to clear the leaves or detritus that accumulate up there. So this is where
Anbyouin-san came from last night. As you can tell by the lack of noise when
Mercury-san opened the window, this allowed him to enter very sneakily
without Mizorogi-san, Kawabe-san, or Miyazaki-san—talking in the hall—
noticing. Having climbed down in front of room 7, Anbyouin-san inserted the
arrow he had prepared through his back and died. Of course, to create a mys-
tery. Had he died normally, there wouldn’t be much left to do except solv-
ing...well, finding the twelve words waiting outside. Therefore he used this
simple trick I just explained to feint a murder on the second floor, and used
his will to further increase the chaos of the case. He now only had to wait for
someone to discover him. Either someone would go out of their room, or in
the worst case scenario, Kawabe-san or Miyazaki-san would find him upon
returning to theirs. There are two sets of stairs. Of the trio talking in the hall,
Kawabe-san occupied room 4 and Miyazaki-san room 6, so they both chose
the stairs in the back. Had they been residents from other rooms, Anbyouin-
san would’ve surely died nearby the set of stairs closest to the reception space.
Thus was created the small mystery of Anbyouin-san’s death on the second
floor. ...Well, I ought to add this for his honor; being the reputed mystery
writer he was, he could’ve come up with a more elaborate plan, indeed. How-
ever, keep in mind that Daibakushou Curry-san, a made-up great detective
with his brain destroyed, was coming to solve this mystery. No matter how
detailed the plan on paper was, making it too intricate would leave a chance
of failure possible. That’s why he prepared something so simple. Well, even
if Daibakushou-san couldn’t handle it, there was still Hongou
Takeshitakeshi-san, a real great detective; both were apt to solve the count-
down. Anyhow, Anbyouin-san must’ve planned for Daibakushou-san to ar-
rive at dawn, point out the twelve words and the phone number, then discover
the secret path using the cedar trees behind the house. And if he was profi-
cient, he could’ve gone for the countdown hidden in past cases and the magic
square to surpass Hongou Takeshitakeshi-san. But an unforeseen intruder
arrived and threw a wrench in the plan. That was Kozue-san.”
I put a hand on the spiky pig in my chest pocket and covered her ears. I
couldn’t let her hear this.
 Dezuumi noticed me, paused for a few seconds, then went on.
“...Well, it basically happened as Kozue-san said earlier. The ‘◯’ of blood
Anbyouin-san had given up on was drawn, and many great detectives came
to the Pinehouse. As he had feared, Daibakushou-san ran out of juice after
only finding the twelve words and the phone number, and seemingly died in
an attempt to fix his brain with a second lobotomy. The blood ‘◯’ and Dai-
bakushou-san’s lobotomy broadened the mystery, created a weird context,
and led many great detectives to stab their eyes due to the overbearing
amount of meanings in the Pinehouse. As you can tell from the presence of
Kozue-san and Nail Peeler, this house drawing a magic circle has the peculi-
arity of communicating with the spiritual world. But it’s soon time to bid it
goodbye. I’m so scared I... Wait, no, please give me more time. My deduction
isn’t over yet, errrr errrr...ughhh, SERIOUSLY!?”
Seeing Dezuumi suddenly break into a scream, I followed his gaze; two
boys were standing behind the entrance doors.
They both seemed to be middle schoolers, I’d say. They had cute faces. But
what were they doing here at this hour?
...Rather, why had the police let these two inside the Pinehouse?
...The answer was clear-cut.

No adult would let normal kids come here at this hour. They were no
standard children.

One of them spoke.

“Er~~m, my name’s Nishimura Yukio. And this guy’s Runbaba 12. Anyone
ordered a great detective?”

See? Guys like this always have cute faces and weird names.
 Well, not like I could call him out on his weird name.

15

“The fuck!? Why is this happening!?” Dezuumi was confused, so Nils ex-
plained to him.
“Your will lost to your destiny.”
“Ehh!? But...my deduction was perfect for sure, no!? Everyone can tell I
passed it with flying colors!”
“That was the case for me too.”
“Ahh... Why is this happening... I wasn’t even planning on making a de-
duction, I just overheard Katou-san and Wednesdayyy-san talking and
couldn’t help myself...”
“Sometimes destiny can create a will,” Nils said. “Same as making you
stab an eye you didn’t want to stab.”
“I don’t get it but I get it... Still! I object! This is fucked up! Badly messed
up! The answer is running away? That’s fucking unfair!”
“Shut up Dezuumi,” Mercury C sneered. “Who are you objecting to? Under
what rules is it unfair?”
“Don’t say that, Mercury-san, you gotta save me!”
“C'mon, go ask the doctor over there for anesthetics. Smearing that on the
chopstick should make a big difference, don’t you think so?”
“Uuaaaaaaghhh...I’m going insane.”

“Um~, may I start my deduction?”

Runbaba 12 asked amongst the ado.
 “Hold on a minute,” I spoke to him. “You’re Runbaba 12? You do exist?
Are you acquainted with Mitamura Saburou...uhh, Anbyouin Owaru? Wait,
haven’t we met somewhere? You seem kinda familiar.”
However, Runbaba 12 ignored my question and instead asked me:
“Is your name Disco Wednesdayyy?”
“Mm? What about it?”
“I see, then you’re the mislead.”
“...The what?”
“Everyone keeps calling for ya, don’t they? But it’s not like they want you
to do something, you see.”
“How do...” Where had he been spying on us from? “How do you know
that?”
Runbaba 12 paid no heed to my confusion, and went on with his non-
sense...though it was something Mercury C had told me and something I had
repeated to myself many times.
“Ya read too much into a weird context. Ya got the order wrong. Ya came
in late, didn’t ya?”

“What are you...”

Seeing I couldn’t string a sentence together, Runbaba 12 abandoned me
and addressed his companion.
“Yukio, let’s do it. Please, excuse meeee!” he called out to the Angel Bun-
nies. “This will be quite the collective labor, but could you gather all the
planks from the second floor hallway~?”

All the troupe members except for Hongou and Sakurazuki spread out,
flipped the carpet, and took out the planks underneath, all the while clamor-
ing. Each came back with about four planks in hand and the hallway floor was
now bare naked.
 “Then let’s assemble our elevator to the sky, the Stairway to Heaven~.”
Tsukumojuuku had mentioned the Stairway to Heaven too. But what could
planks alone do? I asked him, “You gotta take the rods from the handrail too
or it won’t hold together, will it?”
Yet again ignored.
“It’s easy to make~. Instead of making a circle like before you arrange
them with every other plank being upside down. Then we’ll hang it from the
Pinehouse. This is how it’ll look in the end~.”
Picking up Runbaba 12’s sign, Nishimura spread out a map for us to see.
The planks from the second floor were sticking out of the Pinehouse in a
straight line on the two hour mark.

“Oooh...” the Angel Bunnies were in awe. “Woah. The circle’s become a
straight line.”
What did this mean, I thought.
That’s when Runbaba 12 finally turned to me. “See? Got it? All the fuss
about ‘wednesday’ was because ‘wednesday’ = ‘onsdag’ was one of the twelve
words spreading out radially that Daibakushou Curry found at the very start.
‘Build the Stairway to Heaven in the “wednesday” direction.’ That’s what
everyone’s been saying. But you’re here, aren’t ya? That’s what got everyone
pointed in the wrong direction. They all got trapped by you.”

The troupe members got to work as soon as Runbaba 12 gave out his orders,
yet I was standing still.
Because I was here...?
All these great detectives got it wrong and died because of me?
“Well, don’t mind it. Ya came here for your own reasons. It’s their fault if
they fell for it.”
Runbaba 12 then returned to the Angel Bunnies.
“Ooh~, looking good, make sure to use them all~. Yeah. Raise it, raise
it…stop. Can anyone go on the second floor to hold it? Keep at it. Alrighty.
Raise it a tad more. Facing it this way. Perfect. Next we’re pushing it through
the window above room 7. Yup. That’s why this window was built this way.”
I thought I heard Dezuumi’s soul leave his body.
Runbaba 12 continued giving out directions.
“Now let’s all pull it up from below. Let it lean under its weight. Yeah.
We’re not pushing it up, we’re simply balancing it. Alright, more. Good. With
this length the people on the roof should be maintaining half of it, so if we
keep adding it here it should stay stable, no? Can some more people go on the
second floor again...okay. Then let’s all slowly lift it up. ...Looking fine. Then,
can the people upstairs hold it for us while we add more planks? Don’t rush
it. Keep a good balance. Good, good. Alright we used them all. Then let’s give
it a last push then let it go. It’ll be fine, trust me...”
Even in my confusion I couldn’t help but admire the sight. The path of
transparent planks kept growing longer and longer, passed through the sky-
light and extended towards the sky. Then, when it reached its peak length, it
fell outside the Pinehouse...towards the ‘wednesday’ direction. And it made
me notice something.
That cedar tree which had its branches fixed with the iron staple. It wasn’t
there for someone to climb from the garden to the roof, it was a bridge girder
to support the transparent planks.
Bshhh, I heard something hit the tree, then saw the planks above the sky-
light align almost horizontally. Then—probably because of their weight, the
slight inclination of the skylight, and the casters—the boards slowly made
their way towards the outside and eventually left the skylight. The Angel
Bunnies let out voices of relief and excitement.
“Good. The boards are really light, so one could even do it alone with
enough time. Well, with a lot of effort too. So, could the troupe members wait
for us here while Wednesdayyy and I walk on it?”
Even Runbaba 12 who’d been controlling the Angel Bunnies like Hamelin
couldn’t repress their curiosity this easily. They lined up in the hallway in an
orderly fashion, then merrily climbed on the roof with the stepladder Fuku-
shima had brought from the detached building. I let out a smile seeing how
well-organized they were. Even Runbaba 12 shrugged and gave up, “Well,
can’t blame them.”
Nishimura Yukio and Runbaba 12 headed to the stairway in the back of the
hall. Nils, Dezuumi, Hongou, and Sakurazuki were sunk in the sofa, but Mer-
cury C was looking energetic.
“Yo, Detective, it’s getting more and more interesting by the minute! I
wouldn’t mind living here!”
Stop joking. “I can’t bear this forever. There ought to be an end to this at
some point. It’s natural since there was a start.”
Mercury C laughed. “What are you saying? Eternal things have a begin-
ning but no end. After all, anything eternal started somewhere.”
“But there can’t be an eternal case if there are great detectives.”
“Well there aren’t any! Because they’re all dying!”
“...”
 “Idiot, stop pretending to be worried. Aren’t you relieved to know the
‘wednesday’ wasn’t about you? You’re such lazy scum. You half-assed pedo.”
It didn’t really piss me off. Mercury C wasn’t entirely wrong.
“Tch, such a boring guy. Won’t you at least try to oppose this great inertia?
I guess all this routine made you dull and rot, huh. You’re only a real one if
you destroy and create something anew. Being a Japanese confection artisan
is impossible for you, get that? Only the real ones can carry out that job.”
Destiny can bend wills.
He could talk like this because he didn’t know that.
“Huh~?” Looking at the source of the voice, Taniguchi Tooru had come
out of room 11 and was curiously looking at the empty hall. “Where did eve-
ryone go?”
“On the roof,” answered Runbaba 12, who was about to climb the steplad-
der. I looked up and saw many men and women walking on the iron frame on
the other side of the skylight.
“What are they playing at...”
“Wanna go together?”
Taniguchi got startled upon being called out so familiarly by a boy who’d
appeared so abruptly.
“No thanks. I’m busy,” he refused.
“I see, see ya later then,” Runbaba left these words as he passed on the
other side of the skylight; my eyes inadvertently met with Taniguchi’s.
“...What’s his deal?”
I wish I knew.

The Angel Bunnies had spread out on the roof and were waiting for Run-
baba 12 while basking in the moonlight, so when the young great detective
showed his face, they started cheering for and even applauding him. I enjoyed
the leftovers of these cheers as I climbed the stepladder following Mercury C.
 We both came out on the roof. The roughly twenty people standing atop
the circular skylight were lit by the cameras and cars of the media people po-
sitioned in the forest beneath us. The stars and the moon were shining
brightly, making the people and the cars and the river feel far away and silent;
the wind was lukewarm, smelling like grass and forest and river. This scene
felt unrealistic, yet for some reason had a hint of sadness that pained my
heart.
The Stairway to Heaven was pointing towards the bottom of the mountain,
and the horizontal boards disappeared beyond the cedar forest. Given how
flat it was laid out, it seemed the trees had been trimmed to get the right
height and length for this bridge. The bridge started right on the branch fixed
to the Pinehouse’s wall, leaving but a half step gap between it and the roof.
“Wednesdayyy-san, come with me,” said Runbaba 12.
Where? It wasn’t the time to ask such questions. Runbaba was standing
near the bridge.
“Be careful,” I told him.
“It’s fine. No need to worry,” he answered in a calm tone.
No need to worry, he said...I thought as he put a foot onto the bridge before
my eyes, shortly followed by the other foot; he’d shown no hesitation. He
then took three more steps, and the transparent bridge made out of plastic
boards lying onto cedar trees almost didn’t budge. That meant the trees
hadn’t only been adjusted to fit the bridge’s angle, but also were equipped
with braces or another low-tech mechanism that’d been skillfully hidden.
That said, the bridge supporting the weight of a Japanese child didn’t mean it
could handle an American adult, so I very carefully set a foot on it. Looking at
it from right above, the transparent boards barely reflected the moonlight,
which revealed all the more clearly the cedar trees and the dim ground un-
derneath, making my knees go weak for a second.
“Wednesdayyy-san, look at me instead of down,” Runbaba 12 advised me.
I raised my face. “It’ll be fine. It’s a straight path. It’s dangerous if ya slide
off, but ya should be alright if you walk normally.”
 Upon raising my face, my eyes stopped on the skinny boy with round eyes
standing on the bridge overhead the cedar forest. How should I put it, I felt
like looking at him for some more to make sure this sight stayed engraved in
my memory.
Runbaba 12 started making his way across the Stairway to Heaven. I felt
rushed and followed his steps. A few Angel Bunnies were holding onto the
base of the bridge, but that was probably unnecessary. This bridge was made
to run on this forest.
“As I said earlier,” Runbaba 12 asked me just as we passed the first cedar
tree of the backyard. “Wednesdayyy-san being Wednesdayyy-san caused a
lot of confusion. Feeling relieved?”
“Relieved? What for?”
“Weren’t ya peeved because everyone was telling ya to get moving, mis-
ter? I’m asking ya if you feel relieved now that you know they weren’t talking
about ya.”
“...Hey, where were you watching that from?” The twelfth detective, Run-
baba 12. Had he been waiting for his turn while observing everything? Him
too? I already knew great detectives loved doing that.
“I’m too busy for that. I wouldn’t have showed up if my presence wasn’t
needed. But I wasn’t left with a choice this time around.”
“What do you mean? ...Is someone controlling you?”
“Drop it with the obvious mastermind theories. It’s that thing Nils men-
tioned earlier.”
“What thing?”
“The one about wills and destiny.”
“Ahh.”
“Sakurazuki talked about it too, no?”
“But again, how do you know that?”
“Events come from the interactions between destiny and wills, don’t
they? So, put another way, when something happens, that means there are
both destiny and wills behind it. Either that, or an iron will is bending destiny
or destiny is creating a will. These should be the three patterns.”
“...”
“What’s destiny? What’s fate? If wills and destiny produce events, ran-
domness shouldn’t exist. ‘Cause all of it would either obey destiny or a new
destiny decided by wills. I control my will myself, fine, but where does destiny
come from? Does it simply pop up out of nowhere? Think it through, will ya?
Do you think I came here to be the twelfth one by my own will? Do you think
just because I call myself the ‘great detective Runbaba 12’ I wait in every sin-
gle case to be the twelfth one to make a deduction, or that I’m the twelfth one
by chance? No way, right? But here ‘Runbaba 12’ came to be the twelfth one.
‘Tsukumojuuku’ was the ninth and tenth. I’m obviously creating a context
here. But for whom? For what? Focusing on the order means talking about the
whole. If there’s no one or two there won’t be a nine or a ten or a twelve. Cre-
ating a context here means bringing about a notion of continuity. And reading
that context means expecting a next turn. There are others after me, Wednes-
dayyy-san.”
“...What do you want to get at? Stop being so roundabout and spit it out.”
“Dummy. I gotta make ya think. I’m not gonna let ya have it easy.”
“Why did you come here? What is this deduction for?”
We passed over many cedar trees and finally saw the end of the Stairway
to Heaven. Due to the mountain’s slope, the tip was about five meters above
the trees with nothing to support it. However, Runbaba 12 was progressing
on that transparent path floating in the air without lowering his pace; he
reached the end, then turned back to me.
“I wanted to show ya that something round can be straightened out. I
wanted you to walk straight on something that was previously circular. Listen
carefully. It’s possible for straight things to become circular.”
“...?” What did he mean? “How is that related to this case?”
“That’s for you to find out.”
“Isn’t this your deduction?”
 “My turn ends here. I came here solely to show you that.”
“...?”
“You seemed to really hate it, so I got your thinking off the ‘wednesday’
thing for a moment. Felt relieved, didn’t ya? But too bad. This deduction
doesn’t make any sense. You get that too, don’t ya?”
I did. I said, “It’s the blood, right?” The Stairway to Heaven didn’t have
the carpet. It would be near impossible to have it on, and even if you did there
would be the same problem as with Tsukumojuuku’s first deduction… Rather,
the rubbing would point in opposite directions at each plank, so this didn’t
work in the slightest.
Runbaba 12 nodded. “Yep. But I got it wrong because I wanted to. On pur-
pose, ‘kay? This happened because ya seemed to hate it so much, but I
wouldn’t even be here if you weren’t so reluctant about it. Well, it just shows
you cannot escape your destiny.”
“What...”
“Well, but it’s still like all the deductions up to this point. Even mine
wasn’t entirely wrong. None of them were futile. You know that too, don’t ya?
In cases like this, nothing is useless. It’s always the case. Everything is always
important, but nobody tries to solve it unless they’re in detective novel-like
cases, so no one notices it. But it doesn’t work like that in cases with so many
great detectives, does it? They decipher all the meanings and expose a beau-
tiful world lacking in pointlessness. That’s destiny and fate. Get it? Now think
with the big picture in mind.”
“...Your deduction is mistaken, right?”
“Sure it is. But not a useless mistake.”
“And are you going to stab your eye?”
“If that is my destiny.”
“Why not stop it?”
Runbaba 12 sighed. “...Do you not get it at all? If there’s a destiny, there’s
a will. Pay attention when people are talking. This is gonna take some time.
Why did it have to be you? I’m starting to feel sorry for the poor souls who
died, but nothing I can do about it, let’s say it’s all destiny. You’re making my
stomach ache.”
Runbaba 12 crouched in the air.
“Are you okay?”
“So-so, not that good.”
“Go to the toilet.”
Pfft, Runbaba 12 laughed. “Idiot. It’s not because my stomach grew cold.”
“Don’t tell me you got neurotic gastritis because of me.”
“Haha, that ain’t it either. The right side of my stomach hurts, that’s my
appendix.”

Appendix? ...Appendicitis?

“Ya heard it somewhere, didn’t ya? Oftentimes the first thing that comes
to your mind is correct. Don’t let unnecessary common sense hold you down,
and believe. That’s the whole reason I came here. I figured you wouldn’t think
for crap if I didn’t isolate you.”
The word appendicitis had only come up once. That couldn’t be. But there
was no superfluous information. Everything had meaning.
I asked Runbaba 12. “Hey, how old are you?”
“Seventeen. I look younger, don’t I? I'm Japanese, so I bet I look even
younger in your eyes.”

Taniguchi Tooru. Taniguchi Tohru. See ya later then. That’s why he was
so familiar.
I see. If the twelfth deduction is wrong, there will be a thirteenth one...
 Runbaba 12 said, “You know, the worst thing a mystery novel can do is
having the culprit cough it all up. We can’t let that happen with ten or so great
detectives, can we? Only you have seen it all, so you’re the only one who can
do this. Good luck. Once you go back to the Pinehouse, it’s all over. Ain’t this
a nice place to think alone?”
I raised my eyes to the starry sky, and closed them while enjoying the
summer breeze.

“I see. So it’s really me.”

“It is. And it has been since the very start.”
Only you can correctly save the world!
Nail Peeler had said so.
So that’s what it meant.
Only think about Kozue!
He’d said that too.
So that’s what it meant.
“Everything has meaning.”
“Yup. After all, you're Disco Wednesdayyy. Don’t let others make you
dance around, take over the dancefloor.”
Hah, I laughed. I’d gotten many comments about my name, but this one
was a first.
I opened my eyes.
I saw a new world.
To put it in Revelation to John like Tsukumojuuku, I was witnessing a new
Heaven and a new Earth. The Pinehouse was a new Jerusalem. Hallelujah!
“Okay. I’m ready.”
I said. In English, for the first time in a while.

Here I go. No way in hell I’m letting Ehimegawa Juuzou have a turn.
 16

“The main show’s starting now,” ‘Runbaba 12’ laughed. “Wanna think
alone? I don’t mind hiding beneath a cedar tree, you know.”
“...No, I wouldn’t get anywhere like that. I’d have so many things in mind
I’d never reach a conclusion. I’ll sort it out as I explain to everyone.”
“...That’s the great detective style,” the boy said, satisfied.
He truly was the first one and the last one. The commencement and the
end.
Even what Tsukumojuuku had said wasn’t pointless.
And the ouroboros. Nils’ reflection wasn’t pointless either. And Caduceus.
Ah, I remembered how Nils had taken the ouroboros apart. Right. The round
ouroboros was straightened out and became Yggdrasil. I wanted to show ya
that something round can be straightened out. Listen carefully. It’s possible
for straight things to become circular. I’d witnessed that back then. Shit, I
added unnecessary meaning to it because of the names, but if I’d gotten the
proper meaning, perhaps Runbaba 12 wouldn’t have needed to come.
No, I bet it was destined for me to not realize and Runbaba 12 to appear.
After all, I didn’t have an iron will, no way I could’ve bent destiny. And most
importantly, everything had already happened and was set in stone.
Straight to round, round to straight...I chanted to myself as I returned to
the Pinehouse on Stairway to Heaven. I felt like I’d shuffle my feet if I kept
looking down, so I had my eyes set straight ahead. The round Pinehouse was
protruding out of the cedar forest. The ouroboros house. Round things can be
turned straight.
The moment I thought that, I started shaking in the air.
That couldn’t be...I thought. How was that possible?
But I managed to remember something else.
To put it another way, an extreme example I often use is that long ago,
when people believed the world to be a big table, the world then might have
really been one. But some people started doubting it, and that started the
roundification of Earth.

People’s consciousness could shape the world.

If you were alone in the world, that’s how it might work. But there are
others. That allows ‘common understanding’ or ‘common sense’ to exist,
which binds the world.

Mitamura Saburou had been living alone in the Pinehouse.

I’d dropped my pace without realizing, since the boy passed me and
headed to the Pinehouse.
Mitamura had been alone even in the Cottage Natsukawa too. He had got-
ten it for so cheap because only he was using it as a workplace.

Maybe staying on this Stairway to Heaven and thinking for myself would
be for the best. But I got scared of finishing this thought and proceeded for-
ward. I approached the Pinehouse without doubting myself. I’d head there
either way. I had both the destiny and will for it. I was going to expose the
thirteenth deduction in the Pinehouse.
Wills are important. The fundamental rule of this world is to decide on
what one wants to do and strongly believe in it. There are many people. Each
one with their own will. Strong wills bend destiny. With both wills and destiny,
events can occur. In other words, a wish comes true. People with weak wills
will either be crushed by destiny or have their wills modified. People’s wills
are the source of everything, the world is a mishmash of these. If one truly
had an iron will, they could even become God. Some might even have done it
already. But most people’s consciousness gets mixed by their interactions
with others, and miracles are purged as a result. Abnormal things no longer
can happen. That’s how the world stabilizes itself. But once in a while, a few
recluse geniuses will appear and change the shape of the world. That’s how
this world has always worked.
I was far from being a genius, but the ten-or-so great detectives had pre-
pared the terrain for me. They’d set the table. They did everything in their
power up to the limit. I could feel their fervor. Thanks to that, I could now use
their work as a stepping stone. I just had to strengthen my will. That was my
responsibility.
It’d be fine. I could do it.
Tsukumojuuku as Daibakushou compared the Pinehouse to the Divine
Throne. Then the ‘God’ residing there would be Mitamura Saburou, and I’d
climbed the Stairway to Heaven alongside that God and received an oracle like
in Revelation to John there. In other words, there was a Divine Throne on both
ends of the Stairway to Heaven. How fitting for an ouroboros house. The start
and the end were the same. 0 and 1 were the same. I finally reached God’s
house. I got on the roof where the Angel Bunnies and Mercury C were waiting
shortly after the boy, then said:
“Sorry for the wait. Alright, let’s solve this together!”
“Ahaha! Good, good!” Mercury C laughed on the spot then clapped his
hands. He was happy.
I had to guide everyone, him included, and correctly solve this mystery.
“Huh? Wasn’t Runbaba 12-san going to solve it?” a female Angel bunny
asked.
“Unfortunately, Runbaba-kun’s deduction was wrong.”
“Ehhh?” The troupe members were all bewildered.
“Then is Runbaba-kun going to die~!?” a girl yelled. Seemed like
Mitamura Saburou’s fictional great detective was quite popular. Truth to be
told, the impression of cuteness I had of the boy had now turned into awe. His
intelligence and vigor had manifested in his beauty.
 “I won’t.”
The boy in question answered.
“There’s no longer a need to, is there?”
He turned to me and asked.
Honestly, I still didn’t get the whole stabbing thing. Yet, I nodded.
“Yeah, no need to stab your eye now.”
I should get there during my deduction. My will and destiny should lead
me there. An iron will. That was crucial.
“Okay, let’s go down. We’re done with the roof.” The great detectives were
still in the hall. I needed to persuade everybody. I might need their help too.
The deduction scene should be held downstairs. Inside the Pinehouse. Inside
was outside. Outside was inside. I would explain everything in the hall.
I passed through the skylight and landed in front of room 7 first.
I had to confirm my intuition.
I spoke out to the tall great detective installed on the sofa downstairs.
“Hongou, do you have the floor plans of the Cottage Natsukawa? The detailed
ones.”
“I do,” he was about to stand up so I told him, “Don’t bother, stay where
you are,” then to Kimura Daisuke next to me, “You go get them instead.” Ki-
mura gave me a cold “Aye aye, sir,” then ran to the first floor’s room 5. That
was probably Hongou’s room. The Angel Bunnies were still using the step-
ladder behind me to get off the roof. What did I have to show them? Why did
I have to see?
I gave the Pinehouse a look. I couldn’t see the sight I was meant to because
I still wasn’t truly believing; I still hadn’t fully persuaded myself. I could only
believe in truths. Just facts. I had to gather proof and credibility.
I proceeded along the hallway and stopped between rooms 8 and 9. I
crouched. There was a hole in the wall near the floor. Nils had thought it was
from ‘an arrow Mitamura had stabbed in the wall to keep his body from mov-
ing along the hallway’s rotation.’ But if it had been made by the pure arm
strength of a man lying down in his last moments, it shouldn’t be that deep.
At least not deep enough to warrant a great detective thinking it would allow
a man to grab on it and endure a full loop. However, facts were, it was that
deep. I plunged a finger into the hole. I touched the plaster. I then touched the
fuzzy wallpaper. I scratched it with my fingers. I flipped a small part. I
pinched it with my fingers and peeled more off. Scrrrb, a part came off. The
bare wall had a deep, straight vertical cut in it. The cut passed through the
hole Nils had pointed out. But this wasn’t a cut. I decided.
“Can I get two Angel Bunnies to come here? Don’t ask why, just peel off
the wallpaper here.”
A girl and a boy approached. The girl spoke. “Eh? How much of it do you
want peeled off?”
“Everything from the floor to the ceiling.”
“Eeeh? Is it fine?”
“Don’t sweat it, ‘kay?”
The boy calling himself Runbaba 12 nodded. “Only great detectives are
pardoned for such eccentric behavior. Getting carried away should be a no-
go, but what does it matter at this point. It might be a good thing.”
“You heard the man.”
Hearing that, the two troupe members crouched and started working on
peeling the wallpaper off. They started laughing between themselves. They
might be just the right people to persuade. I spoke to another guy nearby.
“You guys too, go downstairs and scrape the wallpaper between rooms 8 and
9 away.” He then called out to other members and they headed for the stairs.
Alright. I then opened room 8’s door. The hole in the wall being wide open, I
could see into room 9.
“Heeey! Someone, come here and measure this hole. Mitamura’s office
should have a measuring tape. Go grab it. Oh right, you guys have a stage set-
ter, he should have a tape too.”
A few troupe members broke into a run. What to do now? I thought. Facts,
facts, facts, visible facts...pictures. Right. I ran up to room 7, went down the
stairs, and entered the closest room, room 9, Mitamura’s office. Inside were
a few Angel Bunnies searching for a measuring tape, but I paid no heed to
them and observed the bookshelves. Only a few books remained after Kiyuu
scattered them on the floor for his deduction, and amongst them was the one
I was looking for. An album. With an orange cover and no title. I felt a scary
chill run down my spine. Nothing was pointless, I thought again. Kiyuu had
gotten rid of the unnecessary books for me. And the blood sullying most of
the books was a message telling me not to look too far into it. But it’s not like
Kiyuu did so with that intent in mind. I was simply interpreting it that way. If
I had to include the contents of every single book in my deduction to fit the
residence of meanings that was the Pinehouse, I’d never be done. If one wants
to dig for meaning, they can always go deeper, wider, and further. But doing
so would trap them in an eternal search for meaning, and they would never
reach any end. I would only choose the interpretations I felt were correct.
I recalled the exchange I had with Mercury C about eternities.
I’d said eternal cases couldn’t exist because there were great detectives to
solve them, but here their presence made this eternal case possible. Even so,
we could also say they made it not possible. I could act thanks to the deduc-
tions they had piled up. Destiny and wills had brought about an end.
I opened the album and checked the insides. It had what I wanted. I
thought for a second about how this discovery might be an invention accord-
ing to Sakurazuki’s theory, but that wouldn’t bother me. Facts resulted from
the state of the world, no matter how it actually worked.
I closed the album and looked at the wall separating Mitamura’s office and
his bedroom. There should be a square hole here too, but it was still hidden
by the wallpaper. I spoke, “If anyone’s free, come in rooms 8 and 9, and re-
move enough of the wallpaper to make the hole apparent on both sides.
Measure its width too while you’re at it.” I then recalled.
Huh? Wasn’t there a bowgun inside this hole? I saw Kiyuu place the
bowgun back into the hole during his deduction before he left the room. I
walked up to the room and ripped the wallpaper. I could see inside the hole,
but there was no bowgun. After that...oh, I see, Mercury C had used it. He shot
the hole on the second floor from the cedar tree with it...
I left the office to search for Mercury C. Found him. He was on the sofa,
teasing Dezuumi.
“Mercury, what did you do with the bowgun?”
“Eh~? I gave it to the police, of course~?”
He widened his eyes on purpose.
“Liar. As if you’d part with it so easily.”
“Ehh~, but the culprit might’ve used it for murder, nooo~? I gotta coop-
erate with the investigation. As an exemplary citizen.”
“Drop that act and hand it over. I wanna test something with it.”
“I’m telling you I don’t have it.”
“Don’t drag me down here, man. Hurry up and give it.”
“Aaaand I’m saaaaying I dooon’t haaave it! Gee~.”
Grr! Having him fool around really struck a nerve in me.
“Um, Wednesdayyy-san, Mercury-san really doesn’t have it,” Dezuumi
butt in. “I saw him handing it to a police officer.”
Where was he looking from? “Say that earlier next time. So, was it the ac-
tual murder weapon?”
“Apparently not.”
“I see.” That meant Kiyuu had prepared it.
“Hey, Detective.”
Mercury C called out to me. I became tense all of a sudden. This guy was
such a pain every single time.
“What?”
“The real bowgun, be ready if I find it first. I’ll crucify you on the walls of
this Divine Throne.”
Haaah. I couldn’t afford to deal with this idiot. That said, ignoring him
would only make him act up even further...
Anyway, I needed to find the bowgun, I thought. And probably faster than
Mercury C could. Else his pranks might inflict stigmata onto my body.
 I found Fukushima nearby and spoke to him. “Ask the police to give the
bowgun back. We’re gonna use it for a practical experiment.”
“Sure,” he agreed obediently and ran off.
“If it’s Kiyuu’s, will they really give it to someone else?” Mercury C
seemed to be having fun. “Find the real deal. Doncha think that’ll be faster~?”
I ignored him. No time to take his bait. I got an idea and called out to a
nearby male Angel Bunny.
“Can you bring me hammers? Go borrow as many as you can.”
That guy went off running. Everyone reacted so fast. Having interacted
with great detectives all day must’ve trained them well. Also, they should be
getting desperate to attain the real true answer. Everyone was exhausted. So
I was gonna end this quickly. Their feelings of wanting this to end shouldn’t
be an obstacle to me. I was only scared of them getting used to the answer
being a dud given how many deductions they’d seen get refuted. But I
wouldn’t let that happen. I had to progress while creating a different mood
than anything up till now. I needed to exercise the Angel Bunnies to break the
set rhythm and pace.
The guy came back with three hammers. I asked him, “Alright, what’s
your name?” “Ah, Kawabe.” “Kawabe, come with me for a second. Ah, you
and you over there. What are your names?” “Kamimura.” “Hayashi.” “Then
come along.” I had the three boys follow me, jogged inside the office again,
and put the album book back temporarily. It was an inconvenience at the mo-
ment. I then stood before the square hole in the wall, took a hammer from
Kawabe, told them to step back, and struck the lower face with all my strength.
Crack! It was thinner than expected. I spoke to the three. “This surface is
coated with concrete, but look closely. There’s a cut beneath it.” The part I’d
removed the concrete from had the same kind of cut as the wall upstairs.
“This cut goes around the entire hole, go and make it entirely visible. The
coating is thin so it should crumble with light taps,” I handed back the ham-
mer to Hayashi. “Ehhh~? Okay!” Make up your mind. “Good luck. Do the
same to the wall on the second floor.” “Seriously?” said Hayashi, who'd al-
ready started picking at the hole, so I left the office and took Kawabe and Ka-
mimura with me to the main entrance. Once outside, we went around the
house to the backyard while ignoring the media’s eyes. I paced through the
grass, then finally found the office’s window with the Angel Bunnies near the
wallpaper.
“Should be here,” I said, standing about halfway between the office and
the bedroom. I took a hammer from one of them and bashed the wall, break-
ing the light brown, decorative brick tiles and making them fall. Behind them
was more plaster and the same kind of cut. “Okay, see this cut here? Break the
wall up to the roof, and if possible make it entirely visible.” “Can we? Isn’t
that too much?” “Don’t sweat it. It’s for the deduction. A really important
part, so apply yourself.” “Gotcha!” “I’m counting on you. Then you, Kami-
mura, come with me.” “Eh? I’m not going to help here?” “I have another job
for you. Kawabe, if you need more hands, go ask around and get it done
quickly.” “So arrogant~. Fine.” “Alright, give Kamimura a hammer. Let’s go.”
I took the skinny, glasses-wearing man to the tree between rooms 7 and
8 that Mercury C had climbed earlier. The branches were quite low, it really
seemed easy to climb. Above us was still the Stairway to Heaven. “We’re going
up.” “Eh?” “Don’t stop midway.” Tree climbing didn’t seem to be his forte,
so I took his hammer and started the ascension first. I wasn’t good enough to
ascend while laughing like a maniac as Mercury C had done, but it was pretty
easy even with a hammer in hand. Kamimura hurriedly followed me. Alright.
We soon reached the top. We crossed the transparent bridge waiting for us
there, and went out to the roof for the second time. Looking down at the sky-
light, everyone bare the detectives were working. Though he was still pan-
icking from having walked on the Stairway to Heaven, I took Kamimura and
stood, once again, in front of the delimitation separating rooms 8 and 9. I
adjusted my position thanks to the skylight, crouched, and checked the roof.
Not much work had been done on this front, there was just some waterproof-
ing tape extending from one end to another. A letdown. I peeled it off all the
way from the skylight to the roof’s edge. There was another cut running
through the ground. As I’d thought. I peeked through the window once more;
most of the wallpaper on the second floor had been removed and the cut was
almost entirely visible. Given their dexterity, I bet the people in the rooms
were making good progress too. I stood up and said to Kamimura, “My bad.
The roof’s fine now. Go give Kawabe a hand. Hit the wall like I did earlier but
from the ceiling. Make everything within your reach fall off. The cut should
be extending from below.” I took him to the edge. Below us, Kawabe was half-
way done with the first floor’s part of the wall. He couldn’t reach any higher
so he’d stopped and was about to change his spot; just as he took his first step,
I called out to him. “Kawabe, we’re gonna break it from the top. Be careful of
the falling shards.” He returned another “Gotcha!” from below. After he’d
gotten far away enough, I hit the wall with the hammer. The decorative brick
tiles fell off, revealing the cut. That cut should be going across the whole ver-
tical section of the Pinehouse. “Then, Kamimura, hurry up while Kawabe’s
on the move. When he gets on the second floor, decide on signals to time the
hits. Also, don’t fall off.” “Haha.” “Okay, good luck!” I stood up and thought
about the hallway’s floor. The cut should go through it as a prolongation of
the one from the wall, but given how wide the gap should’ve been, it had
probably been filled with a lot of concrete. Breaking it would take a lot of time;
time I didn’t have. There was the handrail too. That should’ve been a new ad-
dition. Whatever, I couldn’t quite imagine what it’d look like. Probably how-
ever we saw fit.
What to point at next? What more was there? Visible facts that are easy to
understand... As I was going back and forth behind Kamimura, listening to
the repeated picks at the wall, my eyes stopped on the hallway’s floor down
the skylight.
The carpet had been removed; the movable, transparent boards had been
moved elsewhere; and now was left a gray, concrete floor. On that surface.
Cracks.
 Oh, I saw it now. ‘Tsukumojuuku’ had removed the carpet and ‘Runbaba
12’ the Stairway to Heaven to show me this.
“Kamimura, are there any tools left?”
He stopped his hands and faced me.
“We should have some more, yeah...”
“Where?”
“Probably in Hongou-kun’s room. Room 5 on the first floor.”
“The fuck? Is he a sceneshifter?”
“More like a baggage holder. He’s a klutz and gets shy easily. He can’t act
for crap either.”
Pfft.
I jumped off the skylight into the hallway, then crouched on the floor. This
gray was painted. As I’d thought. Plus it was getting old and didn’t stick well
to the foundation.
It was easy to remove. I went downstairs and headed for room 5. Seeing
me, Hongou hazily tried to stand up, so I told him, “Stop it, stop it, stay seated,
Hongou. Hey, Dezuumi, your eyes are totally fine so stop mixing in with the
injured and give me a hand.”
“Please~. My mind is severely injured~.”
“Shut up. Your eyes are in no danger.”
“We still don’t know that, do we~? Everything we’d believed to be true
eventually turned out wrong.”
“And that’s over now. To begin with, your deduction wasn’t entirely mis-
taken.”
“...”
“You merely got the suicide method wrong. The cedar tree only served as
a pier to the Stairway to Heaven. He didn’t climb it to then drop from the sky-
light.”
“Ehh? But...then from Kawabe-san or Miyazaki-san’s window...? But I
checked with them. They both had their windows locked...”
 “Stop it. There’s a part your deduction cannot attain. Shut your trap and
come with me.”
Dezuumi reluctantly stood up and followed me. I entered room 5, looked
around the neatly-ordered room of the great detective, and found his toolbox.
Perhaps because Kawabe had taken hammers out of it, the lid was open, and
I could see a spatula to scrape off paint.
Perfect.
I picked it up, told Dezuumi, “Come,” as I passed by him when leaving the
room, and changed direction. I went upstairs where I crouched before room
7, but then froze. I’d wavered at the thought that this one movement of spat-
ula would change my world. I was hesitant to change myself.
“Is there a problem, Wednesdayyy-san?”
Dezuumi asked me once he caught up with me.
Why was I getting led astray?
My path was already set for me.
Exactly. As a proof of that, no matter how much I hesitated, wavered, and
paused, I never once thought I might’ve been wrong.
I was right.
But this hesitation and waver was surely meaningful, because during the
few seconds I spent crouching with the spatula in hand, the Angel Bunnies
made a clamor to announce they were finished, paying no heed to the con-
fused great detective beside me.
“Wednesdayyy-san, I’m done~.” “We finished~.” “It’s all ready~.” Ka-
wabe came back in too. “It’s mostly good.” Kamimura dropped in from the
skylight. “I asked everyone to give me a hand and we got done in an instant~.
So what’s this cut about?”
Everything was ready.
I would give the answer now.
I spoke out, still holding the spatula.
“Everyone, gather in the reception space! Bring the injured great detec-
tives there along with the sofas!”
 The hall went silent for a second, then everyone moved at once. Their vec-
tors pointing at the reception. The sofas the great detectives were sitting on
got lifted up and moved there.
Alright.
I told Dezuumi, who was confused as to what to do. “You stay here and be
a witness.”
He was shaking.
“Of what?”
“I will now destroy the magic circle’s barrier and release everything.”
Right. Mitamura had used his blood to draw a circle and conjure a sealing
magic.
To confuse us into believing this mistaken world.
I raised the spatula and glanced at the hallway; my eyes met with Mercury
C’s.
The ‘C’ of his name he wouldn’t explain to me might’ve been an indicator
to destroy the barrier of this ‘◯’. Maybe it was another symbol telling me this
round Pinehouse was split. Maybe it was a harbinger notifying me that the
ouroboros’ mouth was about to let go of its tail.
I made the spatula run across the concrete and removed a little part of the
paint covering it at the center.
That small amount of paint was enough to reveal the true foundation be-
neath it.
It was red.
“The heck is that?”
I raised my face to look at Dezuumi. I could now see the previously-hidden,
correct world.
A new Heaven and a new Earth.
I learned the meaning of everything. Everything the great detectives had
piled up was a means to get to this point, and a way to build up our resistance
to the fact the world was broken.
Any discovery of the truth comes abruptly.
 Voooon!

The new world made a loud noise as it appeared.

The imagery only I could see pushed me towards the fence, then shot me
off in the opposite direction a moment later. I rolled on the concrete of the
hallway and hit the door to room 7. Bam! My head hit the corner of the wall
and hurt so badly I wanted to cry.
“Aagh!”
Dezuumi rushed to me.
“What was that? Why did you jump just now!?”
Agh, it was because I did it before room 7.
Starting next time it should be done near the entrance.
“What’s that about?”
Dezuumi pointed at the red concrete beneath the paint I’d peeled off. I
stood up while stroking my head.
“Daibakushou’s blood.”
Many words arose in my head. Just earlier the boy calling himself Runbaba
12 picked up the term ‘wednesday’ from the twelve words spreading radially
from the Pinehouse, but this time I was thinking about the ‘to wash and peel
off’ at zero and one o’clock, and about the ‘repeat’ at six o’clock. The two ‘to
wash and peel off’ might point at Tsukumojuuku removing the blood-
drenched carpet and me removing the paint from the hallway... Then the ‘re-
peat’ would mean the two ‘to wash and peel off’ happened at the same spot,
with the ‘repeat’ being an ‘overlap’ with their blood trails exactly overlapping.
Behind Dezuumi, who was so bewildered he couldn’t say anything, I found
it.
 A ladder and Mitamura Saburou’s bowgun.

I see, I realized one more thing.

There was meaning in Kiyuu leaving the bowgun between rooms 8 and 9
too. Because it was precisely hidden between these two rooms.
No matter how well the police or the great detectives searched the place,
they would never have found it.
I went for the stairs to get the bowgun, when I saw something moving fast
towards it.

It was Mercury C.

“Ahahahahaha! Found it! Ahahahaha! Prepare yourself, Detective! I’ll

crucify your ass! Right on the spot! Ahahahaha!”
Though startled at first, I deeply accepted the situation.
You are scary, Mercury-san, Hakkyoku Sachiari was right.
No, I was just thinking Mercury C-san was destined to come here as well,
Nils was right too. Wednesday = Odin = Mercurius = Mercury! Mercury C and
I were a pair.
I wasn’t the only one who’d seen all the deductions and was deeply com-
mitted to the situation. Despite all his fooling around, Mercury C was the
most involved. He’d interacted with Kozue, traced Daibakushou, Dollhouse,
and Choukuuji Keraku’s deductions, helped in Kiyuu’s deduction, and even
came to save me in the Pinehouse Theater; Mercury C had witnessed all of
these deductions too!
And he’d arrived here at the same time as I did!
“Hold onto this,” I handed Dezuumi the spatula, descended the stairs, and
walked straight in the direction of Mercury C. Don’t be afraid, I repeated to
myself. If he saw someone afraid, he’d just play with them longer and deepen
that fear.
“Ahahahaha! You fool, you let your guard down, Detective!” he talked like
a true bandit and pointed the bowgun at me with a devilish smile. “Hehehe.
If I kill you now and hide here, this case will never ever end. I will be able to
enjoy this for eternity. Ain’t that right?”
“Yeah.”
He was right. He could do that. Mercury C could kill me.

“Mercury-san! Wednesdayyy-san! Where are you!?”

The Angel Bunnies were in a turmoil. Couldn’t blame them. Two people
had just disappeared before their eyes. But Mercury C and I weren’t hiding
anywhere. We were standing before their eyes. Separated by a bowgun.
“They vanished! Woah!” “The fuck was that? What happened!? They both
became flat, then entered the wall!” “True! They became flat!” “Like a paint-
ing!” “Hey, look over here!”
A few came in and out of rooms 8 and 9. But doing so, they would never
find us.
Not yet.
“Mercury C, give up on that. You’ll get bored of it anyway,” I said. “An
eternity is impossible for you.” I knew he would rebel against the word ‘im-
possible.’ And Mercury C knew I was saying it knowingly.
“Do you think I can’t kill you?”
Mercury C asked me.
I answered.
“You totally can. If you want to, that is.”
“See? I can kill you.”
“Yeah.”
“But then why am I not doing it?”
“It’s simple.” Truly simple. “Because doing that wouldn’t be much fun.”
 “Exactly,” Mercury C laughed. “Plus, I’m looking forward to what’s to
come.”
“To come?” I was perplexed. “There’s nothing coming after this, you
know?”
“Not here, yeah. But obviously, this won’t be the end of everything.”
A next adventure? We’re not running a series here. Still, I said, “Fine. I’ll
take you with me next time.”
“You will take me?” He seemed to dislike my phrasing, but of course he
knew that I was aiming for it. “Mph. Ungrateful bastard. Whatever. Here you
go. Use it all you want.”
Mercury C threw me the bowgun.
I received it, then wondered for an instant. Should I shoot down this idiot
with the arrow loaded onto this?
But I stopped myself.
This type of guy was a rare find.

We walked towards the reception space and appeared to everyone’s eyes,

provoking a flood of reactions.
“Wednesdayyy-san!” “Mercury-san!” “What the fuck happened!?”
“How did you do it!?” “Where did you go!?” “We checked both rooms 8 and
9 and inside the hole, but you weren’t anywhere! Where were you hiding!?”
Mercury C laughed and said nothing, so I started.
“We didn’t go anywhere. We were right before you guys.”
“But you went in the wall between rooms 8 and 9, didn’t you?!”
“You got it wrong. I walked in the opposite direction to room 8 or 9.”
“Ehh...!?” “Wednesdayyy-san, where did you get this bowgun!?” “Is that
the murder weapon!?” “You found it!?”
“I will explain everything. It’ll be quicker with what you already saw.
Where did I go? Where even are you all now?”
“...?”
 “Where are you?”
“...In the Pinehouse, no?”
An Angel Bunny said. I shook my head.
“Wrong. You’re in the Cottage Natsukawa. In the parking lot, at that.”

17

I led the Angel Bunnies up the stairs, took the spatula back from Dezuumi,
and peeled off some more of the concrete’s paint. On a wider area this time.
It soon became apparent. The red-black line cutting the hallway at the center.
I stood up and gave the spatula back to Dezuumi. “Dezuumi, sorry but please
remove all of the paint in the hallway. Just enough so we can see this red-
black line.” “Ehhhh~~?” he clearly wasn’t feeling it. “Stop complaining and
do it.” “But I wanna hear your deduction, Wednesdayyy-san.” “It’s fine,
we’ll wait for you. I have a few more things to prepare too.”
Kawabe and Kamimura spoke up from downstairs. “We’ll help~!” “Hold
on a second. I’ll bring more spatulas.”
Behind them I caught a glimpse of ‘Runbaba 12’ making a stern face. He
was looking pale. “Hey, are you still fine?”
“Shaddup. Hurry up!” the boy yelled. “This is hella painful. Agh, my ap-
pendix won’t recover.”
“Be a bit more patient. I’ll be done in no time.”
“Uuugh... Please~~.”
“Eh~? What is it? Are you okay, Runbaba-kun?” a woman from the troupe
was preoccupied. I had to take that idiot replying “No~, I’m alright...” with a
smile to the hospital as soon as possible.
“Don’t worry about Runbaba-kun, come here.” I gathered the Angel Bun-
nies in the reception space.
Seeing a bunch of people who didn’t know messed with the scenery.
 “Don’t move a step from here,” I told them, then climbed the nearest
stairs up, and went inside room 11. Taniguchi Tooru, who was busy looking
after Tsukumojuuku, noticed me and stood up.
“Hey hey, what’s with all that ruckus? What happened?”
“Well, I’m about to end this case.”
“How long are you guys going to say the same thing? Nothing has been
resolved yet. Let’s give up and get off this mountain. We can’t leave him here
forever either...also, what are you doing here?”
“Right. I thought I’d borrow some antibacterial gloves.”
“Then just ask for them. Sure I’ll give you some. What are you gonna use
it for?”
“An experiment.”
“What kind?”
“Testing how the new world works.”
“...Y-yeah? Hold on a sec. How many do you need?”
“Four should do it.”
“Nice coincidence, that’s all I have. But be careful, there’s no telling
what’s gonna happen next...”
“We’re at the end now.”
“Everyone’s been repeating the same thing for a while now.”
“But this is the end for real this time. We’ll all leave this mountain.”
“...Really, let’s. Can you leave me one glove for the moment?”
“Sure. Ah, can I also take some strings, scissors, and tape?”
“You sure need a lot, huh...”
I grabbed the bag with the three rubber gloves and left room 11. I took them
out and inflated them, blowing into each glove-balloon until all of their five
fingers were perking up like white bunny ears, then sealed the base around
the strings and had them hang from the hallway’s ceiling with the tape. I
placed the first one left of room 11, a bit before room 10, then returned to the
stairs near the reception while passing by Dezuumi and others who were
peeling off the paint and placed one before room 1 and the last one before
room 4, made sure they were hanging at the same height and position, then
went downstairs and entered the office. Something to write and paper...that
was my original aim, but I instead found a wheeled whiteboard perfect for the
job. I took the orange album from the shelf, kicked around the books scattered
on the floor to make a path, and dragged the whiteboard with one hand back
to the Angel Bunnies. I checked the troupe members and Dezuumi were done
peeling off the paint and had come back, then said,
“Then I’ll explain very simply the uhh, the thinking necessary that leads
to the explanation of the trick.”
Despite having talked big, though I’d explained sequences of actions mil-
lions of times, I’d almost never explained the theory behind these actions.
One of my scarce experiences was when I’d explained my thoughts on how
the passage of time worked to the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ in our letters,
but thinking about it, Kozue had complained it was so long! She also said your
drawings were so confusing!
This time I should try to be more concise. Simple enough so that even the
small Kozue could get it.
That’s it.
I’d make it so the six-year-old Kozue could understand.

“Eerm. There are many people in the world. Let’s take a-kun living in
space A and b-kun living in space B. Space A is straight while space B shrinks
around the middle, like this.”
I drew along the explanation. Concisely, concisely.
I weaved together questions and explanations while I drew.
 “In this case, a-kun, standing on the left edge of space A, is seeing the TV
positioned on the right edge as normal. Then what about b-kun in space B,
how does the TV on the right edge of his space look like to him? ...Naturally,
as b-kun perceives the space he exists in to be as non-distorted as space A
looks to a-kun, the TV screen looks normal to him. The distortion in space
wouldn’t crop or alter the screen in any way. The image coming from the
screen shrinks along with the space, then expands in size back to normal, and
reaches b-kun’s eyes.
“Then, what would happen if b-kun were to walk across space B? ...His
body would behave like the TV’s image, it would shrink in the middle along
with the space, expand, then reach the right side. But how would that look to
a-kun from space A? He would be quite surprised. From space A, a-kun would
be able to observe the changes happening to b-kun in space B. He would see
b-kun shrink then grow, and be flabbergasted.”
 I went on.
“Here’s a question. Let’s say a-kun moves from space A to space B, right
next to b-kun. They both look at the same TV screen, how would the image
look to a-kun?”
The Angel Bunnies then debated between themselves. What a great audi-
ence they were.
“Since they’re both in space B now, shouldn’t they see it the same? Then
it should look normal, no?” “No, a-kun comes from A, there’s no way he can
see the B TV right.” “But the light in B should bend according to that space,
so a should perceive it normally.”
A few were coming up with bullshit theories, but this was the general
opinion.
I asked another question.
“Then, when both a-kun and b-kun walk across space B, what will happen
to a-kun?”
They came to an answer pretty easily thanks to the previous debate.
The two main views were,
 “Should be the same as the TV. He’s walking straight in his eyes, so his
body will adjust to the space and a-kun shouldn’t even notice the distortion
in space.”
and,
“a-kun won’t be able to traverse the shrunk portion of the space, the
closer they get to it the more b-kun will shrink, and the more a-kun will seem
to get bigger in b-kun’s eyes.”
I continued.
“I see, I see. Well, you are going to see for yourself what happens. After all,
you guys and I are in that ‘b-kun’ ‘a-kun’ situation.”

The Angel Bunnies went silent.

“Also,” no, this should be enough for the ‘explaining to the small Kozue’
method, so I revised my tone and continued. “The ones in the normal space,
‘a-kun’, would be Mercury C and I. And the ‘b-kun’ in the distorted space
would be you guys, and everybody in the world outside the Pinehouse.”
Shocked, the troupe members consulted between themselves.
Of course they wouldn’t understand.
But that was fine. For now.
“Listen well. Your space is the distorted one. The snake present here bites
its own tail while stretching straight. There is eternity in this house. But
speaking in metaphors won’t let you have a concrete understanding so I’ll
stop with that. I’ll show you all the sight of correctness. The true appearance
of the Pinehouse. The imagery of a round fruit naturally coming to mind
when talking about a ‘Pinehouse’ is restraining you. We are in the Cottage
Natsukawa. A linear house.”

18

The Angel Bunnies were still gaping.

 But I wasn’t expecting them to see it just by saying the answer aloud.
They’d start seeing it as I showed them various things. It’s better to do it all
at once while they were dumbfounded, or maybe their minds were drawing a
blank from all the confusion in their head.
It’s better for their brain to stay numb during that process so they don’t
hinder it with superfluous logic.
If they’re confused enough, as long as the explanation makes sense on its
own, they’d have to start believing what they’re seeing with their own eyes.
I suddenly drew a graph.
“I’ll note the edges of the narrow, rectangular Cottage Natsukawa X and Y
on the side of the parking lot, and X’ Y’ on the side of the backyard. I will also
put down P in the middle of the passage, and Q in the middle point on the
backyard side. The Pinehouse is the result of bending the edges on both sides
of the line PQ and making X and Y, and X’ and Y’ connect.”

“The rooms 1 and 12 of the Cottage Natsukawa became rooms 8 and 9 in

the Pinehouse and are next to each other. That’s because the notion of horo-
scope was installed inside the Pinehouse.”
 Someone muttered “Eeeh...?” but everyone else was silent. Though rather
than being baffled at what I was saying, they probably didn’t know what to
say.
Almost no one could follow me yet.
“You all saw the cut between rooms 8 and 9 extending inside and outside,
even on the roof, didn’t you? That’s not a cut someone engraved onto the wall.
That’s the line formed by the edges of the Cottage Natsukawa when they got
stuck together.”
A silent surprise assaulted them.
Good. I kept up the pressure.
“And the holes between rooms 8 and 9 weren’t dug for fantasies about
myths surrounding a scorpion or whatnot. They were just windows on the
sides of the edge rooms of the Cottage Natsukawa.”
That got me some vocal reactions.
Next came the numbers. I asked them.
“Kimura, show me the plans of the Cottage Natsukawa. Both rooms 1 and
12 had an additional window, hadn’t they?”
“They do~. Wow. They were bay windows.”
“How many were there per room?”
“One.”
“Do you have their lengths?”
“I do. Erm, 185cm in width, 108cm in height, and the depth is...”
“No need for the depth. Were they the same on both floors?”
“Ah, yes. The exact same~.”
“And in rooms 1 and 12 too?”
“Yup.”
“Alright. Now, who measured the holes between rooms 8 and 9?”
A few members raised their hands.
“What were the dimensions you got?”
“I got 188x111cm~.”
 “The three-centimeter gap comes from the window frame. The Pinehouse
had them removed, that’s why it’s slightly wider and taller.”
They seemed impressed, but the three-centimeter gap quite lessened the
impact these numbers should’ve had.
Not a big deal. That must’ve been fated too.
I continued. The next part was simple, but should also be decisive.

“The Cottage Natsukawa wasn’t rebuilt into the Pinehouse. It was mor-
phed as is.”

The great confusion had rendered the Angel Bunnies mute, so I dragged
them into my explanation to give them another push.
“You saw Mercury C and I disappear, didn’t you?”
They reacted with their usual zest. “Yes yes!” “Vanished!” “You flattened
and went between rooms...” a Bunny stopped mid-sentence. Looked like
some were starting to get it.
I told them,
“Yes. We appeared to become flat. Some of you even saw us disappear. But
both of these are wrong. We didn’t flatten nor disappeared. It merely ap-
peared that way to you, but we were simply walking.”
The silence that took over the Angel Bunnies once more, however, didn’t
last. It quickly got replaced by a colossal ado. The chaos was increasing.
But it still felt like that chaos was following an orderly course of action.
The goal was near.
“Look at this graph.”
I added onto the previous drawing.
“Let’s call the ‘center of the world’ O, the hall-side point where rooms 8
and 9 joined when the Cottage Natsukawa became a circle P’, and the exte-
rior-side point Q’. That means the line segment OP’, that is, between the
‘center of the world’ and the intersection of rooms 8 and 9, is in fact an area
kinda like this...”
I colored it with a red marker.
“And the line segment P’Q’, so the space in the walls between rooms 8 and
9, is like this...”
I used a blue marker.
 “...That space has been compressed into a surface.”
The Angel Bunnies gulped again. I could hear the gears turning in their
heads.
“To put it simply, when we entered the space colored in red, you guys saw
it as us getting flattened on the OP’ axis, and when we then entered the blue
zone, you guys saw us getting sucked between the walls of rooms 8 and 9.”
The Angel Bunnies were at a loss for words. One eventually said “Ah~, I
give up. My brain is too smooth to get this,” acting as a trigger for everyone’s
questions.
“Can we see it the same way as you too?” “How do you change that?”
“How did you do it, Wednesdayyy-san?” “And Mercury-san?” “Liars~~.”
Calm down, calm down. “If you don’t understand, stop doubting and
think.”
“But~,” some still protested. “Liar~,” said Kimura Daisuke. This guy was
a real cancer. But if I could convince him, my job should be done here.
I got away from the whiteboard, walked in the hall, and passed the ‘center
of the world.’ The Angel Bunnies raised screams I couldn’t quite call cheers.
“Woaaah!” “HE’S FLAT!” “Awesome!”
 Shortly after that, a boy let out a short yell and fell onto the floor. He got
projected up to room 4 and could see me. He must’ve been caught off guard
by the inertia like I’d been.
“Wow...I can’t believe it, it’s really the Cottage Natsukawa...”
“What the fuck Hayashi, you can see it too now?” “I mean, it’s more like
I see the same thing but differently...this is insane. Truly life-changing.”
“You’re kidding me...I wanna see it too.” “Use your heart’s eye. Open that eye
and you’ll see it,” he started giving out half-assed advice so I butted in.
“It’s not really a spiritual experience. Just use your eyes and think. Hey,
when you can see it come out in the parking lot.”
“Got it!” Hayashi stood up with great vigor and took my place while I re-
turned to the whiteboard. “The fuck...Hayashi’s flat...” “I wanna print him on
wrapping paper...” “Turn to the side please... Wow! You’re still a flat surface
no matter the direction you’re facing...” “Is it even convenient...” They were
fooling around yet again. “If you let yourself be distracted by jokes, you’ll
never realize how you were scammed.” Silence. I felt like I’d become a teacher
at the spacetime school.
I resumed my explanation.
“After bending the Cottage Natsukawa to make the foundation for the
Pinehouse, Mitamura Saburou created this reception space so it could func-
tion as a house, added a skylight, laid out the floor, and replaced the stairs
and handrail. But he didn’t touch the hallway on the second floor. He simply
painted over it and installed the transparent boards for his automatic horo-
scope, but the Cottage Natsukawa’s passage still remained underneath. I
confirmed it earlier with Dezuumi and two Angel Bunnies...Kawabe and Ki-
mura. The paint had been hiding traces of blood. Obviously, that blood was
the one that had been shed by Daibakushou in the incident six years ago when
Mitamura Saburou attacked him in the Cottage Natsukawa and made him
crawl across the passage. If anyone wants to check for themselves, I’ll wait a
bit, so go up the stairs and take a look. But don’t go too far. When the Pine-
house turns into the Cottage Natsukawa, the stairs straighten out instanta-
neously, and the further you are from here, the bigger the amplitude will be
when that optical adjustment blasts you away.”
It was probably a case of what we see being so realistic we really feel it.
Since sensations are products of our mind too, if you think you feel it, you feel
it.
...But my warnings were in vain; two girls hit their heads on the door of
room 12. “Ooouch!” they yelled, but then started laughing. “Amazing! It’s
true! Ahahaha! So weird. So the world can flicker like that!”
These two entered the zone for ‘those who can see’ with Hayashi and be-
came flat, making another girl next to me stagger.
“Uwaaa...”
“The heck, you too Kajiwara? How little common sense must you have to
believe that story so quickly?” said Kawabe. He might have a point. Defying
common sense might be problematic. Yet, I told him,
“Kawabe, your common sense is a delusion you force yourself into believ-
ing. You simply lack knowledge. Think more.”
“Gee~...”
Seemed like we were done with the awakenings for the moment.
“It’s strange you still don’t get it after having seen Daibakushou’s blood,
but I guess wrapping your mind around it is tough. It’s time to surprise your
senses now. Can someone, a representative, go up the stairs with me?”
Fukushima Manabu stepped up. “I’m sorry. The police wouldn’t give me
the bowgun...”
“Ah, not a big deal. I’ve already found the murder weapon.”
“Oh, so that’s what that was?”
“Yeah. But I’m not handing it to the police just yet.”
“Okay, but what about the fingerprints...”
“No problem. You, Mercury C, and I will just have to give our fingerprints
later for the investigation.”
“Ehh...?”
 “It’s not that big a deal.”
I paid no heed to Fukushima’s confusion and talked to the Angel Bunnies
downstairs. “Okay, this experiment will be by far the most important for the
resolution of this case. There won’t be anything exceeding that, nor will there
be anything following that. It’s your last chance, so keep your eyes peeled.”
They all replied at once. “Yes!”
“You sure got everyone under control,” I was impressed. “You’re quite the
great leader, huh.”
Fukushima bowed. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Now go stand before room 7.”
Saying that, we both started walking from room 1, but Fukushima went in
room 12’s direction while I went towards room 2. Fukushima soon noticed
and hurriedly caught up to me, making me realize my own fears. I hadn’t cho-
sen the path including rooms 8 and 9 to go to room 7 because I wasn’t sure
what would happen in that space. For me it was the end of the passage, and
beyond that was just the dark forest. But there should be room 9 beyond room
8. My fears and lack of comprehension might ruin everything. The moment I
thought that, I spun right, made a U-turn, and set myself on passing through
that space, but then stopped myself. If believing was everything, then I was
already believing. I wouldn’t doubt.
Everything would go fine.
As we were walking counterclockwise, making sure not to walk on the trail
of blood in the middle of the hallway...Daibakushou’s blood from six years
ago, and evading the glove-balloons hanging at chest height, I picked up Fu-
kushima’s muttering.
“...Remodeling the Cottage Natsukawa...but concrete can’t bend this much.
Even if it was a type of concrete highly resistant to fractures, what kind of
natural disaster would bend a building into a perfect circle...”
“Mhm? You studied architecture?”
“No, I just took physics classes in university. But I’m into that sort of
thing.”
 I was about to tell him not to try persuading himself with that kind of un-
fitting logic, but stopped myself once again. I was lucky to have someone like
him be my experimental subject. Persuading him would be a great influence
for the others. Plus, if I let him see this from afar he might spout out more
sophisms and trap himself for good into this cage made out of his own past
experiences and his common sense. But I wouldn’t let that happen...having
thought that, I got another revelation.
I bet the great detectives stopped thinking or destroyed part of their brains
to not be a bother in this experiment.
If there was even one great detective left, they would surely deny my ex-
planation with another deduction the moment I’d open my mouth, and the
great orators they are would bring more people to their side than I could. But
there was no one to hinder me anymore.
When I said ‘I’m ready’ earlier, in fact everything and everyone was
‘ready.’
Arriving at room 7, we both stopped in our tracks and I handed Fukushima
the bowgun. “Hold onto that.”
I closed the door to room 7 I’d left wide open, then gave it a good kick and
broke the hinges.
“Aaaaaaaaaah!”
I heard a scream, but it was most likely from the owner of this room, Ki-
mura, yet agaaaaain. I ignored him. I picked up the door that was now lying
on the ground, brought it out to the hallway, and set it against the wall. I then
entered the room, walked up to the bed, threw the futon along with all the
clothes and magazines cluttering it on the floor, put the mattress up, and
started dragging it out of the room when my eyes stopped on a mannequin
standing near the wall. It was the one used during Choukuuji Kiyuu’s deduc-
tion.
“Aaaaaaah noooooooo! My privacy~~!”
Kimura raised another scream when seeing me take the mattress out on
the hallway, so I told him,
 “Shut up, Kim! Come here and give me a hand!”
“Ehh~~. I’m just Kim now...?”
“Move your ass!” He obediently went up the stairs and walked to room 7
using the counterclockwise path.
“Go set the mannequin before the window of room 9.”
“But I wanted to bring it back with me as a souvenir...”
Souvenir of what?
Despite complaining, Kimura entered room 7 to grab the mannequin. I set
the mattress against the wall, then moved the table supporting the object for
the Libra constellation to the center of the hallway. I set the door against it on
the room 6 side, and the mattress on the opposite side. The makeshift barri-
cade now blocked most of the passage, and neither Fukushima nor I could see
room 6 from where we were—before room 7.
“Good. Now go stand there with that behind you.”
I adjusted Fukushima’s position, then addressed the other Angel Bunnies.
Kimura entered room 9 with the mannequin.
“This is where Mitamura Saburou died! Fukushima is standing right atop
where Mitamura’s blood was, facing the tangent! Fukushima! What do you
see straight ahead of you from before room 7?!”
“Er~m...”
“I can’t hear you!”
“Erm! The door to room 8!”
“Right!”
I walked up to room 8 and opened the door.
“Now what can you see?!”
“The hole between room 8 and room 9!”
“Through that hole, can you see a mannequin standing before the room 9
window?!”
“I cannot!”
“Kim!!! Move the mannequin so he can see it!”
“Roger!”
 “How is it now, Fukushima?! Can you see it?!”
“I can only see Kim! Move it to the right, Kim!”
“Roger!”
“Oh, that’s perfect. I can see the mannequin!”
“Near the window?!”
“Right in front of the window!”
“Nice, now Kim move the hell out of there and be on standby!”
“Ehhh~!?”
“Alright! Fire! Fukushima!”
“Eh?” Fukushima looked at me.
“No questions, just shoot that thing!”
“Eh? At what?”
“What you just saw. The mannequin standing straight before you through
the hole.”
“Ehh...?”
“Stop complaining and shoot straight at it.”
“What happens if I miss?”
“Nothing. Don’t stress about it.”
“...I just need to shoot straight at it, right?”
“Yeah.”
“...Then here I go!”
“Okay, everyone, watch closely!”
Fukushima took a deep breath, then pressed the trigger.
Bshh!
The arrow seemingly flew through the door and the hole, because I heard
a loud Thud! coming from room 9.
“Oooooh!” It was followed by Kimura sounding impressed.
“Kim! Take the mannequin out of room 9!”
“Roger!”
Kimura carried it to us and showed the mannequin with the arrow going
through it, but the Angel Bunnies who didn’t get it simply looked at it with
indifferent faces. I couldn’t blame them, they couldn’t see how abnormal that
was. To them, it must’ve looked like the same trajectory Mercury C’s arrow
took during Kiyuu’s deduction. At the time it was shot from outside, passed
through the room 9 window, the hole in the wall, the room 8 door, and finally
stabbed the mannequin in front of room 7.
This time it was the opposite. It went from before room 7 to room 9’s win-
dow.
The rebound of the bowgun had caused Fukushima to stagger, so he only
now managed to stand straight.
“Did it go straight?”
“Yeah. In a sense.”
“What?”
“You hit the mannequin.”
“Then it’s a success, isn’t it?”
“Kinda. Now hand me the bowgun.”
“Sure.”
Seeing me take it back, Kimura asked, “Ah, should I put the mannequin
back?”
I answered.
“Yeah. Please.”
He carried the mannequin into the room, and placed it beyond the hole
just so I could see it while aiming the bowgun.
“Is it good here?”
“Perfect. Kim, don’t move a step.”
Behind me, Fukushima noticed and panicked.
“Hold on, hold on, that’s not the mannequin, that’s Kim! Watch out, Kim!”
“What?”
“Kim, look this way and say cheese.”
“What’s that old—”
I pressed the trigger.
Bshh! Clack!
 “Aaaah!” screamed Kimura who noticed I was aiming at him, and Fuku-
shima who saw me push to trigger nonetheless. “Wha-? Wednesdayyy-san?
What the fuck did you do? Kim, are you okay!?” Fukushima yelled. It seems
like he hadn’t noticed the confusion spreading amongst the Angel Bunnies
downstairs. “Woah~~you got me stressed...I’m A-OK~ I ducked just in time...”
Kimura replied, still hiding. “Must’ve scared you good, huh? But the arrow
didn’t go anywhere near you.”
“Ehh...? But weren’t you aiming right at me...?”
“But it didn’t go that way. Look at the mannequin. Is there an arrow in it?”
“There isn’t...”
“Check the window. The glass isn’t broken anywhere, is it?”
“True... So what? Did it hit the wall on your side? ...The only arrow I can
see in room 9 is the one Fukushima-san shot...”
He said as he left room 9, curiously looking around, and joined Fukushima
and I.
“You got me wrong. The arrow didn’t fly in your direction at all.”
A hand gripped my shoulder tight. It was Fukushima’s. Contrasting his
usual peaceful tone, his voice had a hint of anger and consternation.
“Either way, that was dangerous~. You shouldn’t shoot arrows at other
people.”
“And I keep telling you I didn’t,” I brushed his hand off my shoulder. “I
wouldn’t do something so reckless. It simply appeared that way to you two.
Go check for yourself, my arrow isn’t anywhere in room 8, is it?”
He went into the room. “Ehh... The heck? Where did the arrow go?”
“Look at the gloves,” I told him. “The balloon hanging before room 10 has
popped, hasn’t it?”
Fukushima looked at the hallway diagonally. Kimura too.
“Oh, true. Huh? It really went in a totally different direction...”
But it had flown straight.
I told them, “Not just the one from room 10, look at the one in front of
room 1.”
 Fukushima turned sideways and looked at the other side of the hallway.
Over there were rags of the rubber gloves hanging in the air. “Eh? What?
It popped...”
“What the fuck...” Kimura widened his eyes, then let out “How...” in his
confusion.
“The balloon in front of room 4 too.”
They both bent over the handrail and looked at room 4 over the barricade.
“Ehh...? You must be kidding...”
“It’s popped...”
“I’m telling the truth. The space you are seeing is deceiving you. Look. My
arrow arrived all the way here.”
I tapped on Fukushima’s shoulder and made him turn around. I then urged
him to check our side of the door constituting the barricade. An arrow had
made its way through the mattress and part of the door, and had its head
pointed at us.
Time for the decisive blow.

“The arrow I just fired started at room 7, passed before room 10, room 1,
and room 4, and finally came back around to us. All the while flying straight.”

Neither Fukushima nor Kimura dared say anything.

“Last night, Mitamura Saburou did the same thing to shoot himself in the
back and commit suicide.”

Fukushima and Kimura didn’t need it, nor did most of the Angel Bunnies,
but about five of them still couldn’t see it, so I returned to the whiteboard and
drew a graph.
I hadn’t thought I’d need to go this far.
 People’s common sense is really tough.

“This is the true straight. This is the Pinehouse’s ‘straight.’ The space in
the Pinehouse is twisted. That’s why the arrow bent straight.”
By the way, Fukushima and Kimura both awakened before room 7, got
blasted away by the inertia of the adjustment, and got sent rolling inside
room 7.
 Good thing I’d taken that door out.
With that amplitude, had they hit the door, the recoil might’ve sent them
over the handrail and hurt them badly.

19

“Okay, now let’s go back to the initial question. How does the space B’s TV
screen look to a-kun? You should get it now. It depends on a-kun’s mind. If
a-kun perceives space B to be the same as space A, then he will see the TV the
same as b-kun does. After all, they would both be residents of space B. But if
a-kun’s mind looks at space B from outside, he might get it wrong. Even if it
doesn’t seem to make sense physically, the screen might appear to be de-
formed. If a-kun indeed gets it wrong, he will actually see a deformed version
of the screen. In the same way as my arrow got it wrong and looped around
the hallway. Listen. Inside the Pinehouse, the physically correct trajectory
would be the one Fukushima’s arrow took. But my mind perceived the space
differently than Fukushima, so my arrow took its correct path which is wrong
according to the curved space. The same goes when a-kun walks across space
B. If he is mistaken, a-kun’s body will ignore the distortion of space B and
advance as if it was in space A. And b-kun, walking alongside him, might see
a-kun grow in size as they progress.”
I looked at the Angel Bunnies I had gathered in the parking lot to grab their
attention. They were listening.
I continued.
“The mind rules space. When we hadn’t noticed the distortion in the Pine-
house, we weren’t curving. We were walking straight. But we didn’t notice
that. At every step we took, our minds were deceiving us. The Pinehouse had
been arranged this way to cover up its bent space. ...Let’s say this bent space
was on flat terrain. Someone who wanders in it would walk straight in that
space, and go around in circles. However, if one places a landmark on this flat
terrain, they should be able to ignore the distortion in space and go straight
towards it...rather, they would ignore the notion of ‘going straight’ and just
head towards it. Or maybe their mind would create a new straight space con-
necting there. People’s minds use markers to establish space. The Pinehouse
looks like a proper house with its walls, roof, handrail, doors, and windows;
because they all work as markers, we don’t know if we’re walking straight or
turning. After all, any movement inside the house is done while looking at
something or with a clear objective. If one closes their eyes and walks, they
might just be able to walk straight. They would seem to be turning to other
people, though. But for you guys it’s the contrary, because your eyes were
open, you kept turning when trying to go straight, and went straight when
trying to turn.”
None of the Angel Bunnies were fooling around. They were listening to my
every word with seriousness.
I went on. “The mind has power. The mind can bend space. This Pinehouse
was bent by the mind too. By Mitamura Saburou when he was living alone
here. His solitude made it possible. He lived atop this mountain without in-
teracting with others, and created his own space. He kept bending something
that was originally straight until it formed a full circle. The most extreme
form of hikikomori. He then finalized the Pinehouse, took the name An-
byouin, spent his days writing mystery novels, and finally called the Angel
Bunnies here three days ago, and killed himself last night. The Pinehouse re-
tained its distorted space even after Mitamura’s death due to the power in the
Angel Bunnies’ and the great detectives’ minds. The appearance of the Pine-
house deceived us and hindered us from noticing the distortion. The Pine-
house in itself was a trick Mitamura prepared, as well as a weapon.
Mitamura’s story about having seen a doppelganger which Daibakushou re-
ported to us was likely true, in a sense. However, when he saw his own back,
that wasn’t a lookalike or anything, it was himself. When he stood at the
boundary of rooms 8 and 9, Mitamura should’ve been able to see his own
back.”
 Even beyond the passage that stopped after room 8, there should still be
room 9. I could only see the forest, but the arrow I’d shot vanished after pass-
ing through that boundary. If he only passed his head through that boundary,
he should’ve been able to see his back all the way across the pas-
sage. ...Mitamura might’ve told Daibakushou that story as a cryptic way of
reporting he succeeded in creating an ouroboros space. With his death near-
ing, he might’ve wanted to give a big hint to his childhood friend he had
raised to be a great detective.
“There was no need for Mitamura to climb the cedar tree and use the sky-
light to drop into the hallway last night. After all, he had a vast space he’d
kept hidden between his office and bedroom. He crossed from room 9 on the
first floor into that compressed space, used a ladder to climb the opposite side
of the Cottage Natsukawa, and came out inside the hallway on the second
floor, before room 8.”
I had the Angel Bunnies check the ladder left next to room 8 (room 12 in
the Cottage Natsukawa).
“He probably stuck only his head through the boundary to take a firm aim
at his back before firing. He probably wanted to be done with it quickly too.
And so, right before passing away, he threw the bowgun into the space hidden
between rooms 8 and 9, the area I colored in blue earlier. So long as the mur-
der weapon wasn’t found, we couldn’t abandon the possibility of a homicide.
This mystery wasn’t solvable without it. Moreover, Kozue came here. She en-
tered Mitamura’s fresh corpse and, as Dezuumi stated, crawled around the
hallway once. That created the mystery of the blood trail which led many
great detectives to dying or injuring themselves. But all of this is now over. I
know why Kozue came here. That’s because only Kozue could push me to
come to the Pinehouse. It was in my destiny to solve this Pinehouse Case,
therefore everything happened as it should have. The ‘wednesday’ among the
twelve words written radially to the Pinehouse and the symbols pointing at
Odin all referred to me. That was true. But I couldn’t solve this case any earlier.
It took me some time, but this was for the best. Isn’t that right? Do I get a
perfect mark for this? Let’s compare our answers, Mitamura Saburou.”

“Hmm. You get 90 points. Your explanation was so fucking long, dummy.”

Said the boy who’d made his entrance as ‘Runbaba 12.’

I told him, “I don’t feel like I should be the one doing that, but no one
else’s fit for the job, so I’ll introduce you. Ladies and Gentlemen, he is the
future, present, and past owner of the Pinehouse, the end of the beginning,
the first and last God, aged 17 despite his appearance, Mitamura Saburou-
san.”
The future (past?) mystery writer, meant to appear as ‘Ehimegawa Juuzou’
after his role as ‘Runbaba 12’ had ended.

The Angel Bunnies thought nothing could surprise them at that point, but
it properly did and they let out voices of surprise.
I continued.
“You’ve been enduring the pain in your stomach when you should really
be asking ‘Taniguchi Tohru’ to take you to the hospital and remove your ap-
pendix, but you only kept us company for your own sake, because you wanted
to witness the resolution of this case yourself, right? You wanted to check
how you looked after dying, what happened after your death, and what you
needed to make happen. And you will use that information to prepare your
death. Though it seems paradoxical, on his 17th summer, Mitamura hadn’t
vanished nor been kidnapped. He’d traveled 20 years into the future to wit-
ness his death and use it as reference for when he would go back in time, so
he could die in the same way 20 years later.”
Mitamura was laughing.
 I recalled. It was the same as the problem of the ‘future Kozue’ and the
‘letters’. The ‘future Kozue’ made up those ‘letters’ by copying the contents
of the ‘letters she would exchange with me in the future’, but if you go back
and back and back on that chain of made up...you obtain an infinite chain of
made up. I’d also thought that, perhaps, in the same way as the world started
from null, those ‘letters’ popped into existence; maybe I simply never noticed
that such things could pop into existence and, in reality, it happens very com-
monly and frequently.
Mitamura’s suicide used the same copying method. He brought his
memory of what he saw in the future back to the past, and started preparing
all sorts of things so he could die in the same way.
There was no original.
If time doesn’t flow but merely connects, then the past, present, and fu-
ture all occur simultaneously, and it wouldn’t be weird for causes and results
to appear at the same time. That can happen. In most instances, time
travel/timeslips result in an ouroboros problem of ‘a recursion without orig-
inal.’ The original was swallowed by the ouroboros...

“And?” Mitamura said. “That’s still 93 points in my book. That’s not

enough to escape the eye stabbing, you know?”

The fuck, was he still going to go after my eyes!?

20

...I shuddered, and thought. Did they crush their left eyes to symbolize
Odin and hint that Wednesday = me to urge me to make a deduction...or as a
lobotomy, or to indicate a cheaper way of going to the Pinehouse Thea-
ter...that’s about all the meanings I could find in crushing their eyes in this
case. But what would crushing my eye achieve in this situation? There was no
need to call for me anymore, I’d started my deduction. I didn’t need a lobot-
omy. So it might mean I should go to the Pinehouse Theater, but having been
there once, I knew. The play held in the Pinehouse Theater was titled The
Pinehouse Dead, and it was a retelling of the case happening in the Pinehouse
in the real world. If you don’t get it right, you get your eyes crushed—just like
here—but if losing an eye really was what took people to the Pinehouse The-
ater, where did they go after their eyes got crushed there? But only Daiba-
kushou and Sakurazuki were able to come back after losing an eye and going
there. And Daibakushou had his destiny as ‘Tsukumojuuku’ to carry out, and
Sakurazuki was brought back by Hongou...just like how Mercury C brought
me back. Right. I didn’t need to lose an eye to come back from there. Losing
an eye wasn’t a means to travel between the Pinehouse Theater and the Pine-
house.
Then what was it?
I glanced at Hongou and Sakurazuki who were still sunk in the sofa. It
wasn’t Odin. It wasn’t a lobotomy. It wasn’t a ticket to the Pinehouse Theater.
Then what did it mean?
Maybe there was no meaning? Maybe I simply didn’t know that losing an
eye was a popular self-harm method like wrist cutting or trichotillomania,
and the great detectives who were mistaken stabbed their eyes as a sort of
self-punishment?
Of course not. Well, not about it being a type of self-harm, I meant there
was no way there wouldn’t be meaning behind that act.
Everything had a meaning.
That should be our basis.
Think.
Think.
Odin, lobotomy, Pinehouse Theater... Odin gained wisdom by losing an eye.
I returned to a question I previously had. How could a loss lead to the acqui-
sition of new knowledge? Loss and gain. Thinking about it, isn’t that kinda
what happens with the lobotomy? Walter Freeman’s transorbital-style lo-
botomy consists of inserting an ice pick through one’s eye socket, destroying
part of their brain, and curing them from mental illnesses. ‘Destroying the
brain’ earns them ‘a normal psyche.’ But, I thought. I wasn’t a doctor, but
wasn’t it actually not a gain at all, and in fact only losses? It removed the ‘ill-
ness’ from patients who had lost their ‘normalcy,’ but did that really lead
them to acquiring ‘normalcy’ again? ...Having thought that far, I connected
the ‘brain’s destruction’ and ‘a halt in thought’ in my head. Did the great de-
tectives destroy their brains to stop thinking about this case? ...But Daiba-
kushou came back as ‘Tsukumojuuku’ and exposed a deduction. He then
stabbed his eye once more, resurrected a second time, and challenged this
case yet again! Great detectives never stop thinking. Even with their brains in
shambles!
No, calm down, all that stuff about the brain was off. I’d veered from the
topic of losing an eye.
Odin didn’t destroy his brain to gain wisdom. He lost an eye.
Losing an eye.
Losing an eye.
Nail Peeler had told me,
Maybe you’re really so stupid I gotta crush one of your eyes for you to un-
derstand? Then you’ll be like the other great detectives.
What did he mean by this?
Was there something to understand by losing an eye? Had the great de-
tectives lost an eye because they didn’t understand something that didn’t re-
quire them to lose an eye to understand?
Tss, why was I believing what the dubious Nail Peeler told me? It wasn’t
even clear whether he existed or not...I was about to think, but stopped myself.
My hands. The ten fingernails I’d lost were the proof. Nail Peeler existed. His
words should be believed to the same degree as those of anyone else in this
world. And everything had a meaning here.
 Something that can be understood by losing an eye. Wisdom. What could
I learn from this?
I gave another look at the great detectives.
Was there something they knew now that they’d lost an eye?
These guys who couldn’t even put the cap on a pen...I’d heard as a kid that
only seeing with one eye made you lose your depth perception, so even put-
ting the cap on a pen proved difficult. And true enough, I tried it myself and
failed and got ink on my fingers. Humans combined the information from
their left and right eyes to perceive space. Seeing with only your right eye is
like looking at a photograph, there’s no bumps or sense of distance. The
world becomes a flat drawing.
I recalled what the Angel Bunnies said.
“True! They became flat!” “Like a painting!”
When they saw me enter the compressed space, they saw me in two di-
mensions since they were still being fooled by the distorted space. But once
they stepped outside of that space with the power of their wills, they could
see me normally.
Space alternating between 2D and 3D.
Losing an eye means turning 3D into 2D.
But for me, who’d stepped outside of space with the power of my will,
what could losing an eye mean at this point?
Return to 2D?
No. It should be something I could understand even without losing my eye.
It wasn’t actually telling me to turn the 3D space into 2D.
It was telling me to do that figuratively.
If going a dimension up proved impossible, I should lower that dimension
so I could travel it.
I’d already exited space.
I’d already stepped outside of 3D.
Above space was 4D, and the fourth dimension could be anything...but
here, it should be time.
 Mitamura Saburou had skipped through time.
Kozue had skipped through time.
It was right there the whole time. Truth, for me, who put so much empha-
sis on facts (just facts!). People could travel through time. Using wills, destiny,
or both.
Nail Peeled had told me.
Only think about Kozue!
He was telling me to believe in the proof that is Kozue and break through
the wall called time that was binding me.
With my strong will.

I checked with Mitamura Saburou.

“What meaning was there in you appearing here?”
Mitamura laughed.
“I came to pick ya up.”
“Why?”
“You gonna make me explain? You’re still at a 95.”
That meant I already knew and didn’t need it explained.
I recalled Kiyuu’s deduction.
“Ichirou and Jirou?”
The two of the triplets who’d vanished.
I was a detective expert in finding missing children.
“You want me to search for your brothers through time?”

“What other business could I have with ya,” he laughed. “98. Now skip
through time to get a perfect mark~...is what I wanna say, but I can’t bear the
pain any longer. Ya should be fine now. You figured out that you could skip
through time with your will. Ya believin’ in it? Don’t forget that. Don’t doubt.
And best of luck to ya. I’m counting on you. I’m gonna play a prank on Tooru
now. Yukio, come with me.”
He headed for room 11 on the second floor. Looking at Mitamura’s back, I
imagined how his childhood friends, Daibakushou and Taniguchi Tooru,
would react to this unprompted reunion, and was waiting to hear Taniguchi
yell of surprise—when I warped.

The scenery before me became dark, then soon retrieved its light, but it
wasn’t bright either. I was somewhere outside at night. The faint light was
shining on a sign; on it were arrows indicating ‘← elephants giraffes →’. I
could see cages in the distance. And animals making noise. I was in a zoo at
night.
There was no one around. And it was cold. Winter cold.
I’d jumped through time. Through space too. Where was I? I hadn’t come
here because I wanted to. It wasn’t my will. Yet I came all the way here
through time and space.
Someone’s strong will had pulled me here.
“Wednesdayyy-san.”
Someone called out my name, I turned back. Inside the large, iron-fenced
clearing behind me was a single panda. Only its white face and back were
emerging from the darkness.
It had called me.
“Excuse me, Wednesdayyy-san, could you come closer? The wind is aw-
fully violent today, so it’s hard to hear what the people above are saying.”
It talked to me in Japanese.
“Who are you? How can you speak Japanese?”
I asked it, and it answered.
“Because I’m a panda raised in Japan. I’m sorry to have scared you. My
name is Runrun. In fact, there is a request I wish to entrust to you, Wednes-
dayyy-san...”
 21

Runrun.
The mother of the kidnapped twin pandas Konkon and Denden.
I was a detective specialized in missing children. Geez, what did I find my-
self dragged into this time?
I interrupted Runrun and asked,
“Hold on a minute. I still don’t get it. Am I eleven years in the future? Or
eleven years in the past? I’ve heard about your case.” It couldn’t have been a
coincidence. “But it’s not clear to me if that case happened eleven years be-
fore or after July of 2006. Which is it?”
Runrun sat on the ground and stretched its legs. I guess it chose a com-
fortable stance for the discussion. As expected of a panda, it was plump and
cute.
“That is part of my request for you, Wednesdayyy-san,” Runrun said,
then continued.

“It is 1995 to me, but for you, who came from the year 2006, it is both
eleven years ago and eleven years later. We are in the year 2017 labeled as 1995.

“In the period between the Summer and Autumn of 2006, someone bent
spacetime on itself. The periods ranging from the beginning of time until the
turning point in 2006 and from the turning point until the end of time were
overlapped. Starting from the year 2006, people live in a counterflowing time.
Of course, time will flow within the space these people’s minds have created.
The people before 2006 and after 2006 live next to each other, with their
spaces dominated by counterflowing times. Most people spend their lives
without having their minds disrupt the space or time they live in, so they
don’t notice each other’s existence, but the power in minds and wills is truly
chilling. There is no telling when they will take notice of the overlap. If that
were to happen, countless minds would rampage and result in unprecedented
chaos. Being a mere panda, I cannot imagine it well, but it would be as terri-
fying as the collapse of spacetime. I want you to find the culprit behind the
overlap in spacetime and revert it back to normal before that happens. But
that is not my true request.”
Runrun then lowered its head in a bow.
“I don’t need spacetime to regain its original shape, but please give me
my sons Konkon and Denden back. I might be able to get my children back
from the counterflowing time, in 22 years from now to me, the year 2017, be-
fore they get kidnapped there too. Or perhaps myself from 22 years in the fu-
ture stole Konkon and Denden from me. But there is no way I would do that
to myself; it is infinitely more likely for someone else to have stolen my chil-
dren than for the paradox of stealing them from myself to occur. And I wasn’t
the only victim of this. Mitamura Saburou-san and Sakai Tsutomu-san suf-
fered the same fate. Poor Sakai-san, his brothers were stolen from him before
their bodies were even created. Everyone is grieving. O please, find the twins
and return them where they belong. That is my one and only, genuine wish.”
Runrun bowed even further.
Sakai Tsutomu = Daibakushou Curry = Tsukumojuuku = the man with
three belly buttons. So his two superfluous belly buttons were remnants of
his kidnapped brothers?
“Why me?” I couldn’t resist asking. Even though I knew the answer.
“Mitamura can travel through time too, can’t he?”
Runrun answered, “Mitamura-san is an author. Not a detective.”
“But there are countless great detectives. You could’ve taught any great
detective how spacetime works.”
“But they cannot search for missing children. You can teach someone how
to travel through spacetime, but you cannot teach how to love.”
She was right.
 Runrun continued. “You are my one and only hope.”
Indeed, cases like the Pinehouse weren’t so easy to produce, and it would
be even harder to drag people like me in them.
But you can’t expect me to agree on the spot after getting forcefully pulled
through space and time like this. At least it was certain I’d have to face an
unknown opponent. Would it get even more dangerous? I didn’t have even
one fingernail left on my hands, though.
“What’s the reward?”
I asked. What could a panda give me? “And I don’t need your eucalyptus.”
“Koalas eat eucalyptus, not us. But worry not, I’m not proposing to give
you bamboo grass in exchange. Of course, I will give you any amount if that
is what you desire...but that isn’t the reward you are hoping for, is it? Hon-
estly, being an animal, unable to leave the small grounds of this zoo, there is
nothing I can offer to you. But I believe. You will not refuse. All the contrary,
you will actively investigate this case on your own, and become the center of
it, whether you want it or not.”
This panda’s desperate feelings had brought me here.
Not just this panda’s. There were Mitamura and Daibakushou too. And she
talked as if there were more. Many twins had been stolen.
Did that get on my nerves?
Of fucking course it did.

But my hands were full with Kozue.

“I’m kind of busy with a case right now. Do you mind if I deal with yours
after I’m done with that?”
I asked just in case. Runrun raised its face.
“It is alright. Kozue-chan’s case and the Spacetime Bending Case and the
Serial Twin Kidnapping Case are all part of a single, giant case, I’m sure. After
all, Mitamura-san, too, was searching for the glasses-wearing man with the
black bird tattoo. He figured finding out where that man was would make it
easier to entrust you with his case.”

Shimada Kikyou had said inside Kozue,

An old man wearing glasses was sticking his head in my...in this girl’s
crotch and licking really fervently, and the girl’s body was restrained with
ropes or something. She wailed and cried but he wouldn’t stop...

“But he couldn’t find him. Mitamura-san could freely travel through time,
so he kept a close watch on Kozue-chan. From outside space. But Kozue-chan
was always fine. Yet she was still raped. In other words, her time has been
edited. The actual period of her rape has been cut out and stuck somewhere
else. Even though both you and Mitamura-san became able to travel through
time, you cannot bind nor edit time itself. You can alter spacetime in many
ways, like making time flow faster and slower. You can bend space however
you want as well. But you cannot interfere with the flow of time itself. The
flow of time is yet but like a book to you and Mitamura-san. You can open any
page you want. You can read at any pace you want. But you cannot change
what is written inside the book nor change the order of the pages. You prob-
ably need to step outside of time itself to directly alter time. You need to com-
pletely exit spacetime.”
I didn’t get any of what it was saying. What a crazy panda. I’d looked down
on them.
“Errr,” I said, “I guess I’ll think about what you just said later, but for now
you’re suspecting the shithole that raped Kozue to either be close to the per-
son who bent spacetime on itself or to be that same person?”
Runrun nodded.
“Indeed. Only someone outside of spacetime could have slipped through
Mitamura-san’s watch and raped Kozue, or bent spacetime on itself. And I
cannot imagine there are many people capable of doing that. But if you man-
age to step outside of spacetime, you could probably save Kozue-chan
still. ...No, please, save her. I ask you that as a parent. Please, save Kozue-
chan. ...But I probably do not need to ask you this. You will do it on your own,
won’t you, Wednesdayyy-san?”
Yeah. “Of course.”
“I shall take that as my wish being granted, then. As long as you are work-
ing on it, I am sure to get Konkon and Denden back.”
Runrun generously fell on its back in the dark, raised its round bottom and
its rear legs, and used the momentum to stand on its two feet.
“Wednesdayyy-san, I implore of you. You are my... no, you are the light of
hope for every family who saw their twins stolen.”
The panda clasped its hands before its stomach and deeply lowered its
head. Its stance wasn’t very stable since it wasn’t used to such acts of polite-
ness.
“Okay, okay. I got it. Thanks.”
But Runrun didn’t raise its face. As expected of a Japanese panda; respect.
It wouldn’t raise its face until I left to show how serious it was. Or until it fell
because of its weight and how round its stomach was.
I left the Jindai Zoo.
I traveled through spacetime. I could do that.

22

I returned to the Pinehouse at the time I’d left. “Whoa,” I heard cries of
surprise. “He disappeared then came back!” an Angel Bunny exclaimed.
These guys’ understanding of time and space was still shallow, so they
couldn’t yet control spacetime like I did, but minds have an unconscious part
to them, so they might go on adventures in all sorts of eras without fully in-
tending it, or they might not.
 There was some ruckus going on in room 11 on the second floor, but I paid
no heed to that and headed towards Sakurazuki on the sofa in the hall.
I tinkered with the space around Sakurazuki’s skull and made it so I could
see his brain directly inside my space. I then checked the future state of that
space. The brain would heal. Then it might as well do so now; I made Sa-
kurazuki’s brain skip through time. I could skip time for other things as well
as I could do it for myself. Now his brain had reverted back to normal.
Good...no, hold on, I thought. In my head, I was restricting time to be a one-
way flow, but it didn’t just move forward, it could also be turned back. ...Was
that related to the fact both past and future were flowing inside the same
space? ...No, no, stop it. It was too early to think about that other case yet.
Cases should be dealt with one after the other. I reverted the time for Sa-
kurazuki’s brain back to how it was before it got injured. In the process, his
healed brain became damaged again then healed back. I might’ve experi-
mented too much with someone else’ brain, but well, it should be in a better
state than after the chopstick stirring. I might’ve misinterpreted how I ex-
actly healed his brain, but there should be no problem as long as I believed.
I bulldozered my way through the application with my will.

“Oh please~, I’m not gross in the slightest~.”

Sakurazuki opened his eyes and replayed a line from the last conversation
he’d exchanged. I giggled. Seriously? He had to have done it on purpose, but
maybe my will had done that without me realizing.
There was no guarantee people’s wills only influenced time and space.
They might move, fix, morph, or destroy many other things.
“Huh? Is the case over?”
 Sakurazuki asked, throwing looks around. “It sure is, dummy,” I laughed,
then restored Hongou Takeshitakeshi’s brain. He opened his eyes and imme-
diately said, “Hey~, you did something to me, didn’t you~? What did you do
to my precious brain?” A great insight from a great detective.
“Is it over? For real?” Dezuumi asked behind me. “A superhero...” he mut-
tered with his eyes swimming. That guy was seriously afraid of losing an eye,
eh.
“You know,” I told him. “You solved the mystery of the blood looping
around the hallway. You’re the best great detective here. I simply put every-
one’s answers together. Be more confident, Dezuumi. Puff your chest.”
“...Yes!” He saluted.
Uoooh, another gross guy appeared.
“Wednesdayyy-san, it seems there are still many unresolved things,
aren’t there?” Nils said. Yet another insightful great detective. My insight
was quite terrible, so I’d never have guessed his next line. “Master! Please
take me with you!”
I bursted out laughing.
“Hahaha! I’m not a master! Plus, you’re only eleven, no? Act like a normal
kid.”
“But I’ve always been a great detective, and I’ve never studied for school,
and I don’t have any friends, and my name is weird, and...and people stuck
the title ‘Deduction Prince’ onto me to bully me~~. Uuugh~~.”
He went from being excited to crying. His emotions must have been in
quite the disarray after all that happened.
“Who cares about school. If you’re being bullied, just quit,” I didn’t know
if my advice was appropriate. “And everyone here will become your friends,
don’t sweat it.” Hearing me, the Angel Bunnies approached him. “He’s right
Nils-kun~~, you have u~~s.” “Yeah! We survived the Pinehouse together,
you realize!? Our bonds are stronger than steel, don’t you think?” “Let’s all
create the Club Pinehouse then!” “...No, that’s just lame.” “Go be the only
member, Kim.” “Good luck alone.” “Whoa...everyone’s so cold...” “Die, Kim.”
“Ehhhhh~~~?!”
Since the Angel Bunnies started chatting ye~~~t again, I left Nils with
them and jumped to the morgue. With the corpses of nine great detectives. I
wavered a bit, so I took a peek at the future and it seemed like I’d carry it out,
so I brushed away my hesitation and attempted to resurrect the great detec-
tives. The great detectives who’d died at the Pinehouse Theater might’ve pre-
dicted this to happen and stood on standby next to their bodies. I revived
Hakkyoku Sachiari. I revived Mame Gen and Nekoneko Nyannyannyan. Then
I revived the three others whose names I’d forgotten, and finally the
Choukuuji brothers and the female detective named Dollhouse or something.
But these guys were really noisy too, and unlike the Angel Bunnies, they
didn’t stop pestering me with questions, and the staff had noticed the ruckus,
so I brought all of them back to the Pinehouse in one fell swoop.
I hesitated a bit for Sakai (Daibakushou Curry = Tsukumojuuku), but he
was related to the Serial Twin Kidnapping Case so I didn’t know how to ap-
proach it. I put it on hold. He was still a great detective, so there was no telling
what he could do when I revived him.
I then finally found Mercury C.
I couldn’t find him anywhere, and it turned out he was sitting alone on the
tip of the Stairway to Heaven. Apparently he really wanted to cross it.
I chuckled, then crossed the transparent bridge.
“Yo,” I called out to him. Mercury C turned back.
“Ah, it’s you, Detective. Didn’t know you were back. Where did you go?”
“To a zoo at night.”
“Hmm.”
Was that all? “And what are you doing here?”
“Using the night wind.”
“Feeling the night wind, you mean?” I was better than him at Japanese
now or what?
“No, using it. On you.”
 “Huh?”
On the tip of the Stairway to Heaven, Mercury C was holding a man in an
all-black attire by his feet as if fishing with him.

Wearing entirely leather.

...Nail Peeler!

He was inside the Pinehouse. I see, there was another space hidden inside
the Pinehouse. We went to the Pinehouse Theater right after Sakurazuki’s
theory of the ‘guardian circle is sealing away a demon,’ so nobody was in the
hall. That’s why he could be so bold with the play. The Pinehouse Theater was
just the Pinehouse.
“Essessneinpinner is here. I’m scared, Disco~.”

“Where is he?”
“Here.”

“Where?”
“Here.”

“Can you see him?”

“He’s hiding for now. Run away~, Disco.”

He really was in the hall.

Which meant that wasn’t a dream or anything, but real events that took
place in the real world.
Sharon Styron had apparently been cut into pieces by the remnants of
Elderama after the drug war. Spacetime had been connected to that place, and
the ‘Mitamura Saburou’ who came to my office was...ah! Runbaba 12! It was
literally the 17-year-old Mitamura Saburou! I thought he looked familiar
when he appeared as Runbaba 12, but then brushed it off; I had met him in
that office!
 But the play in the Pinehouse Theater hadn’t happened. ...Which meant it
would happen in the future?
Really?
The moment I was about to voice my thoughts, Nail Peeler, who had his
back turned to me and his head lowered, faced me.
No, he wasn’t exactly lowering his head. I couldn’t see anything above his
neck simply because there was nothing there. As far as I could tell by looking
between the leather of his costume, there was nothing under his neck either.
No, it’s not that there was nothing.
There was a transparent space under the leather attire.
But that was wrong too, since a simple space wouldn’t say, “Hey! Why are
you still here!? I told you to only think about Kozue, didn’t I?!”
Standing before me was someone transparent, angry at me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The transparent guy answered.
“I’m you!”

He screamed back at me with my voice. The moment the darkness that had
been covering his face back when he guided me to the Pinehouse Theater
went away, I clearly recognized his voice as mine. It sounded slightly differ-
ent from my voice when it reverbs inside my head, but I knew how my voice
sounded to other people. His voice was my voice.
He was me.
Me, who’d rebuked me, instigated me, protected me, and peeled off my
nails since I was taking too long.
He wasn’t me from the past or the future. I wouldn’t turn completely
transparent neither in the past nor in the future, and I wouldn’t wear all-
leather attire. But he was still me. What was he to me?
My soul?
 Had someone entered my body and pushed me out, like Kozue was, and
came to the Pinehouse?
But I was the only one inside my body. Could it be that my body had been
stolen from me in the future and my soul decided to meet the present me?
“Where did you come from?” I asked him.
He replied, sounding like he’d had enough of my bullshit.
“I came from you. Where else? Who else but you could create yourself?”
But kids are born from their parents, I was about to refute, but then real-
ized. “Only your body is born from your mom and dad fucking, that alone is
worth shit. You’re not only made out of your physical body. And I’m not talk-
ing about what kind of friends you had or what kind of teachers you had or
any of that trivial stuff that’s easy to recall. In the end, you create your own
self. Where you went, what you heard, what you saw, what you did, what you
felt, what you thought, all of that stems from you. You gave birth to yourself.
And you gave birth to me.”
I was me and he was me too, so had I created a double of myself?
Was the story of Mitamura Saburou seeing his own back inside the Pine-
house hinting at me creating a double?
“If you’re me, what am I?”
I asked...well, it felt more like these words leaked out of me. He answered
angrily.
“You’re not the first one who took the napkin, you fucking dumbass, stop
lazing around! You’re over 30, stop talking like a cringe motherfucker who
doesn’t even know who he is! Please. Of fucking course you’re yourself! You
reside in your body. Like a building on a lot. Do you have to confirm the ad-
dress every time to tell it’s your house!?”
If I was inside my body, who was this transparent me wearing bondage
attire?
No, I must’ve been asking the wrong questions.
He didn’t have a body. He was something born from me. Then this should
be the correct phrasing,
 “What part of me are you?”
He answered.
“I’m your feelings.”

“I’ll force you to protect Kozue. Okay? Only think about Kozue. That’s the
only thing you can do.”
Feelings had power.
But not just that.
Strong feelings or emotions towards something could gain a shape and a
voice.

What is a human?
What is a soul?
What is the mind?
What are feelings?
Instead of finding an answer to these questions, I realized something:
Oooh. Human bodies were merely a frame to shelter souls. Just like how the
Pinehouse was merely a frame for the bent space inside it.
That answered a few problems concerning Kozue.

23

“The panda was so cute,” Kozue said inside the spiky pig. The spiky pig was
cute too. “Why are pandas black and white like this?”
“Mmh~~.” I didn’t know. “Because they tried their hardest to look cute?”
“Pandas can talk?”

“Only that panda can.” Probably.

“What’s its name?”

“Runrun.”
 “Who are Konkon and Denden?”

“Her children.”
“What happened?”

“Looks like someone very evil hid them somewhere.”

“That’s bad. The poor ones.”

“Exactly, yeah.”
“Why are the names with n?”

“What?”
“Runrun, Konkon, Denden.”

“Pandas are cute, so people want them to have cute names, no?”
“N, n, is cute.”

“It sure is.”

“I will be Zunzun. Taking Kozue’s zu.”

“Zunzun, huh. That’s not cute.”

That made the spiky pig let out a high-pitched, ecstatic laugh.
“Then Disco, think of a cute one!”

“Ehhh~?” That’s hard. “Zunzun is fine.”

Kozue laughed again, “Nooo~.” This could go on for a while.
“Go back to sleep, Kozue. We’ll be home by the time you wake up.”
She’d fall asleep in no time anyway.

I jumped to the Princeton Hotel in Chofu with Kozue. I’d bent space to take
a look at room 1201 and confirmed Shakuko and the ‘seventeen-year-old Ko-
zue’ were sleeping, so I jumped into the small bedroom they weren’t using. I
put the spiky pig to sleep on one of the two beds of that room. She rubbed her
paws against my hands for a bit then slept. Alright, I needed to hurry, I
thought. I had to prepare everything before she returned to her own body. Of
course, I’d make it in time. Time wasn’t a problem for me. But I couldn’t quite
erase my feelings of back when that was the case, so I felt a bit in a hurry.
I first went to the Iijima Hospital near Chofu Station, then went around to
Toda Erika’s home in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture; Horikiri Maki’s home
in Chofugaoka, Chofu; Kawamura Yukie’s home in Ishigakijima; Shimada
Kikyou’s home in Yakushima; Tashiro Yurie’s home in Sendai; Konno
Narumi’s home in Saitama City in Saitama Prefecture; and then came back to
room 1201 of the Princeton Hotel in Chofu. I came back at the time right after
I’d put Kozue to sleep, so obviously her state hadn’t changed one bit. The
spiky pig was still sleeping.
After having checked that, I left the second bedroom and entered the main
one through the door in the back.
The two girls there were wearing the same pajamas borrowed from the
hotel and sleeping in similar postures...kind of bold postures. I chuckled, then
said,
“Kozue, Shakuko, I’m back. It’s Disco.”
“Eh, ah, welcome back!” the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ jumped up.
“Eh~? What time is it? ...You’re already back...you worked hard,” Shakuko re-
marked with sleepy eyes.
“Yeah. The case is over.”
“Eh~~? Wow!” the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ nearly screamed, so I put
up a finger to hush her.
“I have the small Kozue sleeping in the other room. Don’t wake her up.”
“Oh, really?” she whispered. “So, how did it go?”
“Well, I resolved everything at the end.”
“Wo~~w.”
“I also solved the Panda Lover Case.”
“Seriously? Really? You’re amazing, Disco~~.”
“Yeah. So, Kozue, can I talk with you for a bit?”
“Eh, ah, yes. Sure,” the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ tensed up. “What is
it?”
“The small Kozue is a bit too close here, so let’s go away. You mind?”
“Eh? Then hold on, I’ll change clothes.”
 “Ah, no need to, it’s fine. It might take you by surprise, but stay calm. First,
close your eyes. Don’t open them until I tell you to. Shakuko, I’m entrusting
Kozue to you.”
“Leave it to me.” Shakuko waved at us from the bed. “Enjoy the trip.”
I jumped to room 303 in Villa Hapira Kojimacho along with the ‘seven-
teen-year-old Kozue’ who had her eyes closed. Kozue and I’s house, plunged
in the dark. The change in environment seemed to have made her restless,
but the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ didn’t open her eyes. Good girl. “It’s a
little magic trick. Kozue, you may open your eyes now.”
“...Woah! Where are we!?”
“My house. You came here a few times too, don’t you remember?” “Eh,
ah, right. But how did you...” “I told you, a magic trick.” “Heeh...” “Joking.
We traveled here through space and time. But don’t mind that, you can go sit
in the living room. Want something to drink?” “Eh~...? Then water.” “Sure.”
I went to the kitchen and poured out two glasses of mineral water from a bot-
tle I’d kept in the fridge. “Did something happen at the Pinehouse for you to
want to talk?” the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ asked with a tense voice. “It
did. A whole lot happened there.” Really, a lot. “...Was that thing about bend-
ing time and space true?” “Yes. I thought you wouldn’t believe me if I didn’t
show you first-hand.” “That’s amazing...you can do that?” “You’re doing it
too. I could only believe and do it because I saw you doing it.” “Ahh...the
timeslips? But I’m not doing that on my own will.”
Because that was as natural to you as breathing is to humans.
One cannot bend spacetime without using their wills, yet you didn’t notice
yourself doing that. That’s because you are that will.
I took the two cups filled with water to the living rooms, and sat facing
Kozue on the sofa. I handed her the water which she brought to her mouth,
but her hands were shaking.
“What is it?”
“...Sorry, I’m kinda tense for no reason...ahaha. You know, you give off a
different impression than usual, Disco.”
 “Oh, sorry. That’s probably because I’m really sad.”
“Why?”
“Because of many things.”
“...Am I included in those?”
“They’re all about you. I don’t care about anything else.”
“...”
“But I can’t stay at a standstill forever. There’s a procedure, well, an order,
to respect.”
“...So I’m low in that order?”
“You’re the highest priority, in a way.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’ve no choice but to say it straight. I want you to leave the six-year-old
Kozue’s body.”
“...Are you telling me to go back to the future?”
Now what was the future and what was the past.
“No. I’m saying we shouldn’t push the six-year-old Kozue’s soul outside
of her body any more than that. She’s seen enough hardships already. I don’t
want her to suffer anymore.” I didn’t want her to be driven into faraway
plushies or corpses. “Plus, I think the Kozue living in this era has a right of
possession of her own body. That goes even if you two are the same person.”
“...But how am I meant to do that?”
“I will teach you how now. But before that, you must know a little about
yourself.”
“Eh? About myself?”
“Yes.”
“I am Inoue Kozue.”
“Yes. But you are not.”
“...What do you mean?”
“You’re not Kozue’s soul. You are her feelings.”
Just as Nail Peeler was my feelings.
“Eh? What does that mean?”
 “People can harden space with their minds. When the feelings born from
that mind are strong enough, they take shape. And probably look just like
yourself.”
“Eeh...? But I’m going back and forth between now and eleven years in the
future? How could that be?”
“You’ve always stayed here since you came, and never traveled anywhere.”
“I have.”
“You haven’t. You simply think you have.”
“But...”
“The Pinehouse really attracted the attention of the media. Many great
detectives died and came back to life there.”
“...”
“Well, I bet it was hard to write about that case, but there must’ve been
articles in the newspaper, the TV, and even the internet summing up what
happened. And yet, how come you weren’t able to find anything when you
came back to the future?”
“...”
“Did you go to the library?”
“I did...”
“But you didn’t investigate.”
“...”
“If you’d searched a bit, it would’ve come up immediately. Look.”
I traveled eleven years into the future (the past), printed out an article at
the library, and returned to show it to her.

The Pinehouse Case in Fukui was solved!

The frenetic battle of deductions that took place in the Pinehouse in West Akatsuki, Fukui
Prefecture, about the strange death of the mystery writer Anbyouin Owaru (real name:
Mitamura Saburou)-san finally met its climax. In this bizarre case where great detectives ex-
posed their unique deductions one after the other, then were later found with chopsticks going
through their eyes, caused not only the media but even the police forces to be shut out. Most of
the deductions that took place within the Pinehouse remain unknown to us, but in the end, the
case was solved by the Chiba Prefecture-born great detective Dezuumi Style (real name un-
known)-san. The police are currently hearing out the details of his deductions... (The Daily
Fukui)

I’d prepared ten articles. They barely touched on what actually happened
in the Pinehouse and wrote it off with a flimsy suicide theory, but that wasn’t
important. They could leave out the solution for all I cared.
“That much came out just from checking the newspaper archives.” I’d re-
ally gone to a library eleven years in the future. “This is my proof. I printed
that out at the same library.” I showed her a TV program from a newspaper
of 2017. I didn’t care about TV to begin with, but I chose this instead of articles
about social issues or cases just so she wouldn’t learn about them in advance.
I wouldn’t want to scare her. She was at the top of my priorities. “See? I can’t
imagine a high schooler like you being unable to search through old newspa-
pers at a library.”
“Ehh...?”
“Do you remember what you were doing when you weren’t inside the six-
year-old Kozue’s body?”
“Er~m, I had a boyfriend...”
“That’s just general information. What did you actually do?”
“...” The ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ opened her eyes wide. It seems
she’d remembered something. “Eeeh...?”
“You were only looking at yourself from the exterior. Am I wrong?”
Just as Nail Peeler was silently staring at me when I was in the Pinehouse’s
hall.
I imagined in my mind the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ looking
at the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s’ back, which made me recall something.
What Daibakushou had told us about doppelgangers as ‘Tsukumojuuku’.
Someone who sees their doppelgangers will soon die.
In fact Mitamura had died soon after seeing his back. And the ‘seventeen-
year-old Kozue’s feelings’ would soon leave too.
“You are simply a clump of feelings. You don’t have a physical body. And
you never thought of pushing ‘yourself from eleven years in the future’ out
of her body and stealing it for yourself. It’s kind of weird for me to say this,
but you’re the embodiment of the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s’ strong wish
of wanting to meet me.”
The ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’’ face turned beet red.
“The Kozue in the future probably remembered a bit about me.
Maybe...when she saw the news about the panda case?”
The Kozue in 2017 must’ve seen mentioned Runrun’s twin panda kidnap-
ping case in old newspapers or on the TV...or maybe she traveled to the hidden
year 1995 that was sharing the same space as her...? And that made her re-
member the weird foreigner she used to live with for a little while when she
was six?
As I was thinking that, Kozue told me, “I’ve never needed to remember
you, Disco-san. I’ve never forgotten you. I’ve always been thinking about you
somewhere in my heart. Well, no, it was probably...the fireworks.”
Ahh...
“I went to see fireworks with someone. At a fireworks festival in Chuo, on
the banks of Tokyo Bay. I went really close and was looking up at the fire-
works, when suddenly...”
That’s why the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ came on the night
of the fireworks. Across spacetime.
“The fireworks in Chofu were just as beautiful...it was really fun.”
“Yeah.”
“I was wearing a purple kimono...”
“And wooden sandals. We went to the Tama River.”
 “Yes. Then we ate grilled squid...” as the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s
feelings’ whispered that, probably because she was slowly acknowledging
her new identity as a feeling, she let out a tear. “...You were right. I finally
remembered. ‘I’ hadn’t forgotten, but I didn’t understand... I wanted to meet
you. I mean, the only time I...‘I’ had fun in my life was when I was with you,
Disco. Only you were kind to me, and you were the only one I felt at ease with.

“I can pretend to be having fun, mind you. I’m seventeen, not quite an
adult, but I can read the mood like normal. But I’m lonely. Very lonely. I’ve
always felt like I was acting, I didn’t know whether my friends were really my
friends or whether I thought of them as friends, and I didn’t get how it is to
like people. I can be kind, mind you. But I don’t know whether I like someone.
Despite that, I got a boyfriend...I hate it. In reality, I’m afraid of having sex.
But I still got a boyfriend. Isn’t that how it works? Isn’t it normal to go out
with someone if they’re kind and it’s fun to be around them? I just don’t want
to be alone. But isn’t my life a giant lie? Isn’t it normal to want something
genuine? To me, you’re that something genuine, Disco. I was still small, but
I really liked you. I loved you. I’m serious, okay? Please don’t make fun of me.
That’s the only thing I have.”

I knew. You showing up before me with that appearance in itself proved

that.
As I was moved by the words of the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ I had yet
to meet, that the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ brought me, my
heart was also moved for a different reason.
It seemed Kozue had been living a somewhat normal life for a girl her age.
She struggled, rued, and wavered about relationships. I felt so relieved I let
out a laugh.
 “I told you not to laugh at me~,” the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feel-
ings’ sobbed.
“Sorry, sorry. You got it wrong, I didn’t mock your feelings. I just felt
happy.”
“About what?”
“That the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ is doing fine, that she still remem-
bers me, and that you came to see me.”
“Really? Does it make you happy?”
“It does. Of course it does.”
“You like me? ...Or at least the six-year-old me.”
“Yeah. I do. And I probably like you too.” The ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’
giggled abashedly.
“We did naughty things too~.”
“No, we didn’t.” I panicked. “We didn’t, right?”
“Barely. But we went further than I did with my boyfriend, you know? I
think.”
Ehhh...?
“But then what’s your plan? Ultimately, this body isn’t mine, is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what should I do? Float around like a ghost? ...Don’t say you want
me to enter that plush in Kozue-chan’s stead.”
“That’s the crux,” I addressed the main matter. “When you enter the six-
year-old Kozue’s body, it changes to fit your size. Why do you think that is?”
“...Ehh? Isn’t it normal for my body to be shaped like me?”
“It is. People include their bodies in their overall image of their self. Their
self isn’t exclusive to one’s brain or head or heart. It’s their whole body.
That’s why the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ took your current
shape.”
But that wasn’t the case for the six-year-old Kozue. She didn’t have a
good hold of her self yet, and that’s why she could enter plushies or corpses
without changing their shape.
 Each human owns their own space. They fit their awareness of their self
in it. The ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ transformed the space that
was the ‘six-year-old Kozue’s’ ‘body’ just like how Mitamura Saburou had
turned the Cottage Natsukawa into the Pinehouse.
“If you enter the plush, it will take your shape. But that’s...you know.”
“Mm~~m. How about a mannequin?”
“That’d be the worst.”
“Right? I wouldn’t even be able to eat.”
“So I have a suggestion.”
“...? Ah, I see. What is it?”
“It’ll be a surprise, but don’t panic.”
I showed her a different article I’d prepared.

A licenseless truck went on a rampage in Chofu City causing five deaths.

On the morning of the 21st, a truck crashed in the roundabout of Chofu North Station in
Chofu City. In this incident where many employees and students commuting to work or school,
trying to board their bus or cars, got run over, another victim, Muroi Shakuko (22, student),
passed away in the hospital. The cause of death was a blow to the head. The Chofu Police
continues their investigation of the suspect, a self-proclaimed musician (26), whom they ar-
rested on the scene, changing the charges of accidental infliction of injuries to accidental in-
fliction of fatal injuries. (July 23rd 2000)

“Ehh...?” the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ looked at my face in a daze.

I took her bewilderment head-on.
Everything had a meaning. In fact, part of Hakkyoku Sachiari’s deduction
was right. It wasn’t pointless. Shakuko was dead, and the thing about
Shakuko fabricating fake official documents and internet articles was actu-
ally fake.
 I asked Hakkyoku,
“Is ‘Kozue’ Shakuko?”
Hakkyoku answered. “Ultimately, yes.”

That damn great detective. In the end, no one was entirely wrong.

24

“Fuyuno speaking,” I answered on the phone with a hoarse voice. Yeah,

that was about right. “I’m Disco Wednesdayyy, is Shakuko-san around?”
“Yeah, hold on a second.” I handed the phone to the ‘seventeen-year-old
Kozue’s feelings’ residing inside Shakuko’s body, which I’d fixed completely
when I got her from the Iijima Hospital in Chofu on the 23rd of July 2000.
“Hey Disco, don’t give out your name so casually,” the ‘seventeen-year-old
Kozue’s feelings’’ face was bright red because she was embarrassed at what
she’d need to say next, so when she saw me grinning next to her, she gave me
a kick.
She’d become a bit raunchy, but she was still as naive. Kozue was still cute.
I mentioned Norma earlier and her face turned into Norma’s, so I pan-
icked. “What, you like this face, don’t you?” she pouted. She morphed the
space on her face to tease me. In some ways, that was another cute aspect of
her, but honestly, I wished she’d stop.
“Aw shit. That lit a fire to my lower half. I’ve got a wet...”
She was so abashed she averted her eyes from me. Should I tell her what I
was about to do to ‘Shakuko’?

I then carried the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ inside Shakuko’s

body to Villa Hapira Kojimacho on the 14th of July 2006, and parted with her.
 “Say, Disco, what should my name be?” the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s
feelings’ asked.
“Hm~~m.”
She’d said a few times she didn’t need to be Kozue.
“Enough for now. Think of one before we meet again. You have an inex-
haustible amount of time you can use. My only conditions are for it not to be
‘Norma,’ and, let me see, something that sounds like your partner.”
“Ehh...?”
“See ya.”
The ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ made a Norma-like face and
left with Shakuko’s body.
The twists in my life were really something. I thought, letting out a sigh.

But I couldn’t make the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ my part-

ner. I would encounter many more dangers in the future. I’d face people able
to bend or even cut and paste portions of time.
I had to return to the Pinehouse on the 14th of July 2006...or was it already
the 15th? Anyway, I needed to return to that night. My real partner, Mercury
C, still had Nail Peeler hanging there while waiting for me.
Shall I go, I thought, but I felt like looking at Kozue’s face once more, so I
came back to room 1201 in the Princeton Hotel a last time before starting in-
vestigating the case Runrun had entrusted me with. The ‘seventeen-year-old
Kozue’s feelings’ as ‘Shakuko’ had fallen asleep a second time after I took the
‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’ who was actually the ‘seventeen-year-old Ko-
zue’s feelings’ to Villa Hapira Kojimacho with me. It was seven o’clock, I
came at this time thinking it should be fine to wake her up. But no need to. I
had time. I looked at her sleeping face for some time. The summer sun rose
above Chofu beyond the lace curtains and shot its rays of sunlight onto the
‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’’ face. I recalled the face Kozue had
when she grew into the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’, but at this point I
couldn’t tell if I liked it any more or less than Kozue’s Norma-faced Shakuko.
Women weren’t about their appearance. At least to me.
I loved Kozue, I didn’t care which face she had.
And I would come back to my loved ones no matter what.
I’d gained someone I loved and who loved me. I would return here as soon
as I was done with the case. Before the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’
woke up and started searching for me.

I took a peek at the second one...or well, at the face of the one I loved just
as much, inside the small bedroom.
The six-year-old Kozue was awake; she was sitting on the floor and doing
something.
“Kozue.”
“Ah, Disco, good morning~.”
“What are you doing?”
“Eh~~? Thinking about the panda name. Kozue panda.”
I looked at what she’d written on the memo pad of the Princeton Hotel on
the floor.
 Hey you can’t write ‘chinchin,’19 I thought at the moment, but there was
no way Kozue would think of such a name.
Especially in her case.

The first thing I’d found dubious was why, when the ‘seventeen-year-old
Kozue’ entered the ‘six-year-old Kozue’s’ body, it changed in size, yet when
‘Shimada Kikyou’ entered it, her body stayed just as small.
It was ‘another personality,’ so the ‘fourteen-year-old’ ‘Shimada Kikyou’
should’ve made the ‘six-year-old Kozue’s’ body grow and change her face.
But she didn’t.
What did that mean?
There was only one answer.
The ‘Shimada Kikyou’ that appeared then had the same spatial awareness
of her body as the ‘six-year-old Kozue’. In other words, they were already
sharing the same body.
It’s relatively common for children who were subject to sexual abuse in
their young days to develop dissociative identy disorder.
But Kozue’s symptoms were special. That’s because she had a special
power. One I’d taught her myself.
The power to control spacetime.
I tried so hard to protect Kozue I ended up having her accompany me for
too long inside the Pinehouse. The spiky pig in my pocket had seen the same
things as I had, heard the same conversations as I had, and experienced the
manipulations of space I’d demonstrated.
Since she was so young, she’d yet to gain a good awareness of her own
body, which heavily changed how she viewed the world and how her mind

19
In Japanese, some characters may be replaced with circles to censor crass or forbid-
den words. That’s why, looking at this image, Disco thought Kozue had written ‘chinchin,’
Japanese for ‘penis.’
perceived spacetime. And that made everything more complex. A normal dis-
sociative identity disorder would consist of a single body switching between
multiple personalities, but Kozue had infiltrated other people.
These people being Toda Erika, Horikiri Makie, Kawamura Yukie, Tashiro
Yurie, and Konno Narumi.

I paid a visit to these six on the night the Pinehouse Case was concluded.
None of their faces looked anything like Kozue’s, but they were all Kozue.
These poor girls, who had been connected with Kozue for fourteen years
through a bizarre spacetime corridor, were each made to carry Kozue’s
trauma.
But the truly poor ones were the personalities Kozue had ejected when she
implemented her own substitutive personalities into the babies; the real Toda
Erika, Horikiri Makie, Kawamura Yukie, Tashiro Yurie, and Konno Narumi,
who were never allowed to grow up.
I managed to find these six, who’d been chased outside of their bodies.
They were inside plushies for the incoming baby or in their siblings’ fig-
urines. I took each of their bodies, shrunk their arms and legs, and made them
round. They then all took the shape of embryos, which meant Kozue had sto-
len their bodies back when they were still inside their mother’s womb. As
these six souls hadn’t even gotten to be born, they couldn’t feel sorrow. I
placed them into Buddhist altars or kamidana inside their houses. When there
weren’t any, in their mother’s bedroom.
I didn’t believe in any religion, but I believed in death and a life after.
Someone dying didn’t mean their soul died. I knew that.
Of course, I didn’t forget that this had brought sorrow and grief to many
people, but I rejoiced at learning that Toda Erika, Horikiri Makie, Kawamura
Yukie, Tashiro Yurie, and Konno Narumi were now empty. That meant Kozue
no longer needed her other personalities, which subsequently meant Kozue
was healed. Kozue would definitely recover. I sure hope ‘Shimada Kikyou,’
her sort of guardian personality, who came to warn me, would wind up being
her last additional personality.
I would protect Kozue for that to come true. To do that, I jumped at the
location of each body just as they emptied, and left scribbles over their bodies.
‘Panda Lover,’ ‘Pandas, so nice!’ ‘I ♡ PANDA,’ ‘Yaah! Pandas are so cool,’

‘Pa-panda Panda ♪ Panda Ron-ron ♪’ ‘Pandas sure are cute.’

These six scribbles were another ouroboros instance that appeared out of
thin air. But I wouldn’t have been here if they didn’t exist. Everything was
destined to happen.

But that didn’t mean I could be lenient in my efforts. Thinking, feeling,

yearning, wishing, hoping, just having strong emotions of the sort could
change destiny. Having the strongest emotions out of all meant that your
destiny would come true. I would love Kozue more than anyone.

Inside room 1201 of the Princeton Hotel, in the small bedroom, early in the
morning, I was looking at Kozue. As I was hardening my love and will, I no-
ticed.
I finally noticed.
The vertical ‘◯N◯N’ Kozue had drawn looked like ‘0202’ when looking
at it from the side, from my position.

I still don’t want to go near room 202.

 Right then, something hit my head. Someone was waiting for that mo-
ment.

“Hahahahaha! Dumbass! Die!”

Hoshino Masato laughed. I fell on the floor and he continued beating me
up. My hazy mind tried to bend spacetime but I couldn’t. Because of that guy
that appeared before me.
He was wearing glasses.
On his right arm was a tattoo of a black bird.

The man outside spacetime.

“Heheh! It’s my first time doing a kid! Lemme have a go at it please!”

Hoshino Masato was ecstatic.
The Black Bird Man smiled.
“Don’t you worry, we have plenty of time. Let’s relax and have fun, shall
we.”

No, that can’t, I thought.

 Was it going to start?
In front of my eyes?

With a pencil still in hand, Kozue looked up at the man. Her body was
shaking.
“Disco~.”
She called for me.

Stop it!
Please, stop it!

The Black Bird Man healed my fingers. I got my fingernails back and Mer-
cury C’s bite mark disappeared.
“Be glad it’s not your dick at least,” he said as he cut off the middle finger
of my left hand with a knife. “Foreigner dicks are too much for a kid’s pussy,
after all.”
He made my left middle finger heal, then cut it three more times.
“NOO! NOOO! DISCO! DISCO! SAVE ME! DISCO!” Kozue was crying for help.
I called for her, but the Black Bird Man was blocking the spacetime
around me and my voice didn’t reach her.
Part 4: Ark
 1

My name is Odoriba Mizutarou. The literal translation of ‘odoriba’ in Eng-

lish would be ‘dancefloor,’ but in Japanese it means the relatively large space
you find midway up the stairs, like when there’s a turn. In English, the ap-
propriate word to designate that is ‘landing,’ so why do we Japanese call it a
dancefloor? Does that space look large enough to dance on to us? I didn’t get
it.
Apparently ‘odoriba’ can also refer to performing in a red light district; so
given that my first name has the kanji for water and that I’ve never seen my
parents, my ‘odoriba’ was probably meant in that sense. In Japan, ‘water
trade’ encompasses jobs highly dependent on popularity, where one directly
interacts with a certain type of customer. Like at restaurants, bars, or night-
clubs. My mom might have been one of the many poor prostitutes, exotic
dancers, or escorts in Detroit. Or, since she’s Japanese, a geisha. And my dad
might have been a pimp overseeing her, a bar manager, the owner of a strip
club, or the boss of a geisha bar.
I didn’t even want to know.
I’d left Detroit and now lived in the northern suburbs of Troy. Only upright
white people lived here and poverty was nowhere to be seen; it was reputed
as one of the safest and most boring towns in all of America. A few Japanese
families lived here, but I was probably the only orphan.
Not having parents wasn’t a problem for me. I lived in an orphanage, at-
tended school, studied, and made friends…that said, my grades weren’t any-
thing special and I didn’t have many friends. Honestly, I was a bit of a geek.
But I didn’t care for Japanese manga or anime. My passion was astronomy.
Stars and galaxies and all of that were so cool.
The roof of the public school I went to had a prefabricated storage room
where we could keep telescopes, and we, the astronomy club, used it as our
clubroom. It was the only room that had never been used for sex in the whole
school. The last bastion where one could escape all the trivial disturbances
happening outside. On a certain day, I was alone with Norma Braun in that
room, dimly lit by the orange Autumn sky, but, as expected, it seemed like
we’d get to protect our bastion for another day. To begin with, Norma still
hadn’t calmed down since she’d slapped the cheek of the princess of the
premises, Dana ‘Chanel Chanel’ Strummers, in the middle of the cafeteria
that noon, so any romantic mood was at least as far away as the Lyre constel-
lation. Well, not like I liked Norma or was attracted to her anyway. My body
just instinctively fluttered at the situation of being alone with a girl. “Doesn’t
she just look stupid when she gushes about Chanel like a fangirl?” Norma was
going off on her. “Did you know? When the Nazis were occupying France, that
scummy Coco Chanel found herself a lover in Germany and gained a privi-
leged life just for herself. Like, I know beauty is skin-deep and that won’t
change, but I just can’t tolerate superficial pride and dignity.” I knew that
Norma didn’t mean what she said, that she was simply stringing together
meaningless words to come off as aggressive. For fashion or politics or any-
thing in that department, Norma usually made a good distinction between
her ideas and others’. She was careful enough not to come to a rash judgment
at the smallest occasion. But if I had to guess, Norma was throwing out these
jabs at Strummers and at Chanel as a sort of punishment against herself for
acting this way and for having slapped Dana. After all, she was in an astron-
omy club and claimed to hate violence more than anything. That’s why I
didn’t reply and simply let her do as she pleased. Of course, I also knew that
she wasn’t the type to say that in search of consolation or validation. I was
barely listening to her complaints. Seated next to Norma, I was merely pon-
dering about the spelling of Coco Chanel’s name. The COCOC at the beginning
of her name looks like Pac-Man advancing while munching on some dots.
Pa-chom-pa-chom-pa.
C→O→C→O→C.
九十九十九.
Tsukumojuuku.
 “After France was liberated, Coco fled to Switzerland, but none of the
French or Americans already wearing Chanel clothes or jewels by that point
blamed her one bit for it. Even I don’t care about that. It was war time. I won’t
comment about the path others took to survive. Mizutarou, do you think my
irrepressible hatred for Dana Strummers will one day fade away? Like if I em-
igrate to Switzerland and hide in the mountains for a decade?”
“...I don’t think there’s any point to it if you hide? I mean, if you’re com-
paring it to Chanel. But if the opposite happens and Strummers vanishes for
a decade in the Alps while you continue leading a normal school life, I bet
you’d forget about your hatred and think of her as a somewhat pretentious
girl.”
“But I can’t drive Dana Strummers away to Europe. Like, physically. I
don’t have that power. It’d be all good if I could grab her by the collar and yeet
her off to the other side of the Earth, but I can’t, so I must go away, but I don’t
have the money nor time to go to Switzerland, and obviously I’m not plan-
ning on doing it. One doesn’t just move to another country because they don’t
like their classmates. And moving to another city doesn’t make it any less ab-
surd.”
“Yeah. If you simply hate someone, you’d normally just take it on yourself
and endure.”
“Endurance, eh. I’m already doing that quite a bit, you know? At least as
much as most people.”
“I bet.”
“How much do you think Dana Strummers has to endure? Of course, I’m
not superficial enough to say someone can’t have any problems just because
they’re rich, but you will never convince me that Dana is stomaching and en-
during even close to the average amount.”
I wasn’t really paying attention to her complaints, but as soon as I started
replying to her, I got even more sick of it. She was only speaking to vent off
the anger burning inside her heart, something only girls seem to do. It’s like
how dogs let their tongues dangle and pant to cool their body down. She was
coming up with boring insults to cut down on her hatred and get the last
word… Well, it wasn’t a live argument, so she couldn’t; but anyway, she was
going off. I couldn’t put up with her. Why not have sex instead? It’s not often
we’re alone, let’s fuck. I tempted myself with these impudent babbles. The
stupidity of it all surfaced in the form of a long sigh, and naturally, Norma
noticed me letting it out. She looked apologetic for making me listen to her
futile complaints, but she mouthed none of it. It’s not that her pride didn’t let
her; it seemed Norma thought apologizing led to making excuses for herself
or trying to justify her actions. Norma would rather take on many hardships
upon herself and be hated than take a stab at forgiveness for her failures with
mere words. I personally thought it was off and that there’s no need to be that
strict with yourself, but that’s how Norma was.
After some time, she broke the silence.
“I wonder, why am I so disdainful of Dana Strummers? Even if she was
wearing Marc Jacobs or Gucci or Muji instead of Chanel, I’m sure she’d get on
my nerves just as much. Mizutarou, is there someone you hate without any
reason or that you instinctively can’t tolerate?”
I thought a little. “Hm~m. There isn’t, but I think I get you.”
“How can you if you’ve not experienced it?”
“I absolutely hate jellied fish.”
“Jellied fish?”
“Yeah. I can’t bring myself to eat it. I’m totally fine with jelly or puddings,
even jellied salads, but I just can’t have jellied fish.”
“Oh, food… Is it a Japanese food?”
“Yeah.”
“But preferences in food only come in the form of whether it’s good or bad.
You see, I’m not saying Dana Strummers is a horrible person or that her phi-
losophy in life disgusts me, okay? Frankly, she’s beautiful and attractive and
cute and elegant and pulls off that one Chanel sweater like no one else. Her
smile is amazing too, and the way she stands out from all the girls surround-
ing her makes you weirdly accept that she deserves her spot at the center. Yet
I hate her! I know that despite looking superficial at first glance, she comes
out with surprisingly reasonable opinions and looks like she can think just
fine, but I know that deep down, maybe so well hidden no one else can sense
it, Dana Strummers is fundamentally mistaken, I know it! And for your in-
formation, it’s not jealousy or envy, okay? I’m going in a totally different di-
rection than her and I don’t give a damn about what she does. But even if she
goes far away and disappears from my life, just knowing that she exists and
continues to live the same way makes me uncontrollably mad! I can’t believe
no one else hates her as much as I do and that irks me even more! A world not
hating Dana Strummers isn’t worth anything, it should perish once and for
all. And I even hate that she makes me think stuff like that! Mizutarou, can
you really not empathize? Even against someone other than Dana Strum-
mers?”
What animosity, I thought, and burst out laughing. Norma realized it her-
self and giggled too.
“Ahaha. Of course not,” I said.
“Geez... You’re so peaceful, Mizutarou,” she said with a smile. “Is it be-
cause you’re Japanese?”
“Beats me. But I don’t see how your origin can dictate that. Also, I’m not
especially peaceful.”
“Really?”
“Obviously. I have my own stuff going on too.”
“Mizutarou, do you think my hostility towards Dana Strummers will one
day calm down? Would it go away if I don’t go to Switzerland and just live
normally? Will I get any kind of closure and be able to move on with my life?”
“M~m… Well, I feel like your experience is kind of meant to be, given the
phase we’re at in our lives. In other words, it’s just because of our age.”
“So you think I hate Dana Strummers because of puberty? You think my
hormones can’t stand Dana Strummers? Hey, don’t try to put me in a box
with phrasing that just sounds nice to the ear. My hostility isn’t anything like
the cliché worries teenagers have. It has to do with a fundamental defect in
Strummers.”
“Or in you.”
“...” The quite-pretty astronomy club member and sophomore glared at
me, then sighed and looked away. “...Yeah. There’s probably something
wrong with me.”
“Where’s the problem? Isn’t it normal to have someone you can’t like for
no reason?” I said. “I mean, it’s not like you need a reason to like someone to
begin with.”
“You do, like because they’re kind or cool or that kind of stuff.”
“Then do you require your boyfriend to be kind? Won’t you go out with
him if he’s not cool? Are you restricting your choice to only men that fit these
criteria?”
Norma tilted her head and frowned. “Mmm~~m. I’ve yet to really fall in
love with someone, so I’ve no idea.”
I looked around, then said, “What about stars, then?” Telescopes, refer-
ence books, star charts, and many astrophotographs taken by previous club
members. “Is there any reason for you to like stars?”
I’d heard from Norma herself that she’d liked looking up at the sky ever
since she was young and felt an attraction for stars, so it felt natural for her
to start using scopes to look at Saturn’s rings or the stripes of Jupiter, all that
you can’t see with your bare eyes.
Norma looked around too and confirmed where she had landed. “...Stars,
huh. Yep. You got me good. Yeah, I don’t have any reason to like stars. So that
can happen too. Maybe Dana Strummers’ adoration for Chanel is the same as
mine for stars. She might’ve become that way because it was the natural path
for her. And maybe it’s simply natural for me to hate her. I concede.”
“It’s not like everyone will like stars because they’re pretty,” I drilled in
further. “If the glimmers of stars were that powerful, the astronomy club
would blow out Dana Strummers or the cheerleader club or all these idiots
wearing matching jackets and we’d be seated at the center of the cafeteria,
wouldn’t we? If you even do as much as glance up at the sky on the way back
from a party, you’d see many sorts of myths, paintings, deep mysteries, and
an infinitely vast place for imagination to toy with. But not everyone stares at
the sky for hours, and we eat our lunches where nobody can see us. It’s even
worse when we’re only between male members, you know? We’ll look back
and see a hundred chewing gums stuck on your backs. Many imbeciles
proudly decide to trample on us as if they’re acting for some righteous reason.
Isn’t that weird? But that question doesn’t pop up in the minds of these
brainless freaks. They simply do what they do. They’re not searching for rea-
sons. And we, too, continue being the victims, but it’s not like we try very hard
to fight against it. It’s the same thing. We don’t need any reason to accept the
situation. We hate them too. We both loathe each other, and the strong rule
over the weak. It’s natural. There’s no changing it. So you never need a reason
to prefer one thing over another.”
Norma looked at me in silence for a moment, then laughed, “That sounds
so lame. I don’t feel any inferiority. I think of myself as being on equal status
with anyone else.”
Well, maybe you do, I thought. She could maintain just the right amount
of distance to not be shunned nor despised; how lucky that must be.
Haah, this time instead of purely sighing, I was half-mocking myself.
“Then, in the end,” Norma said, “the naturally-born Dana Strummers hater
that I am will never get rid of this hatred? Is there no saving me?”
“You’re fine,” I replied. “I told you, it’s probably temporary.”
“But that won’t change as long as I’m me?”
“You’ll still be you, but the seventeen-year-old Norma is different from
the twenty-seven-year-old Norma or the thirty-seven-year-old Norma. It’ll
end one day. You’ll forget all about Dana Strummers before you realize it.”
“Will I change?”
“That’s what becoming an adult entails.”
“...I see. Right.” She then put up a normal smile. “Thank you, Mizutarou.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Japanese people are good listeners, eh.”
 “...For that too, I don’t think origin matters,” I said. I tried not to think
much about the kiss.
“But there’s no one else like you anywhere around me.”
But we were both still seventeen. There was a ton of stuff we didn’t know.
But Norma should know that too, so all the comments about ‘Japanese people
are’ might be a sort of service for me. It’s not like she thought all Japanese
people were like me. After all, she was still the same old Norma who never
judged people easily.

We changed the topic of conversation.

We nonchalantly left the topic of Dana Strummers behind and started fo-
cusing on what we were meant to talk about, what we were most passionate
about: the universe. As is natural with most exchanges between good friends,
the changes in topic were abrupt, but none of us noticed that.
I bet we could follow the leaping between subjects because we shared an
invisible something, more than a simple addition of words or apparent con-
text. And for us, that something was talking about the universe or stars.
This time we started talking about one of the hottest topics in our astron-
omy club, as well as one of the universe’s most fascinating mysteries, how
the universe started and how it would end.
Apparently yesterday, or the day before, anyway, recently, Norma had thought of a wild
theory, so she was grinning as soon as we started talking about it. “You see, long ago, people
thought the universe was vast, constant, eternal, and peaceful. That’s the classic approach of
the steady-state theory,” Norma began as she drew a simple graph. She wrote ‘time’ under
the horizontal axis and ‘size of the universe’ next to the vertical axis, then drew a perfectly
flat line, perpendicular to the vertical axis and noted it ‘∞?’.
“But for a whole 60 years after Edwin Powell Hubble discovered Hubble’s
law in 1929, most people accepted the cosmic inflation theory, right?” Norma
explained as she drew the cosmic inflation theory graph. “There was the Big
Bang about 13.7 billion years ago which caused the universe to expand expo-
nentially during the first 10 to the power of minus 36 seconds, and since then
it’s continued to expand at a steady pace, but at the very end there won’t be
any new stars and all the old stars will eventually break down into black holes
and the black holes will try to fuse with each other to create a supermassive
black hole, but the expansion of the universe will be too fast to let that happen,
so the black holes will scatter away and eventually vanish due to thermal ra-
diation, leaving only photons, but with only photons flying around, the uni-
verse will cool down until the Big Rip when all matter constituting space will
be elementary particles that will only get further and further away from each
other...so the universe will cease to fulfill its function, but it doesn’t end there.
The supermassive universe filled with only elementary particles will expand
into infinity. In other words, the universe as a space doesn’t have an end. If
we compare it to an animal, it topples and suffers for a long time before fi-
nally dying, but its corpse will continue to rot away forever, it won’t ever stop
rotting away...that’s the gist of the theory.”
She took a breath.
“But isn’t it weird to think of something as having a start but no end?”
She said as she finished drawing the graph. It starts out with a rapidly in-
creasing line that then mellows out but continues to go up, and eventually
picks up the pace again as it extends outside of the axes.
“But there’s also the idea of the Big Crunch instead of the Big Rip...” she
started drawing a third graph while explaining it.
“That’s the oscillatory universe theory. There’s a Big Bang that expands
the universe, but at some point the expansion turns into a contraction, and
ultimately the universe will return to its original high-pressure state. Still,
there needs to be a counterforce to the expansion for the contraction to hap-
pen, but it’s not like the boundaries of the universe are made out of rubber
bands, so you’d need something able to pull back the universe to make it work.
At least it’s certainly beautiful on paper. Maybe because with its cyclic nature
it forms a more acceptable form of eternity, like with the classic steady-state
theory. There is no start nor end.”
The graph for the oscillating universe theory starts with a rapid increase
followed by a mellow increase, and continues with a symmetrical mellow de-
crease followed by a rapid decrease, the whole looking like a funnel, and that
repeated over and over.
 “These are the current three big models of the universe, okay? And you
see, I took all three of them and fused them rea~~lly boldly to create a brand
new theory of the universe’s expansion.” She was looking at me with stars
sparkling in her brown pupils. I couldn’t come up with anything to say, so I
nodded and waited for her to continue. To us, these three models were the
ABC, the base. One step before boredom. But looking at Norma’s ecstasy, I
understood the low tension preceding it was but a preface. She started her
real explanation, but with something that took me off-guard.
“When you want the total of 1 to 100, there’s the trick of using 50 and 51
being the turning point, no? Every pair from 1&100 to 50&51 add up to 101.
And since there are 50 of them, you get 101✕50 = 5050. Right? My idea is sim-
ilar to this trick.

“Look. The second graph, the cosmic inflation one, has the ‘size of the
universe’ on its vertical axis, so the lines in the graph represent the boundary
of the universe, and if you draw a vertical line at any point of that line, it rep-
resents the volume of the universe at that point in time, doesn’t it? My idea
is that you divide the graph at its middle point, turn the second half upside
down, and flip it over so it overlaps with the first part. With that, if you end
up with the line for the Big Bang and the line for the Big Rip perfectly over-
lapping, the total of the size of the universe in the first and second halves will
be identical.”
 Neat, I thought. Norma added a second horizontal axis pointing in the op-
posite direction, and as a last touch added ‘start and end’ at the origin.
“Doesn’t this look great? It’s a steady-state, inflating, and oscillating
universe. However, instead of having the size of the universe oscillate, time
is oscillating here. Do you get what this graph entails?”
 “That there’s another universe living in a counterflowing time beyond the
end of the universe, right?”
“Though that other universe is identical to our space and flow of time,”
she put up a big smile. “This theory shouldn’t contradict the physical theory
or observation in favor of the expanding universe, and gives an explanation
to the force causing the physical contraction of the universe for the oscilla-
tion, don’t you think? In other words, one of the universes that’s expanding
due to the explosive energy of the Big Bang pushes on the other and makes it
shrink. But that other shrinking universe works with counterflowing time, so
despite looking like it’s shrinking for the universe expanding, it’s actually
expanding too.”
Fair enough, I thought. This graph was quite beautiful. But that’s just ap-
pearances, how good were its contents...? “How are the universes at the fold-
ing spot...uh, time? Are there two identical universes side by side?”
“Yep.”
“Eh? Then we and the entire universe are being copied and reproduced
somewhere else?”
“It’s not something that’s actively happening, you and I and the whole
universe have a copy acting in parallel. If we were on the verge of crossing
this folding point, there would be another, slightly older set of us talking here.
We will grow older as we get closer to the folding point, but they will grow
younger, and we will meet at the folding point.”
“So we’ll have twin-like existences of us overlapping with us?”
“Hmm, naw, wouldn’t they rather be like yourself from an adjacent mo-
ment? Like how there is a you from a moment before and a moment after, but
you are still basically the same...”
“Ooh...so the soul and feelings of ‘us from the former half’ will be trans-
ferred to ‘us from the later half’? In an instant?”
“No, no. We don’t have one soul for two bodies, each body has its soul and
lives in its flow of time. It’s just that they are identical, no need to bring any-
thing, they will have identical feelings or souls either way.”
 “...Ooh...I see...but how about, instead of this complicated folding graph,
you just overlap two of the same graph? Wouldn’t it be far easier to under-
stand?”
I said, and drew a graph myself. It consisted of two symmetrical inflating
universe graphs overlapping upside down with an additional horizontal axis
pointing the opposite way.

“But with this, wouldn’t there be two different universes overlapping as

they each progressed?” Norma commented. “And they spend their life like
twins, both pushing on the other while living in opposite flows of time. But
isn’t it impossible for them to have the same lifetime and expand at the exact
same pace?”
“What if they’re not two different universes but a single one repeating?”
“I mean, these universes end with elementary particles being scattered
and start with an explosion of these same particles, right? There’s no way
that would make the exact same universe twice.”
“Right...”
 “Let’s say there’s another universe with another set of us. Wouldn’t that
be creepy? They would both be us and not us, no?”
“...Yeah.” I said while thinking to myself it wasn’t that far-fetched to im-
agine the exact same universe being born every time. The two universes in
that theory would really behave like twins and bear the same DNA infor-
mation ever since their birth by some unknown means, no? Then, somewhere
in the gigantic space of the other universe, there might be another puny me
acting as a counterweight. Otherwise there’s no way two universes with dif-
ferent histories and structures would constantly be equal in power,
right? ...Or maybe only well-balanced twin universes can come to existence,
and they overshadow the innumerable only-child universes that get aborted
and vanish into nothingness?
I looked at Norma’s graph. It was indeed a novel way of thinking. Thinking
the Big Bang and the Big Rip would perfectly match was a new hypothesis.
It’d mean the Big Rip would be of a much bigger scale than what we ever im-
agined and the universe would expand at an alarming rate. That, or the cur-
rent universe was expanding faster than our calculations, which would mean
we’ve overestimated the size of the Big Bang. I thought my arrangement was
more reasonable as it didn’t include an abrupt folding in time in the middle
of history, but having two twin universes of the exact same size and energy
might be a stretch too. Anyway, Norma’s folding universe model was quite
interesting to consider as an idea. It was a bold idea with surprisingly few
holes. Very elegant.
How very Norma-like, I thought.
Of course it was, she’d made it herself.
“If this is true, time travel might be easier to achieve than expected. Be-
cause you know, we’d have a universe at a different point in time right beside
us. There’d be no need to travel through time itself, we’d just have to go be-
yond the boundaries of the universe,” I said, making Norma giggle.
“Well, if we can make a machine capable of catching up and passing the
expansion of the universe.”
 “...And by the time we’re done making that, we might have entered the
second half of the universe, and instead of traveling to the future we’d end up
in the past.”
“Why not give that machine to us in the past then? I’d gladly take it.”
“Ehh...? What about all the paradoxes that would entail?”
“Ahahaha. It’s too complex. I can’t think that far down the line. My brain
starts aching when I think about these annoying problems.”
“What are you saying, didn’t you come up with this graph?”
“This was a sudden idea I had. I didn’t wring out my brain over it. Just in-
spiration. I’ve already forgotten where it came from, and frankly, it felt like
it came from nowhere.”
“Heeh...”
“Let’s go home. It’s starting to get cold.”
The sun had mostly disappeared behind the fields.
I told Norma,
“But this idea is pretty amazing, you know.”
“Ehehe, thanks,” she replied. Her expression then turned lonesome. “But
you know, finally presenting it in front of someone else, it feels like it’s not a
big deal. Yet I was so sure that the great idea I’d been toying around with in
my mind would win the Nobel Prize and it’d be a ruckus like something on
the level of the Copernican revolution.”
That’s how new discoveries work, I bet.

Was there any reason behind me thinking ‘That’s how new discoveries
work, I bet’? It seemed like I could empathize to a certain degree with the idea
of ‘A great idea I’d been toying around with in my mind turned out to not be
that big of a deal’, or at the very least imagine how it feels realistically. Why
could I feel that way?
I certainly did. But I didn’t know why.
 For new notions to become normal…to become pre-existing knowledge.
When something spreads, it cools down, like in the universe.
Oh, I see, so all the energy released during the Big Rip at the end of the
second half of the universe gets stored in the backwards-flowing first half of
the universe. All energy and mass simply gets exchanged between these two
universes and nothing gets lost.
A solution as elegant as Norma, I thought again.
I parted with Norma and thought to myself as I drove through Troy at dusk
in my Prius.
Norma’d found my twin universe theory ‘creepy’ and rejected it, and even
I found the idea of coincidentally identical twin universes nigh impossible.
However, it might be possible for two universes to be born as a pair. Looking
around me, many things in this world existed as pairs. Like weather. Ascend-
ing and descending airflows meeting create atmospheric convection. Same
for currents in the ocean. And for economics, and population density; almost
everything related to humans works in such a way that if X rises/increases, it
causes Y to fall/decrease. The same goes for fundamental laws on a micro-
scopic level. Like atom structures. Electrons revolve around the core of atoms
on the K, L, M, and N shells set at different distances, and on each trajectory
electrons are paired with other ones which have an opposite spin. Yeah, if we
think like that, wouldn’t it be fair to say that the root of matter is pairs? ...Oh,
that works for the origin of life, chromosomes. That spiral structure. We are
made out of paired matter. Then it shouldn’t be all that ‘creepy’ for the uni-
verse to be similar to that.
Plus, this twin universe theory was hiding yet another possibility, I real-
ized.
I drew a new graph inside my head.
It took the expanding universe one, but added a symmetrical version of it
at the end. Twin universe A and twin universe B exist simultaneously, but
they alternate between expanding periods = active periods and passive peri-
ods = resting periods. In other words, when twin universe A is active, twin
universe B is resting. That would make the folding in time Norma came up
with more natural, wouldn’t it?

Good, I thought. This should be simpler and, well, easier to wrap your head
around. Moreover, this satisfied the condition of a steady-state, inflating,
and oscillating universe Norma was obstinate about. ...Though it was now a
shrinking universe too.
Thinking that, I remembered Norma’s folding universe theory and
laughed to myself. It felt so much like a compromise between the classic
steady-state, the cosmic inflation, and the oscillating theories. Haha! This
isn’t politics, you don’t have to make everyone happy! But Norma was a nor-
mal American girl, she wouldn’t get the idea of converging the three schools
of thought into one just to make everyone satisfied. That rather feels like
something Japanese people might do, but obviously Japanese scientists
wouldn’t let unrelated reasoning interfere with their work…hopefully.

I lived in a pretty orphanage shaped like a circular theater in a remote area

of Troy. The Pineapple Home. The kids inhabiting the Pineapple Home mostly
ranged from zero to eleven or twelve years old, and I was by far the oldest at
seventeen years old. No American families wanted me because in 1988…es-
pecially in Michigan, near Detroit, many people lost their jobs due to the rise
of Japanese automobiles causing a decline in the local automobile industry.
That worsened the safety of the city and instilled a hatred for Japanese people
in some…it might be easier to live thinking like that, but no, there was surely
a problem with me. Almost no one talked to me at school except Norma, and
really no one in the Pineapple Home. It’s not like they came at me and called
me a jap, but it felt like the people who talked to me all eventually gave up on
something inside me and left. Well, I might have also just been rude for driv-
ing a Toyota Prius in high school when there were Ford, GM, and Chrysler
manufacturers nearby. But I merely wanted a hybrid, it’s not like I chose a
Japanese car because I was Japanese. I might have been similar to Norma in
that I felt obligated to justify every single thing like that. I parked my car all
the way in the back of the Pineapple Home’s visitor parking lot so it wouldn’t
get smashed by a neighbor with a hammer during the night, and entered the
facility. As I did, the twelve-year-old Sharon Styron came and talked to me.
That was a first.
Something unusual was happening.
Sharon’s face was grim. “Mizutarou, do you know of Lord Whiplash?”
“Lord Whiplash?”
“He took Double J away.”
“Ehh?” Joaquin Joseph was Sharon’s cousin of the same age. “Took him
away…where to? And who’s that ‘Lord Whiplash’ guy?”
Lord Whiplash, ruthlessly whipping the kids he captures inside dark holes.
“No idea,” Sharon said. The round tears welling up in her eyes, hidden
behind her swaying, straight, blonde bangs, ran across her cheeks and fell on
the floor. “But last night I heard Double J crying. I heard the whip’s sound
going whu-psh. Double J was crying so loud it sounded like his throat was
exploding. ‘Mommy!’ ‘Daddy!’ he was calling. But his papa and mama are
dead, so I was angry. I thought it was stupid to ask dead people to help you…he
was being an idiot and I got angry...”
I didn’t get it. “Sharon, are you sure that wasn’t a dream?” Wasn’t JJ still
here with us?
 “But, look,” she showed me her right arm and pulled up her sleeve with
her left hand. She had a long, red bruise on it. It was already dry, but it still
looked bloody.
“How did you get this?”
“Lord Whiplash said I was next. He came next to my bed, pulled my arm
out of the blanket I was hiding in, and whipped it.”
“...Did you tell this to the staff?”
“Lord Whiplash said telling adults was useless. He said they weren’t our
parents so they didn’t care about us and wouldn’t save us.”
“That’s stupid...” I could barely hold myself from sighing at Sharon’s in-
fantility for believing something so idiotic. That ‘Lord Whiplash’ doesn’t ex-
ist, Sharon. That’s a fictional character you made up in your mind.
“Mizutarou, is being weak a sin?” she asked with a serious face, startling
me. “...Does Lord Whiplash bully us because we kids are weak and evil?”
“What are you saying?” Her nonsensical question irked me. “Of course
not.”
“Lord Whiplash said so. Children are weak. Being weak is evil. Lord Whip-
lash wants to whip the backs of every child in the world, but most are pro-
tected by their parents, so he cannot. But since we have no parents, we have
nowhere to hide and he can catch us easily. He says that children are weak
even with their parents, but without them they become even more weak and
even more evil. Uugh. Gh, uuuugh, aaaaah,” Sharon started crying. “What
does it mean that being weak is evil? What should we do?”
Lucy and Sheridan, two close friends of Sharon, came over when they saw
her crying. They were weeping along with her. But it wasn’t infectious crying.
They’d been crying even before joining us. “What happened?” I asked them,
surprised.
“We’re scared, Mizutarou,” Lucy answered. “He’s going to take us away
one by one and do horrible things to us.”
She then let out a loud wail, which seemingly acted as a signal for yet again
more crying voices to echo. But it wasn’t the three before me being amplified
by the round hall’s echoes. I couldn’t see them, but many children were cry-
ing in their own rooms; their weeps leaked through the gaps of the door—or
passed through it—and rained down on us.
Something was truly amiss.
Was it a case of mass hysteria, I wondered. The bruise on Sharon’s arm
must’ve been from something else she’d completely forgotten about. But
could it be that the dream she’d seen by chance yesterday—maybe because of
the bruise—had become a reality after she woke up and saw it? Seeing the
oldest of the kids, their unofficial leader, Sharon, afraid made the younger
kids doubly afraid; she synergistically resulted in even more fear, and so on
and so forth. That was typical for ghost stories shared by children, but clearly
this had exceeded the level where one could enjoy it. The smile I’d barely been
able to keep up disappeared from my face. I had to calm down.
Lord Whiplash didn’t exist. Children should know that too. Especially a
twelve year old.
“Sharon, do you not remember anything else about this bruise? Maybe
you injured yourself while running around?” I crouched and asked her again,
however, she only firmly shook her head. Her eyes were serious, she was
looking straight into my eyes and didn’t seem to be lying.
“I’m telling you! It’s true! Double J disappeared!”
“He must be out for...” a bit, I was about to say. And actually, it wasn’t rare
for JJ to sneak out by his window and go play in the morning or evening, even
during times he shouldn’t have been out.
But I couldn’t finish my sentence as Lucy interrupted me with a yell. “JJ is
the third one, Mizutarou! Do you not know?”
Third one...? “Who are the other two?”
“James and Lisa! How do you not know!?”
“Well, I didn’t...” Being the only high schooler in the Pineapple Home, I’d
been too detached from that. “Is that real?”
“It’s every night!”
“Every night? What is? You mean one by one?”
 “Yes! Every night someone is taken away!”
“So they went away...and haven’t returned.” Wouldn’t it be a scandal if
that were true? Kidnappings? And the kidnapper guy would go by the stupid
name ‘Lord Whiplash’... No, if it was a standard kidnapping, would the kids
be taken one per night instead of three at once? No way. The Home looked as
usual, at least to me. If there were kidnappings going on, the staff would warn
us about it. They’d try to have us be careful. Right. Why hadn’t I heard about
the kids disappearing every night?
“Do the staff know about it? About the three missing,” I asked Lucy, who
shook her head. Eh, really?
“You haven’t told them?”
“It’s not that. We don’t have to report every little thing, they know. But
they won’t do anything. They won’t protect us. They just want us to behave
like normal!”
“That can’t be...” It made no sense.
So this wasn’t a criminal case? Or were they hiding information to not
make the children panic? But if more kids might get abducted, wouldn’t it be
normal to put measures in play to try to prevent that?
Or were they confident there wouldn’t be any more victims? James, Lisa,
and JJ were all twelve years old...hold on, the other twelve year old, Sharon,
was told she’d be next!? Why weren’t they protecting her? Was that threat
actually something Sharon imagined, and the Home’s staff had concrete ev-
idence pointing at the disappearances coming to a term?
No, think more, there should be a logical explanation.
Maybe I didn’t know about the Lord Whiplash disturbance simply because
the staff decided to keep me out of it.
Anyhow, I needed to speak to the staff, I thought. The moment I stood up,
Sharon hit her limit and screamed in a half-craze.
 “They are all being whipped somewhere! Ahh, Double J! Poor soul! I had
to protect you, but I couldn’t... Lord Whiplash, however, will come again to-
night! For sure! He will take another one away! Mizutarou, become every-
one’s father!”
Ehh?
Sharon and Lucy were staring at me. Sheridan was hanging her head and
said, while crying, “Mizutarou, save us.”
What in the world could I do? “The Home’s staff are...”
“These people are mere strangers!” Sharon said. “They won’t protect us!”
Lucy agreed, “And they won’t believe that Lord Whiplash exists.”
Well, yeah, of course, I thought. Decent adults wouldn’t. But Lord Whip-
lash aside, if James and Lisa and JJ had really gone missing, they should’ve at
the very least contacted the police, so an investigation should’ve started. And
if the police hadn't come here, the scale of the incident shouldn’t be any-
where as big as a kidnapping. They probably just ran away, I thought. But was
it possible for three kids to run away one by one three nights in a row? Doing
it one by one to confuse the staff was a good strategy, but it took a lot of cour-
age to plan an escape alone, which seemed unlikely for kids. Especially for
orphans who had no one else to rely upon.
Anyway, I needed more information, I thought. I was out of the loop. If
that was due to someone’s intent, I wanted to know the reason for that too.
“Where are the staff? I want to ask them a few questions...” I asked Sharon.
“They all went away. Double J vanishing must have scared them.”
Dumbfounded, I looked around the hall flooded in cries. Indeed, usually
you could always see one or two people, but there was no one. The doors to
rooms 8 and 9 on the first floor…the staff room and the office room, were
wide open, and, as far as I could tell, empty. To begin with, it was weird for
adults to not be there when so many children were crying.
All the adults had deserted, leaving only children.
Why...what had happened?
 It was messed up, I thought. The Home was run by seven people. Were they
all that senseless? Ran away...? There were zero-year-old babies in here!
They wouldn’t get away with just being fired. If the Child Welfare Department
sued them, they’d all be charged. For them to be fine with that, did they have
a good enough reason to abandon not only their job, but their whole life?
The bruise on Sharon’s arm.
The three kids who’d gone missing.
What if these weren’t accidents, runaways, or crimes from outside people,
but the doing of the Home’s staff...?
Abuse.
That would explain why Sharon made up a fictional character in Lord
Whiplash. She couldn’t accept the reality of her being mistreated by the peo-
ple she trusted, so she discharged the crimes onto a fictional character. And
given the general response of the Pineapple Home, maybe all the children
present here shared that feeling?
And what if I...the only Japanese kid, had been left out of the abuse because
I was seventeen...?
‘Lord Whiplash’ being a metaphor. If that was true, what in Hell did the
staff do to the children?
What about James, Lisa, and JJ? Where could they be? Being the eldest, did
they decide to take it upon themselves and run to alert Child Welfare or an-
other authority? By sneaking out at night...one by one? Couldn’t be. If kids
wanted to do something of the sort, they’d form a group and go together. The
more numerous they were, the more convincing they’d be. Plus, even if they
were righteous, betraying the Home staff must have been stressful.
Could they have been trapped somewhere to prevent a rebellion? Some-
where secluded, where they would be smacked until they became obedient?
Could the staff have done something so unfathomably cruel?
No idea. Ever since I’d grown up…for the last five years or so, I hadn’t spo-
ken much with them. New people had joined in the meantime, so there were
some I’d barely interacted with. I was in no position to decide. That said, I
didn’t remember ever feeling this kind of eerie and tense atmosphere in the
Home. The children always seemed to behave normally too… Still, I was living
detached from them, so I wasn’t fully confident in that.
Anyway, looking at the facts, there was no denying the staff were behav-
ing strangely. And there’s no way people who’d run away leaving children
behind could be decent people. There might have been an evil outsider at work
too, but there was no telling what kind of person had infiltrated the Home
either. I couldn’t tell if they simply didn’t care about protecting the kids or
were afraid of getting dragged into a scandal, but none of them were innocent.
They’d completely abandoned all responsibilities, both regarding work and
education. If anything happened to the kids, they’d be blamed for it, no doubt.
I wanted to believe in an outside crime, but given the current situation, that
might have been unlikely. So the adults went away after the third consecutive
night that saw a child disappear, we had no guarantee a fourth kidnapping
wouldn’t take place, and everyone who knew that took flight...?
“Mizutarou~~,” Sharon wailed, making me realize the biggest reason
why I was being relied upon.
I was the only one left.
“Okay, fine,” my hand was forced. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Will you protect us?”
I nodded. “I will.” In total, there were 48 children living in the Pineapple
Home. Subtracting the missing three and myself, 44 people. These 44 pan-
icked children needed protection. They needed to be with someone who
didn’t believe in Lord Whiplash.
And there was something I could do.
I could call the police, contact Child Welfare, explain the situation, and sue
whomever I had to sue. The idea of charging the staff I’d been in the care of
made me feel bad, but I knew I could do it. I hoped the kids would be fine until
the police...maybe even the FBI, found JJ and the others. I had to hurry.
I crouched a second time and told Sharon, “I’ll do something about it.
We’ll get the missing three back too.”
 Unexpectedly, upon hearing this, Sharon jumped at me from point-blank
range.
“Thank you Mizutarou!”
She hugged me with her soft and sweet body. I really wasn’t expecting it,
so I thought for a second she was attacking me, but I quickly relaxed. This
would’ve never happened if they had other adults to rely on. I knew she only
clinged onto me because she had no other choice, but it still made me feel
happy. I’d been one until not so long ago, but children really are small, thin,
and frail. Usually, interacting with something small...like a rubber band, a
coffee cup, or a water bottle; doesn’t make you consciously aware of their
small sizes, but children do. Just like me, they have a head, a torso, and limbs
extending from it that eventually divide into fingers, but all of which are two
sizes smaller than me. It was surprising to think such a small body could con-
tain as many feelings, emotions, and thoughts as I had. There was still more
I hadn’t realized. Children’s temperature...well, their warmth. Either because
she was crying, because she was a kid, or probably both, Sharon’s arms and
shoulders and face were warm. Moreover, though it might sound weird, their
weakness gave them a certain strength. When she wrapped her arms behind
my back, a strong sense of duty of protecting this creature, smaller and
weaker than me, surged into my mind. But I didn’t produce that. Sharon had
pulled that out of me. “Mizutarou, you’re not an adult, but you’re not a child,
you must be strong!” I put up a wry smile. I had no clue how strong I was...at
least, I had no confidence in my physical strength. But I’d soon call many
other adults, there was no need to worry. “It’ll be fine,” I tell her. “I will pro-
tect you all.” Lucy and Sheridan came to hug me too. My whole body was hot.
It made me sweat, however, I could tell there was another strong heat inside
my body. Children should all be protected. Being a parent or not doesn’t mat-
ter. One must protect the children near them from danger. That is one’s nat-
ural role, as well as the vocation bestowed to us by life.
I set on contacting the police first. I’d ask the officers to protect the chil-
dren. But what about after that? Wouldn’t having these frightened children
be scattered to different orphanages simply increase their fears? How many
would be able to trust adults again after being betrayed by the Pineapple
Home’s staff? What kind of shelter could put them at ease and make them
forget about Lord Whiplash? How could I make them not worry about their
friends who will be taken far away? ...I should ask for everyone to be moved
to the same shelter. If that couldn’t be done, I knew it’d be difficult, but I’d
ask for regular patrols around the Home at night. Should the staff be called
back too? Shouldn’t I give the kids an occasion to retrieve their trust towards
adults? Ahh, but it still wasn’t clear whether some of them were abusing kids,
so that couldn’t be done...making out who was to blame would take time, and
there was no telling if the method to do that could be trusted, so it was no
good either way. I couldn’t rely on the Home’s staff. At this point, I couldn’t
trust the absent staff. I needed more reliable adults. It was already night, but
could the Children Welfare dispatch someone for us? Or would we just be
moved to different shelters? How likely was it that there was a facility able to
welcome 44 kids at once?
But thinking about that wouldn’t lead me anywhere. People with the nec-
essary knowledge and experiences would tell me the answer.
I left Sharon and the girls behind in the hall, went into the empty office
leaving the door as wide open as it was, and picked up a phone’s receiver from
one of the four desk islands. I put it up to my ears, but heard no beeping sound.

That beep beep was gone. The receiver served no purpose. The phone line
led nowhere. I tried pushing on the hook myself just in case, but no reaction;
I felt the receiver growing heavier in my hands. That unforeseen fact made
my head spin. I realized how heavily I was relying on the fact I could contact
other adults. Everything I’d planned was based on that possibility...I’d
thought I could be useful in consoling them while the police or Child Welfare
took care of the rest.
 But the phone didn’t work. Things wouldn’t go my way. I’d have to protect
all of them until other adults came here. And there was no telling how long
that wait would be. It might never even come. Would the staff come back in
the night to check on how we were doing? ...No, they wouldn’t! They wouldn’t
do that! As if it was a coincidence I couldn’t contact the police. The phone line
had been cut. It wasn’t an accident, someone had done it intentionally!
I checked the plug and the phone line. It seemed to connect to the jack port
in the wall just fine. I tested all four phones on the desks, none of them
worked. As I was still holding the fourth receiver, I started thinking. We were
still getting electricity in the form of light, so the problem must have been
coming from the phone line...from the outside. It wasn’t snowing, nor was
there a tornado. I didn’t feel like asking myself how likely it could be for re-
cent phones or phone lines to break spontaneously like that. Someone evil
severed all communications in the Pineapple Home to isolate the children
and me. I’d seen the staff working as normal in the morning...so the sabotage
had happened after that. Then there was no doubt they were planning on tak-
ing away more children tonight. They made it so we couldn’t ask for help...so
they might not be sneaky about it like when JJ got abducted in the middle of
the night. With no one around, we’d panic, and that panic would attract peo-
ple...that is, if they saw us. How were we meant to contact anyone without
phones? If sobs or yells could alert people, someone would already have
checked up on us. The culprit too. Were they thinking we wouldn’t act after
realizing the staff members were gone and the phones didn’t work...? No,
even if that was their expectation, no kidnapper would stay at home and eat
while watching the TV before taking a long bath and finally slowly get up from
their sofa and set out to abduct a few children. They must be checking on us
from somewhere. Were their goals already set in stone? ...Would they really
try kidnapping Sharon? Then did the whipping bruise on her arm have a
meaning?
Anyway, the children weren’t safe at the moment. This should be consid-
ered a pressing danger. Our surroundings would become darker and darker,
and it’d be easier for malicious people to move around sneakily. The inhabit-
ants in Troy would soon eat dinner and turn on their TVs; there was no guar-
antee anyone could hear us screaming from this remote orphanage.
We had to act, and quick.
I put down the useless receiver and thought about other ways of contact-
ing the police. Running there myself was an option, but I couldn’t leave the
frightened kids behind.
How about sending some kids there? But the oldest one was Sharon who
was twelve. It’d be too cruel to send a few panicking kids outside alone when
the sun was setting...
That said, even though the Troy Police Station might be too far, they could
walk to the nearest house in ten minutes. Five if they ran. The Whites didn’t
have kids, but they had elderly people living with them; someone had to have
been home...unless they went out to an event. Boys might get to borrow their
phone. Since JJ and James, the two twelve-year-old boys, were gone, the next
ones were the ten-year-olds John and Lamar and Hugo. Lamar was a crybaby,
but he could run fast. These three might make it to the Whites’ house.
Coming up with a realistic plan managed to calm me down.
I had to appease the children.
I left the office. The three girls in the hall were anxiously staring at my
face, so I smiled to reassure them. Sharon then rushed up to me. I spoke
loudly so everyone could hear me from within their rooms. “Erhm, could eve-
ryone exit their room? Let’s all gather in the hall. Don’t stay alone, let’s all be
together for the moment.” I tried to sound as cheerful as possible. “The staff
is out today, so we’ll hold a party just for us kids. Bring out games and let’s
have fun! Ghosts won’t approach bright rooms!” Doors opened and the or-
phans peeked at us. I could see John and Hugo. Though they could feel the
ambient anxiety, only they didn’t let it get to their heads. They weren’t crying.
Good. “John! Hugo! Come down!” I directed them a smile, to which they re-
ciprocated with a wry smile, as if wondering why I was speaking to them
when I usually didn’t, and came down. Seeing the eldest boys move, the oth-
ers accelerated. Everyone was gathering in the hall. “Is everyone here?” I
asked, starting to count the kids, when Sharon told me, “Lamar is missing.”
Eh? I looked at the second floor. A shrilling sound echoed from behind the
only closed door along with Lamar screaming. “AAAAAAAAAH!” Lamar
sounded like he was extremely surprised at something, but the next moment
he suddenly broke into weeping, so he hadn’t discovered something mean-
ingful. Then laughs echoed.
“Ah hah hah!”
The kids in the hall all started screaming, but they got overshadowed by
yet another shrill sound...the sound of whipping.
Of whipping? Don’t tell me—
Whuuuuu-pshhhhhh! It was like a tiny, sharp thunderbolt fell in that
room.
“GYAAAAH! WAHHHHH!”
Lamar’s wails bursted through the door a second time. Followed by yet
more laughing. “Ah hah hah! Crying is futile! Wailing is futile! No one will
save a stranger’s kid! No one cares about a kid not even loved by their family!
Ah hah hah! Weak, so weak! Weakness is evil! Weakness is a sin! This is pun-
ishment! The punishment you deserve!!”
The fuck was that? A raid? No one in the Home had that kind of voice. Was
it a human? A hoarse voice reminiscent of a boulder exploding into dust after
falling down a cliff, a stiff voice, and a shrilling voice echoed in sync. What
kind of human could produce such a sound?
“GYAAAAAAH! GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!”
Overtaken by fear, Lamar couldn’t muster the energy to form proper
words.
It was Lord Whiplash.
He really existed. Swinging his whip around. Lord Whiplash, ruthlessly
whipping the kids he captures inside dark holes. The kids’ imagination had
taken shape.
 “Woah,” John and Hugo exclaimed before running away towards the en-
trance, followed by the other kids.
“Listen! Wait! It’s dark outside, it’s dangerous! We don’t know who could
be hiding there!”
There was no guarantee Lord Whiplash was alone. He might have had ac-
complices. Or there might’ve been some other evil waiting for the kids to be
left alone. Something that existed because they were scared.
John and Hugo, the leaders of the pack, were ten, so they could visualize
their fears more realistically. They managed to endure the fear...or rather,
they froze after imagining what kind of horror could be lying in wait for them,
and started giving instructions to the panicked kids. “Don’t go outside! It’s
dangerous!” I heard John scream, however, the children were so terrified
they didn’t hear him...they couldn’t hear him.
At this point it would be too difficult to convince them Lord Whiplash
didn’t exist.
He’d emerged and wouldn’t disappear.
After confirming John and Hugo managed to stop the deluge of children
by making a barrage at the entrance, I headed to room 8 on the second floor.
If he had a body, I should be able to fight him. I should be able to physically
chase him away. I could use my strength on him. Halfway through climbing
the stairs, I realized something and turned around; instead of running away
with the others, Sharon and Lucy and Sheridan had stuck with me.
“Stay downstairs!” I screamed, but Sharon argued back. “No! We’ll go
with you!” I had no time to spend on persuading them. Running up the stairs,
I screamed, “Stop it!”
Whuuuuu-pshhhh!
“HUAHHHH! WAHHHH!”
“Ah hah hah! The puny being dares to leak filth and cry! Just you wait, I
will rub that filth over the wounds on your back later! Ah hah hah!”
The whip and Lamar’s cries and the sadistic laughs continued despite my
pleas.
 “Stop!”
I kicked the door as soon as I reached room 8. Baam! I’d faintly hoped it
would slam it open, but the Home’s doors were sturdy, so it didn’t budge. I
then tried the door knob just in case, but...it was open!? The fuck!? I’d taken
my hands off of it, so I hurriedly twisted it back and pushed the door open,
however, inside there was no Lamar, nor anyone suspicious. Just the white
sheets of the bed drenched red in blood, and traces of piss and shit on a corner
of the bed. But the room didn’t smell that much because the open window was
letting cold air aerate the room...he must’ve taken Lamar out through the
window! I rushed to it, swung the curtains open, and looked outside. Dark
shapes were dancing outside, but those were just the branches of the ever-
greens. I leaned over and brushed them aside to check if they were hiding a
strange man, but nothing. I then looked for Lamar and Lord Whiplash among
the bushes, but still nothing. They’d vanished... Had he used these branches?
While carrying Lamar? “They went away?” Sharon, sided by Lucy and Sheri-
dan, asked me from beside the bed. “Yeah...looks like we chased him away,”
I said, but that was no good. I should think of ways to get Lamar back. I faced
the window again to search for their escape route when I heard screams
sounding like a giant ball of glass had exploded, this time coming from the
hall! The kids who’d been near the entrance were all returning to the hall
while yelling and crying; the sound of their footsteps made me realize. The
entrance...outside! Shoot! Lord Whiplash hadn’t run away, he went around to
the front entrance!? I left room 8 along with the three girls and looked down
on the orphans in the hall from the hallway. The kids were running in all di-
rections aimlessly. Some closed themselves into their rooms while others
rushed up the stairs headed to room 8 where I was. Lord Whiplash’s laughs
once again echoed from beyond the door of the entrance across the hall.
“Ah hah hah! How weak! So small! Fast on your legs and useless with your
fists! Filled with fear and devoid of courage! But I cannot blame you! You just
don’t know! So I will teach you! Weakness is a sin and sins are evil! You, small
and weak in body and mind, are the most evil of all! You, only running away
in fear, are the worst of all! I will train you with this whip! I will bash the ugly
weakness out of you! Come out and line up. Accept your punishment grace-
fully. Sins are to be rinsed as soon as possible. Be ashamed of the sinfulness
of your weakness and accept the benevolent whip! Come on, rejoice!”
He then lashed his whip, whu-psh, causing another wave of screams and
weeping. I was shaking and couldn’t move nor talk while Lord Whiplash was
laughing again, but then Sharon and Lucy and Sheridan grabbed my back
while crying, which surprisingly calmed me down. “Don’t worry. I’ll drive
him away.” I produced a yell so loud I didn’t know I had it in me. “Give back
the children! Then leave forever!”
No response from beyond the door.
I continued. “Children are innocent! They’re weak and small, but that’s
no sin! You fucker! You are evil for tormenting kids! You should be punished!
You’re a disgusting coward who picks on the weak!”
Silence returned to the hall. The kids were holding their breaths as they
waited for a response from Lord Whiplash.
How should one fight someone holding a whip? I didn’t know if he was an
adult, but he probably wasn’t a kid at least. If he was as good as a tamer, being
weaker than lions and tigers, I had no chance to win barehanded. I imagined
a whip hitting me. Whips acted differently depending on the material they
were made out of. Ones made out of bamboo or wood would bruise my skin
and cut it. Ones made out of leather would scrape my skin and tear it off. If
that was crocodile leather with scales or anything bumpy, it would rip my
skin and flesh apart. How was I meant to fight against that?
But for some reason, that seemed like a trivial matter to me... After all,
Lamar had already eaten it, and so had JJ and James and Lisa probably. They
had gotten their skin torn and ripped, and maybe even their flesh too.
Shit! He’d ruined the smooth skin of children as if treading on a flower bed.
All the while scoffing at their screams of extreme fear and pain!
 I took Sharon and all the kids who’d been hiding behind my back down-
stairs and gathered everybody in the hall. The doors around us opened, and
the kids who’d been hiding steadily came out.
“You all wait here and don’t move.”
In their rooms, Lord Whiplash could enter by the window. In the hall, at
least they’d be more likely to escape from him...was it alright to think that?
Would everyone properly move as I expected them to when the time came? I
wasn’t dealing with 43 of myself, they were children aged 12 at most. The
eleven-year-old Melinda was carrying the zero-year-old Tuffy...the staff
were a bunch of cowards! They were the most cowardly out of anyone! Why
had they abandoned us?! It wasn’t about me...I could handle myself alone. I
was confident I could run away from a pervert or two. But what could I do with
over 40 kids in my care?
No. It wasn’t about what I could do. I had to do it. Anything. At least punch
him once. Fight him. If he had a whip, I’d just have to close the distance
quickly. Right. That logic must work. Against someone armed, whether it’s a
knife or a spear or a whip or whatever, the best method is to ram into them
before they can use the distance to their advantage. That was my only option.
But was I capable of that?! I’d never been in a brawl, not even once. I mean, I
was in the astronomy club. I’d never even had sex. That didn’t matter. Shit.
Shit. Who cares if I’d never fought. I had a situation laid before me. I had no
choice. There was nothing I couldn’t do. I had legs to close the distance to him.
I had fists to hit him. I could attack him in the stead of the children. I was
faster than kids. My fists hit harder than kids’. That’s all I had, so I would use
it.
I’d dash as soon as I opened the entrance door. I’d aim for Lord Whiplash,
ram into his stomach, and punch him as much as I could. I’d show him my
dashes and rushes. I wasn’t that short for a Japanese person, and I wasn’t as
thin as most astronomy club members. Plus, I was against a pervert whose
pleasure in life lay in whipping kids. He must be weaker than other adults.
After all, he loathed kids; of course someone like that would be rotten both in
his body and mind. He was the kind to go for children because he was too weak
to beat adults. A cowardly insect. I’d crush him. I’d do it. I’d push the door
open and run to him until my breath couldn't handle it and punch him and
push him onto the ground and kick him half dead. Okay. Good.
Here I went.
“I called...” the police! I was about to say, but I realized he was likely the
one who cut the phone line. Was he going to play all or nothing tonight? Prob-
ably. Things weren’t like last night. The day prior and the day before that the
phones were still working and the staff was acting normal. But they ran away
today. And the phones broke. He’d taken JJ away yesterday, but tonight he
whipped Lamar right next to us...Lord Whiplash was going full out.
The loud laughs had stopped beyond the door. Was he calmly waiting for
me to make a move? With a big grin on his face? Was he smiling at the idea of
trapping us in the Pineapple Home? Was it that fun to imprint fear and con-
fusion in our minds?
Or was he really gone? That wasn’t impossible. He was taking away one
every night...James, Lisa, and JJ, so he might’ve satisfied his quota with La-
mar tonight. That would calm me down. I couldn’t deny I wished for that. I’d
prefer to avoid an action scenario where I open the door and clash against
him...
But I should avoid thinking that. I should avoid enjoying such a cowardly
conclusion. That wouldn’t be fair to the kids trusting me—even if that wasn’t
actual trust, but a desperate hand extended by someone about to drown.
“Give the kids back!”
I screamed. I left the kids at the center of the hall and approached the door.
Still no reaction from beyond the door.
He might’ve moved to another window.
Then what should I do? I spun my gears while walking towards the en-
trance. If I didn’t see anything suspicious beyond the door, should I call eve-
ryone and escape together? Should we all run for the Whites making sure no-
one gets lost on the way? But we had a zero-years-old baby, no one-year-old,
but two two-year-olds and one three-year-old. They obviously couldn’t run
at our pace, and the kids carrying them would get slowed down. Maybe some
wouldn’t last until we got there, and some might panic and run off in a com-
pletely different direction, and we might split into multiple groups. Lord
Whiplash might attack the weakest-looking groups.
There, I remembered my Prius. My hybrid car! I still had my keys on me.
How many would fit inside if we tried stuffing all the smallest kids there?
What if we beat the Guinness world record? If we put a few in the trunk, make
pressed sushi on the back seats, and have some sit up front without it getting
dangerous to drive, I bet we could fit half of us. It’s not like we were going on
large American roads. The eldest kids who wouldn’t fit could run parallel to
us. We’d reach the Whites in five minutes, and the town proper in fifteen.
Children are flexible enough to make it work. Alright. I’d open the door, and
if everything looked safe, I’d call over everyone and head to the parking lot.
If any weirdo tried assaulting us on the way, I’d run him over with my Prius.
I wouldn’t let him lay a finger on kids. Alright, alright! This was it!
I stood before the door and looked back on the kids. All 43 of them were
anxiously looking at me.
I put my hand on the knob.
Naturally, if I saw anyone likely to be Lord Whiplash, I’d become Mike Ty-
son in his prime. Closing in with a dash and landing the first hit. I wouldn’t
let his whip come into play. I’d jump under the arm that old guy raised in a
hurry and bam, get him in the chin or the stomach, wherever his guard was
down.
My legs were shaking. Don’t get flustered and fall over.
My arms were shaking. But you’ll be fine. Keep these fists tight.
My lips were shaking. My teeth chattering. But that shouldn’t pose a prob-
lem. You don’t need to raise a battle cry. Wouldn’t it be more confusing for
the opponent to get attacked in silence? I felt like it would...but who knows? I
had no real experience, after all.
 Argh, worrying wouldn’t get me anywhere. I was simply losing inertia. I
was lowering my already-nonexistent fighting abilities.
Don’t doubt. Don’t think. Your plan was set in stone. You decided on it. Do
it! Yeah! Show them what the Japanese spirit is like! Charge in! Kamikaze
time! I twisted the knob, swung the door open, and stepped outside while
screaming banzaaaaaai in my head. After the first step, I could tell. There
wasn’t anyone in the Pineapple Home’s roofless entranceway.
I stopped in my tracks after the third step and looked around. Nothing du-
bious in the woods surrounding us.
I could see my Prius lit in orange in the parking lot down the hill beyond
the entranceway.
I checked around me once more, but still no one.
That whip idiot had left.
We just needed to get to the prius and we’d escape!
I turned around to the entrance and baaam!, the door slammed shut be-
fore my eyes, and got locked almost instantaneously.
How!? Who!?
I grabbed the knob but it was firmly locked in place and wouldn’t move. 43
different screams echoed from behind the door and made the frosted glass
vibrate. Followed by more condensed thunderbolts shaking the air. Whu-psh,
whu-psh, whu-psh! Lord Whiplash spoke from just beyond the door.
“Ah hah hah! I have no time for a gutless brat who’s not even a kid nor an
adult!” His voice was progressively getting farther. “Here I go, the Lord is
harsh to the weak! Cry and wail and scream for my greatest pleasure!”
The footsteps of the kids running away in confusion got overwhelmed by
their screams, making me stagger. My knees failed me and I had my hands
against the ground. I was having a panic attack. But if I sat, I wouldn’t recover.
Shit! How had he gotten behind me!? Was he hiding behind the door!? No,
I’d been looking in all directions, I’d have noticed any irregularity on the
smooth circular walls. Even if he was quick, I should’ve spotted him. There’s
no way I could’ve missed him!
 “Stop it!”
I tried to break the frosted glass with my fists, but it was too thick. Whu-
psh! Whu-psh! Even from outside I could hear him probably whipping the
floor to isolate children. I picked up a stone from the entranceway and
slammed into room 1’s window. Bom! Not even a scratch. That was too fuck-
ing solid, even for security glass!
I switched to the neighboring room 12’s window and shuddered. The room
was dark and the window was covered in a liquid, blocking the view. The faint
light coming from the entrance barely reached it and revealed that the liquid
was blood. Whu-pshhhh! Followed by a new surge of blood splashing onto
the glass panel. Lord Whiplash laughed again. “Ah hah hah hah! Your small,
round back already ran out of skin and flesh! Your spine and ribs are fully vis-
ible! I can see your heart and lungs move, but can’t you even muster the en-
ergy to scream? Why are you so weak? Why are you so evil? Be strong the next
time you are reborn, okay? At least have parents to protect you. Got it?”
“STOOOP!” I screamed and hit my right fist against the window.
“Ah hah hah hah!” he laughed again, then ran a finger across the bloodied
glass pane to write something. Squeak, squeak, whee-whee-squeak, squeak.
It was kanji. He’d flipped it so it was easier for me to read.
 弱悪強罰. ‘Weakness is evil and will be strongly punished.’
“Fuck off! Stop it! You asshole! You coward!”
I picked up another rock at my feet and hit the window. I figured I might
have a chance if I repeatedly hit the same spot. But my hands were bleeding
yet the glass was still intact.
More whu-psh echoed in the hall. Lord Whiplash’s laughs too. The only
things that never stopped were the children’s screams and cries.
I gave up on breaking the window and screamed,
“Anyone! Go to the entrance and open the door! Sharon! John! Anyone!”
Then I remembered. The window from which Lord Whiplash had escaped
with Lamar. I’d never closed it. Nobody else had approached it, so it should’ve
stayed untouched. If it was still open I could possibly crawl my way inside the
building. Lord Whiplash must’ve used it to enter and exit the building. There
had to be a path. The evergreen outside the window. The branch near the win-
dow. That was it!
 I ran from room 12 back to the entrance. Room 8 was in the opposite di-
rection, but I wanted to check if anyone had opened the door for me. ...It was
still closed. Could they not come near here? Had the panic made them forget
about the door? But I couldn’t wait forever for someone to open it for me, so
I headed to room 3.
Aaaaah!
I was on the verge of collapsing.
The light was on in room 3, but the window was covered with blood too,
and on it was written ‘弱悪強罰’ again. Same for rooms 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. I bet
room 9 onward had the same crimson canvas too.
But I didn’t have the time to check that, nor did I want to.
I looked up at room 8 on the second floor. It was open!
I checked the evergreen facing the window. It had branches quite low and
seemed easy to climb! I lost no time and got onto climbing it.
I made my way up among the evergreen’s leaves while listening to the kids’
screams and the whipping and Lord Whiplash’s laughter reverberating from
within the round Pineapple Home. I gauged the branch leading to the window
and went for it...but the lights turned off in room 8 the moment I snuck my
face out of the leaves, so I tried rushing my way on the branch, but the win-
dow closed right before me. Someone...obviously Lord Whiplash, was laugh-
ing from beyond the window, “Ah hah hah!” I slammed my head into the
window and fell onto the ground, unable to find any decent footing. I hit my
hips and back pretty badly, but I had no time to feel pain.
I stood up despite being out of breath and screamed again.
“...Stop it! Don’t lay a hand on the kids! Don’t be violent towards kids!”
Of course, my utterly weak voice wouldn’t make its way across the chaos
happening inside the Pineapple Home.
Even so, I continued yelling at him to stop as I went around the Home to
check if any window was open, but I only found dark rooms blocked by blood
with the seal ‘弱悪強罰’, and looped around to the entrance. I’d hoped some-
one might have opened the door, but still nothing... However, I hadn’t lost all
hope. I had my Prius. My Toyota, which should be infinitely stronger than me.
I’d crash into the building with it.
I took out my keys and rushed to the parking lot downhill. I inserted my
keys into the frontmost car, my Prius, got in the driver seat, turned the igni-
tion key, and started the engine. Vrooom! The acceleration pedal to the floor,
I cut through the turf and headed straight for the entranceway! I crashed into
the door! Baam! Boom! The airbag activated and hit my face. I thought my
neck had broken since I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt, but in my hazy vision I
spotted the entrance door had split open on the other side of my smashed
front glass and wrecked bonnet. There was a gap. It was open!
I opened the warped door to my left and got out of the car. I clearly hadn’t
recovered enough from the shock. I wobbled for a short while, then collapsed.
Apparently I was bleeding. Blood was trickling down my forehead and my
nose. But it didn’t hurt much. I must’ve been excited. I stood up and allowed
myself to rest as I took one deep breath in and out.
Okay.
I slid over the smashed nose of my Prius, passed through the door, and
entered the Pineapple Home.
“Sharon! Lucy! Sheridan! Everyone! Where are you?! Lord Whiplash! I’m
your opponent! Stop picking on kids and try me!”
As I said that, I realized I’d been so desperate to open the door my body
was now in tatters...how would I fight anyone in this state?
But I would! I’d figure out something!
However, when I entered the hall, there was nobody around.
No children, no Lord Whiplash.
And no traces of the tragedy that should’ve taken place here.
 No blood, no agitation, not even the screams that’d been present until
moments ago. The Home was as clean as the staff usually made it to be. Eve-
ryone had disappeared, leaving only me, breathing heavily. The Pineapple
Home’s hall was bright and calm and empty.
I headed for room 3. I opened the door. Although the bed was somewhat
messy, I could see through the window, there was no layer of blood nor the
‘弱悪強罰’.
Same for room 4. Same for room 5. Everything had disappeared.
Lord Whiplash had taken everything away...he’d taken the children some-
where I had no hopes of finding, probably where he’d come from, and erased
all traces of his rampage.

So I couldn’t help them...not a single one of them. I had so many children

I should’ve protected, but I couldn’t lead even one of them to safety.
I returned to the hall and was about to sit on the cold floor, but stopped
myself. I wouldn’t be able to stand for a good while if I sat now. Maybe forever.
I realized how sinful weakness was.
Being unable to save anyone, weakness in that sense, is the evil Lord
Whiplash was talking about.
I was too unworthy and pathetic and guilty to cry.
I just stood at the center of the hall and closed my eyes to reflect on how
evil I was, but it merely made my vision turn dark and I couldn’t think one bit.
I wanted to punish myself, but I couldn’t do anything.
Then someone spoke from above me.

“See? Weakness is evil. It’s a sin. Am I wrong?”

He was right.
 Yet I opened my eyes and yelled.

“You are...!”

I looked up.
The ceiling depicted a scene of Hell. But it wasn’t a painting. It was re-
flected on the skylight of the Pineapple Home. The aftermath of the carnage
that’d taken place. Blood-drenched kids. Many orphans whose backs had
split open after getting relentlessly whipped. They were dead. No one was
moving. Their clothes were torn, their backs destroyed, and their blood and
flesh scattered around the area and tarnishing the floor. And among all the
corpses, right above my head, looking down on me...looking up at me...in the
skylight, was a skinny half-naked man wearing glasses with a whip in hand.
He had a bruise on his right shoulder...it looked like a black bird.
I flipped my left sleeve and looked at my shoulder.
There were teeth marks.

It hurts, but don’t stop! she said as she held onto my shoulders. It hurts,
but I’m fine! Do it more! Harder! she said before biting my shoulders.

It was from that. At that time...

It was the second time I was remembering that scene.

“I remembered,” I said as I pulled on my shirt and revealed my left shoul-

der she should’ve bitten. It had a red mark shaped like teeth.
 The first time was when Dezuumi Style pointed it out in his deduction. I
talked with Kozue...with Kozue’s feelings.

“Then I asked you many things to confirm your true feelings, but you just
muttered nonsense so I bit your shoulder. I think I bit you pretty hard but you
didn’t move an inch. Do you have a mark?”
“I do.”
“That’s my teeth. Ahaha. Sorry ‘bout that. You remember now?”
“Yeah.”

Kozue’s feelings had given me this bruise on my left shoulder that night.
And now the same kind of mark was showing on the right shoulder of the
skinny man smiling at me in the skylight...my mirror image.
The Black Bird Man was me.

My name was Disco Wednesdayyy.

I finally learned the true meaning behind my name. I was the child of wa-
ter = a fetus. A child that had never been born.
Because I never existed.

“I am you.”
The Black Bird Man said the same.
“Same thing as Nail Peeler. I’m your feelings. It’s Super Sadistic too, you
know, the Lord Whiplash whipping kids. Ah hah hah. Come on, don’t give me
that look. I’m like Nail Peeler, your ally. That goes without saying. Your feel-
ings would never betray you.”
“But I don’t want to hurt kids,” I said. “You don’t exist within me.”
“Then why did you become a missing child detective?”
“To save children.”
“That’s a lie,” he flatly denied. “You wanted to see a lot of children get
hurt, didn’t you?

“You want to enjoy that suffering from the front seat. That’s the kind of
person you are. An onlooker specializing in children’s suffering. You want to
be in the front row when children scream or shed blood.”

“Of course not,” I denied. “I wouldn’t hurt kids. I love all children.”
The Black Bird Man covered in the children’s blood put on a gentle smile.
“Even I can’t deny that. I know that, obviously. I know you seriously love
children and are ready to put your life on the line for them. Yes, absolutely.
But that’s what led you to loathing them. You started wondering why they
made you suffer so much despite all your love. After all, you’re surrounded by
children who meet miserable fates. You might’ve started this job with benev-
olence and love, but don’t you think it’s getting tougher on you? No matter
how many children you save, there’s no end to their suffering. Aren’t you
feeling the burden of the grief generated by their painful deaths and your
guilt for being unable to save them? I’m a product of that suffering. I under-
stand better than anyone your feeling of wanting to punish the children for
their weakness. I’m your feelings, after all. That’s why I came to you. I liter-
ally whipped here.”
The dead children around the Black Bird Man.
They’d been killed twice.
 Right. Except for Sharon and JJ, all the kids in the Pineapple Home were
American children I’d found dead.
The twelve-year-old James Crichton was killed by a Chinese pastor in Cal-
ifornia and buried behind his church. The other three boys who’d been buried
with him after getting raped might’ve been in the Pineapple Home too.
Lisa Mary Brentwood’s corpse was hidden atop a palm tree after a hit-
and-run in hopes of having the birds take care of it. In the end, I’d only man-
aged to find her right foot.
Lucy Primo was shot by her divorced dad in a forced double suicide. Their
corpses should still be in the back seats of a car hidden in a secret cave in Or-
ange County.
Sheridan Louis Barr was kidnapped, then raped as the abductor cut off one
of her fingers every day and sent it to her dad. I found him after he’d already
cut her head off, and passed him to her father in Vancouver, who should’ve
slowly killed him with sewing needles.
The eleven-year-old Melinda Palfrey was drowned in a bathtub by her
mother.
The zero-year-old Tuffy Coleman was a casualty of his bad father and bad
mother’s bad relationship, after which they fed his corpse to their dog, which
they’d starved.
The ten-year-old John Bulworth was thrown into the rapids of a moun-
tain in Wyoming. He’d spent four days sinking and surfacing under a water-
fall until I found him.
I didn’t know how Hugo Goodwin had died, but when I found him, his body
had been split into twelve puzzle pieces.
Lamar Evans Junior was tortured through a device discharging irregular
electric current into his body for four months until he couldn’t handle the
pain and turned his life switch off himself.
Each of the other 33 had died, been part of a case, and were found by me in
their own way too. All my requests were to find missing kids, so their cases
were work for me, but obviously not the cheerful kind... That said, given I’d
killed the children who’d already died once another time, maybe I was seri-
ously struggling with my job?
Did I resent children?
“Fuck off,” I said. “I’d never kill children.”
The Black Bird Man gave me a ruthless look. “That’s why you didn’t kill
them. Your feelings did it. Through me.”
“I’ve never felt like killing children,” I persisted.
“Aren’t I the proof that you have? You’re finally getting sick of children
meeting horrible fates. Isn’t it natural? Of course you’d land there. You should
get it together, really. They’re not at fault for being weak, but it’s no wonder
you’re feeling like blaming them. And that feeling is me. But hey, I’m not nec-
essarily your evil part, okay? I’m a completely natural emotion for humans to
have. Any kind of love or affection has its limit, and when you’re asked for
more than that, you get irritated. You did quite good, you know. You’ve found
over 40 miserable children. And that’s just the dead ones; you must have over
200 children who’ve been through horrible hardships, sometimes maybe
saving a dozen at once. That’s impressive. Betrayal after betrayal, intricate
twists, flashy car chases and gunfights; you’ve had to survive through all of
that just because children are weak. How is that not evil?! And I’m not talking
about their impact on society, just on you. Of course you know it’s inevitable
for kids to be weak, but even so, they piss you off! In the end, no matter what
you do for children, people won’t stop abducting them, wicked parents and
relatives won’t stop abusing and exploiting them, deviants won’t stop raping
and killing them. And every single time you’ll have to put your life on the line,
go on an adventure, lose friends, see people dear to you die, and get driven to
the edge socially. You know that will never ever stop. That’s why you hate
them. But don’t brood over it! Look, I’ve only killed brats who’d already died
once. See?”
The Black Bird Man pointed at the corpses around him with his hand hold-
ing the whip.
 “You’re still somewhat sane for not attacking living children. Yeah, you’re
right, you really love children. That’s a given. But this intense hatred was only
possible because of your strong love.”
“...”
“Heh, you can’t wiggle your way out of this. Just look around you. Every-
one but you is dead, okay? You’re the only one left. Just so you know, I wasn’t
born from your fantasies about gathering a bunch of children in an enclosed
space and making them feel dread, okay? I mean, these kids are so dead they
can’t feel anything, let alone fear. It’s for you. You created me and prepared
these kids for me. And...at this point, don’t you think you gotta admit it?
You’ve enjoyed your own show plenty. Was it fun playing the audience with
all these ‘stop it’? But since you have no guts, you looked away from the main
fun. Still, you prepared this stage. I’m but one of the many pawns you’ve pre-
pared. I’ve acted precisely, without any deviation, as you wanted.”
“...”
“As I’ve said earlier, I’m your feelings. Your ally. I’m only being so direct
because it’s best for you, okay? Seeing how your feelings can’t be as pure as
you’d want them to be creates stress and torments you. That’s why you made
this bizarre stage in the first place... Don’t blame me. I’m saying this for you.
All that built-up stress hurts the children you’ve wanted to protect so much.”
Still glaring at the ceiling, my body made some creaking noise and stiff-
ened.
“Like Kozue.”
He continued talking calmly.
“Kozue’s case was especially shocking for you. It flipped all your beliefs
and knowledge upside down. In a way, it was way more appalling than dis-
covering a kid buried in the ground, taking into custody a kid whose hands
and feet had been cut off by abusive parents, or all these tragedies you’d
grown accustomed to. Well, you were quite confused. And so you’ve created
me and started feeling the urge to mess Kozue up.”
“...”
 “I understand you don’t want to admit it. But you’re broken beyond repair.
You just couldn’t handle it, that’s all. The strange twists and turns in Kozue’s
case broke you long ago. You’ve started resenting your job. That’s why you
stayed in Japan, doing nothing, instead of going back to America. You’re done
for. You loved kids so much you started hating them, you repressed your ha-
tred so much you started wanting to fuck them up. You’re now on the side
that abuses and kills children.”
My body was shaking.
But not from fear. What he’d said didn’t come out as surprising.
I was smiling, but I hadn’t gone crazy.
I was trembling from excitement.
I was feeling my power run through my veins before a battle.
The Black Bird Man continued, paying no heed to me.
“Shouldn’t you, like, die? Go out gallantly at least. In this situation, Japa-
nese people properly sit down, ready their Japanese sword, and split their
stomach in half, you know?”
I raised a hand to silence the man in the skylight.
“Shut up,” I said. “Your role is over.”
“Hunh?” my feelings replicated.
He wasn’t that Black Bird Man.
He was my feelings.
“I guess I should thank you,” I told him. “You can go away. Disap-
pear. ...Well, you don’t have a body, so you’ll probably disappear as soon as I
look away.”
Mirrors only reflected when one could see. It’s not like there was a dimen-
sion on the other side of it. There’s nothing behind it. I was merely looking at
the reflection of light.
“What are you saying, idiot,” my feelings said. “Take a look at the may-
hem you’ve created. There’s no way you can go on living after this.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s why I’ll surpass you. I will surpass my own con-
sciousness!”
 I took my eyes off the skylight. I looked away from the illusion I’d yearned
for reflecting in the skylight.
The voice ceased.

I knew what the ‘Lord Whiplash/Black Bird Man’ really was. He was my
guilt.
Kozue got assaulted before my eyes, so I blamed myself using my feelings
through Lord Whiplash to hide. I ran away inside the fictional character
Odoriba Mizutarou.
But as ‘my feelings’ = ‘my guilt shaped like Lord Whiplash’ said, although
he tried to kill me, in the end, he was my ally. Thanks to him, I’d be able to
rise up again. Using my feelings as a stepping stone.
If my guilt hadn’t driven me so far, I might’ve continued living a half-
assed escapism lifestyle in Troy forever. I could bend spacetime, I could do
that. Since running away like that is obviously wrong, my guilt didn’t allow
for it. My guilt gave me a severe scolding, just like how Nail Peeler had re-
turned me to the Pinehouse and repeatedly warned me to only think about
Kozue. ...Of course he went too far, but feelings of guilt and blame generally
cross the line. He showed something I absolutely didn’t want to see, a mas-
sacre of children, made up some bullshit reasoning to try and persuade me I
hated children, fabricated crimes by pinning what happened to Kozue onto
me, and tried to pass the biggest judgment onto me: death.
But thanks to these excesses, I was able to notice my true feelings.
If the Black Bird Man, who appeared in room 1201 of the Princeton Hotel,
really was ‘my earnest feelings,’ he’d have never hurt Kozue.
That’s the only thing I could claim with absolute confidence.
Okay. I could build on that and continue fighting. After all, I still had to
find the culprit who assaulted Kozue in the real world.
The time for self-admonishment was over.
 I’d probably not wasted that much time. Not like time was a problem to
me, but I still regretted the precious moments I’d wasted. I lamented not be-
ing able to spend these at Kozue’s side.
Time to go back. Enough wavering about how to deal with my feelings.
From now on, I’d use my time solely for Kozue.
Foreseeing my return to the real world, my body was shaking with excite-
ment. That oscillation produced heat, which wasted energy. I regained my fo-
cus and started thinking.
What I’d experienced here wasn’t merely a fictional world. It might not
have been what everyone believes to be the real world, but it wasn’t com-
pletely unrealistic to me. As it went for Nail Peeler and Lord Whiplash, there
was no way my own feelings could betray me.
What irked this belief was Sharon and JJ’s intrusion. Why were they in the
‘Pineapple Home’? They weren’t kids who’d died in cases I’d been a part
of. ...I thought, but revised that. Was it really not the case? Weren’t the good-
for-nothing Styron siblings’ deaths, in fact, related to me? Now that I could
control the chronology of time, wasn’t there another way of looking at it?
That is: Sharon dies in the past in a case I was going to get involved with in
my future. And JJ, whose death had yet to be reported to me, was already dead
somewhere in the twisted flow of time?
I recalled the golden rule within myself.
Everything had meaning.
That went for my doubts, too.

Kozue was sleeping soundly in room 1201 of Princeton Hotel. Staring at

her face devoid of any traces of having cried for too long felt like it’d change
the nature of my shaking, so I desperately held it in. The memo with ‘◯N◯N’
written on it was still on the floor, so I picked it up, rolled it into a ball, and
threw it in the trash can. All her wounds and memories had vanished...that,
or they were repressed deep in her mind. She’d erased a good amount of that
disgusting experience herself.
The scene ‘Shimada Kikyou’ had ‘remembered’ back then might not have
come from Kozue’s brain, but from part of the memories she’d discharged
onto ‘Kikyou’. Either way, the current Kozue had forgotten everything and
was sleeping soundly. For some reason, there was a red Koeda Chocolate box
next to her pillow. It was still sealed, so ‘Shakuko’ = the ‘seventeen-year-old
Kozue’s feelings’ must’ve come here, found her sleeping, and silently laid the
box she’d bought next to her. Kozue loved chocolate. I bet she’d love it. She’d
munch on it with a beaming smile. Looking as if nothing had happened.
I had no clue if I should cry, go off on someone, get angry, or simply stay
by Kozue’s side. But crying wouldn’t comfort her. Plus, she wouldn’t even
understand why I’d be crying, since she dealt with her wounds herself—nor
would she want to know. Still, I didn’t know if hiding from Kozue and venting
off my anger was the right choice. At any rate, standing still wasn’t gonna
help me.
I couldn’t act as if Kozue’s wounds had never happened.

I couldn’t act as if nothing had happened.

I then returned to the post-conclusion Pinehouse, right after I’d left. After
sending me off to Runrun, Mitamura Saburou had returned the normal sev-
enteen-year-old, Nishimura Yukio, home since him being in West Akatsuki
in 2006 for too long would be a problem, then was transported to the hospital
along with his childhood friends Daibakushou Curry and Taniguchi Tooru. I
could hear the siren of the ambulance disappearing into the distance. Mikami
Nils was the first to react to my sudden arrival. “Woah! ...Ah! Master!” he
screamed. “Don’t call me that,” I told him. We were in the parking lot of Cot-
tage Natsukawa in the dead of night; I perceived it back to the Pinehouse’s
hall. I didn’t want my concentration to be lowered by the deformed parts of
the building or all the police and media people we could see outside the Cot-
tage Natsukawa, but most importantly, I wanted to check the Pinehouse’s
skylight. I looked up, but there were no blood-drenched children nor Lord
Whiplash. I let out a sigh, then got startled by applause. The Angel Bunnies
and the great detectives who’d returned from the morgue surrounded me.
Many policemen and media people couldn’t believe their eyes when they
spotted the presumably dead great detectives return to the Pinehouse. Among
the resurrected great detectives, Hakkyoku Sachiari approached me and said,
“Salutations, Wednesdayyy-san. My deepest gratitude for earlier. I’ve al-
ready said it back at the morgue, but I’m truly thankful you revived us. More-
over, I bow down before you for solving the case as you had announced and
completely defeating us. As the representative of the great detectives who
died by ineptitude...no, we no longer deserve the title of great detective, I pre-
sume. Anyhow, as the representative of those who challenged this mystery,
lost, and died, I would like to once again commend your great feat of...” I was
sick of his long-winded speeches, so I cut him off. “You all, return the Cottage
Natsukawa back into the Pinehouse. I have things to say, but I don’t want
people outside to know. There’s no telling what influence we could have on
the people outside if we left the house open.” The great detectives and the
Angel Bunnies complied. I could still take the lead. I faced Nils. “Mikami,
please tell us about Joaquin Joseph Styron and Sharon Styron.” His face
turned grim. “Eh~, I mean...the moving bomb inside my body will...” Since he
was hindered by boring hesitations, I found the insect-like robot situated
near his kidney and took it out. “W-wha...thank you so much!” The reason
these guys couldn’t manipulate space despite being able to see the Cottage
Natsukawa was likely because they hadn’t interacted much with Kozue and
hadn’t piled up as many experiences as I had, so their understanding of
spacetime was still shallow...I thought, but even if they had experienced as
much as I had, opening up your body yourself would probably still be tough.
The power of consciousness would weaken if the mind was afraid. “Hey,
Hakkyoku, gimme one of your shoes.” He looked at me weird, so instead I
manipulated spacetime to nab his right shoe instantly, then threw the beetle-
shaped robot onto the floor and crushed it with Hakkyoku’s shoe. Boom! The
bomb meant to kill Nils in desperate times went off and destroyed the sole of
Hakkyoku’s shoe, making the Angel Bunnies jump in surprise. I could’ve re-
winded time to fix the shoe back, but I just gave the tattered remaining tip of
the shoe back to Hakkyoku. “Thanks,” I told him. He accepted it looking flab-
bergasted. “You’re welcome...it’s my pleasure,” he still managed to be polite.
Japanese manners sure are something. I felt like I might’ve done something
bad, but who cares. I was in a hurry.
“Now, Nils, tell us about Styron,” I asked again. “How was the case?”
“Eh...but there wasn’t much to it, I swear. I was merely called because they
wanted an efficient private great detective to avoid spreading information
with faulty deductions, and because they thought I would be easy to threaten
since I was a kid. The mystery in itself wasn’t anything difficult,” Nils said.
“I’m not expecting a riveting trick of an exciting mystery, just tell me what
happened.” Geez, these great detectives were so keen on entertainment.
There’s no need to make people’s deaths entertaining.
He started. “As the cases I usually covered were not only highly complex
but also might have had important societal influence or caused a great scan-
dal, I’d employed a public affairs manager and a public relations manager for
the last few years. This case was brought up to my attention by the former,
but after being implanted with the bomb, I fired both of them and set out to
never again take on a case that would have the slightest political implications.
However, after a while, I changed my mind and hired a new person to fill in
that spot. Whether I liked it or not, my actions were already seen with a po-
litical eye, so anything I did would be political. And since I knew I’d be too
childish and fussy to act accordingly to these expectations, I figured I needed
adults to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. My parents are quite
grounded and reliable, but having them stick this close to my activities would
expose them to second-hand political expectation, and they’d eventually
need their own public affairs and public relations managers, which only
shifts the problem further down the line, so I’m having my managers super-
vise me directly without passing through my parents. ...But that’s besides the
point. Anyway, after my former public affairs manager presented me with the
outline of the case and obtained the approval of the public relations manager,
I set out to Colombia alone. It was expressly demanded by Styron to not bring
any escort. I entered the country by land roads in Ecuador, navigated through
complex detours for a whole 20 hours, then finally met Joaquin Joseph Styron
and learned the details of the case.
“Seven of his subordinates were killed, all hung upside-down on trees in
their residences’ garden. The rope attached to the branch was tied around
their right feet, they had their arms tied behind their backs, and furthermore,
they had a counterweight hanging from another rope coiled around their
necks. The identified cause of death was asphyxia due to tracheal stenosis.
But as soon as they let me inspect the corpses and the scenes of crime, I saw
through the mechanism at work. Among the seven bodies, the three discov-
ered last had towels coiled between their necks and the ropes. It seemed like
a compassionate act from the murderer to protect their skin from the rubbing
of the rope to not uselessly increase the pain from suffocation. This act of pity
pushed Styron to suspect the culprit wasn’t a remnant of the organization
preceding them that he’d exterminated, but a betrayal from one of his allies...
Well, honestly, it’s hard to tell what goes on in Styron’s head, so I’m not en-
tirely sure. At the very least, some people around him were thinking that way
and suspected their friends and acquaintances. They’d vastly misunderstood
the meaning behind the towels’ presence. The inverted hanging wasn’t a new
type of torture the culprit invented. It was just a really crude trick.
“The first thing I noticed was an inopinate similarity between the sites
where each of the seven corpses were discovered. The trees they were hung
from were all situated near the victim’s bedroom, and moreover, in every
single case, the window had been left wide open. Driven by a stroke of inspi-
ration, for each, I measured the length from the branch supporting the rope
hoisting the corpse to the rock dangling from the rope around their neck, as
well as the length from that same branch to the window. In all seven cases,
they were quite close. I imagine some of the great detectives here already fig-
ured it out...” Nils said as he consulted the great detectives around him, all of
whom were nodding; a white woman among them said, “It’s a swing, right?”
I think that was Judy Dollhouse, whom I brought back to life. Following that,
there was some noise coming from behind her, then Mame Gen and Nekon-
eko Nyannyannyan came out, chanted “Ta-dah!” and showed us a drawing
they’d just made. Ooh, I see, I thought. It represented the ‘swing’ Dollhouse
talked about. Their ideas and ways of conveying them were as impressive as
ever.
 The victim attached a rope to their foot and hung themselves from their
bedroom’ window, then the culprit waiting outside would grab the rope dan-
gling near the ground, climb up a nearby tree until the corpse was parallel to
the ground, anchor the rope, traverse the newly created rope-corpse-rope
bridge between the branch and the window, and untie the other end of the
rope around their neck which they rode à la Tarzan to return where they came
from. Finally, they take a random rock and attach it to the bottom rope so it
floats above ground. I then understood why Nils had described the towels
around their necks as ‘crude’. When the corpse is raised to be parallel to the
ground, to be a bridge then a swing, the rope and the neck would likely both
be pulled in the same general direction as during the hanging, but there is a
possibility for the marks left then to be bizarrely amiss, so the towels were
used in an attempt to diminish those. And since the plan was to disguise sui-
cides as homicides, they left some of the towels...could they have purposely
aimed to elicit ‘pity’ to make it seem like it was the act of a friend?
“Wooow! You’re so fast, you two!” Nils was elated when he saw Mame Gen
and Nekoneko’s drawing. “That’s exactly it, and it’s also why the victims
were wearing diapers.”
“Diapers?” an Angel Bunny tilted their head, so Hakkyoku Sachiari ex-
plained, “You see, hanging doesn’t leave the corpse in a pretty state.”
Ooh, I understood it with that, but the troupe member didn’t seem to get
it yet. “He’s talking about incontinence,” said Choukuuji Kiyuu. His big
brother, Keraku, added, “Normally, people get their pants or legs dirty with
hanging, so it would be weird for that not to happen if they were meant to
have been hung upside down. Plus, the rope around their feet could’ve gotten
dirty when they hung themselves over the windows.”
“Eh~, what, not because they were embarrassed to dirty themselves?”
“How pragmatic~.” “I bet they all pissed in it too.” “What the fuck?” “Man,
too far, seriously.” “Yuck~.” “Eh? It was a joke.” “And I’m telling you it’s
over the line. Die.” “Eww...” The Angel Bunnies started their usual chatter so
I ignored them and glared at Nils to urge him to continue.
 “Ah, uh, right, after that I naturally went to collect pieces of evidence.
Rope fibers remaining on the windows or balconies, footprints showing peo-
ple going back and forth on the ground, unnatural rope marks on their necks,
etc. But the question was, why was such a trick needed? Obviously that swing
trick was used to camouflage a suicide by creating a homicide-like situation.
But why did they kill themselves? They were all direct subordinates to the
boss of a drug cartel. Regardless of their secret business, they should’ve been
living comfortably. And they had all been steadily committing crimes their
whole lives, it’s not like they had a sudden upheaval in morals on that day and
despaired over their past acts. To begin with, why would such seven people
commit suicide? For suicides...there are two reasons. The first one is when
living becomes too painful. When one gets crushed by illness, hardships, grief,
pain, or the likes. The second one is to avoid an even more painful death. I
can’t imagine the former reason applying to these men. But I could for the
latter. They were working for the biggest cartel in the world who’d just won a
war of attrition, and had recently climbed to the top of the hierarchy. Who
could’ve made them suffer so much they’d rather commit suicide...? The only
person capable of terrorizing these men to that degree is their boss, Styron.
And the only reason for these seven to fear their boss, whom they’d fought a
war alongside, was treason or dishonesty. After all, they’d seen what became
of Styron’s enemies with their own eyes.”
Nils had said the same earlier.

Styron massacred Elderama’s family, relatives, friends, acquaintances,

associates, and even the servants and their families.

“I was shown pictures of people killed directly by Styron,” Nils continued

with a sigh. “They’re not something kids should see...I swear. I’ve had many
diverse experiences through all the cases I’d solved, but ever since then, I
can’t eat certain foods, and am now scared of certain visual imagery. Like a
bathroom furnished with bright and detailed tiles, or a deserted stable or pig-
sty in the afternoon with only sunlight shining onto dry heaps of straw, those
kinds of scenes. Styron doesn’t simply kill many, he’s a sadist who carries out
his original ideas. A certain cameraman took a liking to that and kept a col-
lection. He’s witnessed those in person for a long, long time, and probably
also participated. Styron’s subordinates knew what would happen if they be-
trayed him. These seven must’ve lost themselves during the chaos and ec-
stasy of the war and tarnished Styron’s image in some ways. They dreaded
his retribution once the war ended and peace returned to the cartel. However,
although simply committing suicide would allow them to escape, they would
be leaving their families and friends behind. A suicide speaks for itself of its
reason. They had to hide the motive from Styron at any cost. That’s why they
came up with a clumsy trick, and desperately carried out that crude plan to
enact a bizarre ‘murder’. Each of them in turn rode someone else’s swing,
then escaped. If there had only been seven of them, the last one would’ve had
to actually hang himself upside down and die by the weighted rope, however,
if there weren’t, there must’ve been someone else waiting in fear for Styron’s
retaliation. But I don't know what happened after I left. To be honest...I
wanted to buy time to persuade the last person possibly planning on com-
mitting suicide not to, so I prepared a fake deduction for Styron, but...having
observed all my actions, he’d caught up to me in thinking somewhere along
the way. Styron called me to his office, gave me a lecture metaphorically in-
volving the notions of work, responsibilities, and ethics, then suddenly told
me ‘I won’t lay a hand on the seven’s family or friends,’ making me under-
stand he’d reached the same truth as I did. ‘So you should go back to Japan
now,’ he told me. I couldn’t blindly trust him, so I told him, ‘I will keep in
contact with the families of the deceased. If their videophones suddenly cut
out or if they hear of some unwanted news, I will speak everything I know,
spread all the documents I have in my possession, and use every last bit of
authority I have to strip everything away from you.’ Of course, it was a poor
bluff, but nevertheless, Styron said, ‘That’s fine by me.’ Well, of course he
would. Their bomb was already inside my body by that point. That’s really all
I could do, so I visited the families myself before parting with them, donated
Styron’s remuneration entirely to charities, then escaped Colombia by yet
another complex route. I’ve been periodically contacting the families. If
something were to happen to them, I would be at war with Styron, but that
probability is low. Styron purged the most immoral half of the Mederica Car-
tel members...well, everyone in there was already a criminal by definition, but
still, most of the people more reckless and inhuman than Styron were
cleansed, which likely played a role as to why the Colombian government, and
probably the American one too, secretly supported Styron replacing Antonio
Juanes Elderama. In other words, Styron wasn’t the worst of the bunch.
Moreover, there’s no way he wouldn’t be coveting to gain more political au-
thority in the future, so his actions should be limited. His aides won’t let him
do anything flashier than that war now that he’s at the top.”
Hearing this from the eleven-year-old Nils should normally make me feel
gloomy...and in fact, the other great detectives and the Angel Bunnies were
lamenting his fate or gasping in awe at the young great detective putting his
body on the line...I must’ve been the only one to think of something com-
pletely different.
So, what did this story convey to me? ...It felt mostly unrelated to me. Then
were JJ and Sharon’s presence at the Pineapple Home actually a mere dream
or delusion without further meaning? ...No, I’d decided I would cease with
that kind of detective skepticism for the moment. It should mean something.
And I simply couldn’t make sense of it...but then what should I search for in
Nils’ story?
At that moment, as the others were all expressing the emotions that tale
evoked in them, Sakurazuki Tansetsu spoke out. “Say, Nils-kun, why did
those seven people only hang one of their feet?”
 “Eh?” Nils widened his eyes and looked at Sakurazuki. “That shouldn’t
have much importance...but if I had to say, the first person must have done it
that way, so all the others imitated that...”
“Was it their left leg for all of them?”
“...Yes. It was.”
“And were their right knees bent, making the ankles pass behind their left
knees and forming the digit 4? An inverted 4.”
“...”
“So it was? Next is, mhmm. Do you remember, ehehe, if the trees they
were hung on had the lowest branches lopped?” Sakurazuki asked an even
more random question. “Same for the tree next over, so the corpse is between
the two trunks.”
“Yes...” Nils answered with a perplexed face. “Of course. After all, the cul-
prit used the corpse tied to the tree to swing to the ground. The lower
branches had been lopped in an unsuspicious way so as to not disturb his
course. The neighboring trees too.”
“But each of the two trees must’ve had six branches lopped. ...No, they
each had six cut ends left as is, and if there had been any more, those would’ve
been removed...so cleanly that they must’ve been processed differently than
the six branches.”
“...? Why do you know that...” Despite seeming so random, Sakurazuki’s
concrete inquiries hit the mark and confused Nils.
“Well, you see, I probably know that pattern. Of course I know it, it’s one
of the tools of my trade, but I haven’t done much of that recently. Only rela-
tively simple astrology.”
Nils opened his eyes wide. He was still a great detective; he reached the
same answer as Sakurazuki only a few moments later. I still didn’t really
know what was going on, but these two seemed to be imagining the same
‘pattern’.
“The Hanged Man...” Nils whispered, to which Sakurazuki nodded.
 “Yeah. The Tarot card. To be more specific, the Marseille version. Eheh
eheh.”
Mame Gen and Nekoneko let out a yelp of excitement, then showed us the
drawing they’d finished. Even looking at it, I still didn’t get it. I’d only seen
Tarot used in horror movies. Were they saying that story had to do with
southern France voodoo stuff or something? As I was still pathetically clue-
less, the answer came out.
 “That Hanged Man is commonly believed to be the Norse god Odin who
hanged himself off the World Tree Yggdrasil to decipher the runes...”
 Sakurazuki said, looking at me. That pink fatty who’d previously gone on
about magic circles and opposite mirrors was a fortune teller. On Saturdays,
I work as a fortune teller in Odaiba, and I use the name Sakurazuki Tansetsu
over there. Sakurazuki was looking at me. “Odin yet again. This means...”
I recalled what Mercury C had told me on the Pinehouse’s skylight soon
after I arrived.

It’s your name, Detective. You’re being invited. Though it seems you
didn’t know.

“Oooh... I can remember it vividly...” Nils said with his voice trembling due
to a profound surprise mixed with fright. “The trees on both sides had six
open cuts left while the rest had been camouflaged with excessive care for
seemingly no reason...thinking back now, it had been set up expressly to be
easy to recognize, yet how did that not pass through my brain... So the corpses
had been moved to reflect The Hanged Man? And it was foreseen that I would
speak about that here and now...? Ehh...? Is that what’s happening? Then,
earlier, when Styron’s name came out by chance, there wasn’t actually any-
thing coincidental about it and everything had been meticulously planned?”
Nils said, then threw me a look begging for help.
Planned by someone...? Of course not. I shook my head. “I simply think
everything has been attributed meaning. That’s what fate or destiny really
means.”
Obviously, saying that wouldn’t erase the fear Nils was experiencing. His
mouth was gaping open and he didn’t seem able to accept it yet, so I looked
away and asked Sakurazuki. “In Tarot, you decipher meaning from flipping
cards, no? What does The Hanged Man mean? Is it related to suicide?”
 He euphorically started explaining. “Odin didn’t hang off Yggdrasil to
commit suicide, mind you. It was to decipher runes. And he didn’t do so up-
side down, but normally...well, it sounds weird when put like that. He hung
himself by the neck. Moreover, he’d been pierced by the Spear of Destiny,
Gungnir, hanged from there during nine whole days, and thus earned new
wisdom. Therefore, interpreting an inverted Hanged Man with both of his
eyes and devoid of Gungnir as Odin means that the hanging isn’t part of a
suicide, but actually a rite of passage. In the upright position, The Hanged
Man means training, endurance, or service, and in the reversed position, vain
effort, useless bearing, or defeat in a trial. ...But in my opinion, if the case Nils
was a part of was really depicting The Hanged Man, then considering the sit-
uation, these should be interpreted as both upright and inverted hangings.
Therefore, the meaning really diverts from suicide and becomes endurance,
or service for their family they left behind. Wow...the more you think about it,
the more it fits Tarot. Even though it holds both upright and reversed mean-
ings, the fact they were found during the inverted hanging might hint at the
upright meaning, being the service, going well. And that drug king actually
let the families of the victims alive...which is thanks to the reversed position,
meaning defeat in a trial, having been flipped over. Amazing!”
I ignored Sakurazuki making a fist pump with his big, white hands, and
thought. If I was Odin = The Hanged Man, since I was standing normally in-
stead of upside down, did that mean I was destined to lose...so this case would
end in a big defeat for me?
I then remembered the ‘me standing upside down’. The ‘Lord Whiplash’
reflecting in the skylight of the Pineapple Home. If I was the reversed position
and that sadistic guilt of mine was the upright one, then this world truly
wasn’t worth shit. Children were whipped and killed... 弱悪強罰. Whu-psh!
Weakness is evil! Eat shit.
However, I thought. I could maybe flip my situation over.
There was a world where standing normally could also mean being upside
down.
 Norma’s folded universe theory.
I then recalled the origin for that idea. Oh, right. The panda Runrun was
precisely talking about that in the zoo, wasn’t it? It seemed this world really
had been folded.

“In the period between the Summer and Autumn of 2006, someone bent
spacetime on itself. The periods ranging from the beginning of time until the
turning point in 2006 and from the turning point until the end of time were
overlapped. Starting from the year 2006, people live in a counterflowing
time.”

So if I were to believe Runrun, this world was both normal and upside
down. And since I was both upright and reversed, I was The Hanged Man =
Odin...?
But Norma’s theory wasn’t exactly the same as what Runrun described.
According to Runrun, the counterflowing universe wasn’t outside of the nor-
mal one, they seemed to exist in an overlapped space. ...But that should actu-
ally work in my favor. No matter how I bent spacetime, I couldn’t imagine
myself reaching the outskirts of the universe. At least at present.
“Wednesdayyy-san.”
I was called out by Nils. He was staring at me as I was lost in thought.
“What do you think? Did the Serial Reverse Hanging Case in Colombia
happen to call for your name, Wednesdayyy-san? Were these seven people
killed to enact The Hanged Man, then I was called and...fell for the culprit’s
scheme and went home after delivering a mistaken deduction?”
Since it seemed he couldn’t shake those doubts off, I told him,
“If that’s bothering you, ask Hakkyoku or the Choukuujis instead. Why did
they stab their eyes? Do you really think they aimed to evoke the one-eyed
Odin?”
 I looked at the great detectives who’d died once.
“Ah, regarding that,” Nils answered, “I’ve actually asked them. But their
memories of that moment were hazy at best. There is no doubt they did it
themselves, but they say they either did it on impulse to imitate Daiba-
kushou-san and the great detectives who came prior to them, or that they
were killed by themselves during a lapse in thinking, something like that...”
The great detectives around me nodded. Seeing even Dollhouse and the
Choukuujis do so, they must’ve been retold what happened after their deaths
and had finished processing it.
“I see,” I said. “Killed by themselves, huh. Either way, it’s clear they felt
an exterior will or force being at work.” What could that force be? Where
could the impulse of bloodthirst they felt have come from?
Nils said, “Ever since Dollhouse passed away, all chopsticks in the house
had been held off, and yet everyone managed to obtain one. That shows there
was an existing intent to stab their eyes. ...That’s why, in my opinion, alt-
hough it seems they stabbed their eyes because their deductions were mis-
taken, everyone actually had sensed the truth like the great detectives they
are. The eye stabbing holds many meanings: the transorbital-style lobotomy,
Odin, and the devolution from 3D to 2D. However, couldn’t it also be seen as
a last minute appeal to the other great detectives from one who had to stab
their own eyes after learning of the future of this case that couldn’t be put
into words?”
Indeed, I couldn’t have reached Runrun without that interpretation... I
further realized.
“Then had they foreseen that I...or anyone for that matter, would inter-
pret all these messages correctly, gain the ability to transcend time, and bring
them back to life?”
I was basically talking to myself, but Nils gave me a firm nod.
“That is possible. So these wouldn’t be suicides driven by impulses, but
messages in the form of self-sacrifices in view of a future resurrection. Or
inversely, they could stab their own eyes only because they’d foreseen their
coming back.”
Hongou Takeshitakeshi intervened, “Hey, hey, great detectives aren’t
omniscient, it’s not like they know everything. At least, I was clueless about
all that crap when I pierced my eyes.”
“So you’re implying the meanings behind that action were strictly coin-
cidental?” Nils asked.
“Not really. It’s random but also inevitable, like the, uhh, that thing, you
know. What was it again...” He roamed through his brain for a second, then,
“Luck is also part of your skills.”
Hearing that, Nils went “Ehh, aren’t you just making excuses for yourself?”
looking all confused, while I was impressed that Japanese had such an idiom.
I also found it very great detective-like. If events are a product of wills and
destiny, and a strong will can bend destiny, then the expectation of hearing
the truth from great detectives might’ve been the source for the eye stabbing.
That general idea might be contained in the cliché line I’d heard for the first
time.
“At any rate, every stabbing was inevitable...or felt inevitable, right?” I
said. “That means there was another huge force separate from your will at
work.”
Nils and Hongou went silent, and the great detectives who’d died once yet
again nodded in unison.
I then thought about the possibility of a single existence causing those
sensations of inevitability. Could anyone that has transcended spacetime be
able to do that? I could reshape space and move through time, but I couldn’t
rearrange spacetime. The Black Bird Man could...there might be many more
people capable of it too. And one of them might have actually been calling for
me. But I couldn’t tell for sure yet...and I wouldn’t until I became able to step
outside spacetime like the Black Bird Man. What could lead me to exit
spacetime...? I had to acquire yet another new wisdom. And quickly. “Anyway,
Odin came up in that Hanged Man story, so at least it’s clear I’ll have to pay
Styron a visit.” Realizing I must’ve become crazy to think that sentence was
logical, I chuckled, then Nils asked me, “Master...Wednesdayyy-san, in the
end, what was this case about? What in the world happened after you resur-
rected everyone?”
Dezuumi butted in, “Also, please give the media and the police an expla-
nation before you vanish again~. There’s no way we can convey that well~.”
“Don’t be so down on yourself. You did a pretty good job at it, you know?”
I said.
“Eh? ...Who did a good job?”
“You.”
“Ehh? I haven’t done anything, though!?”
“Meaning you will do it.”
“But do what?”
“What you said, explain to the police and the media.”
“Ehhh...? Why must it be me...”
“Isn’t that normal? You solved the mystery of Mitamura looping around
the hallway first. Plus didn’t we all decide on you during the meeting?”
“No, we were right about talking about how we should hold that meeting
soon...”
“Aren’t you glad we came to a conclusion earlier than expected? It’s you.
I read it in a newspaper from eleven years into the future, it’s set in stone.”
The other great detectives gasped too. “Eleven years!” “In the newspa-
pers!?” “Woah...it’s on another level from foresight or clairvoyance...you can
even read newspapers.” Dezuumi still had his mouth wide open.
“Want me to tell you the article and text too?”
He panicked and screamed “No thanks! No thanks!” agitating his arms.
“You can’t! It’s dangerous!”
“Dangerous?” I laughed. “Not really.”
“It absolutely is! It might change the future, can’t it!?”
“It’s probably okay. The past and future are set in stone.”
 “That’s...but wouldn’t that be a paradox? If I act a certain way because I
saw it in a newspaper from the future...”
“Certain things just happen that way.” I knew. Things lacking originals,
purely existing as copies. Kozue’s letters. Panda Lover’s scribbles. The great
detectives knew of another example too. “It’s the case for Mitamura
Saburou’s time travel and the Pinehouse Case.” Mitamura Saburou could
prepare the Pinehouse Case only because he’d seen it unfold 20 years into the
future.
Dezuumi fell silent, and the other great detectives thought about what I’d
said...looking at that, I continued.
“Now...do you all have suggestions to step outside of spacetime?”
Gathering ideas from them shouldn’t be that bad, I thought after asking
them. After all, they were great detectives—if anyone could bent spacetime
at will, locked room tricks, alibis, and everything they’d always dealt with
would be rendered meaningless as they would merely be permitted to explain
what happened and analyze the motive of the culprit after the case ended, but
at any rate— they were insanely smart.
“Eh...I mean, we still haven’t caught up to you, Wednesdayyy-san,”
Hakkyoku said. “Even our understanding when it comes to bending space is
meager.”
“You don’t bend it. You know it’s bent.” ...After saying it, I realized how it
seemed like something a spoon bender might say, and talking about the inner
secrets of the mind wouldn’t make for a good explanation in my opinion. I
had to show them something concrete. Just like how I had to show them all
sorts of proofs to get them to see the Cottage Natsukawa. Had I said ‘Actually,
the Pinehouse isn’t a circle,’ nobody would’ve seen it. They were heavily
trained to think rationally, so I had to demonstrate that was the only logical
explanation. I thought for a bit, then bent time and space. I touched the
shoulders of the 13 great detectives and 17 Angel Bunnies simultaneously in
their time. That should make them understand.
 “...Woahhhh!” “Ooh! I can see it!” “So cooool! A clone technique!” “So is
he moving super fast?” “That can’t...ah, wait no, oh, they’re not clones at all...
Ah, ah, I see, I see...huh, looks like it’s all up to concentration!” “One Disco-
san turned into many Disco-san...uhoho.” “Concentration, concentration...”
Good. That’s the spirit. The Angel Bunnies were yelling their thoughts, so
it was easy for me to follow their understanding. They’d first see me split into
30 mes. So their first idea would be that I was tapping on their shoulders at
extreme speeds, like a stereotypical ninja, and only left an afterimage...kinda
like the propeller of a fan. However, their sensation not of light and quick taps
on their shoulders but of a firm, continuous grip denies that interpretation.
Instead of something hazy like a high-speed propeller, they’d see me as a
definite being in front of them. With their brains unable to dismiss the guy in
front of them smiling and gripping their shoulders as a mirage, they use logic
to perceive the truth. In other words, the me in front of them is the real one,
and all the others are fakes. Then they remember the context. So they assume
I actually bent time and space. And since I can’t grab that many shoulders at
once, I should be grabbing them one after the other, so there is a continuity
in time, meaning the other mes around them are me from different points in
time. As long as they get that far, then it all depended on how strongly they
could believe it and how much they could suppress their inner common sense
telling them it was impossible. That’s all the concentration they needed here.
The great detectives understood immediately. Nils split into three to hug me
from all sides, Mame Gen and Nekoneko Nyannyannyan created a four panel
manga with them as characters in front of me, and most great detectives set
up something funny as part of the service spirit they’re so known for. Good
thing I alternated between great detectives and Angel Bunnies. A great detec-
tive’s stupid gag followed by an Angel Bunny’s unfiltered surprise. Since
there were 30 mes, it took a pretty long time for me, but whatever. We
couldn’t have made any progress without that anyway.
I left the excited troupe members to themselves as they were struggling
hard to somehow show off their clone techniques to each other, and spoke to
the great detectives. “Okay, now you’ve learned how to warp spacetime. You
can do whatever the hell you want with space at this point. The problem is
time. If we compare the flow of time to a book, we can go to any page we want.
However, we cannot actually change the order of said pages. But my enemy
can.”
I didn’t want to remember Kozue’s rape.
“I wanna step outside of spacetime to beat that guy to a pulp.”
“In other words, you want to become a higher-dimensional being,” in-
terjected Hongou Takeshitakeshi. “Isn’t that what stepping outside of
spacetime means?”
I still wasn’t sure about what higher-dimensional being meant.
“Yes, I think it is,” Nils answered. “Two-dimensional beings...so manga
characters here, can only live inside the pages, they don’t understand what
outside the pages look like. If we assume the fourth dimension is time, then
the third and fourth dimensions—that is space and time—come together to
form spacetime. That’s why we reside both in the third and fourth dimen-
sions. Since we are 3D, we can freely draw manga. We can create 3D matter,
touch it, move it, and destroy it. But we couldn’t warp the third dimension
itself nor destroy it...until now. Since we can now do that, it should be fine to
assume we’ve stepped outside of the third dimension. We can fiddle with it
however we want. Just as freely as we can with the second. But for the fourth
dimension...for time, we can only move through it at the moment. To bring it
back to 3D terms, it’s like we can only touch objects. Creating or destroying is
still impossible. So if we manage to step outside, we will be able to create or
destroy time however we want...maybe? What does it mean to create or to de-
stroy time? I can’t picture it well...”
Hakkyoku took the baton. “Earlier, we likened the continuum of time to a
book, so in that image, creating time would probably be like producing a new
page. And destroying would be ripping a page off and throwing it away. And
fiddling with it would be like rewriting or editing the pages? Like moving
chapter three after chapter six, I guess.”
 The Black Bird Man might be capable of pulling that off.
“Then exiting the fourth dimension would mean entering the fifth di-
mension, but what can there be outside of spacetime?” Nils said. “Outside of
spacetime means outside of the universe, right? And the people there can
handle the entire universe and its history as if it were a single book...but
where could they be? I mean, is there anywhere people can exist outside of
spacetime?”
“Hmmm~~~m. I don’t have an answer for that, but as I view it, the out-
side of spacetime is...how should I put it... Isn’t spacetime inside of our con-
sciousness?” Sakurazuki Tansetsu said. “Fufun, fufufun. Like, we can be in
the same place and yet perceive different spacetimes, can’t we? Earlier, we
were seeing the Pinehouse while Wednesdayyy-san was looking at the Cot-
tage Natsukawa, and now we can all see the Cottage but everyone outside still
cannot. And moments ago we were all in the same spacetime when Wednes-
dayyy-san was touching our shoulders, except he was in a totally different
time. We perceived the split Wednesdayyy-sans to be in the same spacetime,
but in actuality, you only truly shared a spacetime with the one touching your
shoulders. If you think that way, you will see it like that... In short, our con-
sciousness brings the notion of time and also is capable of bending spacetime.
So that’s what Wednesdayyy-san meant when he said we don’t have to force
the bending, we can bend things just by knowing they are bent~. If we force-
fully set our minds on bending spacetime, we fail because our reason is telling
us it cannot bend and our doubts overshadow our beliefs. But if we know it
can bend, we can seriously believe in it, and that strong belief will bend it for
real. Also, right, when Wednesdayyy-san explained this to us, the time flow-
ing inside him and inside us should be completely different, shouldn’t it? We
were synched up with the clocks scattered all around the world, but he had
lived through more time, no?”
If you were to add up the time I’d spent in the Pineapple Home, it wouldn’t
be a mere time lag...you’d need a calendar. Take Kozue’s split personalities,
all six of them were born 14 years before this case started and spent their eve-
ryday lives normally until a few months ago when they started vanishing one
after the other.
He was right, spacetime exists within our minds.
“I’m taking that idea,” I said to the great detectives. “Are there any more
opinions?” I asked just in case, but everyone seemed satisfied. “Okay, let’s
move on to the next problem,” I moved on. “So how do we fully exit
spacetime?”
I had my expectations on Sakurazuki, but that pink ball of grease only
crossed his arms and made a stern face to act like he was thinking seriously.
Just as I was realizing what a letdown he was, Hongou Takeshitakeshi, situ-
ated behind him, raised a hand and said “Yes.” Hearing that, Sakurazuki
made a face as if to say ‘Ohoho, woah, he really figured something out,’ which
got on my nerves, but whatever, I listened to Hongou. “When we were in 3D
space, we could at least touch 3D objects, couldn’t we? Now we aren’t com-
pletely outside of spacetime, but we can at least touch time, can’t we? We
can’t create new time from scratch or throw it all in the trash, but we can
move it a bit, right? So once we manage to step inside the fifth dimension,
we’ll probably be able to touch our consciousnesses. ...Though I don’t really
get what that’d be like.” He ended there with a carefree laugh. The other great
detectives were looking at him like he’d yet again said nonsense, but I under-
stood what he meant.
I could already touch consciousnesses...even more than that, I’d already
fucked one in the ass.
Right. Touching ‘Kozue’s feelings’ fell under that category.
That’s probably what was happening when Kozue’s alternative personal-
ities like ‘Shimada Kikyou’ earned themselves a body for the 14 years they
lived, and also when Nail Peeler was tied, and when I talked with Lord Whip-
lash.
 Okay, I thought. I could touch consciousnesses, I was relatively close to
accomplishing my goal of exiting time. That unexpected glimmer of hope
lifted my mood a little.
I hesitated for a while over whether I should tell the great detectives that
consciousnesses and feelings can gain a personality and take physical form.
They would likely comprehend that new wisdom instantly and reconstruct
their world by incorporating it. However, was it a good idea to spread such
important knowledge irresponsibly? After all, I'd already produced two of
them and Kozue six. If the 30 people here learned of that fact, there was no
telling how many feelings would gain a body. Looking at Nail Peeler, if there
were no bodies available, they could use a replacement...I bet leather or rub-
ber gloves, shirts, pants, shoes, and ski masks would do the trick. Right,
minds can maintain their shape as long as they have an enclosure. It’s prob-
ably essential, even. It’s like for the Pinehouse, having strict delimitations in
space is important. As long as they have an enclosure...I imagined 500 stupid
great detectives and dull Angel Bunnies feelings crawling out of their closets
and bringing nothing but trouble, and got chills running down my spine...it’d
actually only make me mad, but either way, even if it wasn’t for such a
manga-esque development, I’d rather avoid sharing wisdom when unneces-
sary. If I let that information out here, I doubt the 30 people here would man-
age to not spread it around. Leaks always happen. Right. That’s basically a
law. And there are all sorts of people with all sorts of feelings in this world,
some of them have imaginations and emotions that would do much more
than simply get on my nerves... Actually, my past experiences often had to do
with that, so if there’s one thing I could assert, it’s that there are people out
there secretly carrying emotions that deserve nothing better than getting spit
and stepped on by absolutely everyone else. If those people’s emotions ob-
tained a body and started acting as they pleased, the world would quickly fall
into a tragic situation... After all, they have weird fantasies and obsessions no
normal person would ever think of. Compared to a world dominated by such
beings, Hell is basically Disneyland. Innocuous chastisement. Torture leaving
one barely alive. Well, it’s not just about those perverse and wretched feel-
ings; no one would see having their feelings take form and act on their own
will as a fairy tale. Nail Peeler and Lord Whiplash had in a sense helped me,
so I was grateful to them, but seriously, they could’ve chosen any other way
to do it and it would have been much better. Also, if a feeling steals someone’s
body, that’s a tragedy. It’s not a wise idea to spread the suffering ‘Shimada
Kikyou’ and company’s families went through or to create more sacrifices,
like the real ‘Shimada Kikyou’ who died after having her body stolen from her.
‘Kozue’s feelings’ stealing Kozue’s body made the situation even more com-
plex...I thought, however, I couldn’t imagine well what would’ve happened if
‘Kozue’s feelings’ hadn’t come. The future and the past are fixed...was that
idea merely a result of having given up and feeling powerless? Or was it an
assumption I could put my faith into even though I couldn’t express why that
was the case?
Everything up to now had felt like it obeyed the theory of fixed destiny.
Mitamura Saburou staged the Pinehouse Case thanks to the timeslip, and
‘Shakuko’ was brought back to life thanks to ‘Kozue’s feelings’ coming here...
Was there anything I could do to make Kozue’s rape never take place, even
though it had already happened?
Since I was lost in thoughts and non-responding, the great detectives
went ahead and started discussing a Venn diagram about spacetime and con-
sciousness.
“Yay, this should be it for the first five dimensions. Then what is the sixth
dimension?” said Nekoneko Nyannyannyan with a sketchbook in hand. She
had drawn six concentric circles on it with the captions ‘point,’ ‘line,’ ‘area,’
‘space,’ ‘time,’ and ‘consciousness.’
“If consciousness can bend spacetime and control everything in this
world, does it mean it’s the highest tier? Can anyone think of something
higher?” She was speaking like a fish seller at a market. Any higher bids?
Speak now or never!
 “No, the mind can’t possibly encompass everything,” said Nils. “I mean,
the unconscious is a thing...and we didn’t know we could bend spacetime be-
fore, did we? There might still be a lot we don’t know about. Though I might
be speaking the obvious.”
“You’re right!” Nekoneko followed up. “If consciousness encompassed all
of knowledge, then there would be nothing more for us to learn, after all. So
the sixth dimension is knowledge...wait, but ‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’ refer
to things already inside our consciousness. So if we need something more
global that includes even things we don’t know, ‘intelligence’ should be a
better fit. Intelligence. A global intelligence encompassing all the reasonings
and truths. Yeah, that seems fine to me. Okay, so we have ‘intelligence’ higher
than ‘consciousness’...” she drew a seventh circle on the outside and called it
‘intelligence’.
“With that as our sixth dimension, are we nearing the end~? We even have
things we don’t know in there, what more can come up with...”
“Oh, I have one,” Sakurazuki raised his hand.
“Yes, Sakurazuki-san,” Nekoneko prompted him like a teacher.
“E~rm, I’m not sure it’s above ‘intelligence’ strictly speaking, but...”
“Go on?”
“I believe that human-born creations and inventions appear without re-
lying on intelligence, and expand both the scope of intelligence and con-
sciousness.”
Pfft, I laughed out loud. Yeah, of course he would say that.

People go around inventing and broadening the world they live in like how
they create art pieces. That might even be the essence of living.

That was Sakurazuki’s philosophy. Some Angel Bunnies who had appar-
ently heard his pet theory in the past...perhaps even too many times, looked
like they were thinking ‘That idiot Katou is trying to push that crap ye~t
again,’ however, I could now realize the original resistance I had against that
idea had gone away. It went further, I recalled Sakurazuki’s talk about how
people influence each other—though he was talking about everyone’s views
on the world after death—and was struck by how the essence of his ideas were
right on. The world is as we believe it to be, and how we view the world is
constantly wavering due to the influence others have on you. Consciousness
being able to reshape spacetime is an example of that. One could bend
spacetime because someone told them it was possible. The world might’ve
indeed been a big, round table long ago. ...And in the end, my current philos-
ophy had been influenced by Sakurazuki.
“But is it really possible to create something exterior to all intelligence?”
Nils commented. “It even includes things we don’t know about, right? Then
creations and inventions might simply be part of the global intelligence we
have yet to discover.”
Nils flipped Sakurazuki’s argument upside down.
“If we view ‘intelligence’ as the ultimate whole then yes, you are abso-
lutely right,” Sakurazuki replied. “However, ‘creating’ means ‘bringing in
something that didn’t exist,’ that’s why I suggested creations and inventions
as something potentially outside of intelligence. That is only my philosophy,
and the moment following their appearance, creations and inventions be-
come incorporated into the intelligence and consciousness, so it shouldn’t
conflict much with your view either, Nils-kun.”
Seeing Sakurazuki calmly say that with a smirk on his face, I noticed he
was preparing for a war of attrition and laughed out loud. He must’ve been
thinking it was a contest of influence, so he only had to talk about his per-
spective for as long as necessary. According to him, one’s view on the world
is never wrong. The world exists exactly as it’s shaped inside one’s head. At
any time, no matter what, the world one believes to be real exists.
“Then let’s decide by a majority vote,” Nekoneko announced all of a sud-
den. Everyone seemed to doubt whether it was a good solution, but I knew it
was. In most cases, ideologies are decided by the majority rule; the world is
basically created by the majority. Most people don’t bother thinking about
the world nor how they view it, meaning they’ll believe whatever the majority
believes, and that’s totally fine. Sakurazuki kept his smirk up and waited for
the result of the vote in silence. And the decision was for ‘creations and in-
ventions’ to be above ‘intelligence’...unanimously. Even Nils raised his hand
for it, making troupe members quip, “Oi oi, which side are you on!?” to which
he answered, acting all abashed, with, “We~ll, I mean, having ‘creations and
inventions’ above ‘intelligence’ is more romantic, isn’t it~?” which provoked
a reaction of hysteria among his fan girls. Sakurazuki was smiling.
“It’s decided, the one, two, three, four...seventh dimension goes to ‘crea-
tions and inventions’.” Nekoneko drew an even bigger circle on the Venn di-
agram, then asked “Is that everything~?” Someone raised their hand. Just as
Sakurazuki, it was another Angel Bunny: Hongou Takeshitakeshi.
“Yes, Hongou-san, please,” Nekoneko prompted him so he lowered his
hand and said his idea.
“Ah, um, then love.”
The other troupe members burst into laughter and commented stuff like
“I told you he’d suggest love!” “He’s always about that.” “He just can’t shut
up about love.”
“The heck guys, then dreams.”
Hongou switched, which caused another uproar of criticisms and insults.
“Stop then-ing you Then Monster.” “Fuck off Hongou.” “Go home, idiot.”
“How in hell are dreams and love even related to intelligence or inventions?”
Hongou went in for a third time,
“No okay, this one is for realsies. Logic.”
That was fitting for Hongou, who’d said logic’s the foundation for actions
and conceptions, but the Angel Bunnies let go of their chance to make jokes
and shut up. The impression of ‘Mm? Wait, that didn’t seem like a joke, it
sounds pretty nice’ spread not only among the Angel Bunnies but also among
the great detectives. “You do have a point,” Hakkyoku broke the silence after
some time. Hongou took an arrogant tone and joked, “Oh, it takes a great de-
tective to understand another?” So Hakkyoku added “Although I don’t think
‘logic’ is the only important aspect,” giving Hongou the cold shoulder and
provoking a roar of laughter among the troupe, then continued. “There is
something more than just logic managing creations. In art, any kind of crea-
tion is accepted, but art pieces are selected by logic and aesthetic sense. In
cooking you’d need to add tastiness and safety, and in industrial design it’d
be functionality. Ideas which don’t clear those criteria never get to see the
light of the day. ...What could be the essence behind logic, aesthetic sense,
tastiness, safety, functionality, and all those criteria?”
As everyone fell into thoughts to find an answer, someone raised their
hand; it was me.
“Oh! Please, Disco-san,” Nekoneko gave me the floor with a bright smile.
“It’s probably preferences. Wishes like ‘I want it to be like that,’ ‘This way
is better,’ ‘That’s my ideal’ is, at the core, decided by one’s preferences.” I
could feel power running through my veins. When I said you can teach some-
one how to travel through spacetime, but you cannot teach how to love to
Runrun on that night in Jindai Zoo, that’s what I meant. People’s preferences
weren't bound to their consciousnesses or the global intelligence, it was the
core. “Preferences are the nucleus of the world. Logic or aesthetic sense stem
from there, which then dictated intelligence and consciousness, and finally
give the world its shape.” And the feelings such as ‘I want it to be like that,’
‘This way is better,’ ‘That’s my ideal’ that come from one’s preferences are,
in fact, wills. Since wills can give birth to events, everything in this world
obeys preferences...proportionally to the strength of those preferences. With
this iron will. I would save Kozue. To accomplish that, I would bend anything.
I wasn’t sure it was possible before, but another vote was held and got a
unanimous result, so Nekoneko drew the ninth circle in her sketchbook. “For
some reason, writing those feels exceedingly normal and natural, like it’s not
a big deal, don’t you think?” Hakkyoku said. “It’s common for the solution to
a case to be extremely simple,” Mame Gen answered. Everyone shared the
same feeling, which gave me more strength.
I was right in coming here, there was no doubt in my mind about that.
I would prove the fixed destiny theory wrong. I would save Kozue with my
iron will. My fundamental preferences would mobilize my logic, aesthetic
sense, ‘I want it to be like that,’ ‘This way is better,’ ‘That’s my ideal,’ and
erase Kozue’s wounds.
This drawing promised me success. Just as I was starting to get excited,
“Wha~~~~t are you doing starting a drawing club, you buncha nitwits~~?”
Mercury C appeared. Alone. What had he done with Nail Peeler, I wanted
to ask, but he ignored my gaze and said,
“Oh, what’s that? Gimme.”
He snatched the sketchbook from Nekoneko’s hands.
“The heck, don’t you know I rule over the whole fucking world?”
He went and scribbled a big, gigantic ‘Mercury C’.
 Everyone went “Ooooh” to this weirdly smart punchline. That overly
honest reaction made Mercury C flinch, then act embarrassed. I looked at his
back, somewhat fed up with him, however, with a firm conviction in mind.
There was likely some meaning in having brought that violent man with
me here.
He was the one who’d kept up with me when transcending spacetime, and
he would be the most suitable to accompany me in the future. He had no com-
mon sense, but that’s precisely why I could place expectations in him. After
all, what we were doing was quite literally breaking common sense. I couldn’t
think of a better ally when it came to overcoming everything without a second
thought like he did with his scribble...BUT, I wasn’t confident I could handle
him well... Mercury C came over to me as I was thinking that.
“Oh, Detective, you’re back, huh. See, in the end, flirting with Norma in
that highschool clubroom forever wasn’t an option, was it? What did you ex-
pect? You can’t run away forever. Hey, I’ll give you a hand, let’s go crush that
fucking glasses dipshit.”

That Koeda Chocolate box next to Kozue had been left by Mercury C.

How had he reached that place even though I had no idea where it was?
“You went to the Pineapple Home?”
“Kinda,” Mercury C grinned. “It was fun seeing you get dragged into some
bullshit again. But it wasn’t that dire this time. If it seemed like you’d lose to
that General Slapshot I’d’ve run over and beat him up, though...”
“Lord Whiplash.”
“Huh?”
“It’s Lord Whiplash. Not General Slapshot.”
“Aah. Who gives a shit. Either way, it’s just fucked-up feces you produced.
But well, aren’t you glad you got a chance to look into a mirror? Made you
realize how much of a moron you were, didn’t it? When you’re rock bottom,
the only way is up.”
“...But that orphanage didn’t actually exist, right?” Due to my work, I
knew the names of every orphanage and children’s welfare center in each
state, so there’s no way I wouldn’t have heard the name ‘Pineapple Home’ if
there was such a big facility in Troy.
However, Mercury C said, “No clue either. If you think it exists then maybe
it does, and if you don’t think so, maybe it doesn’t. Isn’t that how it works? I
mean, I managed to get there too, so maybe it exists somewhere? Though not
in this world nor the world beyond.”
When I came back from the Pinehouse Theater, Sakurazuki had asked me,
‘It wasn’t this world, it wasn’t the other world, and it wasn’t even somewhere
that was neither of those...so where did you two venture to?’ like an idiot, but
could it be we’d ended up in a similar place? “Is it possible...” I said, “that just
as our consciousness can alter space...” and as our feelings can take shape,
“mental imageries and imaginary worlds can become a world on their own?
And those would exist parallel to this world in a sort of different universe?”
Sakurazuki had said so too. The world is made out of people’s consciousness.
In context, that meant people’s consciousness could alter/reshape/edit the
world, but since one’s feelings can take form and exist outside of oneself, the
world as pictured by one might, in the same vein, exist outside of oneself as a
different world.
“Moron. As if every single world you vaguely dream up becomes a real
thing,” Mercury C promptly shut down the idea. “Your delusions only exist
within yourself. The ‘other people’ who exist in your delusions within your-
self are simply people you manufactured, clones of yourself,” he’d made
peace signs and bent his fingers to make the quotation gesture when he said
‘other people’. “Geez, I leave you alone for a few minutes and you go right
back to bathing in elitism. Doncha think that egotism is what’s bringing all
these troubles to the people around you?”
It might’ve been. I didn’t think I was particularly elitist, but I did actually
summon Lord Whiplash myself. I had decided to stop the cycle of searching
for causes and reasons within me then pinning those on myself.
The bad guys were outside.
“So, what’s the plan?” Mercury C asked. “What are you gonna do now?”
I was set. “I’ll go wherever I’m being called.” The Hanged Man = Odin.
“Seems like a drug king in Colombia is whistling at me.”
“Hm. The Styron siblings. Well, I bet that’ll be a must eventually, but you
got the order wrong.”
 How could he act like he predicted everything... He continued, as if to clear
away my doubts.
“Don’t you need to go save Kozue?”
“...” I glared at him, but couldn’t find anything to say. Not much in me had
changed since the time I couldn’t do anything in room 1201 of Princeton Hotel.
Was there anything I could do for her sake if I returned there? Mercury C
grinned as if he’d noticed my apprehension.
“Do you think the past can be changed? For real, Detective.”
His voice didn’t have the usual provocative or menacing tone; it felt like
an earnest question. That’s cheating, I thought for a second, then had no
choice but to face that question head on.

Could the past be changed?

That was the crucial point when it came to saving ‘Kozue’.

Mercury C addressed the great detectives and Angel Bunnies present in the
hall late at night.
“It’s important for you all too, you know? Can you change the past? Can
you change the future?”
Though it felt like forever ago...compared to the Pinehouse being the now,
this was yesterday, back when I thought ‘Kozue’s feelings’ was ‘Kozue from
eleven years into the future’; I recalled the exchange I had with her in the
sketchbook. I must’ve written that the choices we make at all points in time
influence the future. But I also very slightly believed in the existence of
worlds that could’ve existed = possible worlds, so I also wrote that all those
futures extending from a branching point existed outside of our universe...‘if
there are an infinite number of universes and an infinite number of
spacetimes, then didn’t all the possibilities that branch off from reality,
those pasts and presents and futures that I drew differently, happen in some
other spacetime, in some other universe, and exist at the same level of real-
ism as our reality?’ I recalled what I’d written and felt embarrassed because
honestly, I was so laid back at the time. I was so carefree... Back then, I could
only think of the time travel happening to ‘Kozue’ as some sort of miraculous
chain of accidents. I’d never ever have thought I could do the same by ex-
panding my consciousness. However, that multiverse theory-like thinking
representing time as a single line could only come out of someone bound by
common sense. Just imagining how insane a single world would look when
taking into account the time travel by many people takes all of my brain
power, so the possible worlds go way over my imagination...but that’s just the
limits of my brain. Therefore, since I couldn’t acknowledge them, it’s the
same as if possible worlds didn’t exist. If cognition shapes spacetime, think-
ing something doesn’t exist makes it not exist. However, although my cog-
nition may shape my own spacetime, it might sever me...isolate me from the
world’s spacetime. The problem of changing the past was obviously relevant
to the world’s spacetime, the one that included others, so worrying about
what happens in my personal spacetime wouldn’t do anything. Sakurazuki
had said, ‘Although other people sway the world, they also fix it in place,’ and
the 30 people gathered in the Pinehouse might actually be doing the work of
spreading, changing, adding, bending, or clarifying vague spots in how the
world behaves. I recalled the Venn diagram. Intelligence surpassed con-
sciousness...my own consciousness would be overshadowed by the intelli-
gence these great detectives were about to produce. The upcoming debate
abetted by Mercury C would likely be of crucial importance to me, or even be
vital.
“Yes, this might be a good time to share our thoughts on that...” Mame
Gen said. “After all, if consciousnesses can bind or bend spacetime, common
understanding might be necessary to live in the same space. Wouldn’t it?
What’s everyone’s opinion?”
She turned to the great detectives who simply stared at her, none approv-
ing of nor refuting her claim.
 “We can’t have anarchic impulses bend spacetime every which way,”
Mame Gen insisted. “You wouldn’t want another charade like yesterday,
would you?” She flipped over the page with the Venn diagram encircled by
‘Mercury C’ and spread an untainted, pure-white, B4-size surface on the
sketchbook Nekoneko Nyannyannyan was holding. Mame Gen drew some-
thing based on arrows, similar to what I’d drawn in my letters to ‘Kozue (’s
feelings) from eleven years into the future’.
“If time traveling to the past creates trouble and makes the flow of time
diverge...” Mame Gen drew diverging arrows. “The thing is, we have no idea
what happens to the timeline from which the time travel occurred. That’s of-
ten the crux in movies or books. The two main patterns are for the original
timeline to disappear, or for the original one to shift to the new one like in
Back to the Future... Let’s say a time paradox caused additional mass we
hadn’t considered to be added to the universe, that would act like a diverging
point and destroy spacetime. Not only might it destroy the original and new
flow of time, it might also create a giant explosion that would shatter every-
thing that had existed up to this point.”
She violently scribbled over the fork and added the SFX BOOM!
“...Of course, this mass resulting from a time paradox is merely something
I thought up now...” she said with a smile, apparently shuddering over this
gloomy drawing, and averted her eyes from it.
“Akh, this task is...pretty dangerous,” Choukuuji Kiyuu commented. “I
mean, having to mind explosions or shattering while our minds bend
spacetime is... There’s no telling what unrestrained thoughts would induce.
Especially since we know that our consciousness can change spacetime.”
“Yeah...”
“Of course, it’s partly inevitable, but everyone should stay aware that
these are merely our first impressions on the matter.”
“I’m only realizing this midway through, but this is scary... It’s a giant
maze. We’re dealing with things nobody understands yet. It’s probably due to
a lack of a proper discussion about this in the past... There have been plenty
of movies or manga dealing with time travel, but they all obey the authors’
views on the matter, and those didn’t absolutely need to be right. No one has
yet to solve the famous paradox of the son traveling back in time to kill his
father, and our current logic and physics and science cannot even predict
what would happen... I finally understood why. That’s the reason why in
movies and the like, the travelers have restricted interactions with the time
in question. It could be they only have one time machine, or not enough fuel;
necessary conditions to enjoy a simple story. Having a situation like ours,
where a mere thought can transport us to the past or future, makes the story
muuuuuch more complicated and hard to control. But...Disco-san,”
My name suddenly came up.
“Kozue-chan came from the future, didn’t she?”
No, only her feelings came from the future...but I didn’t want to talk about
that. Mame Gen had just said she was scared, but I had my own fears too. Ac-
tually, mine should be bigger. I had information they didn’t have access to.
‘Kozue’s feelings’ who came from the future. Since consciousness can alter
the world, our feelings can at times take form, think, and speak. I couldn’t
bring myself to tell them about this...especially since traveling through time
alone caused so much chaos already. Setting aside whether spacetime would
really go BOOM!, I wanted to avoid increasing the troubles I had to deal with.
Seeing me stay silent, Mame Gen asked again. “Disco-san, did you go to
the past? ...Since earlier, when you touched our shoulders, you traveled to the
future.”
“I did,” I said. I’d gone to the morning ‘Kozue’s feelings’ came to Chofu
as ‘Shakuko,’ I’d gone to the day Shakuko died, and I’d also gone to visit Toda
Erika and the five other poor girls. But I didn’t want to explain any of that.
“Did anything paradoxical happen then?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely none.” Far from that. Various puzzle pieces
bizarrely found their place. Shakuko’s death, the victims of Panda Lover, and
Kozue’s division. But the Black Bird Man was the cause of all that, and I had
no intention to explain that either.
 “...Then we can rule out the case where traveling to the past would in-
stantly shatter the flow of time. But we still don’t know what would happen
when a paradox occurs, do we?”
“...”
“Disco-san, how was it, actually going to the past? For example...if I go
there and find myself, would it be possible for me to kill my past self? ...I mean,
when one tries to act out such things, do they feel a certain counterforce? Like
a barrier that would prevent me from interacting with myself...”
Pfft, I laughed. “Don’t you remember the clone experiment I showed you?
These weren’t clones, they were my future self coming to the present and
standing before you all. I met myself and nothing happened, right?”
“Oh~, now that you mention it... I see, so there was no real resistance. Still,
although that didn’t create a paradox, if that ever did, we wouldn’t know in
advance. Disco-san, did you generate any paradoxes?”
“...”
She laughed in turn. “You’re really cautious, Disco-san. Thinking about it,
you’ve already gone many places, so your internal time must have consider-
ably advanced. From our perspective, you come from the future.”
That wasn’t just me, I looked at Mercury C next to me, but surprisingly,
that guy who would act nonchalantly no matter the situation was keeping
quiet, his eyes fixed on Nekoneko’s sketchbook.
He understood the importance of this cognition-sharing event.
“Also, even before addressing the grandfather paradox, this branching
way of thinking about time already bears some problematic contradictions,”
Mame Gen returned to her explanation. Only the Angel Bunnies reacted to the
‘problems’ she’d mentioned; the great detectives had all seen through it and
were silently watching over the process with calm expressions. I had noticed
that contradiction. That was: “If time really branched off like this, with the
original flow of time becoming something different altogether, disappearing,
or being altered, then the time traveler himself would disappear.” The troupe
members went “Ooooh” at Mame Gen’s remark. “If the time traveler’s ex-
istence vanishes, the branching should disappear too...meaning history
would return to its original flow, no? But then, the time travel actually hap-
pened, so the branching happens...but if it does, the time travel doesn’t...but
before we call it a contradiction or a paradox and reject the entire idea, I want
to present a hypothesis. Let’s say time travel leads to a branching in history.
Couldn’t the two resulting lines be a continual oscillation...switching on and
off in turns as they continue their course on their own?”
She said as she drew an arrow oscillating back and forth.
“Not abruptly cutting, they each have a continuity in their time, but when
observed from the outside they are oscillating at a frightening speed, so fast
that we cannot see it as anything other than two timelines advancing in par-
allel...would that be possible? In other words, we would get rid of the parallel
worlds and the disappearing and the shifts induced in the first drawing, eve-
rything would be happening basically simultaneously.”
As the Angel Bunnies were swallowing their breaths, the elder Choukuuji,
Keraku, intervened.
“Mm. The idea is good, but we’re talking about a gigantic spacetime,
aren’t we? It’s hard to imagine something that big oscillating. Wouldn’t that
be an option: The oscillation still occurs. But, it quickly calms down, and the
two lines that appeared to have diverged due to the oscillation’s afterimage
merge back into a single one.”
Mame Gen drew as she listened to Keraku. “So this is how it would look,”
she then showed it to us. The arrow of time split and swelled into a two-lane
midway through, and eventually merged. “Ah, there’s no problem if the
starting point of the time travel is situated in that split oscillating part, but if
it is after the merging point, that means the time travel would exist in the
new history too, and there wouldn’t have been a point to the oscillation. After
all, the swaying exists because changing the past could erase the time travel
and make contradictions and paradoxes emerge. Then how about the oscilla-
tion not happening if we go to a distant past...meaning we wouldn’t be able to
change history? Or maybe the oscillation will always last at least until the
starting point for the time travel? If so, altering the past in a distant past
would cause a bigger oscillation, moving more mass, unleashing an insane
amount of energy, and in the end vub-vub-vub-vub-vub-vub
BOOM!...maybe?” Her drawing was a complete mess.
“Hahahaha...scary,” an Angel Bunny let out a dry laugh, but Mame Gen
and the elder Choukuuji and the rest of the troupe were all serious.
“Right,” Keraku conceded. “...If we try to think without contradictions,
that is indeed possible.”
He admitted it. Admitting something meant raising the probability of it
happening.
“But these are mere hypotheses,” he added, probably because he deduced
like a great detective his feelings would affect spacetime and was afraid of the
power his cognition held.
“Oi oi, guys, this is turning into a chicken game,” Hongou Takeshitakeshi
joked, but that only provoked a dry chuckle from the scared people and no one
laughed. “Well, also,” Nekoneko Nyannyannyan said, taking the sketchbook
Mame Gen was holding and continuing as she drew. “How is this as a com-
promise between Mame-chan and big bro’s points? The oscillation starts,
vub vub vub, but soon loses in amplitude and gets closer; however, they never
fully merge or unify, the oscillation continues semipermanently with both
versions’ history being nearly identical, so no matter where the starting point
for the time travel is, we won’t ever lose the reason for the oscillation that
can only be found in the old history. Good. With this, in a sense they are par-
allel worlds, in a sense there is indeed a shift in the history, and even if the
oscillation was massive, the burden should be kept to a minimum.”
In Nekoneko’s drawing, the line would diverge, swell, shrink, and ulti-
mately overlap each other.
“Ooh...that’s a heck of a compromise,” Keraku laughed. “Reminds me of
electrons. They’re both particles and waves. To think the smallest and biggest
things in the world would be so similar. To me it feels more real than parallel
worlds...but it also smells like a safe punchline to appease our worries.”
“Hey, bro...” Kiyuu rebuked him. However, Keraku’s words had pin-
pointed what many present here felt. Exploding or being erased was scary.
Plus, it would feel incredibly calming if we were to simply believe what
Nekoneko said.
“Oh, the older one’s tougher,” Hongou said, but everyone around him
went silent and seemed a bit gloomy.
Consciousness rules over spacetime, but not totally freely. That’s because
intelligence is above, and people have a hard time actually believing in their
own impressions. We know we are not omniscient. We constantly question
ourselves...that’s the essence of reason and intelligence. We know how little
we know, and that prevents us from manipulating spacetime. Moreover,
doubting is a great detective’s job. They need a deep investigation to be sat-
isfied. However, in the Pinehouse, over ten deductions were presented, many
great detectives had died, much evidence was gathered, various blatant hints
were given to us, I was basically instructed on everything I needed to do, and
like that, we finally managed to transcend spacetime... The simplest thing of
all, believing in oneself, is no easy task for people; it’s even more arduous for
detectives, and a heroic feat for great detectives. But only those who put eve-
rything into question can reach that new, gargantuan intelligence.
“Okay, let’s put this oscillating theory on hold for the moment,” Mame
Gen noticed the mood in the hall and tried to fix it by speaking in a bright
voice while drawing. “Ehm, the next thing is also about going to the past.
Movies have similar patterns on this. When someone tries to alter the past,
actually that intent was what originally formed the past, and in the end noth-
ing changes; pre-established harmony. In other words, the flow of time is
that of one visited by people from the future and is already bent...the time
travelers are oblivious to that fact and believe in a fake, imaginary past, and
in a sense time travel to shape history that way...that’s the idea. It’s not rare
for smart movies or manga to be like that. Like Terminator or Doraemon:
Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld.”
‘Kay, it came. That was it. Though I hadn’t seen the movie she mentioned
nor that particular Doraemon title...
“In other words, with that thinking, destiny is fixed and the flow of time
won’t change.”
An Angel Bunny said, “Ah~, but this comes more naturally to me...” lead-
ing other troupe members to say their piece. I could understand them. The
option for a robust and permissive world must be reassuring. “I mean, it’s
more plausible than people cheating history to me.” “Right?” “It does feel
kinda obvious.” “Agree~d.” “Single-word interjections are banned!”
(laughters) “That’s seriously convincing.” “I guess we’re set.” “I mean, in-
venting time machines is part of history, why wouldn’t that be included in
the whole?” “Anyone wanna test it?” “Eh?” “‘History’ is still in the making,
it’s being created as we speak, no? Why not have someone go a few minutes
into the past and create a contradiction for a test?” “Wait.” “Hold on, Kim,
you know...” “That’s too reckless.” “What’s your plan if that causes the
BOOM! we talked about? Think more, moron.” “That’s why you should shut
up, Kim.” “Ehhh~~...I thought it was a good idea.” “In your dreams maybe.”
“Ah. Hold on, is Kim’s idea being rejected to not cause any paradoxes?” “How
so?” “Like, we are destined to bash him to avoid making any paradoxes.”
“Ooh...” “Okay, time to test it for real, then.” “Shut up Kim... Wait, oh, is that
what happened?” “Yeah. That’s what I mean.” “Oooh...and that’s why Kim
got chosen to say something truly stupid. And we, the decent people, are to
warn him and hold him back...what a nuisance of a job. Are we guardians of
the universe, maybe?” “Uh guys, I’ve been trying to go to the future and the
past for a while, but it doesn’t work...” “Eh, hold on Hayashi, the fuck are you
doing?” “Well~, I was just curious...” “Hey, don’t put your curiosity above all
else, got it?” “Well, anyway, I couldn’t do it. When I saw Disco-san do it ear-
lier I felt like I could, but...” “Oh, me too.” “Right? But nothing to be done.
Nekoneko-san managed to, but...just shows the difference between us and
great detectives. Like, whatever I tried, it was a no...but that might just be how
history works. I mean, it would be scary if normal people like us, the stupid
ones, could easily go to the past.”
“I guess so,” Mame Gen laughed. “But new techniques and knowledge
should slowly permeate into many people, so have hope for the future. Any-
way, refrain from being reckless while we still know near to nothing, I count
on you to...”
“Um, Mame-san,” a great detective called out to her. He was from the un-
remarkable bunch.
“...? What is it, Kakiuchi-kun?”
It was Kakiuchi Mamajump “Errr, can we hurry up and talk about the fu-
ture?”
“???? Why?”
“Well, the past already including every bit of influence and never budging
is fine, but there’s still a risk of exploding or being erased, so...you see,
Hakkyoku-kun is already headed to the future.”
“WHAT!?”

Mame Gen wasn’t the only surprised one; after looking at the refined,
handsome boy, every great detective and Angel Bunny looked around for
Hakkyoku, but the other idol face was nowhere to be found.
“What is he doing...”
Kakiuchi answered Nekoneko’s murmuring.
“He said if he looked at the result of many cases, he could increase the
number of prevented ones...”
Oh, that idea, I thought.
“Ehh...but,” Mame Gen said. “Isn’t that too reckless? We have no idea
what could happen...”
Kakiuchi replied, sounding truly apologetic. “I tried to stop him too, but
he argued that speaking here would limit our possibilities...”
 That’s how it is, I thought to myself and laughed. Jumping into the action
without common cognition might actually give him more freedom. Without
the common sense, logic, and cautiousness of the likes of ‘I’m not sure if it’s
dangerous, but just in case, let’s not’ that other people bring in, he could act
and decide on his own will alone. And his will had the power of transcending
spacetime. If he believed hard enough, he could bulldoze through some hur-
dles. Talking here and gaining new ideas or clearing away doubts also gave us
strength, but people who strongly believe in themselves can instead find out
through practice.
“M~~~~m,” Mame Gen thought for some time, then, “But hold on, hold
on. Hakkyoku-kun isn’t simply going to the future, he wants to bring that
information back with him, no? ...If he changes something in the future and
alters history, whether that creates a parallel world or a shift or whatever,
though you can argue it doesn’t affect us, it would change the world our chil-
dren and grandchildren will live in... Also, in the off-chance spacetime col-
lapses, there’s a possibility for not just the future but the whole thing, our
time included, to break down as well. If we were right with the oscillation of
history, oscillations are waves at their core, so there’s no guarantee they
won’t spread to our spacetime too... But most importantly, if he is to come
back, that means he will be combining both problems of ‘going to the future’
and ‘going to the past’. He might break the future by going there, then come
back and thus break the past as well. It probably matters whether he is to
come back before or after the current point in time too... If history changing
meant shattering the former version, if he goes back in time to a former point
in time and changes something, what will become of our existences? How
immature! Don’t you bring up the fixed theory and carefreely argue that if
you would break history then it was already broken from the start so it’s not
a big deal, all in all! We’re talking peacefully here and you might be stuck
alone in a parallel world, Hakkyoku-kun, you big dummyyyy!” Mame Gen
started yelling theatrically midway through. She took a few breaths then con-
tinued in a solemn tone. “But...now we have to entrust our fate to Hakkyoku-
kun... It will be fine, I’m sure the great detective Hakkyoku Sachiari-kun will
pull it off! Let’s believe in him!”
Everyone around Mame Gen went silent in astonishment, except for
Nekoneko Nyannyannyan, who looked around the Pinehouse hall shortly be-
fore finding what she searched for.
“Oh, Hakkyoku-kun’s here.”
I followed her gaze; Hakkyoku Sachiari was standing behind me, before
the door to room 2 on the second floor.
“Found you!” yelled Mame Gen with a beaming smile, making Hakkyoku
sigh.
“That was too obvious.”
“E~h? Ehehe. Ruining the moment I made for you...I knew you must be
waiting for your moment somewhere... Wait...are you okay, Hakkyoku-kun?”
He looked down at us from over the handrail with a smile, but his com-
plexion had lost its usual vividness. He was kind of...dim.
What had he found in the future?
“M~~~~~~m,” he said and put up a weak smile. “Hold on a second.”
He suddenly vanished.
“Ah, hold on Hakkyoku-kun...”
Mame Gen begged, and he appeared right next to her. “Sure.”
“Woah. Geez, what are you doing… So what happened?”
His face still as gloomy, he silently stared at Nekoneko’s sketchbook,
reached for it, and flipped through the pages.
“...I hadn’t thought of this oscillation... This only includes the travel to the
past, what about the future?”
“Eh, ah, we’ve yet to...”
“I see. I can testify to some degree about that.”
“Eh, really?”
“Yeah.”
“About the flow of time?”
“Yes.”
 “Didn’t you go look at the result of cases?”
“I did. But the important matter right now is whether the flow of time can
or cannot change.”
“Oh, really? ...Ehh? Hold on...I’m kinda scared.”
“Why?”
“Your face. ...Hakkyoku-kun, what happened to history? Did you screw
up?”
“Haha...I wonder. ...I wish that was simply my fault. I can’t quite imagine
how my face looks, but I’m ready to bet I’ve never had such an expression
before. After all...I had always been pretty confident in myself during my ac-
tivities as a great detective. I always had a certain composure, that is, until I
found myself with a chopstick through my eye in that taxi...no matter how
much time it would take, I knew I could solve any case that was presented
before me. And yet...”
“...”
“I don’t fully comprehend the flow of time either.”
“Ehh...?”
“Let’s think. ...At this rate, we won’t have a tomorrow.”
Everyone present shortened their breaths and could feel their bodies tense
up. Even Mercury C was staring at Hakkyoku with a grave-looking face.
“We won’t have a tomorrow...what do you mean by that?”
“Take it literally. ...The great detectives traveled through time earlier,
didn’t they? So from the Angel Bunnies...Fukushima-san and Tanaka-san, do
you have phones on you? Ah, then may I borrow them? Sorry for the trouble,
thank you.” He received their phones and compared the displays. “Good. The
times match...though I won’t check if the seconds do. Okay, Mame-san, hold
onto this.” he gave her Fukushima’s phone, then vanished on the spot, and
reappeared a moment later. The Angel Bunnies were in awe because of the
flickering great detective, but Hakkyoku paid no mind to it and silenced them.
“Mame-san, can you tell us the exact time?”
“Eh? ...On this phone? ...It is 02:28.”
 “On the phone I am holding, it is 02:31. These roughly three minutes were
evidently put to use at another time, but for now...let me think for a second.”
He said and went silent. Even when Mame Gen told him, “Hey...don’t ex-
periment on your own,” he continued fixating on a single point in space in
silence...or maybe he was spinning the gears in his brain without looking an-
ywhere in particular; he suddenly turned his face to me and asked, “After the
child version of Ehimegawa Juuzou-san—that is to say, Mitamura Saburou-
san—appeared and you completed your deduction, Wednesdayyy-san, where
did you head to?”
I didn’t answer. I never leak the content of the discussions I have with my
clients. My meeting with Runrun was a secret as well.
Hakkyoku changed his question. “...You went to a future further than to-
morrow, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Yes, you did say you read the newspaper from eleven years from now. Can
you tell us concretely how you did so?”
“I searched through the Chofu Municipal Library and printed a few copies
from the archives as well as that day’s newspaper.” I made copies of the ar-
ticle about Shakuko’s death and the TV program.
“Do you still have those print-outs on you?”
“I don’t...what about it?”
“I guarantee you won’t find those anywhere now.”
“? What does that mean?”
“Who knows...that’s what I’m currently pondering about...”
The instant he said that I returned to my past self’s time. Dead at night in
the living room of room 303 of Villa Hapira Kojimacho right after ‘Kozue’s
feelings’ and ‘I’ jumped to Iijima Hospital in Chofu on the 23rd of July 2000
where Shakuko’s corpse had been brought to. However, the 10 or so print-
outs from the 2017 library I should’ve been seeing on the table were nowhere
to be found.
 They’d vanished...had someone stolen them? The article about Shakuko’s
death was still there. Did they not need that?
Who would steal them?
For what purpose?
Something I didn’t understand was happening.
I returned to the Pinehouse. Hakkyoku was looking away so he hadn’t no-
ticed my disappearance; as I was about to question him, he continued speak-
ing.
“Ah, ‘I’ am already here.”
So I followed his gaze and found another ‘Hakkyoku Sachiari’ standing
before everyone, a phone in hand.
“Greetings. Mame Gen-san, can you tell us the time now?”
Mame Gen cut her bewilderment short and checked the time displayed on
her phone.
“02:29.”
“On my phone it is 02:28. I came here, to this future roughly one minute
away. First, I shall do this,” ‘Hakkyoku’ said and climbed on the sofa with his
shoes on, set one foot on the back, and shifted his weight to gracefully tip the
sofa over like you’d see in a musical movie. He then spoke to Dezuumi Style,
standing nearby. “Style-kun, remember what I’m about to say next. ...‘The
idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed
other philosophers with it.’”
“...That’s the opening line of Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Be-
ing.”
“Indeed. Eternity...especially for us able to leap through time, is a crucial
matter. It is no longer a metaphysical or philosophical subject of study, it is a
concrete phenomenon we have to handle ourselves.”
“Mm...?”
“Just remember that line,” ‘Hakkyoku’ said and checked the phone in his
hand again. “02:31. I shall then return to the past four minutes ago.”
 ‘Hakkyoku’ disappeared. Everyone’s eyes naturally gathered on the other
one...who had returned four minutes ago and was still thinking to himself,
but he continued to stare at the sofa in front of him in silence.
“Hakkyoku-kun, what was that...” Dezuumi asked.
Hakkyoku answered without looking away. “Style-kun, do you remember
the line I entrusted you with?”
“Eh? Yeah...of course I do. ...? I mean we just heard it...what? You want me
to repeat it?”
“Yes. Please do so.”
“...‘The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often
perplexed other philosophers with it’...want me to continue? ‘To think that
everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself re-
curs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?’...”
“Hahaha... No, that will be enough. You remembering that line, the sofa
still being on its side, and everyone here remembering me appearing a few
moments ago is all I need.”
“...?”
Dezuumi wasn’t the only one confused.
“Hakkyoku-kun, what are you experimenting with? ...If we can change the
future? But like that...”
“Our current selves cannot change the future, Mame-san.”
“...!?”
Since Hakkyoku’s words left Mame Gen speechless, now Dezuumi posed a
question.
“How about the past?”
“The past, however, we can change it...in a way,” he answered on the spot.
“That is my conclusion. The so-called fixed destiny theory you discussed
earlier. That is the unique correct answer.”
Then he’s gonna say destiny can’t be changed, I and everyone else thought,
but he continued as if to counter that idea.
 “How truthful actually are the history and facts we know of? How much
truth can we perceive in ourselves and our surroundings? If consciousness
shapes spacetime, the world should look exactly as one internally believes it
to. Meaning everything is under a constant veil of the unknowable. No matter
how skeptical one is, they are still part of their consciousness. However, put-
ting it the other way, our consciousness can change anything. The world
bends to our every wish and preference. And if someone with such a strong
will becomes capable of time travel, they could theoretically reject the current
now and impose the now they desire. They could change the past through
time travel, justify the current now as ‘something everyone wrongfully be-
lieved in’ and push it back to merely an imaginary world, rendering all the
history and facts known up to then part of the imaginary as well, and finally
promote the world and history and facts they desire but ‘couldn’t see until
then because of their mistaken beliefs’ to be the real world, the real history,
and the real facts. Naturally, it is possible for anyone to deceive themselves
through mistaken beliefs, but people who know consciousness can change
the world and are capable of time travel, if their will is strong enough, can
deceive the rest of humanity as well. And if enough people believe that new
version, the world will actually become that way.”
Hakkyoku asserted. The Angel Bunnies looked blankly at him.
“Yes. I concede, the fixed destiny theory is indeed difficult to imagine. As
Mame-san said, it is only seen used in Terminator, Doraemon: Nobita's Great
Adventure into the Underworld, and some other ‘smart movies or manga’;
the main reason for that would be due to how arduous it can be to make such
a plot coherent to the end. The point is that it does not come easily to the im-
agination of the big public. But in fact, it serves to shape the world as we want
to and yet have it be stable. Branching or shifts in history can be easy to im-
agine, but they are paradoxical and create blockades. The paradox-free de-
terministic destiny model is, in reality, the only way to bring change to the
past, but its complex nature continues to protect our world. That said, Ad-
venture into the Underworld is an interesting one. It is extremely well made.
It sees Dorami-chan, who came to save Doraemon and friends, misunder-
stand something due to the tricks of destiny. After history retrieves its origi-
nal course in the past world, the wise Dorami-chan claims that their original
world turned into a parallel world, but actually that statement becomes the
origin for the hesitation Nobita and company had towards using the Mo-
shimo-box. In other words, that was fixed from the start. ...”
As Hakkyoku’s speech had devolved into gibberish, Dezuumi spoke.
“Hmm, I see. Well then, I’m going to the toilets until Hakkyoku-kun fin-
ishes his explanation...”
“Please do, no need to hold back,” Hakkyoku said. Dezuumi headed for the
reception space to go to the toilets in the detached building. “The problem
here is whether Dorami-chan’s misunderstanding was intentional or if it was
a necessity abetted by history. It could also be a plot convenience from Fujiko
F Fujio, or even...”
Mame Gen cut in Hakkyoku’s seemingly endless ranting.
“Slow down, Hakkyoku-kun. What are you saying...I mean, what is your
point?”
Then, the instant Dezuumi disappeared beyond the entrance, Hakkyoku
said, “Alright,” and faced everyone. “I’m serious about Adventure into the
Underworld being a masterpiece, but talking about that here is useless. Time
is precious to us. Then I shall continue. Mame Gen-san.”
“...? Yes?”
“The experiment and verification you so wanted has now just started, and
in the same instant, ended.”
“Eh...?”
“Mercury C-san.”
The man next to me stared at him without answering.
“...Wednesdayyy-san, when you first arrived at the Pinehouse, Mercury
C-san used violence on Dezuumi-kun when he jumped down from the sec-
ond-floor window, right?”
“...Yeah.”
 “Do you know how hurt Dezuumi-kun was then?”
I replayed that scene in my head. “Uwahahahahghn!” Bam! He was sent
flying ten meters away before he could even touch the ground. The more I
remembered the more I wanted to laugh, but I bet it was no laughing matter
for him. “He broke about three ribs and fainted.”
“He has woken up now.”
“Mm? Who?”
“Dezuumi-kun, obviously.”
“...?”
“Hold on a minute,” he said and manipulated the phone he’d borrowed
from troupe members to call somewhere. “...Ah, hello, Hakkyoku speaking.”
“...” He switched the speaker mode on and directed the phone at us; the
interlocutor stayed silent on the other end, only letting a faint, low noise
reach our ears.
Hakkyoku spoke again. “Can you hear me?”
“...You’ve nailed the timing and everything, Hakkyoku-kun. You got me
good, I concede.”
The hoarse voice we could hear was, without a doubt, Dezuumi’s.

Hakkyoku spoke to the phone amidst the general surprise. “Not at all, you
also took great care in choosing your timing. I expected no less from a great
detective. I see you are not in a hospital room.”
“Yeah, we can’t use our phones there... The lounge is pitch black, I can’t
speak too loudly or the nurses will come and rebuke me.”
“I hope I didn’t make you wait for too long.”
“Haha. Nope~, I just got here.”
“That is well.”
 “It seems like Daibakushou-san and Runbaba-kun...well, the young
Mitamura-san, arrived by ambulance not long ago. ...I bet they’ll be flabber-
gasted when they see me here tomorrow morning. Well, given all the sur-
prises these two gave us, it would only be natural.”
“Dezuumi-kun, I hope you recover well.”
“Eh, ah, thank you very much...tell Mercury-san hi for me. Oh, but
Hakkyoku-kun, be very very mindful of how you speak then, mind even the
smallest details. I just want to take it easy now, so on that note...”
“Understood. Sorry for the disruption. Have a good night.”
“I think I’ll be discharged in two days, so—”
Hakkyoku ignored what Dezuumi was about to say and hung up, then
turned to us.
“...As you could hear.”
Dezuumi had three broken ribs after Mercury C’s kick. And he’d shed
enough blood in that thicket for someone to mistake it with Mitamura
Saburou’s murder scene. In no world could he return from the hospital after
a mere hour.
“The more you chase history and facts, the more they change shape and
run away, Mame Gen-san,” Hakkyoku said. “But you are not to blame for not
understanding that. Your need for experiments, in the end, comes from a lack
of experience. Because you died in the midst of this case; though that applies
to me as well. The Choukuuji brothers and Dollhouse-san too. We have
missed the core of the Pinehouse Case. That core part refers to the peculiar
continuity of what happened here...in other words, the context. This chain of
events that started with Anbyouin Owaru-san’s death was, from the start,
centered around reading into the context. Sakai Tsutomu, acting under the
name Daibakushou Curry, strung the letters scattered in the mountains into
words; his and Dollhouse-san’s death initiated the settings of ‘anyone failing
their deductions will die by having an eye stabbed with a chopstick’; the third
one, Choukuuji Keraku-san, gave a stricter definition of the rule in that
‘speak the deduction aloud and you shall be judged at once’. We are already
much too used to reading into context when thinking. As we’ve said many
times, the basis of great detectives’ logical thinking is that we believe there
is meaning behind every event. And reading into context was the main ordeal
of the narrative that took place in the Pinehouse. Wednesdayyy-san.”
He suddenly spoke to me.
“Our deductions and deaths were all nothing more than on-exhibit ex-
amples for you to correctly decipher the context, weren’t they?”
You are my one and only hope, Runrun had told me. The seventeen-year-
old Mitamura Saburou acting as ‘Runbaba 12’ told me, I came to pick ya up.
The Pinehouse Case had been prepared to educate me. By Mitamura Saburou,
who could time travel.
Hakkyoku took my silence for a yes, and he was right.
“Hongou Takeshitakeshi-san and Sakurazuki Tansetsu-san, how do you
two feel?” Hakkyoku turned his gaze to them. “Do you think our deaths could
have been avoided, had Wednesdayyy-san tried harder? Do you think we
didn’t need all these deductions? How do you feel about that? And you, Nils-
kun?”
Nils straightened like a suricate. “Eh...?”
“I’m talking about feeling, Nils-kun. Be as frank as possible.”
“Well...” Nils was looking at me as he spoke, conveying me that he knew.
It couldn’t have happened any other way.
It’s not like Hakkyoku was asking that out of curiosity. He was a great de-
tective.
“Had Wednesdayyy-san reached the truth earlier, ‘Runbaba 12’ wouldn’t
have had a turn. Moreover, he chose to appear right when Daibakushou-san
saw his deduction denied after crawling here acting as ‘Tsukumojuuku’...
Wednesdayyy-san and the young Anbyouin-san...Ehimegawa Juuzou-san,
had a conversation with just the two of them atop the transparent bridge
hanging off the side of the Pinehouse. I can easily imagine what they talked
about. He must have been asking you to act while focusing on the keyword
‘context’, didn’t he?”
 I’m obviously creating a context here. But for whom? For what? Focusing
on the order means talking about the whole. If there’s no one or two there
won’t be a nine or a ten or a twelve. Creating a context here means bringing
about a notion of continuity. And reading that context means expecting a
next turn. There are others after me, Wednesdayyy-san.
That’s what Mitamura Saburou said.
“...Did you go and check in the past?” I couldn’t help but ask. Was he near
Mitamura and I? There shouldn’t have been any hiding spot on that bridge...
“I would never,” Hakkyoku laughed. “It’s a deduction. I read into the con-
text.”
He then added,
“The past I visited was a tad earlier than that.”

“The past...? Geez, doing as you please...” Mame Gen grumbled, but De-
zuumi too had snuck out to the past. She gave up on her complaint after re-
alizing how vain a goal trying to restrict the movements of great detectives is.
Gauging our confusion, Hakkyoku continued.
“What led me on track was actually the discomfort I felt as someone who
had died part way through. After resurrecting and hearing about the deduc-
tions following my death, I was chagrined. The latter half formed the flow 9,
10, skipping one, 12, 13. Then, as Hakkyoku, I wanted to precede ‘Tsukumo-
juuku’-san and be number 8. But I couldn’t do that. Well, I could satisfy my-
self by thinking I was the eighth one to die, that is, if you don’t count ‘Tsu-
kumojuuku’-san who later came back; Dollhouse-san, Choukuuji Keraku-
san, Sabayama Nigouhan-kun, Kakiuchi Mamajump-kun, Hizuki-kun,
Mame Gen-san, Nekoneko Nyannyannyan-san, and finally myself being the
eighth one to die. Still, even so, 9, 10, 12, 13 isn’t a beautiful sequence. I found
myself surprised as the cases I engage with rarely have that kind of defect.
But I just thought it was because no other great detective here was fit to be
the eleventh. However, right after that, when I learned we were dealing with
time travel, I changed my thinking. And I wondered: Could this anomaly be
due to a time traveler’s actions? Naturally my suspicions fell on the great de-
tective who squeezed into the eleventh spot, Dezuumi-kun. Looking at the
whole, seeing Dezuumi-kun unnaturally occupying the eleventh place felt
like a message destined to me. Me getting ousted out of the eighth place too,
though I cannot deny how arrogant that sounds, felt like fate was trying to
convey me something. ‘Focus on that anomaly.’ And so I investigated.”
He took out a document from his back pocket and spread it out. It was a
copy of a newspaper article I had seen.

The Pinehouse Case in Fukui was solved!

The frenetic battle of deductions that took place in the Pinehouse in Akatsuki, Fukui
Prefecture, about the strange death of the mystery writer Anbyouin Owaru (real name:
Mitamura Saburou)-san finally met its climax. In this bizarre case where great detectives
exposed their unique deductions one after the other, then were later found with chop-
sticks going through their eyes, caused not only the media but even the police forces to be
shut out. Most of the deductions that took place within the Pinehouse remain unknown
to us, but in the end the case was solved by the Chiba Prefecture-born great detective
Dezuumi Style (real name unknown)-san. The police are currently hearing out the details
of his deductions... (The Daily Fukui)

It was the same article I’d shown ‘Kozue’s feelings’. Had he gone to my
room in Villa Hapira Kojimacho and stolen it?
Hakkyoku had told me I guarantee you won’t find those anywhere now.
And when I asked him what he meant, he commented Who knows...that’s
what I’m currently pondering about...
He looked at me.
“I printed this article in 2013.”
Oh, so it wasn’t mine, I thought. Mine was from 2017, eleven years into
the future, in the library the seventeen-year-old Kozue goes to.
 “Then please hold onto this,” he handed it to a female troupe member.
“Keep it in your hands and be sure not to put it away.” He returned to facing
us. “Now. When I saw that article not mentioning Wednesdayyy-san or any
other great detective’s name, I thought perhaps Dezuumi-kun had found a
way to tell his past self the solution to reap the biggest financial reward, that
this was a result of a history handcrafted by him. I should be mocked for en-
tertaining such a despicable thought. However, that was the best my mind
could muster as a novice in the art of time trekking. In actuality, what Dezu-
umi-kun did was completely different.”
Hakkyoku said and took out once more the phone he’d borrowed from an
Angel Bunny. This time, he turned the display to us and played a video...
“Mame Gen-san, this is the testimony I prepared. Dezuumi-kun put his
body on the line with the firm intent of changing the past, and proved the
fixed destiny theory to us.”

On that tiny display, we could see a handsome boy standing near a window.
It was Dezuumi Style. With a fiery glint in his eyes, he put a foot on the win-
dow edge, let out a splendid laughter, and screamed. “Wahahahaha! I solved
it! Uwahahaha!”
Naturally, I had heard that before.
It’s the voice I heard suddenly coming from above when I just arrived at
the Pinehouse and was talking with Kozue inside the spiky pig.
But on the screen, the moment Dezuumi was about to jump out the win-
dow while laughing, someone muttered to him, “Stop it!” appeared behind
him, and leaped at him. It was another Dezuumi! He must’ve come here to
save his past self. However, having no clue about the situation, the past De-
zuumi swiftly dodged him and, likely by reflex, bent his body in an accus-
tomed manner to fling him away.
 The Dezuumi of ‘now’, who should’ve gone to the toilets, underwent a
one-arm shoulder throw from himself, vanished on the other side of the win-
dow, became desperate and let out the pitiful scream “Uwahahahahghn!” as
he fell, then Bam! Mercury C’s merciless kick echoed, and nearly simultane-
ously, the camera searched for the ‘past Dezuumi’ who should’ve still been
near the window, however, he was nowhere to be found inside that room.
The scene changed. We were now inside the forest, looking at Dezuumi
checking his surroundings with much restlessness.

“This is the past Dezuumi-kun who has been flung one hour into the fu-
ture by the other Dezuumi-kun just as he vanished beyond the window,”
Hakkyoku commented as the cameraman.

Dezuumi headed for the main entrance with hazy steps, all the while
laughing foolishly due to the overdose of confusion. I knew what was waiting
for him. Hakkyoku’s camera followed him, then stopped. In the background,
Dezuumi encountered Mercury C. By the time the camera could adjust its fo-
cus, Dezuumi was already lying on the ground.
I remembered this. Mercury C had punched him, paying no heed to the
policeman stationed nearby.
“Say, what did you do to him this time?”
“Eh...? Like, I just informed him I was fine...”
So after allegedly receiving a heavy injury, Dezuumi went to see Mercury
C with a big smile on his face and told him ‘I’m completely fine!’...
I looked at Mercury C.
It was all because of his violence.
But he showed no sign of reflecting on himself, and simply stared intently
at Hakkyoku.
Hakkyoku handed the phone to Mame Gen and continued his explanation.
 “Dezuumi-kun didn’t go to the past to steal anyone’s credit. He simply
wanted to protect himself from Mercury C-san. But as it turned out, his will
and actions were what led to the current situation. With such a result, I im-
agine the line by Milan Kundera I had him recite earlier was potentially
meaningful to him.”
The eternal return embodied by Mercury C’s violence he’d suffered for a
short span.
“The past Dezuumi-kun must have seen the Dezuumi-kun coming from
the future get kicked incredibly hard by Mercury C-san before getting trans-
ported through time. And, after getting sent one hour into the future, still ex-
tremely confused, he got punched another time by Mercury C-san. These
back-to-back assaults caused a weird mental state in Dezuumi-kun. He
wasn’t any sure whether the one who got kicked under the window was an-
other him or himself. Well, for him, all of that happened very abruptly. It’s
natural he wouldn’t easily believe that happened to him. He might have even
interpreted it as an out-of-body experience. Well, only he could answer that.
Now, let’s continue this deduction...or rather, this deduction concerning the
backstage of the deductions. Could the people present then try to recall? Tsu-
kumojuuku-san’s on-the-brink-of-death doppelgänger theory was denied
by none other than Dezuumi-kun, who had seen himself...literally himself, a
doppelgänger, appear before him, and had thrown him out the window,
wasn’t it? It could be, though this is a groundless speculation, that the one
actually internally afraid of doppelgängers wasn’t Anbyouin-san, but Dezu-
umi-kun. Although he wasn’t fully sure of it, he had the misfortune of wit-
nessing himself in the Pinehouse, where many were actively dying one after
the other. That fear might be what pushed him to deny Tsukumojuuku-san’s
theory. He also denied Tsukumojuuku-san’s second theory. However, you
can also perceive the confusion in his memory in that he testified the blood
acting as evidence as being his. As we know, Mercury C-san had injured the
Dezuumi-kun from the future, the one of now. Dezuumi-kun’s memory was
still clouded until he returned to the past and got kicked by Mercury C-san
for real.”

When Hakkyoku finished his speech and checked how everyone was doing,
most of the Angel Bunnies were doing their best to process it, except for one,
looking blankly at Hakkyoku with his mouth gaping open, who said, “Ar-
ghh~~, too convoluted...” A girl followed by asking, “Hold on, this wouldn’t
have occurred if he never went back to the past, would it...?” “Exactly,” Mame
Gen answered.
“Hakkyoku-kun, why did you let him go? Was that a lie when you said the
past could be changed? Don’t you think it’s too cruel?”
“Didn’t you wish for proof and experiments too, Mame-san?” Hakkyoku
said. “Moreover, I did not lie. A past where the past Dezuumi-kun actually
got kicked by Mercury C-san could have existed. But the current Dezuumi-
kun changed that. In that sense, he altered the past. However, no matter how
much one fiddles with the past, the present cannot be changed. In a way, the
current situation only exists thanks to Dezuumi-kun having changed the
past.”
I see, I thought. In the end, the past can be changed but not the present.
That’s what the fixed destiny theory entailed. Mame Gen went silent.
“That’s why there is no need to consider the shift theory. Dezuumi-kun
pretended to head for the toilets and jumped to the past. Were we altered in
any way?”
Nobody dared speaking, but they weren’t thinking, they were checking.
“Dezuumi-kun modified the past. However, if the flow of time really di-
verged, then Dezuumi-kun’s influence past that branching point shouldn’t
have spread to our time, and yet it did. The same Dezuumi-kun who went
back in time to the Pinehouse is currently in a hospital and we could talk to
him over the phone. In short, there should be no problem with eliminating
the branching idea and seeing the flow of time as a single line. We clearly ha-
ven’t disappeared, and as you can see, spacetime hasn’t imploded. Well, eve-
rything up to now may possibly be deduced by inspecting the example of An-
byouin-san—or Ehimegawa Juuzou-san or Mitamura Saburou-san—going
back and forth between 20 years ago and now. However, Anbyouin-san’s case
is quite complex, being the result of long and slowly optimized planning, but
perhaps the most important fact is that Dezuumi-kun was destined to travel
to the past, so lingering on the possibilities of him not doing so would be fu-
tile.”
Hakkyoku paused there. Mame Gen asked him.
“What about the oscillations? That one isn’t diverging either...”
Hakkyoku answered, “Indeed, with the old spacetime A and new
spacetime B flickering like ABABABABABAB, it might be possible for some
ABs or BAs to connect somewhere. That would lead to events in B being mis-
taken for A’s, which could justify the ‘events post-branching point we
shouldn’t observe’ I pointed out earlier. I am currently not armed to refute
that hypothesis, so could we keep it in reserve for later?”
“...Hmm...” Mame Gen threw him a dubious look. “Whatever, if you say so.
Then, your trip to the future from earlier, was that to hide that you went to
the past?”
“Great observation. Mame Gen-san,” Hakkyoku admitted. “Part of it was
to keep it a secret from Dezuumi-kun, but I also didn’t want to worry every-
one unnecessarily. Of course, it was also possible for my deduction to turn out
wrong and be unable to record the evidence needed,” he said with a smile,
then continued. “However, my main reason behind temporarily traveling one
minute into the future wasn’t to disguise my investigation in the past.”
“...? What was it then?”
“Didn’t you see it for yourself? The experiment. On whether the future
could be changed.”
“Ahh...but Hakkyoku-kun, didn’t you just make Dezuumi-kun remember
a line from a novel?”
 “Indeed.”
“How is that related to being able to change the future?”
“It greatly is so. To begin with, we will lose that ability starting from to-
morrow.”

The great detectives and I were stunned for a moment. “Eh?” Mame Gen
asked. “What do you mean?” “The Dezuumi-kun of tomorrow wouldn’t be
able to remember the opening line from The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”
“...What are you saying? That can’t be...”
Hakkyoku spoke calmly. “I tried to defy that many times. With many peo-
ple in the future, in all sorts of ways. But it’s impossible. We cannot influence
the people, the events, the existences from the future.”
“...?”
“I held many experiments and pinpointed the singularity. It’s today, at
23:26. That’s the divider. The future until that point and beyond that point
behave completely differently.”

15th of July 2006 at 23:26.

The time indicated by the Pinehouse’s horoscope at the start of the case.

Everyone seemed to recall, and the Angel Bunnies made some noise.
“What does it mean? What does it imply concretely?” Mame Gen asked.
Hakkyoku answered. “To use a metaphor, here is how it is: A suuuuuper
smart, perfectionist writer who hates rewriting wrote what is our current
past. All the foreshadowing has been meticulously laid out and functions
without a hitch. Everything has been written, even things we, the characters,
haven’t figured out. And this writer is now about to write about the future
from now until today at 23:26. So there aren't that many pages left. Anything
we could do would be justified within the foreshadowing, and thus we would
reach the last page this fictional writer decided on.”
The ruckus around him died down.
Mame Gen asked. “Then, what about after tomorrow?”
“That too would be a blank manuscript...except not. It’s actually the exact
opposite. The future starting at 23:26 has all been written and collected into
a book. It’s a finished product. We can read it. However, we have no influence
over it. Let’s say we cut out a line with a box cutter. The characters in the story
would not notice a line has been removed, the story would continue regard-
less. Even if we rip out an entire page describing an important episode, the
contents of the story don’t get affected...that’s how it is.”
Amongst the confusion due to the sudden metaphor and the shocking
claims, Hakkyoku continued.
“In reality, we cannot bring back a copy of a document from the fu-
ture. ...No, we cannot leave behind the fact that we brought it back.”
He said and approached a girl from the troupe.
“I see you are still holding the article I entrusted you with. Thank you.
Please hand it over. Slowly... Good, thank you.”
He received it from the frightened girl and unfolded it.
“This sheet of paper has been brought to ‘now’ from a library seven years
from now. Look attentively at it. When I let it go...”
He released the grip he had with his fingers, and the sheet of paper slowly
twirled until it reached the floor.
“...?”
Nobody understood what he wanted to do, but Hakkyoku paid no heed to
us, crouched, and picked up the sheet. “Then, this time, pay attention to the
tiny Merlion that will appear in the back of my mouth,” he said and opened
his mouth. “What’s a Merlion...” a girl Angel Bunny muttered, but we all still
looked out for it in his mouth. I saw the sheet of paper dropping a second time
in the corner of my vision...but this time it didn’t flutter much in the air. It
simply vanished all of a sudden.
“Eh!?”
The Angel Bunnies shouted, Hakkyoku closed his mouth in which a
Merlion obviously never appeared, and smiled.
“That’s what I mean.”

Hakkyoku explained. “We can handle it normally while we are holding or

touching it. And if we stare at it, it will stay there. But if our interaction with
it stops and it exits our mind, meaning those forces are no longer at work, it
will cease to exist. That happens for things we bring from the other side, and
it works all the same even there. For example, I poured some coffee in a mug
in 2013 and drank it, but the moment I left it on the table and looked away, it
returned to the cupboard, the coffee disappeared, and the coffee beans and
the kettle returned to their original position. Earlier I talked about how our
consciousness shapes the world, but it also works as a stabilizer to restrain
the world.”
He glanced at the Angel Bunnies letting out a “Huuh” out of surprise that
sounded like they might be impressed, and continued.
“The same goes for people. Even if I meet a man on the street and talk with
him for two hours, the moment we bid goodbye and part, he would no longer
remember having talked with me, nor would there be any proof of that con-
versation having taken place. Instead, he and his surroundings would have
memories for the two hours he should have spent doing something else, as
well as the consequences of these acts which never took place.”
Huoooooh, the Angel Bunnies’ reaction amped up.
“Even if we go to the future, we have no influence on it. We can interact
with objects or talk with people during the time we are there, but our actions
won’t remain and we won’t be remembered. People and objects, everything,
will forget about us. Basically as soon as we go away.”
 Among the stir brought about by Hakkyoku’s unexpected revelation over
the functioning of the future, what popped into my head was the silent Jindai
Zoo at night.
The description regarding 23:26 rang a bell to me.
Hakkyoku was already looking at me.
“You seem to already know, Wednesdayyy-san,” he said, gathering eve-
ryone’s gaze on me. He continued. “In the case about Anbyouin-san’s death,
I proposed an answer relying on reincarnation to justify the events happen-
ing to ‘Kozue’-san and the ‘current unfolding’ of the ‘Panda Kidnapping Case
from eleven years ago’, but with some more thinking, there was a much,
much simpler way of looking at it, wasn’t there?”
Some of the great detectives seemed to suddenly realize. Hakkyoku gave
them a glance, then returned his gaze onto me.
“Tonight, at 23:26, spacetime will get bent and, to some extent, overlap
with itself, won’t it?”
After some hesitation, I answered.
“I only heard it would happen between the Summer and Autumn.”
I felt everyone swallowing their breaths again.
“You heard? From who?” Hakkyoku probed. “Wednesdayyy-san, you
vanished soon after making the Cottage Natsukawa appear, but where in all
of spacetime did you go to? Who did you meet and what did you talk about?”
Mikami Nils butted in.
“He’s right, Wednesdayyy-san, please tell us. We know we were all pre-
pared, in a sense, for you to solve the Pinehouse Case. And Mitamura Saburou
from 20 years ago who appeared as ‘Runbaba 12’, the only resident of the Cot-
tage Natsukawa and the one who bent it into the Pinehouse, said he came here
to pick you up. You went away right after that happened, so who could have a
request for a missing child detective and what does it consist of ?”
 He was even sure someone had a request for me. He could jump around
spacetime anywhere he could think of to answer his remaining questions.
Should I alleviate that effort? I told him,
“To Jindai Zoo at night eleven years ago, where I was asked by a panda to
get her twin children back to her.”
I proceeded to tell them about the panda Runrun who spoke polite Japa-
nese, the Serial Twin Kidnapping Case, and the folding of spacetime, but
midway through, the Angel Bunnies blacked out from confusion. The great
detectives had questions for me, but I had no answers.
“I still don’t know anything,” I told them. “I’ve yet to start investigating.”
So they went silent and fell into thought.
This time I had a question for Hakkyoku.
“Do you have any idea of what will happen at 23:26 today?”
“From what I have gathered, nothing remarkable happened at that time.
It seemed like everyone else spent that moment like any other time...”
“Who cares about the world. What about the Pinehouse?”
If something were to happen, it would be here.
Or was I reading into superfluous context yet again?
However, Hakkyoku said,
“I checked the Pinehouse too. The singularity is here, as you thought.”
Knew it, I thought. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t enter the Pinehouse in
the moments prior to that time.”
“The moments prior?”
“Before 23:26. Starting from the exact time I came back earlier, I couldn’t
enter the house anymore.”
“...”
“Wednesdayyy-san, did you have a specific goal in mind when turning the
Cottage Natsukawa back into the Pinehouse?”
“No, not really.”
 “Then someone else must have sealed it. Someone capable of altering
spacetime.”
“...”
The Black Bird Man.
My body stiffened. That man popped into my mind first, but the great de-
tectives and I, too, were trying to step outside of time, and knowledge does
spread around. There might be others possessing the power of that
knowledge...as I was thinking that, Mame Gen, who seemed to have recovered,
spoke.
“But at least, if Hakkyoku-kun is right...well, there was the exhibit with
the sheet of paper, but still. If we are to believe him, the bending of spacetime
won’t be like with the Cottage Natsukawa and the Pinehouse. It’s not like the
universe will get twisted and deformed, everything stays the same as now,
right? Or it could be altered, but like the Pinehouse where nobody noticed,
people can continue their lives without any problem. Right, Hakkyoku-kun?”
“...Yes. I didn’t check absolutely everything, but that’s how it seemed.”
“Therefore, even if we don’t panic and travel to the future, once we go
through 23:26 we will be part of that spacetime, no? We will be able to leave
our coffee cups around, talk with friends, and be remembered, no?”
“If we can still be tomorrow, that is.”
“Then what’s the problem, let’s just wait for that. Tomorrow always
comes. And tomorrow we...” Mame Gen stopped mid sentence and went silent.
If we can still be tomorrow, that is?
She sent Hakkyoku a worried look, which he received head-on and replied
to solemnly.

“But unfortunately, we might not have a tomorrow available to us.”

With this line, the Angel Bunnies, who until then were somewhat enjoying
the surprises, went silent, and the great detectives widened their eyes.
Hakkyoku took out another folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and
handed it to Mame Gen. I, the ten or so great detectives, and some troupe
members urged by the impulse of looking at something terrifying rather than
curiosity, peeked in.
That was another newspaper article.

The missing notice of the 31 who disappeared in the Pinehouse took effect today.
Since the 12 great detectives and 19 troupe members, who dealt with the case of the mys-
tery writer Anbyouin Owaru (real name: Mitamura Saburou)-san’s bizarre death in his house—
commonly called the Pinehouse—in West Akatsuki, Fukui Prefecture, suddenly went missing
in July 2006, a full seven years have passed. As requested by their families, today, their disap-
pearance has been made official in the Takefu District Court, Fukui Prefecture. They are now
all considered dead under the Family Registration Law. To investigate this case of mass disap-
pearances, the Fukui police has joint force with the prefectural police, with 50 people still ac-
tively working on it this year, however, they are having a tough time and, to this day, we still
have yet to gather any clue as to what happened.
[30 Civil Laws (Excerpt)] (16th of July 2013, Fukui Daily)

“WOAAAAAAAH!” “The fuck!? What happened!?” “What the heck!? What

is this about?! What do you mean, a missing notice?!” “Dead!? Did we die!?
Did they decide we were dead!?” “How did we get to that!?”
Among the erratic lamentations of the Angel Bunnies, Mame Gen started
counting everyone present.
“We are exactly 31 in total. ...All in all, Dezuumi-kun was pretty lucky.”
In the turmoil of screams, some Angel Bunnies started shouting “Let’s go
back! Let’s run away!” And just then,

“Wahahahahahaha! Nobody gets to leave the

Valhalla Palace until Ragnarök is over!”
 There was a loud yell. I looked at its source and saw Mercury C there...but
he was also next to me. That Mercury C had this big grin that one next to me
had lost for the past while. The newly appeared ‘Mercury C’ was laughing.
The screams amped in volume for a moment, but they quickly died down
under the pressure of the second ‘Mercury C’.
Ragnarök = the end time.
We might not have a tomorrow available to us.
‘Mercury C’ talked,

“Don’t you dare run away. Anyone trying to

escape, I’ll catch and murder them for real.”

Someone whistled at ‘Mercury C’, who appeared like a demon lord show-
ing up along a thunderstrike. Of course, that was the Mercury C next to me.
Just when I glared at him to make him stop screwing around, ‘I’ appeared
in front of me.
Another ‘me’.
Not a doppelgänger. Not a clone. A ‘me’ I had no memories of, meaning
probably a ‘future me’.
The current me was accustomed enough to understand that instantly. But
that wasn’t nearly enough.
‘I’ didn’t seem that much older, so he must not have come from such a
faraway future… To begin with, ‘I’ was wearing the same clothes as me...how-
ever, the shirt he was wearing was awfully clean, so much it felt eerie, as if it
had been done to hide its wear… Eerie wasn’t even close to it, just attempting
to imagine what this ‘me’ from such a near future had experienced would
make Bugs Bunny faint. He had hollow cheeks, heavy bags under his eyes, and
his pupils were dark like a bottomless pit. That haggard ‘me’ appeared out of
nowhere, looked for me with hazy eyes, and spoke to me in a hoarse voice...
“Yo, this is your signal. Time to act. Go and dance, Discotheque. And
presto. You are no longer permitted the luxury to stand still before fear.”

What’s Up, Doc?

What’s Up, Doc?
What’s Up, Doc?
What’s Up, Doc?
What’s Up, Doc?
What’s Up, Doc?
What’s Up, Doc?
What’s Up, Doc?
What’s Up, Doc?

I could hear Bugs’ nonchalant voice assaulting me from all directions...

Looking at the other ‘Mercury C’, the one next to me whispered, “Wowoah.
Knew it, I look way cooler in reality than in the mirror.” Exasperated with him,
I thought to myself.
Us going was already set in stone.
No matter when that would be, the fear wouldn’t go away. The fear I was
feeling towards the bedroom of room 1201 likely wouldn’t ebb with time or
experience... Not to mention, what ‘I’ just told myself. And ‘my’ eyes looking
at me.
 There were still many more things I had to discover.

Among the Angel Bunnies suppressed by the other ‘Mercury C’, one of
them would at most murmur, “Woah, Disco-san is looking hella tired...” but
the great detectives were focused on something else. Hakkyoku Sachiari
asked the other ‘me’, “Where...when did you come from, ‘Wednesdayyy’-
san?”
‘I’ looked at Hakkyoku. I could understand his worries, and so could the
other ‘me’. What he really wanted to ask was whether ‘I’ had passed the 15th
of July 2006 at 23:26. He wanted a living example of that.
However, the other ‘me’ said, “Sorry, I’m still Disco Wednesdayyy from
this side...from this spacetime. ...I’ve yet to experience the 23:26 of today.”
“I see...” Hakkyoku seemed dejected, then continued. “It is currently
nearly four in the morning in this spacetime. It’s Summer, so the sky should
brighten up any minute now... And in about 17 hours, we are destined to ‘go
missing’...” Mame Gen spread the newspaper article for ‘me’ to see. “Is there
anything we can do? ‘Wednesdayyy’-san, wouldn’t you know something?”
The other ‘me’ then grabbed the print-out, gave it a glance, chuckled,
then threw it in the air.
Flap, the article brought from the future fluttered for an instant, then dis-
appeared, making Hakkyoku and Mame Gen raise a “Ah!”
‘I’ spoke.

“We have enough intelligence and feelings on our side, so you’ll probably
get to disappear.”

Get to disappear?
 Hakkyoku and others questioned ‘me’ to try to figure out what he meant
by those words, and since I wanted to know too, I made to approach him, but
a phone rang as if to cut off my course. Hakkyoku took out the phone he was
still borrowing from a troupe member.
“That scared me...mm? What is this number? ...Who could it be? The area
code is that of Fukui Prefecture...um, this might be our last contact with the
outside world...is it fine for me to pick it up?”
Hakkyoku asked, and the newly appeared ‘Mercury C’ waved at him. “Do
whatever.”
“...Does anyone have something they want to convey, or something that
needs to be done? ...Well, I’m answering. ...Hello, who is it?”
Hakkyoku must’ve pushed the speaker button, as we could hear the voice
coming from the other side.
“Ah, hi, it’s Dezuumi again.”
“Oh, Dezuumi-kun? Hakkyoku speaking. Where are you calling from?”
“Akahoshi Hospital. I borrowed a doctor’s phone. Is now a good time to
speak?”
Pfft, Hakkyoku laughed. “...It certainly isn’t good, but there won’t be any
more ‘good times’ again, so don’t mind us and go ahead. So what happened?”
“It’s a mystery.”
“...? A mystery?”
“Yes. Runbaba 12-san was brought in for an examination earlier, but the
results of his blood test indicate this wasn’t appendicitis. Instead, he had a
weird, small pouch inside his stomach. And that pouch was empty...”

As I was looking at Hakkyoku’s surprised expression, the other ‘Mercury

C’ stood in front of me and pushed me away.
“’Kay, that’s all you get to see. You can worry about what comes after later,
Detective.”
 The Mercury C behind me stopped my fall, then the other ‘Mercury C’ con-
tinued. “Go. Mysteries and time can wait, but your life won’t wait for you.”
My life?
“You heard him,” the Mercury C grabbing my shoulders said. “Now let’s
do as ‘Mercury C’-san says, Detective. Let’s go.”
Mercury C took me out of the Pinehouse before I could make sense of the
situation.
Right before we jumped through time, I heard Hakkyoku say “...? But
Mitamura Saburou-san should have scars of a surgery on his abdomen from
20 years ago, after his return...” but wasn’t given any time to think about the
shenanigans going on with Mitamura Saburou’s appendicitis that Dezuumi
reported.
That’s because I wasn’t transported to the past when Sharon was still alive,
nor to somewhere in Colombia where I could find JJ, but to room 1201 of
Princeton Hotel in Chofu.
The morning sun rays were shining into the bedroom.
At my feet was a memo pad from the hotel with ‘◯N◯N’ written on it.

Silence reigned for an instant. During that infinitesimal moment, I caught

the light flutter of the curtains in the corner of my eyes, smelled the carpet
and linen bathing in sunlight, and looked at ‘me’, ‘Hoshino Masato’, ‘Kozue’,
and the ‘Black Bird Man’ present at the time before me.
‘Kozue’ was lying on the bed, stripped of her clothes, and the ‘Black Bird
Man’ was standing on his knees at her feet.
The man was holding ‘my’ middle finger.
The sound and image unpaused.

“Ahahahahaha! First one going in! Kozue-chan’s tiny pussy is getting

wetter and more relaxed by the minute!”
 The ‘Black Bird Man’ inserted ‘my’ middle finger inside ‘Kozue’s’ vagina.
‘Kozue’ wailed as though she was lit on fire.
“KYA––––––––––––––AH!! AAAAGH, GAAA––––––––––––H!!
AAAAH, AH, GHH, EEEEEK–––––––––––!!”

These cries were so heartbreaking, I instantly froze in place. My body

stiffened, my ears rang, and I forgot how to breathe. I felt assimilated to the
‘me’ of then. My memories were vivid. I’d been attacked by Hoshino Masato
and got restrained, unable to do anything for Kozue but looking and scream-
ing unthinkable noises...I squirmed my body to shake off Hoshino Ma-
sato...but that Japanese guy must’ve done some ju-jitsu as he flipped me over
and held me down by locking my neck and shoulders, inverting my view...I
felt like spinning upside down along with my field of vision and memo-
ries...but there was no Hoshino Masato to flip me over. The current me was
frozen on the ground next to Mercury C as I looked at the scene unfolding on
the other side of the room from near the window...
“Get a hold of yourself, Detective.”
Said another ‘Mercury C’ who’d joined us. I just hadn’t noticed because of
what was happening before us, but that ‘Mercury C’ had been there from the
start and was looking at ‘me’ and ‘Kozue’ and the ‘Black Bird Man’ and
‘Hoshino Masato’. “...Gah,” I exhaled.
Calm down. Regain control over your body.
Don’t falter, don’t shake, don’t be scared, don’t try running away! You
gotta save Kozue!
“Oooooh!”
I yelled and made to stand up at once, but the joints all over my body still
seemed confused and couldn’t obey my vigor well enough to let me stand.
Fuck! Why did I have to get dropped in this without notice?! I wanted to
save Kozue after making preparations and becoming strong enough! That
fucktard Mercury C! Stop doing whatever the fuck you want without taking
my feelings and plan into account, shithead! I would fucking murder him!

“HEEH GYAA———————————H!! Agh, hah, aaaah, gh, yeeek,

khh, HEEEWAAA————————H!! AH, AH, ahhhh, nnnnn, aaaaaaaah,
guh, gluuuuuuhh, GYAAAA——————————!!”

Fuck, Kozue was crying!

It wasn’t the moment to insult people! I couldn’t afford to be confused
about if-scenarios! The present mattered! I was here now, so I had to do
something now! Stand up! Stand up, bitch!
“RAAAAAAAAH!”
This roar connected my joints back. I was still staggering, but nevertheless
I managed to stand up.
The ‘Black Bird Man’ was on his knees with his upper body between ‘Ko-
zue’s’ thin legs. I ran past ‘Mercury C’ on the soft carpet to get between them
and become a chastity belt for ‘Kozue’s’ pussy, but an invisible wall situated
a few steps beyond repelled me away.
I then realized. Be it concrete or steel, matter should have a certain elas-
ticity or viscosity; however, this enclosed space had none of that. I recalled all
the roads and floors and walls and fences I’d ever jumped on or jumped from
or crashed into or got rammed into, but the wall formed by the space I just hit
was harder than any of those. Everything seemed soft and flexible when com-
pared to this invisible wall. I couldn’t think of anything rigid enough to rival
this. As I rolled on the floor after getting repelled by the ‘wall’ of space, I no-
ticed another thing... I wasn’t looking at ‘Kozue’, the ‘Black Bird Man’, or the
beds and floor and walls surrounding them through that wall...I was perceiv-
ing them as a flat image projected on the surface of the wall.
 Maybe instead of it being a wall, it was just the space beyond that plane
being reduced to a flat surface? And the ‘Kozue’ I could see on it wasn’t a sim-
ple image, but Kozue’s body that had been flattened? Thinking that, I ex-
tended a hand and touched ‘Kozue’s’ silhouette, but I couldn’t feel any
warmth.
I guess it was really just an image... Meaning I was facing a wall. And that
wall wasn’t a transparent partition like a glass plane would be, it was a screen
displaying what was happening on the other side. As I was doing my best not
to barf seeing that fucked up porno movie featuring ‘Kozue’, ‘Mercury C’
spoke to me.
“Calm down, Detective. If you could break through it with power alone, I’d
have done it ages ago.”
The other Mercury C, the one who came from the Pinehouse with me, said
something similar from behind me: “Think, Detective. The one thing you can
do right now is think. That’s how you’ll find what only you can do. If you
wanna save Kozue, think.”
Some acidic fluid gushed up my throat and teased my tongue. If I were to
open my mouth I’d empty my stomach on the spot, so I forced myself to swal-
low and hold my breath.
I was pissed off. I couldn’t think properly.
I waited for my nausea to pass, stood up straight, and rushed once more
to the wall, but its surface was neither hot nor cold so it didn’t feel like I was
touching anything. My palms seemed to be touching the screen, however,
they also looked like they stopped mid-air...a forced act of pantomime.
“...Khh.” I tried to force my way past it while groaning, but no matter how
much I pushed on it or how many times I hit it with my fists or elbows or
knees with all my strength, the wall kept denying me. “Detective, it’s not
about strength, it’s feelings, ain’t it?” ‘Mercury C’ snarked at me from the
sides, but I had no time to be mad at him. His words made me remember I
could bend space...so I tried. Still, the wall didn’t move an inch. “RAAAAAH!”
I screamed and rammed my forehead against the wall, however, not in an at-
tempt to break it. I wanted to directly engrave this intense anomaly into my
head. Thanks to that I felt dizzy and the nausea came back, but that was good.
The mystery was standing in front of me. “Fuck! Fuck! Why!? Your feelings
aren’t any stronger than mine!” I yelled at the ‘Black Bird Man’ on the flat
screen before my eyes, then unleashed yet another kick at the unresponsive
wall...then ‘Mercury C’ who had an ear against the wall snorted and told me,
“You’re wasting your time. Your kicks can’t make this space waver and your
voice cannot go through it, it won’t reach them. Seems like the ‘you’ on the
other side can’t hear you either, and no one there appears to be able to see us.
Am I wrong, Detective?” Right...during my grappling with Hoshino Masato I
got to look in various directions. If myself or ‘Mercury C’ were standing there,
I would’ve asked them for help. But they weren’t...I couldn’t see them. “Don’t
you find it weird, though?” ‘Mercury C’ said. “I’ve been wondering for a bit.
Why could we enter the Pinehouse’s warped space without noticing, and yet
we can’t enter this one?”
I gasped at that question, then slammed my head against the wall one
more time to make myself think. The fierce lack of feedback from something
that should be there yet couldn’t be seen shook my brain; Kozue’s screams
felt more distant too. I felt grateful for this pain. I was weak. Stupid and pow-
erless.
Seeing me stagger, ‘Mercury C’ said, “Hmph, you’ll either die or become
even dumber,” then continued. “The misconception in our brains should take
priority over the actual bending of space, so why can’t we enter the room in
front of us?” He turned to Mercury C. “Hey, Mercury C-san from the future,
you must know something, don’t you?”
Right, this ‘Mercury C’ was the past Mercury C. When I met with the one
who’d placed the chocolate on Kozue’s pillow at the Pinehouse, he must’ve
known about her sufferings. That meant the other ‘Mercury C’ here had to be
him when he witnessed Kozue’s agony. The Mercury C questioned by the
other answered from behind me, facing this way. “Yeah...to some extent,” he
said, but not with his usual grin...meaning he wasn’t teasing nor testing
me...he was asking something of me. ‘Think,’ he was telling me.
The one thing you can do right now is think. That’s how you’ll find what
only you can do. If you wanna save Kozue, think.
I had to think for Kozue’s sake. I reverted the gaze I had taken off ‘Kozue’
back to her. I observed her frenzy of screams as my middle fingers were get-
ting inserted inside her vagina. I could feel blood rushing up my head once
again. Bam! My skull was about to burst open so I held it in my hands, but this
time I wouldn’t look away, I wouldn’t avert my consciousness, I wouldn’t de-
ceive myself. The ‘Kozue’ in front of me was experiencing tremendous pain,
enough to split her personality, but that wasn’t happening in the present; it
had already happened and was over. And her tragic memories were shared
among the relief personalities and healed over 14 years, transcending
spacetime and bodies. The current Kozue had lost her other personalities, she
felt at ease. Right. To Kozue, what was happening before me was something
from the past, a memory she barely had traces of remaining. It was the re-
cording of an event that had basically never happened.
“AGGH, UUUH, AH, GYAAAUUUU—————HH!”
But to me it was the Kozue present before me.
“KOZUEEEE————!”
I slammed my head against the ‘Black Bird Man’ on the screen many times,
bam, bam, bam, these sounds, however, only echoed through my head; not
even my ears could catch them. “Oi oi, Detective,” ‘Mercury C’ called to me
with a fed up tone, but he got me wrong.
I wasn’t headbutting the wall to break it.
“I’m cooling my head down. Fuck’s sake. I’m alright.”
I was trying to think.
My blood was in the way. My anger was in the way. I had to get rid of my
fears and confusion.
“This wall...” I said. “Did the Black Bird Man set it up because he expected
us to come...” Obviously he was capable of such a prediction. If he knew we
could travel through spacetime, it’s natural he would devise a plan to block
us off. However, how had he done it? How could he keep us at bay when we
transcended time and space?
Exactly. ‘Mercury C’ had the right question. Why couldn’t we set foot in
the other part of this bedroom even though we were able to ignore the Pine-
house’s distortion? What was the difference between the Pinehouse and room
1201?
No matter how distorted spacetime was, if, to me, ‘Kozue’ was five meters
away from me, I should be able to walk five meters to her and take her back.
Like how we were walking on the Cottage Natsukawa’s passage despite
thinking we were going around the Pinehouse’s hallway. Like how Fuku-
shima Manabu’s arrow bent straight, while mine progressed straight ahead
while turning. ‘Mercury C’ had just said, The misconception in our brains
should take priority over the actual bending of space, and that was true. I re-
called the Venn diagram. The circle of consciousness contained both space
and time. My feelings for Kozue shouldn’t be any weaker than the Black Bird
Man’s, closing us off room 1201. Then...I expanded the Venn diagram inside
my head...bigger than space and time and consciousness would be the circle
for intelligence...for knowledge. I was losing to the Black Bird Man in intelli-
gence!
He was using a trick I didn’t know of.
That would be this wall of space. This transparent wall was mysteriously
separating me from ‘Kozue’, and ‘me’ from ‘Kozue’ at the time as well.
If intelligence was what made the difference, I would get there. I had the
feelings, and I was a detective—moreover, a detective made to save chil-
dren—I was certain I would get there. That’s what only I could do.
Go and dance, Discotheque. And presto.
Did the ‘future me’ who saw me off at the Pinehouse know I would get
there? With his depressed eyes?
 That piece of knowledge must not be a happy one, I thought, but that
wasn’t a problem. I’d survived through many gloomy cases in this gloomy
world. As a detective, I would accept anything.
Now, think!
Shut up and think!
First, observations. Look at things. Base your thinking off facts. To do that,
first, you must pick up the hints lying before your eyes.
I backed away from the screen-wall. You can’t see the big picture if you’re
too close. One step back, then a second, and my whole body was assailed by
‘Kozue’s’ screams.
“UUUUUH, ghh, hhh, UGHYAAAAAAAA————————H!!”
I couldn’t form a decent thought while hearing these screams...I instantly
erased the sound. I used the ropes I’d learned from the Pinehouse and
rounded the part of room 1201 on our side of the wall. The area around me
including the two Mercury Cs shifted, the space before the wall shrank, and a
circular room was formed. The windows were bent without the glass breaking.
Now I couldn’t see Kozue’s suffering...but I could still hear her. “GYAAAA—
——H!!” The volume didn’t lessen at all. I panicked. Erecting a wall by
rounding up space in a hurry served no purpose. It would be another thing if
I could believe that the hotel walls were soundproof, but I was doubting the
effect of the wall I’d built myself. I knew; that beyond this stop-gap wall was
a room’s width of space, and that ‘Kozue’s’ screams could reach us. I couldn’t
forget about that space. Things would change if I could cover the shrunk
space with cement like in the Pinehouse, but I couldn’t spend so much time
on it, and I doubted a layer of concrete could fully block screams this loud.
Even with the hotel’s soundproof walls, she could probably be heard two
rooms away. I had to come up with a different approach.
I returned the room to its normal state, saw the ‘Black Bird Man’ cut ‘my’
middle finger for the third time, and stiffened. Stop it!
 I wanted to scream at the ‘Black Bird Man’, but held off and corrected my-
self: No! I’m the one who should stop! Stop shivering over every little thing
this late into it! At this rate I won’t ever be able to save ‘Kozue’!
Think!
I closed my eyes. Think!
My mind started thinking about sound.
Sound.
Sound propagates through vibrations in the air. I could just sever the air
transmitting it.
I glared at the wall...it was tough to visualize. What should I do? I recalled.
The forced act of pantomime. When my hands were against the wall, that lack
of sensation despite clearly touching something. That was it. Pantomime.
Visualizing something. Alright. Consciousness rules spacetime. If using my
mind alone couldn’t do the trick, I just had to move my body to imagine it
better.
I ran up to the wall and pressed my hands against it; still no sense of touch.
And yet it was hard. I ran my palms against it and felt no resistance. It didn’t
slide, nor did it feel coarse. It felt like nothing. Thanks to that I could manage
some mime action even with smattering knowledge. The ‘invisible wall’ act
was a child’s play. With my palms still pressed against the wall, I took control
over that space. I could do it. Earlier I managed to round the walls on my side,
I was free to do anything I wanted on my side of the wall dividing me from
Kozue. I believed. Against my hands was a flat surface separating them from
the wall. If I removed my hands, that surface would move in my direction par-
allel to the wall, perpendicular to the floor. There was absolutely nothing be-
tween the surface and the wall parallel to it, so ‘Kozue’s’ voice wouldn’t reach
this side.
I took a step back with that surface stuck to my hands.
Silence.
‘Kozue’s’ screams vanished from my mind.
I’d made a step’s worth of void.
 I instantly closed the walls on my side, which resulted in my hands press-
ing against them, but now that I’d fixed the space in place, I could let go of it.
I removed my hands. I couldn’t hear nor see ‘Kozue’ anymore.
“Man, there was no point in you coming here, was there?” ‘Mercury C’
said, to which the Mercury C who’d brought me here answered, “Come on,
don’t say that. He’s seen enough, give him a rest. Plus, Kozue’s still right be-
yond that wall.”
They’d both deduced my process with only my pantomime act, my gaze,
and my expressions.
The two Mercury Cs’ exchange continued. “And it’s much easier to think
now, what’s the problem?” “Where goes the merit of succeeding at overcom-
ing the pressure?” “I’m with you on that, though. But don’t be too hard on
this wimp. Anyway, your thinking time starts now, and it’s soon time for you
to get back to the Pinehouse and bring this chump here.” “Oh, that’s how it
goes?” “Yep. That was my timing as well.” “You go instead.” “Shut up, don’t
be a rebel for no reason. You’re wasting your time, hurry up and go.” “Add a
‘please’ to that.” “Hahaha. You’re not being funny, just get the hell out,
dummy. I’m older than you, got it?” “I wanna see what happens next.”
“You’ve got something equally riveting over there too, don’t worry.” “Oh,
really? Then my bad, Mercury C-san. I’ll keep the fun here for after I come
back, then. Time to go~.” “Enjoy.”
The ‘Mercury C’ who’d been in this room since before us disappeared, and
I started thinking. Something was bothering me. I felt like I had to go over a
part of the process I just went through. Sound propagates through air. Light
is blocked by matter. Matter can’t cut off sound. Void between me and the
sound will erase it...
When the Black Bird Man assaulted me, I couldn’t see nor hear my present
self. So back then...which would be now too, was there another wall of vacuum
somewhere? But then neither of us would hear nor see the other side. There
just can’t be a situation where one side hears what happens on the other side,
but the other doesn’t, or one side can see the other but the other cannot. The
properties of air didn’t allow it to act like a one-way mirror...but could one
accomplish that by manipulating spacetime? What would a spacetime only
allowing light and sound to travel in a certain direction look like? How could
bending result in that?
I thought for a bit, but any bending should affect light and space equally
in both directions. In the Pinehouse, the power of consciousness made arrows
either go straight or loop around the hallway, but there hadn’t been any ma-
jor shift in consciousness between the ‘me’ who was attacked by the ‘Black
Bird Man’ in the past and the current me looking at them. We perceived space
similarly. So I actually should be able to walk up to ‘me’ and save ‘Kozue’ in
the same vein as one would walk around a straight path in the Pinehouse be-
fore they learn about the Cottage Natsukawa. But I couldn’t. I once again
came back to ‘Mercury C’s’ remark of The misconception in our brains should
take priority over the actual bending of space, so why can’t we enter the room
in front of us? Slow down, I thought to myself. Focus on the problem of light
and sound. Being able to walk there was up to consciousness. I’d stepped out-
side of space and could control time, so as long as my cognition was correct,
I could enter any space... The correct cognition. I recalled the parking lot next
to the Cottage Natsukawa. No one could enter it—not even Mercury C nor
me—until we found the compressed flat space sandwiched between rooms 8
and 9 and the Pinehouse’s center of the world...but the wall before me didn’t
lead anywhere. It wasn’t even an impasse. If it led somewhere or signified an
end in space, it should have had some sort of texture. And yet this wall had
nothing...it was merely a barrier restraining me to this side of the room. Hold
on. I should really stop making premature conjectures from just the sense of
touch. My hang-up was with light and sound. I’d intuited there was a clue for
my thinking in there. Let’s focus on that.
Why could I see and hear the other side, but they couldn’t hear or see us
from there? What was the trick to making a one-way gate for light and sound...
Calling the space here A and the one over there B, it’d be a wall allowing
B→A but not A→B.
 Could it be, I thought, that we think there is B on the other side because of
what displays on the screen, but actually it’s like TVs, which don’t contain
people inside, and there is no space B to be found beyond it? In other words,
the scene showing on the wall was a recording of something happening in B
at another time?
I picked up the hotel’s memo pad and a pen, and started drawing. I’d
picked up the great detectives’ habits. I drew room 1201’s small bedroom
twice, added the wall separating me from ‘Kozue’ in both, then placed “Ko-
zue” on the other side of one wall and “me” on this side of the other wall,
thought some more, and connected both walls with dotted lines.
Mercury C took a peek at my drawing and snorted. “You’re trying to figure
out why they can’t hear us, aren’t you? But you know, even flattened and
moved to another time, as long as that space is connected to here, B’s visuals
and noises won’t be the only thing commuting through that gate, A’s would
as well. Ultimately, connecting those spaces through a plane means A and B
end up adjacent. Moreover, if this plane was simply cut from room 1201 at
another time and pasted here, we’d be looking at a still image. Spaces don’t
have a record button as far as I know. If you cut a plane, you’ll only get the
light passing through it at the moment, but no continuity, and most likely no
sound either since it’s a vibration and I doubt it’d support the transfer well.”
My idea got rejected before I was even done with my drawing, so I still
finished it in silence, but something in what Mercury C had just said rubbed
me the wrong way.
What could it be?
It felt similar to the hang-up I had when I rounded the space we were in
and muffled the visuals and sounds from the other side.
I stared at my drawing and muttered.
“Light and sound, that’s the key.”
Well, obviously.
It was obvious, and yet that wasn’t all.
There was something more to it.
 “Oh, I get it now,” Mercury C said. “I see, it’s light and sound.”
Mercury C seemed to have understood something.
“Light and sound propagate. In all directions, of course. But their propa-
gation has a certain speed.”
Right, they propagate, I thought. They’re both really fast. But because
light is faster and sound is relatively slow, even I knew they had different
speeds. And speed is distance over time.
Distance and time.
There was some distance between ‘me’ and me too. It took some time for
light and sound to cover that distance.
And someone transcending spacetime could freely play with that distance
and that time.
Mercury C saw my expression and said, “You’ve noticed too?”
“Both light and sound travel,” I said. “That’s obvious. There’s no one-
way gate anywhere. But it takes some time for them to get somewhere. We
can’t observe something the exact moment it occurs. As long as there is dis-
tance separating the witness and the phenomenon, the latter’s observation
will always come after. That applies to this cramped bedroom too.”
The speed of light was set at about 300 thousand kilometers per second.
But time and distance aren’t fixed...they depend on people’s conscious-
ness.
I decided to think more about time: For example, with the extreme speed
of light which can rotate 7.5 times around the Earth in a second, it would nor-
mally take an infinitesimal amount of time for it to pass through room 1201.
But not zero. And similarly, it would take a non-zero period of time for Mer-
cury C or me to reach the eyes of the ‘me’ rolling on the floor. And to the Black
Bird Man, it not being zero was enough. Be it 0.1 second or 0.001 second or
0.000000000000000000001 second, it makes no difference to someone
who’s transcended spacetime.
“Mercury, when did you enter the room back then?”
 “Right after you. I saw it all, starting from when four eyes and Hoshino
appeared.”
There was roughly five meters between Mercury C and the ‘me’ who was
pinned down by Hoshino. If the light carrying Mercury C’s visual information
didn’t reach the ‘me’ struggling on the floor over there, the time light took to
cover these five meters—~5m ÷ 300,000,000m/s ≈ 0.000000017s—has been
extended to at least the whole duration of ‘Kozue’s’ rape.
Okay, next, I thought. If distance had been tweaked and it took from the
start of ‘Kozue’s’ assault until ‘I’ fainted for the light carrying Mercury C’s
image to get there, the distance between ‘me’ and the wall must’ve been mul-
tiplied by a factor of tens or hundreds of billions. However, if that were the
case, they should appear incredibly small to us...rather, the human eye
couldn’t possibly observe them. And yet they appear on the screen with a
seemingly normal depth; did this mean they had been made bigger as well?
Either ‘Kozue’ and ‘I’ have been enlarged to scale with the distance, or the
wall took care of the zooming function.
“Let’s bet on which got extended, time or distance,” Mercury C laughed.
We were thinking almost synchronously. Of course I didn’t have the leeway
to follow him in his joke. ‘Kozue’ was suffering here, it wasn’t a hypothetical
talk in a sketchbook but something that was happening on the other side of
the wall...or that had already happened. Wait, no, I was wrong. It couldn’t be
happening in the present. Regardless of whether time or distance got
stretched, it would all be over by the time ‘I’ could perceive Mercury C, so it
should take the same amount of time for the first image of ‘Kozue’s’ rape to
reach us. So I didn’t know about Mercury C, but when I’d arrived in room 1201,
‘Kozue’s’ suffering on the other side of the wall was already over.
Once again, I’d only been a witness to Kozue’s misery.
Seeing me go silent, Mercury C said, “Hey hey, Detective, being all gloomy
won’t solve shit, you know? Dunno if you’re feeling guilt or self-pity, but
throw away your stupid empathy and think! Aren’t you a detective? The time
or distance dilemma is important, but aren’t you only thinking about images?
We feel like light and sound travel at the same speed, but they’re wholly dif-
ferent. Sound travels at 331 meters per second. Temperature and pressure af-
fects it, but it’s a bore so let’s keep it at 300 m/s. It’s one millionth the speed
of light.”
 That made me realize. Indeed, Mercury C’s remark was on point. I had no
notion of how long Kozue’s assault lasted; it might have been five minutes,
but it also felt like an hour. Even if it had only lasted one minute, it took over
a minute for Mercury C to appear to the ‘me’ near the bed five meters away,
and the same could be said about the scene of Kozue’s agony; they both slowly
propagated towards the wall. Kozue’s screams, however, should take a mil-
lion minutes to cover a distance light traveled in a minute. We should be get-
ting a minute of silent video, with the sound arriving 999,999 minutes later.
But in what I saw the sound and image were in sync...how was that possible?
Moreover, for a 300m/s sound wave to take a million minutes to get some-
where would mean that distance is about 18,000,000 kilometers apart. The
distance between Earth and the Moon is about 385,000 kilometers, so it
would be nearly 47 times that. No matter how loud, high-pitched, and filled
with sincere grief Kozue’s screams were, there was no way they could be
heard from that far away.
As I started wondering of a way to speed up sound without touching light,
Mercury C interrupted that train of thought.
“Hmph, too damn slow. We’re talking about you, Dimwit Detective, so I
bet you’re trying to come up with a way to bend or connect spacetime, but
you’re losing your time. No choice, I’ll show you. Look.”
Mercury C walked up to the deformed sofa set in the rounded space, kicked
the sofa to push it away, and revealed the portable Bose speaker hidden un-
derneath. He then walked past me and took the TV off the wall; there was an-
other one there.
“It’s stereo audio. Would’ve been better if it were 5.1 surround, though,”
Mercury C joked, but I couldn’t muster the energy to rebuke him.
That answer was so unexpected I’d lost my voice.
That was a mystery novel-like trick... Using a mechanism so simple at the
perfect time after presenting us with various spacetime-related hurdles...
But it wasn’t the time for praises.
He was right, I ought to think more.
 I wasn’t bathing in self-pity, but I did feel guilty, yet I had no time to spare
for such feelings.
And even these regrets were a loss of time.
I noticed.
These speakers had been set in a space I’d enclosed myself.
I’d thought the cushion of vacuum I plastered onto the wall muffled Ko-
zue’s screams, but if the speakers were inside the round space, it didn’t make
sense for them to stop.
He just cut the sound in sync with my stupid miming.
The Black Bird Man must’ve gotten a kick out of it. I bet he struggled to
keep himself from laughing...I glanced at my side and saw Mercury C grinning
at me. I nearly got angry at him, but then I realized that’s not what his beam-
ing smile meant. I understood why Mercury C could clown around.
It was the hysteria before the battle.
“Open the curtains, Detective,” Mercury C said. “He can see it all anyway.”
Since the Black Bird Man cut the speaker along my lame pantomime act,
indeed, he might have easily opened the walls I’d rounded. This space was a
make-believe locked room. If you perceive space correctly, you can see past
it. Just like how one gets to see the Cottage Natsukawa.
I stared at the spot the walls connected.
Mercury C appeared eager, but I was shaking down to my organs.
“Don’t lose your nerve, Detective. I’m with you,” Mercury C said. “You’ll
be fine too. You can stop that shithead and kill him. And I can catch Hoshino
Masato and torture him good. Ahahahahahaha!” He laughed, then yelled.
“Prepare yourself, Hoshino! Same for you, limp-dick pedo son of a bitch!”
Right then, a sneer echoed from the speaker Mercury C had just found.

“Such bold claims, but tell me, macho boy, why is it you aren’t opening
those walls yourself?”
 My already frightened organs jumped 20cm up, and my heart nearly com-
pressed into a black hole.
It was the ‘Black Bird Man.’
His voice was awfully soft, but somehow felt like a nail running across
glass, which froze my blood on the spot.
Mercury C stayed silent for a moment, then said, “Let’s open it together
with seh-no.”
I’d never heard seh-no but I got that it was a signal through context. It
was ‘on three.’ I nodded, lined up with him, and set my eyes to the front.
“Seh-no...”
On Mercury C’s signal, I reverted the walls back to normal and got rid of
the vacuum.
The two of us then saw.
Everything was over in silence; ‘I’ had disappeared, and the ‘Black Bird
Man’ was carrying ‘Kozue’ who’d fainted. He walked close to the wall,
grabbed ‘Kozue’ by her knees, opened her legs wide to show us her bare
vagina, and smiled. Before my eyes. Right beyond the wall...where we could
see it.
‘Kozue’s’ smooth genitalia was drenched in red, and some liquid was still
dripping from the inside.
The glasses-wearing ‘Black Bird Man’ locked eyes with me; I felt fire-
works going off inside my head and electricity coursing through my whole
body. My body reacted on the spot.
“UOOOOH!!”
I sprung forward to rip that man apart, but yet again the wall prevented
me. I hit my face hard and collapsed to the ground. That transparent partition
was still there. I instantly got up and rammed into the wall I had to break
through, but to no avail. I realized solving the visual and sound mystery alone
wasn’t enough. My perception of space was still vague, I hadn’t learned to see
things in a new light, like when I’d discovered the Pinehouse was the Cottage
Natsukawa. Right, once again, I was convinced I had a good understanding of
things when in fact I knew nothing.
“It’s futile, Disco-chan! Hah hah hah! I’m done plunging your four fin-
gers in her, so I’ll throw away this useless pussy wherever!”
I had to think much more to snap the ‘Black Bird Man’s’ neck in half.
“Ehh~, I can still do her, though!” Hoshino Masato heartily laughed from
behind him with a camera in hand and his bizarrely black dick erected. “We
can even pull the fingers out, fuck her some, then put them back in! I’ve only
taken pictures, please lemme have at it even a little~. I’ll probably cum right
away, no biggies!”
The ‘Black Bird Man’ glanced at ‘Hoshino’ then told me, “What do you say,
Disco-chan? Yes?”
My head was so filled with anger and fear I felt dizzy. “Stop! Don’t you
touch Kozue! I’ll murder you all, got it?! I’ll kill you for sure!”
The ‘Black Bird Man’ laughed. “I already heard that earlier~. Before you
ran away with your tail between your legs due to your own incompe-
tency...poor Kozue-chan, being left all alone. Weakness really is a sin, isn’t
it? Only second to idiocy.”
That’s when it happened. Behind the ‘Black Bird Man’ carrying ‘Kozue’,
next to ‘Hoshino’, the door was flung open by ‘Mercury C’.
“Ah!” ‘Hoshino’ widened his eyes. “Wah hah hah hah hah!” the ‘Mercury
C’ beyond the wall and the one next to me both laughed. He’d gotten through
it! “Kill the fuck out of them, Mercury!” I screamed. “W-woah! I’m so sorry!”
‘Hoshino’ yelled, then ‘Mercury C’ jumped towards him; that’s when I saw it
happen. ‘Mercury C’ mowed an arm horizontally as though it were a blade
and splat, ‘Hoshino’s’ head disconnected from his body. As I was admiring
‘Hoshino’s’ head slowly rotating forward as it rose in the air, despite my sur-
prise, I thought ‘Mercury C’ had merely manipulated spacetime to make it
look like he chopped off ‘Hoshino’s’ head by hand, but he couldn’t actually
do something like that—then, the next moment, heavy-looking blood
started spurting out of the remaining torso’s neck like fireworks. He had
fucking done it! I looked at ‘Mercury C’s’ left hand extending straight to-
wards the dynamic pillar of blood in awe. How magnificent was it! Uooooh!
Nice job, samurai from the Nippon country! You’re balling, Jap! Sa! Mu! Rai!
Sa! Mu! Rai! Banzai to the Hinomaru!!
“Raah!” that voice reminded me Mercury C was still next to me. “You did
it, Mercury!” I shouted at him. He answered with a cool laugh, “It’s only the
beginning.”
“Ahaha,” I heard a laugh and looked for its source. “Gambling on the im-
pact, eh,” the ‘Black Bird Man’ said, adorning a composed smile under his
glasses. “How much do you have in stock?”
I slammed my fist against the wall. It still had no texture, but I could feel
pain. “I’ll kill you too!”
The ‘Black Bird Man’ then adjusted ‘Kozue’ to make it easier for me to see
her. “I will be waiting for you while licking on Kozue-chan’s flat boobies,
then.”
Seeing me snap on the spot, his smile becoming even more vicious, then
he threw ‘Kozue’ he was still holding by her legs in the air, and instead of
catching her, he kicked her butt mid-air with all his force. ‘Kozue’ let out a
“Gyahh” while still unconscious, spun in the air a few times, then rolled on
the floor, and stopped with her bare bottom facing us.
“Kozue!!”
“Hmm, should I help develop her asshole you love so much, Disco-chan?”
The ‘Black Bird Man’ gave me the middle finger. “Hahaha. Children’s asses
only smell like poop to me, though.”
“Stop it!” I screamed, and someone grabbed my shoulder.
It was Mercury C. “Give it up. Don’t fall for his stupid provocations.”
The next moment, I was sent flying through spacetime and landed on the
floor of a bedroom dimly illuminated by the morning sunlight with Mercury
C. This is...I was about to say, but Mercury C covered my mouth. The past ‘me’
was walking in the hallway on the other side of the room with his back to us.
‘Shakuko’ = ‘Kozue’s feelings’ was sleeping on the bed.
 This was room 1201 of Princeton Hotel right after I’d come to check on
Kozue. The door the other ‘me’ was ignorantly about to open led to the small
bedroom where the small Kozue was. There, two other men were waiting for
him.
Stop! Don’t go in! I tried to scream, but Mercury C was firmly blocking my
mouth with the palm of his hand. ‘I’ opened the door without noticing me and
stepped in. I recalled. The conversation between ‘Kozue’ and ‘I’. I could hear
it. It replayed inside my head.
“Kozue.”
“Ah, Disco, good morning~.”
“What are you doing?”
“Eh~~? Thinking about the panda name. Kozue panda.”
Then ‘◯N◯N’ = ‘0202’.
“Hahahahaha! Dumbass! Die!”

That replay took a mere instant. ‘I’ still hadn’t fully closed the door. I
could still prevent it!
But stopping ‘me’ wouldn’t cut it!
Only saving ‘me’ wasn’t enough!
I looked over ‘me’ closing the door while lying on the floor with Mercury
C’s hand on my mouth.
I thought to myself, It started, then it happened.
BANG!!
An explosion echoed and shook my body.
What!? ...A gunshot?
But we’d never used guns there?!
As I stared at the door ‘I’ had just gone in, the hand stopping my breath
left my mouth, and Mercury C stood up and ran to there. It was silent beyond
the door, we couldn’t even hear ‘me’ grappling with Hoshino... Where had all
the yells, screams, wailings, and fights gone... Something was amiss.
 Mercury C gave me a glance, put a hand on the door knob, and flung it open.
I recalled the hand-katana move from earlier and readied myself, but Mer-
cury C didn’t jump into the room.
I raised my body, stood on my knees, and leaned sideways to take a peep
at the door.
Beyond the living room, I could spot Kozue’s foot lying on the floor of the
small bedroom.
She’d been undressed. She wasn’t wearing her pajama pants. Kozue was
in a different state than back when ‘I’ had left, one I’d never seen.
I froze up in fear again.
“No four eyes nor Hoshino. It’s all over,” Mercury C stated, and disap-
peared into the room.
All over?
What did it mean... I could think for myself, and did so. If ‘I’ had just gone
in and it was already over...that meant time hadn’t only been stretched for the
space acting as a wall to ‘Mercury C’ and ‘I’, but for the entire room as well.
The carnage that had happened there was compressed into a tiny portion of
time that had been stretched. And from the outside, we could only hear that
explosion.
That wasn’t a gunshot.
That BANG! contained everything starting with Ah, Disco, good morning
and continuing with the whole abuse scene.

I used the momentum of that theory to stand up and planned on checking

on Kozue, but my eyes met ‘Kozue’s feelings’ who’d raised her upper body on
the big bed next to me.
“You scared me...what are you doing, Disco?” ‘Kozue’s feelings’ said as
she widened ‘Shakuko’s’ eyes. “You’re the Disco from after all that, the one
who knows about me, right? Didn’t you hear that big sound? And why is Mer-
cury-san here? I thought he was still back in Fukui.”
 I had no idea how to answer.
I stayed silent. Mercury C came back before the door and was about to tell
me something, but he spotted ‘Kozue’s feelings’. I could see the small Kozue
lying in bed behind him.
Kozue.
Mercury C addressed ‘Kozue's feelings.’ “Oh, ‘future Kozue,’ didn’t know
you were awake.” “...So you must know about it. Is something up, Mercury-
san?” “Nothing. Go back to sleep.” “I’m not sleepy anymore. When did you
come back from Fukui?” “I still haven’t.” “Ehh? Then what are you doing?”
“Don’t mind it and sleep. Hey, Detective. How tall is Kozue?” “Last time I
measured she was 107cm...” “Any pattern she prefers?” “She likes green, I
guess.” “I see.” ‘Kozue’s feelings’ tilted her head. “What’s going on?” “Told
you, nothing,” Mercury C replied with that plus another question for her,
“Hey, what do you like? For food.” “Eh? Me?” “When you were a kid.”
“Hm~m. I don’t remember well.” “Chocolate.” I said. “Got it,” Mercury C
briefly acquiesced, disappeared, then a moment later reappeared next to the
bed Kozue was sleeping on in the other bedroom. In his hand was a vinyl bag
containing a set of kid pajamas and Koeda chocolates.
So that’s how that red box ended up here...
Mercury C turned to me and put a finger in front of his mouth.
We couldn’t let ‘Kozue’s feelings’ see him changing Kozue’s clothes. Her
old clothes had been mostly torn apart, leaving her basically naked, and she
was bleeding from her crotch. I closed the door. I trusted Mercury C to heal
her injuries. The fingers that had been inserted were already gone...they’d
been sent inside the past ‘Kozue’ when she was ‘Shimada Kikyou’. I’d
thought the Black Bird Man edited time that way to create a good time for his
attack, but maybe Kozue did that herself to get rid of the wounds. I was now
nearly sure it was Kozue. Her past and present vaginas were connected. No,
there’s really a snake in there! When ‘Shimada Kikyou’ screamed that from
another bed in the same room 1201 of Princeton Hotel, the two similar vagi-
nas were connected... I’d never have thought the half-joke idea about Kozue’s
vagina acting like a miniature wormhole I thought of in the bullet train when
we first headed for the Pinehouse would end up being correct.
Having entrusted Mercury C with Kozue’s first aid, I spoke to ‘Kozue’s
feelings.’ “I still have some more work, you can go back to sleep.”
She stared at my face. “How much longer?”
“I’ll be done in no time.” No matter how long it took, I could return to this
time right after. “You can relax and sleep some more.”
“...Fine. Say, Disco.”
“Mm?”
“Did you think of a name for me?”
‘Kozue’s feelings’ had told me Think of one before we meet again. I’ve had
no time for that. My only conditions are for it not to be ‘Norma’, and, let me
see, something that sounds like your partner.
I had no idea if that sounded like my partner, but something popped up in
my mind.
“How about Koeda?”
“Koeda? As a name?”
“Yeah. Kozue means the thin tip of a branch, right? So it grew a bit and is
now Koeda, a twig.”
“Koeda, huh...sounds pretty cool actually. And what about my last name?”
“Morinaga Koeda.”
“Hey! That’s a brand of chocolate!”
“Ah, busted? Is it famous?”
“Of course it is! Any Japanese person would know about it.”
“Huh really. You like them?”
“I mean, I do.”
I giggled. Her taste hadn’t changed since she was a kid. “Then all’s good,
no?”
“I don’t mind, but isn’t it trademark infringement?”
 “We’re not naming a chocolate, it should be fine. Nobody would mistake
a detective’s partner with chocolate. Good luck to turn it into a source of ad-
vertisement for us. Still, Koeda is technically a common noun, and Morinaga
is a pretty widespread last name, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be fine.”
“But hearing ‘Morinaga Koeda,’ I can only think of chocolate.”
“Do your best to change that so you think of yourself.”
“Sure, fine. But more importantly, why didn’t you make my last name
Wednesdayyy?”
“Eh...”
“Why not Koeda Wednesdayyy?”
“...Then should we change it to that?”
“No thanks. I’ll go with Morinaga Koeda.”
“I see.”
“Plus, ‘wednesday twig’ would make no sense. Though Morinaga Koeda
only has one meaning...for now. Hmph. Whatever.”
The newly named ‘Koeda,’ which was ‘Kozue’s feelings’ inside
‘Shakuko’s’ body possessing ‘Norma’s’ face, dove onto the bed.
“Disco, how long until you come back?”
“I’ll be back in no time.”
“Let’s eat breakfast together.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t get injured.”
“I won’t.” Even if I did, I would come back after healing myself.
“Then I’ll sleep a bit more~,” Koeda closed her eyes. “Yesterday was so
tiring, having to act all day before the Disco who didn’t know yet.”
I smiled and kissed Koeda’s forehead. “Good night.”
“Thanks. Good night~ Pi♪po♪pa♪po♪.”
“?”
“Ahaha. It’s nothing. Nothing you need to know. Then, take care~.”
I’m going.
 There was nothing quite like the nuances Japanese has for ‘take care’ and
‘I’m going’ in English.

Before I left Kozue, I put up a thin layer of vacuum around the room. It was
a simple soundproof wall. I touched it. The moment my finger came into con-
tact with it, it felt like all the blood in my body was pulled towards it as my
body temperature dropped at once, but since the entire wall got dispelled too,
there shouldn’t be any risk of major injuries. I remade the wall then made my
way into the small bedroom. I opened the door. Kozue was sleeping in her
newly acquired clothes with the blanket pulled up to her jaw. Next to her pil-
low was a box of Koeda chocolate. I picked up the baby-clothes brand bag and
the receipt from the floor, then told Mercury C,
“Thank you. ...I’ll pay you back later.”
“Shut up. I don’t need your money.”
“But these are pretty expensive, aren’t they?” I could read the price on the
receipt.
“I don’t have a kid, how would I know what’s expensive?”
“I see. But let me pay you back.”
“No need,” he insisted, then asked something disturbing. “Detective, did
you bring any guns or the likes from America?”
“...? Of course not.”
“I guess it’s not a big deal. If you boil it down to the base, guns merely
shoot some lead. Bullets are much too slow for us. It’s like they’re frozen...I
mean, we can freeze them.”
“...Yeah.” I agreed with him at the moment, but after imagining it for my-
self, I wasn’t so confident. Stopping bullets. Could I do it? Theoretically it was
possible, but...
Mercury C continued as though he’d foreseen the clog in my mind from a
mile away. “Guns only shoot at 350 meters per second, with some rifles
reaching 1000, you know? And that’s when they leave the cannon. It’s a tad
faster than sound, but it’s not worth shit compared to light. Well, if you’ve
been shooting like crazy and got used to its might, it might actually be harder
to imagine, but either way, it’s best not to use firearms. Guns are kinda the
equivalent of telegraphed punches in boxing. You can predict the trajectory
as soon as it’s set off. If you can’t alter the speed or trajectory of the bullet,
it’s best to leave it alone. Worst case scenario, your opponent bends the tra-
jectory into a U shape and that’s game over. Listen well. When two spacetime
benders face off, victory is decided by how much you can surprise your oppo-
nent. It all depends on how far ahead you can read, how much you’ve pre-
dicted. And how inventive your ideas are. Go ahead, take whatever you like
from inside this bag.” He pointed at the vinyl bag on the ground. It contained
dozens of knives and blades still in their packaging.
“These are the most convenient. I bet you’ve grown accustomed to using
them when living alone. And although I make Japanese confections, I’m still
a cook. Wahaha, I’m gonna stuff Hoshino and that four eyes with anko and
slowly blend them.”
“I can’t hold that many.”
“Dummy. Use your head, won’t you? Shrink space and make them tiny. I
already got a bunch equipped.”
So he might have used these hidden knives to decapitate Hoshino earlier,
not his bare hands. He sure had ideas...but I couldn’t afford to stand still in
admiration.
I had to think, too.
Mercury C succeeded in bringing down Hoshino...or he would, but I still
had no clue what happened with the Black Bird Man.
“Get serious, Detective,” Mercury C said. His face wasn’t joking. “There
will be a trap ahead.”
?
“Why...”
“Didn’t you see Kozue was left behind naked?”
“...Ah...”
 “We checked until the part where I killed Hoshino, but we still don’t know
what I did to the four eyes.”
If he had defeated the Black Bird Man after Hoshino, either ‘Mercury C’ or
another ‘I’ who would appear later would have promptly rescued Kozue. So
when Mercury C opened that door earlier, we would’ve seen a dressed Kozue
sleeping on the bed.
But that wasn’t the case.
That meant neither of us had the leeway to save Kozue, which wouldn’t
happen except if the situation was dire.
“Look. The speakers are gone too.”
I followed his gaze and confirmed the same thing. The Bose previously
hidden beneath the sofa and behind the TV had disappeared. The Black Bird
Man even had the leeway to retrieve them.
So we wouldn’t defeat him so easily in our upcoming assault...
“Wanna return to before we jumped and see what happens after you kill
Hoshino?” I proposed. “We could hide behind ‘you’ and ‘me’...”
Mercury C shook his head. “Let’s not. If the four eyes spots us, he’ll just
devise a new plan. Plus if he lets us see something, it might be because it
works to his advantage, don’t you think? Let’s not let ourselves get flooded
with information, it’ll just increase the amount we must analyze. Listen, this
is a contest of reading and fooling. We need to come up with a trick greater
than our opponent’s.”
I was already straining my brain trying to follow Mercury C, how could I
fool the Black Bird Man like that...
“What’s your plan?” I asked, making Mercury C grin.
“I can’t be bothered with puny tricks. I’ll aim for a fastball in the center
and break through with strength.”
“...?”
“Well, I’m leaving it to chance.”
Seeing the exasperated look on my face, he added,
 “The C in Mercury C is the c denoting the speed of light. Heh heh. I’ll sur-
pass light and go beyond.”
I was taken aback as usual, then smiled. It must be fun living like this guy.

“’Kay, review time,” Mercury C said. “Seems like he messed with the time
of the whole bedroom.” He’d noticed too. “Since everything happened during
that instantaneous bang, the time of the space we occupied near the window
was stretched too. On top of that, the time between us and four eyes was
stretched by a factor of a few millions. So annoying.”
“So he altered the flow of time on two different levels,” I said. “But what
was that artifice for...?”
“Ending everything in an instant makes it harder for intruders to butt in.
Jumping in the middle of that bang is next to impossible. Well, for now. But
there’s a way in.”
Mercury C could get in.
“What do you think that transparent ‘partition’ is made out of?” Mercury
C asked. “All in all, we can’t reach that four eyes without breaking it.”
Earlier I’d wondered which of space or time had been stretched, but if it
was space, I would’ve been able to walk to ‘Kozue’ without a hitch like how I
could walk around the Pinehouse’s straight hallway; be it a billion kilometers
or whatever, I should’ve been able to get closer. But I couldn’t, which meant
that wall involved an element outside of my knowledge. That would be none
other than time.
The Pinehouse’s space was warped, but not its time.
“It must be the flow of time,” Mercury C said the same. “That’s the only
possible option. If that partition was made out of matter and relied on space,
we would’ve seen through it. Even if there was a new transparent material
nobody else had heard of, that sensation rules it out.”
 I recalled. That hard surface lacked any kind of elasticity; I couldn’t feel
anything even when touching it. Could that have been a wall of time instead
of a wall of space? If so, I’d rammed my head and shoulders against time.
“We can’t set foot in spaces with a different flow of time...” I muttered.
Despite feeling confident in my claim, I realized the incoherence.
We were able to join the past ‘Mercury C’ in the space before the wall even
though time had been stretched there too. The past ‘me’ also managed to en-
ter the rape space which had its time altered by the Black Bird Man as well.
And finally, Mercury C and I were able to leave that space and land in the main
bedroom of room 1201 where time flowed normally. How could I explain these
incoherences?
Actually, were they even incoherences? And not another trick? I stared at
the space near the window in the bedroom Kozue was sleeping in. Mercury C
and I were undoubtedly there moments ago. We’d both come from the Pine-
house.
To begin with, how did I move through spacetime?
That movement had felt so natural I couldn’t immediately list the steps to
achieve it, but there was one thing I could say for sure: Moving through
spacetime, at least to me, wasn’t a digital kind of substitution; I merely trav-
eled in between A and B... My surroundings didn’t instantaneously change to
another spacetime, there was a faint period of transition. There was a mo-
ment during which my vision turned black, and sometimes I even had the lei-
sure to choose my landing point with precision.
Reminiscing that moment of blackout, I felt like I could express the steps
I took to a certain degree.
First...I find an image of spacetime B on the map inside my mind. Then I
kind of scoop up a vague portion of space of the same size as the room or place
of spacetime A I am in...but staying careful not to sever the connection it has
with spacetime B, and I pull it towards spacetime A. Doing so, in addition to
the tangible me present in spacetime A, I create a hypothetical me present in
spacetime B. When the former disappears and the latter becomes a tangible
me present in spacetime B, I’m already there...that’s probably how I travel
through spacetime. In short, I insert a vision of myself inside my vision of the
destination and move to spacetime B through that double hypothesis. And
during that final step of making myself tangible in spacetime B where I only
exist as a possibility, my body does move, but since these spaces are exceed-
ingly close—not overlapping, though—I merely leave spacetime A and enter
spacetime B. Earlier too, I didn’t suddenly pop into room 1201’s small bed-
room. I didn’t know how exactly I got in, but there was an entrance. It’s the
same as light. I move at a gargantuan speed, but not instantaneously. More-
over, there was no missing middle like in anime frames or movie tapes. Every
ounce of my existence was linked. I wasn’t sure about consciousness, but in
my internal time I couldn’t have my body be in two different spots. Nor could
I skip intermediate steps.
The word ‘link’ inspired a new hypothesis in me.
We couldn’t step inside spaces where time flowed at a different speed, and
yet we were able to enter that room; earlier, I called that an incoherence, but
it was the same problem as with sound and light. We didn’t digitally manifest
inside the room, we came in from the outside by passing through the walls.
That involved distance. So what if time was gradually altered in that distance
so as to link the flows? If instead of a normal speed and a super fast speed
space next to each other, there was a smooth connection between them,
making time flow slower when going in and faster when going out, a grada-
tion in speed around the space near the window, then couldn’t we enter it like
it was nothing? And we couldn’t go past the wall partitioning the room be-
cause it didn’t have that gradation... We couldn’t keep up with the harsh
change in the flow of time. It gotta be gentle...I thought, then remembered.
That stillness I initially felt when I found myself in the corner of the small
bedroom.
 The fluttering curtains. The morning light shining onto the carpet. The
smell of linen. That one moment before the ‘Black Bird Man’ said, Ahahaha-
haha! First one going in! Kozue-chan’s tiny pussy is getting wetter and more
relaxed by the minute!
Maybe that wasn’t my ears malfunctioning, but actually them not picking
up what they naturally couldn’t hear, then hearing it when time allowed so?
I’d penetrated a world of slow motion where light took a few minutes, or
maybe even dozens of minutes, to cover five meters. However, despite the
detection of sound or other information taking more time there, my con-
sciousness, oblivious to that fact, prioritized its misconception and adapted
my sensations to match my surroundings. It was the same as when walking
through the Pinehouse’s straight hallway. Adjustments take time. If the
round Pinehouse could simply flicker to being the straight Cottage Natsu-
kawa, I would’ve been fine, but in reality I was sent flying and hit my head.
That’s because I felt the Pinehouse straightening in a smooth motion. Right.
Consciousness doesn’t change abruptly. There is always a sequence and a
process. So no matter how brief that time is, there is an adjustment period. So
when I entered Kozue’s room I needed some time to adapt my senses to this
new spacetime; couldn’t that explain the moment of stillness? And maybe a
proof of the fact time was stretched? I wouldn’t have noticed if the change
had been smooth and continuous...and thus, I reached the word ‘continuous’.
Continuity and discontinuity.
People can’t keep up with abrupt changes, with discontinuous things.
Isn’t that a general truth?
If people’s consciousness could change the speed of time, then the world
must be covered with spaces ruled by different flows of time. However, if en-
tering a space of different speed proved to be impossible, humans wouldn’t
be able to move an inch. But in reality they can travel anywhere. That’s be-
cause there is no discontinuous wall, the borders are smooth.
How are the barriers in spacetime smoothed out?
 Because people look at the same clocks and decide on a common time as
they look at the short and long needles moving; it could be that, but move-
ment isn’t restricted in places free of clocks, so it must be first and foremost
thanks to the existence of others who are conscious of the world. Other people
are really big. And the world is constantly wavering. As Sakurazuki Tansetsu
had said. Although other people sway the world, they also fix it in place. The
many people scattered around the world influence each other and smoothen
the passage of time. The existence of others was what allowed time travel to
exist.
Then, I remembered one more thing... After crashing into the wall in an
attempt to save Kozue and rolling on the floor, I finally perceived the past
‘Mercury C’ who was already there. But was it possible to not notice someone
in such a cramped space?
I could explain that too, now. Time had been stretched inside that space,
so despite ‘Mercury C’ being right next to me, a few dozen centimeters away,
it took some time for my eyes to see him. But the moment we both perceived
the other, our time got shared, and our light and voices were synched.
Others connect and smoothen spacetime.
But the time in that small bedroom was ruled by the Black Bird Man, and
his strong will had erected a surface of discontinuity between us and him...to
keep us away from Kozue.
I looked at Mercury C. If I hadn’t been with this wild guy, the Black Bird
Man would’ve successfully trapped me in there and made me his plaything.
“We can’t get past that wall for the same reason we can’t enter people,” I
said. “Time flows inside people, and since consciousness can alter spacetime,
everyone possesses their own specific flow of time. That might be what lets
them remain the same person. One’s shape is delimited by one’s skin, but
even people like us who can freely move through and alter space can’t infil-
trate people nor destroy them with the power of consciousness alone. The
difference in flow of time protects humans.”
That’s why Mercury C had to swing his hand-katana to kill ‘Hoshino’.
 I thought to myself: Inversely, if they share the same time, multiple con-
sciousnesses can enter the same body. That’s what was commonly called split
personalities; and Kozue was a special example of that. After her conscious-
ness learned to travel spacetime by accompanying me, she entered other
people’s bodies before they had the chance to establish their consciousness,
and thus ousted Toda Erika and the five other girls when they were still fe-
tuses.
And that Kozue was evicted from her body by the ‘seventeen-year-old
Kozue’s feelings’...it made sense for feelings to own a flow of time too. After
all, feelings are the embodiment of the passage of time. They exist because of
all the fun, tough, sad, and happy times one went through.
“Hmm,” Mercury C pondered. “Then are we free to enter others as long
as we match their internal speed of time?”
If he or the Black Bird Man could do that, a true nightmare would start.
“But consciousness isn’t really fixed, so that speed must be constantly
changing. It’s probably impossible,” I said, feeling relieved humans were
such complex creatures.
“Enough with entering people, can you change the flow of time in the
space outside, Detective?”
“I’m not sure...”
I’d become quite proficient at altering space...but I could only manipulate
space itself as an extension of my experiences with physical objects, more or
less forcefully applying the intuitive image they’d provided me with. How-
ever, I’d hardly thought about bending or extending time myself. Who would
even think of that? I’d never seen any movies or novels setting the limits of
how much time itself could be compressed. In most works of fiction, the
characters rely on a device to change time and it takes care of everything.
That’s why, despite the numerous SF novels, movies, or anime that had come
out, our imaginations hadn’t progressed one bit... Time machine, switch on!
Voom, just like that, we’re on the same day 100 years ago! Time travel powers,
activate! That’s it, bam, we’re in 23rd century London... The consequences of
constantly dodging the matter, of taking the easy way out impacted, of all
things, a missing child detective.
That said, it was thanks to those numerous SF works that I could time
travel to some degree. I’d gone to the past, to the future, and I’d even reverted
the bodies of great detectives to their past states. And yet I’d only intuited
how to travel to the past or the future, I hadn’t thought much on what exactly
I was doing... Well, this might be what technology is all about. Couldn’t I apply
those natural and intuitive sensations to the speed of time as well? When time
traveling, I went to the past, I went to the future, it always felt like moving to
‘somewhere else’. So, what kind of experiences could I use as reference for
the speed of time?
“Can’t we do it by imagining things in slow-motion?” I proposed, then
tried visualizing it myself, but even though I was used to the fast forward and
rewind functions, in the end, I had no concrete understanding of how to link
the image of a video deck or a DVD player in my head to actually fast forward-
ing or rewinding time. But whenever I thought of changing the speed of an
image in my mind, I couldn’t help but involve a player or a fictional machine
which was just a rearrangement of the same thing. I’d gotten too used to vis-
ual media.
What the heck, I was irked. Machines made humanity progress, but they
also limited our imaginations and were reducing it further!
As I was lost in an asinine rant about modern civilization,
“For now, not only can we not enter spacetimes where time flows at a dif-
ferent speed, we can’t get in counterflowing spacetimes either,” Mercury C
said, a grimace on his face and a hand pressing against the top of his cranium.
“That’s all I managed to demonstrate.”
What? Demonstrate? “What did you...”
“I actually tried going to a different spacetime where time was flowing in
the opposite direction,” he said. “I hit my head hard...my head’s fine, but my
neck and jaws are killing me~~.”
 A spacetime where time flows in the opposite direction? “Where did you
find that?”
“The outskirts of the world.”
“Huh?”
“That panda told you about it, plus you talked with Norma about it, didn’t
you? You even told the great detectives about it...the world will be folded on
itself after today’s Ragnarök, right? See, there’s your counterflowing world,
the future beyond the horizon.”

My idea is that you divide the graph at its middle point, turn the second
half upside down, and flip it over so it overlaps with the first part. With that,
if you end up with the line for the Big Bang and the line for the Big Rip per-
fectly overlapping, the total of the size of the universe in the first and second
halves will be identical.
I recalled Norma’s pleasant voice, as soft as a bell slowly rolling inside a
paper balloon. And her folded universe graph. If that turning point was really
on the 15th of July 2006 at 23:26 and time continued flowing at the same
speed after it, on the other side of the universe of now...of the 15th of July at
07:17, there should be a universe where it’s the 16th of July at 15:35.
But how does one go to the outskirts of the universe?
The far end of the current observable universe was about 47 billion light
years away, pinpointing its exact location seemed impossible. It’s not like I
couldn’t travel to places I’d never been to, but in my case I had to at least have
a concrete and realistic image of the place I wanted to visit on my mind’s map.
And when you take into account that place is constantly expanding at the
speed of light...I had no clue of what to imagine, and even if I did, I knew my
poor imagination would quickly throw in the towel...but maybe that was nat-
ural? I once again recalled Sakurazuki Tansetsu’s words. The world is made
out of people’s consciousness. If that was true, the outskirts of the universe
was the limit of one’s consciousness.
So he’d gone there and hit his head against it... I gave Mercury C an exas-
perated look, then asked him.
“How was it?”
“How was what?”
“The outskirts of the world.”
“Eh? Why would you wanna know?”
“I’m simply curious...plus it might give us a clue on how to get there, no?”
“It won’t give you shit.”
“You can’t say that for sure. Where did you go?”
“Up in the sky. A bit above the clouds.”
“Above the clouds...” What was he saying? Could it be that the Black Bird
Man had laid down another wall in the sky above Princeton Hotel? “Are you,
Kozue, and I locked up together...?”
He sneered. “If you mean in this world, then yeah, but it wasn’t that shit-
head pervert’s doing. Go there yourself.”
“Above the clouds?”
“Should be closer than Fukui.”
Well, obviously.
I vanished from the bedroom, aiming up at the sky hidden by the ceiling,
and keeping a hand above my head. I didn’t want to hit my head on the wall.
I doubt my head and neck were as robust as Mercury C’s...but how fast was I
moving during those teleportations? Could a mere hand absorb the shock?
So I anxiously jumped 800 meters above Chofu and was above the lowest
clouds near Princeton Hotel, but there was no sign of a wall. I hurriedly looked
around me, but everything seemed to have depth and be in 3D, unlike the
screen separating us from ‘Kozue’... What would a counterflowing world look
like? Like a movie playing in reverse? ...Nah, probably not. I recalled that
screen. We could see the image displayed on the wall, meaning light could
traverse it. And if that wall had been a physical wall or something made out
of another matter, in addition to letting some light pass through, a percent-
age of it would reflect and come back on the other side. So the wall was likely
just a boundary of space; then it would make sense that barely any light got
reflected. Even if there was a wall between this world and the counterflowing
one, the light from the other side would solely return to its source.
Then shouldn’t it be pure black, not displaying anything?
Probably not either. The light from our side, too, should be flung back for
the people beyond the wall... So light would either be reflected or turn back in
its original direction. If the former happened, the wall would work more like
a mirror than a screen, and if the latter happened, it would become a non-
flipped mirror...however, then, no matter the direction you look in, you’d be
staring into your eyes... Anyway, convinced I would’ve noticed if there was a
wall, I found a second breath in me as I was falling down to Princeton Hotel,
and jumped up once more. The morning weather in Chofu on the 15th of July
was clear with only a few turbulent clouds being formed in the distance. Right
above Princeton Hotel were clouds like irregular dotted lines; when I jumped
above one of those last time it only seemed to give way to a pure blue sky,
but...thinking that, I flew up by bursts of 300 meters and reached an altitude
higher than the highest turbulent clouds, but still no wall in the horizon... I
was about ten kilometers in the air. The temperature had dropped to about 40
below zero, making it unbearably cold, but I figured I might as well jump 30
kilometers more at once. Now out of the troposphere and into the strato-
sphere, it became warmer and warmer the more I climbed, but the air was
also becoming so thin I could barely breathe, which gave me a headache, so I
hurriedly returned to Princeton Hotel’s room 1201’s small bedroom the mo-
ment right after I’d left. Would I be fine with the decompression sickness? I
really shouldn’t venture that far out without a plan. Seeing me come back
carrying my head and worrying whether the blood vessels in my brain had
exploded, Mercury C laughed.
“Oh? You too got your head rammed against that wall?”
 What did he mean, ‘got your head rammed’? “No. I kept going up search-
ing for that wall, but went too far and got a headache. The change in pressure
might’ve been too great and destroyed my blood vessels...”
“Wah hah hah. Moron. Don’t be so reckless.”
“Tsk...Mercury, was there really a wall?”
“There was one for me. But your outskirts of the world doesn’t necessarily
overlap with mine. That’s obvious.”
“...? What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you listen to the great detectives at the Pinehouse, Detective? That
whatnot about the world being a table back when people believed it was one.”
The world is made out of people’s consciousness.
After pushing Sakurazuki Tansetsu’s line into my mind once more, Mer-
cury C continued.
“The Earth and the universe is stable because most others have similar
images of what the world is like, and these people have the limits set to be
extremely far, but the thing is, I don’t believe in the existence of others to
begin with. Of fucking course. My world is mine and only mine. Hmph. You
should better pay closer attention to the people around you and think more.
Feelings and consciousness and the likes can enter other people’s corpses or
even inorganic matter and change their appearance as they wish, you know?
You can’t have any idea who is who, what is who, and who is what. Moreover,
we have no idea how many people can travel across spacetime. How many of
one of those people do you think can be in the same spot at the same time?
Everyone other than me might be a single person, someone’s feelings, or ac-
tually the future me. I can only believe in myself in such a world. And I don’t
believe one bit in the shape of the world, either. Spacetime can be bent at will
and swapped. Fuck if I know what kind of changes have been applied. There-
fore, I will only believe in what I can directly see, feel, and touch. That’s why
my limit of the world was above the clouds.”
 What a guy, I thought. He could manage to seriously doubt the entire
world. Of course I shared some of his doubts, but I couldn’t be as thorough
with them. I still believed in the world to some degree. The sensation of being
connected with others through the world we shared slightly warmed me up
inside, but at the same time, shouldn’t I be doubting any and everything pos-
sible like Mercury C at the moment? To begin with, detectives are ones to start
their reflection by doubting. If they cannot doubt sufficiently, they won’t be
able to think sufficiently...
“Hey, how high up did you go?” Mercury C asked.
“The upper part of the troposphere was insanely cold so I went higher to
somewhere relatively warm, so the upper half of the stratosphere, I’d say?
Sensation-wise I feel like I jumped 40 kilometers.”
“Whoa~. Then if I try again I’ll probably be able to go that far.”
Mm? “You believe in my experiences?”
“Kinda. You’re the center of this case, aren’t you?”
“...If that’s how it works, shouldn’t you have been influenced by my ideas
and gone to the stratosphere?”
“Your head was full with Kozue and that pervert earlier, leaving no space
for thinking about the world, don’t you remember? Maybe that’s why it
worked out? Plus you might be doubting your ideas yourself. Whatever. Any-
way, done checking the outskirts of the world? It’s just a formality, you don’t
need to go there yourself, you know?”
“No, give me a minute. If they really exist, I want to see the outskirts of
the universe and the counterflowing future myself. It might be necessary to
fully understand what that wall is made out of.” That being said, with how
loose I’d been with doubting, they must be 47 billion light years away like
everyone believes it to be. Could I go out into space and leave the galaxy and
pass through superclusters and cosmic voids when I couldn’t even bear being
50 kilometers above ground? If I were to go, instead of heading there alone, I
should prepare an environment to surround myself with while I’m there...to
protect me from any mishap.
 But how would I go there?
I’d need a realistic image... As I was returning to my thoughts, Mercury C
interrupted me.
“It's as simple as ABC. Neither you nor I can go places we don’t know of,
right? We need a planisphere, a globe, or anything to help us visualize the
coordinates. But, in fact, there’s a place we can go to without bothering
checking a map.”
I thought. Guided by Mercury C, the answer surged in my mind. “...Where
we were in the past.”
“Yeah. See, you get it, don’t you? So, your goal is that wall, no? A wall has
more than one face. You can run into it from the other side, too.”
From the other side. Oooh...made sense.
Seeing my expression change after a few seconds, he put up a grin. “We
can’t go to the counterflowing future by jumping through space, but we can
go there normally by jumping through time. So you can go to the future world
at the same point in time as now and head for where you currently are. Of
course if you’re obsessed with the location of the wall, you can go to the other
side once to confirm your location, go back, and then head there. Too much
work for nothing, though,” seeing him laugh, I felt a strong conviction this
method would work. If there really was a wall between this world and the
counterflowing future world, I would surely hit it. I had no idea where the
limits of the world were, but resolving the problems of pressure or tempera-
ture was an easy feat. I wouldn’t recklessly fly off into the sky anymore. I
would enclose myself in a space and head for the limits of the world along
with that space. In that case, if the wall existed and its source was the change
in the flow of time, the space surrounding me would hit it before me and act
like a vaccine, reducing the damage I receive. I could enlarge that space cush-
ion to increase my safety. Okay. I could manage. I would manage.
Contrasting my enthusiasm, Mercury C said, “Hurry up and go, Detective.
I’m bored of working out details. To me it’s over already, I’m ready to barge
into that room. We can go save Kozue whenever you want.”
 “Wait,” I said. “So you know how to manipulate time?”
He laughed mischievously. “Not fully, but kinda. Took me too much time
despite giving a hint myself.”
The fuck? “I’m not sure I follow you, but then I’m good too. I’ll believe
you. I can always check on the wall on the outskirts of the universe later. The
priority is on teaching me how to alter the speed of time.”
I suddenly stood up. “I’m not sure it’s directly related to altering the speed
of time, but chill out,” Mercury C said. “I think seeing the wall out there for
yourself will be important to keep up with me. After all, knowledge and ex-
perience and logic and time and everything builds up to something. So shut
up and go. It’ll only take an instant anyway.”
Indeed, I hadn’t noticed when Mercury C jumped high in the Chofu sky nor
when he went to the future world to mark his position before that. I could
adjust the time at which I came and left. I wouldn’t leave him hanging for too
long.
“Alright. Gimme a second then,” I said. He waved me off.
“Hurry up and go, moronic useless detective.”
He might’ve been right, but I once again realized how vulgar he was. And
yet, I smiled at how reliable he was. He’d only caused troubles in the Pine-
house, but he was a life saver here.
I then remembered what he’d said. There will be a trap ahead. I couldn’t
rejoice yet. I’d only confirmed Hoshino getting killed, and the state of Kozue
and the room after the fact didn’t let us deduce whether we’d slayed the Black
Bird Man.
I had to get a grip of myself.
I checked the clock in the room once again. 07:28. 11 minutes had passed
since I last looked at it before venturing into the sky. Meaning time must’ve
gone back 11 minutes in the counterflowing future, so right now the time over
there should be 15:24 on the 16th of July. So the two of us had spent at least 11
minutes in this room. When I would go to the other side, I would have a whole
11 minutes to act.
 Okay.
I locked eyes with Mercury C who was looking at me with a serious face,
then focused my consciousness and jumped to the future.
My vision turned black, then I found myself standing in the small bed-
room of Princeton Hotel’s room 1201, but without Mercury C nor the small
Kozue. The sheets on the bed had been changed, leaving no trace of someone
sleeping on it. I looked at the clock on the side table—it was exactly 15:24.
There was even the date under the digital display. 16th of July. I’d arrived at
the time I was aiming for. It was still bright outside the window. The space
before the window once illuminated by the morning rays of light was in the
shadows. At this hour the sun had moved onto the other side of the building.
The curtains were wide open, so I could see the Chofu Station and the city. I
could see small figures of children enthralled on a bright Summer afternoon,
middle schoolers wearing their uniform despite being on a day off, and par-
ents on their way to buy groceries for dinner. I opened the door and peeked at
the big bedroom, but Koeda wasn’t there, nor any baggage in addition to the
basic amenities. It seemed like nobody had reserved the semi-suite after we
checked out. I suddenly caught on and looked back; the door to the small bed-
room I’d left open was closed. I recalled Hakkyoku’s words. Even if we go to
the future, we have no influence on it. I grabbed the knob and opened the door.
I let it go to observe when it would close again, but it stayed open and didn’t
move. I thought it wouldn’t occur as long as I was watching it so I faced away,
but it still didn’t budge. However, then, I heard quick footsteps in the hallway
coming my direction and got tense. When I returned my gaze to the door after
listening to them passing by while staring at the entrance door, the door to
the small bedroom had closed without letting out a single sound. I slightly
laughed at the abrupt change, totally denying I’d ever opened the door, and
felt weirdly emotive. People’s influence, huh. Being aware of something can
alter or stabilize it... Then, I briefly shivered. Whatever I did in this world
wouldn’t bother anyone, but since I wouldn’t be remembered, there was
nothing I could help people with, either. I was very free, but also extremely
solitary. But it didn’t quite feel sad nor painful. It was closer to a feeling of
emptiness. Whatever I did in this world would be in vain...
It was no time to get melancholic about being all alone in the world. I
kicked the clean carpet devoid of any detritus after the room cleaning staff’s
work, and jumped to Princeton Hotel’s roof. The hot and sweet scent of a
stuffy Japanese Summer evening’s air pressed against me. I took a deep
breath and focused. I cladded myself with the air surrounding me. Doing so,
the wind stopped and sound vanished. I looked at the sky from the four me-
ter-wide cylinder of space supposedly surrounding me. There should be an-
other ‘Princeton Hotel’ and another ‘me’ on the other side of this sky. I would
likely run against a wall on the way there, but I needn’t worry about this. No
matter where I would crash into the wall, I believed this space cushion envel-
oping me would protect me from any harm. If by miracle there was no wall I
would enter the other side and descend before the past ‘me’, but I had no such
memories.
I jumped.
The cushion seemingly hit something, as planned, and I staggered inside
the air surrounding me.
The outskirts of the universe was...white.

There was no mirror reflecting my image. There was nothing. Just pure
white, which should’ve been much too bright for my green foreigner pupils,
and yet my eyes didn’t feel attacked; it was a gentle, thick, and deep white.
I extended a hand to probe it and found a wall-like surface. It had a tex-
tureless texture like the wall separating me from Kozue. I was once again
forcefully reverted to being a mime.
It was the outskirts of the world.
I could understand why there was no mirror like I had imagined. Not even
light could reach it. Therefore, it didn’t reflect anything and wasn't bright.
 Without light, shouldn’t it be dark...I wondered for a second, but that was
wrong too. Night was dark because there was space, and space was dark be-
cause of depth, but here there was no depth...it was a pure white end of the
end.
I wondered what had happened to the air around me after crashing into
the wall, but it seemed it didn’t scatter away and still formed a protection
around me. With nothing there, the problem of void or gravity or pressure
shouldn’t even apply. I simply existed there, and thus the air gathered around
me...as if it were a frightened beast. The air probably stuck around because I
felt it to be necessary for my survival, but it might remain even if I stopped
feeling that way. Actually, with no one but myself existing in this space, eve-
rything was the way I wanted it to be. I had a solid hunch it would happen that
way. If I started believing I would be fine without air, would it really become
useless to me?
But I liked the air. The scent and the feeling on my skin was pleasant, and
having sound was nice...I took another deep breath of the air I’d brought with
me to enjoy its smell. A new scent I hadn’t felt back in Chofu had mixed in. It
was the scent of the outskirts of the universe. It was sweet and dry, like a mix-
ture of papier-mâché and blueberry. But smell depended on matter, which
obviously didn’t exist on the outskirts of the universe, so I was only experi-
encing the non-existence before me through olfaction instead of vision this
time around. This is what the absence of everything felt like.
Curious on experiencing the outskirts of the universe through my hearing,
I closed my eyes, stopped my breath, and strained my ears.
I could hear a Waah in the distance, as if a child was crying or a girl was
being spoiled.

Wa———ah, Wa—ah wa———ah. Wa———————aahhh. ...Wa——

——ah wa——ah wah Wa——————aaahhhhh.
 It sounded as though the air enveloping me was scared of being in such a
place devoid of anything and begged me to return to where I previously was
while crying, but it was probably just what a non-existence sounded like. A
place devoid of anything went Waah.
I then opened my eyes and observed my surroundings to find the source
of that delicate voice, but this place had a white fence different from both mist
or haze blocking my sight. I put up the palm of my hand a distance away from
my eyes to check if there was any matter floating around, but saw nothing.
Instead, I saw the silhouette of my hand get blurry and panicked. What? I fo-
cused my eyes on my palm and it returned to its usual shape, but the more I
stared, the more I became unsure whether it had always been of this shape...
I was starting to experience the famous gestaltzerfall effect. However, unlike
usual cases of gestaltzerfall, any abnormality or doubt I could feel would
manifest by changing the actual shape of my hand. My hand swelled and my
fingers twisted and stretched in all directions until it finally became impos-
sible to keep a coherent shape; I was made to realize how frail the awareness
of my body had been in this cognitive fight. Having reached the outskirts of
the world and fallen into complete solitude, having nothing other than my
consciousness to think, feel, see, or learn, my shell crumbled away with no
resistance. I was omnipotent in the sense I could do anything I wanted, how-
ever, humans’ consciousnesses are constantly waning. If I stayed here, I
would surely break apart, collapse, melt away, and shhhhhhh...vanish into
nothing.
I needed others.
People—at least that was the case for me—establish themselves inside
other people to some degree. And seeing how my hand collapsed, it seemed I
was somewhat relying on others to stabilize how my own body was shaped.
I gathered myself up and hurriedly returned to the roof of Princeton Hotel
next to Chofu Station’s north entrance in Tokyo, Japan, on the Earth I’d come
from.
 I dropped on my knees on the black, dirty concrete of the roof, and checked
my body. My hands had five fingers and joints that bent in the same direction
as before in the same quantity and shape.
I was relieved from the bottom of my heart, then I noticed that the clear
weather I’d left behind had turned into a clouded one, plus the air was now
cold, and the people walking near the roundabout in front of the station
weren’t wearing summer clothes anymore, they all had sweaters or overcoats,
nobody was walking with short-sleeves T-shirts. I was in such a hurry to get
away from the outskirts of the universe I’d forgotten to set the time and
ended up at another time than on the evening of July 16th.
The clock near the roundabout indicated twenty-eight past two. It was
still bright, so of course in the afternoon. On what day? I’d go to the station’s
ticket gate and...then I finally realized. The Chofu Station and the railway
tracks were gone, leaving behind instead a giant station building and a street
I’d never seen. I jumped to a convenience store that didn’t exist in 2006 and
looked at the day’s newspaper. 31st of October. The year inscribed next to that
was 2019. I’d screwed up the destination time by 13 years. I looked through
the store’s front glass and observed more closely the scenery around the sta-
tion’s north entrance. Every building other than the Parco had been rebuilt
and furnished with brand new signs. Even the students commuting through
the roundabout that had become like a well-organized theme park were act-
ing differently...the only constant were the men and women above 50. I
looked at a group of girls around 15/16- years old passing before the store,
cackling, and recalled Kozue. The grown up version should be somewhere in
this future world...it was 2019, so she should be 19. But I had no idea where
she could be so I couldn’t go meet her...not even take a peek at her face. Inoue
Kozue from Suitengu. According to the ‘seventeen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’
I’d renamed Koeda, she seemed to be living like a normal seventeen-year-
old girl, so she must’ve become a normal nineteen-year-old girl now. She
was surely spending her days in peace after being separated from me. That
was fine. But she remembered me and sent me her feelings. That was a source
of happiness to me...of honor, even. I wondered for a bit if there was really no
way for me to see her face now that she’d become a bit older, then remem-
bered the ginkgo tree in Villa Hapira Kojimacho. Around when Koeda started
taking control of Kozue’s body as ‘Kozue’s feelings’, I buried a set of table-
ware under one of the ginkgo trees in the backyard to test Kozue’s truthful-
ness in our exchange through the sketchbook, and as I was engraving my
name on the trunk, Koeda back when she was ‘Kozue’s feelings’ came to
me...I confirmed that. The silver-colored knife and fork with pink cherry
blossom petals. After looking at your letters, I immediately headed to Chofu.
I might be able to meet the seventeen-year-old Kozue. If only I could spot
the moment Kozue went to Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s room 303 to unbury the
set under the ginkgo tree...I thought, but after using my brain more, that
made no sense. I had no idea when the seventeen-year-old Kozue went to
unbury it...wait, not that. To begin with, the letters on the sketchbook hap-
pened back when ‘Kozue’s feelings’ wrongly thought herself to be the ‘real
future Kozue’, so the actual Kozue had no way of knowing about it. So there
were things I could understand now. I’d left the ginkgo’s trunk with only up
to ‘DISC’ engraved, and I never wrote the pattern of the buried knife and fork
in the letters. ‘Kozue’s feelings’ knew about it, but she was fooling herself.
She must’ve kept existing around us even when she wasn’t inside the small
Kozue, and, without realizing nor consciously remembering, looked at my
actions. She saw that entire scene of me taking out the Uno Chiyo dining set
out of the kitchen.
So I could wait at Villa Hapira Kojimacho forever without the seventeen-
year-old Kozue showing up, I thought, a bit dejected. Not a big deal. Koeda
had shown me Kozue’s future face back when she was ‘Kozue’s feelings’. Plus,
it’s probably for the best that I didn’t meet with the real Kozue... I wanted to
meet you, Koeda had relayed to me, but Kozue had simply forgotten, and the
time she’d spent with me must’ve been the harshest and most cruel period of
her life... I suddenly remembered Koeda had also said ‘I went to see fireworks
with someone. At a fireworks festival in Chuo, on the banks of Tokyo Bay. I
went really close and was looking up at the fireworks, when suddenly...’ The
fireworks festival on Tokyo Bay mainly in Chuo was probably the Tokyo Bay
Grand Fireworks Festival, which had for main avenues Harumi Wharf or Hi-
node Station. Finding Kozue in this festival gathering around 700,000 people
every year would be as tedious as finding a needle in a haystack, but I would
somehow overcome that...I barely kept myself from jumping to the Chuo
public office to investigate in more detail.
But that wasn’t because the feeling that I shouldn’t interfere with her
now-peaceful life won me over.
I headed for the police box next to the convenience store in an attempt to
not needlessly scare the Chofu citizens and arrived at a place that was once
an illegal parking zone but now ridden with bicycles and got ready to jump,
when in the corner of my eyes I saw the name of a company displayed on the
top floor of a gigantic building in that reconstructed zone around the station
that was seven times higher than any others.

STYRON JAPAN

Styron Japan?
The Chuo map in my head got blown away.

My destination changed to the silver-colored building boasting the name

of Styron Japan; I jumped. The building was a two-minute walk south from
the station and overshadowed the heart of the city. Formerly—though it was
the present to me—this area had been a residential zone with a food export-
ing company and a parking lot, but that blue shop and all those residences
had apparently been demolished to erect this giant building entirely covered
in mirror glass. I walked through the hotel-grade porch that wasn’t there
back when this was a food company and saw a security guard standing at the
entrance instead of a doorman. There were two revolving doors and three
push-to-open doors leading inside the building; I opened the middle door
and entered the vast, three-floor tall atrium topped with a glass ceiling,
which contained an evergreen grove of rhododendrons and satsuki azaleas
rising to the second and third floors. I might seriously have mistaken this for
a hotel if not for the salarymen in business suits filling the tables scattered
around the lobby. There was a reception counter across the entrance, so I
made to walk over there...when I caught in the corner of my vision a few men
rising from their chairs upon spotting me and approaching me. There was a
well-dressed, elderly man, three middle-aged men, and a young, well-built
man. The young one was probably a bodyguard; no matter how much he
might have tried to hide it, the look in his eyes clearly showed he was on an-
other level than Japanese salarymen, and I could feel an aura emanating from
his whole body.
I tensed up, but the old man was approaching me with a gentle smile on
his face, throwing me into further confusion.
Did this random old man know me? Was that possible? How... Who would
know me in 2019’s Japan?
I remembered. This was Styron’s company.
“Welcome. ...I apologize for the rudeness, but would you happen to be
Wednesdayyy-sama? Disco Wednesdayyy-sama?”
The old man asked. He knew my name too.
Was he waiting for me?
“...And who are you?”
“I am sorry for the late introduction. I am the president of Styron Japan,
Shinozaki Shinya.”
The old man said while taking out a business card from his inner breast
pocket, adjusting it to hold it with both hands, and presenting it to me with a
bow.
 “Nice to meet you. And behind me are the vice presidents Kabutoya Yuuki,
Suzuki Takayuki, and Koyama Yoshitaka.”
Upon being introduced, the three men readied their business cards and
bowed so I accepted them in order but, looking at their gazes, that gave them
a short-lived feeling of surprise, leaving them looking up, with their eyes
glued on me. Seemed like they were so surprised they couldn’t take their eyes
off me. As if they weren’t confident I would come, despite knowing about it.
The young man apparently decided he wouldn’t need to act, took one step
back while looking at me, and made his way to leave. After seeing him go away,
I asked—omitting any formalities.
“Where’s JJ?”
The four men widened their eyes in surprise, and Shinozaki answered.
“...The chairman has been waiting for your arrival for a short while.”
Pfft, I laughed. “He’s in Japan right in Chofu by chance today of all days?”
“No,” Shinozaki replied, “the chairman has been staying at Styron Japan
ever since last year. He recently turned Japanese officially...”
“JJ did? Japanese? ...By naturalization?”
“Indeed. It happened this summer, I believe.”
“I see. Anyway, tell me where he is.”
“Naturally. The chairman ordered us to guide you to him. Please follow
me.”
Shinozaki said and pointed his palm at one of the elevators in the back,
then started walking there, intent on guiding me all the way through. He
could’ve just told me where he was and I’d have jumped there, I thought, but
nevertheless followed him with the three vice presidents bringing up the rear.
Could these embodiments of your average Japanese salaryman really control
spacetime? ...No clue. Controlling or altering spacetime is done through one’s
consciousness, muscles don't matter. Someone can be over 100 years old or
just a six-year-old kid and do whatever with spacetime as long as they have
a good hold on their consciousness.
 I still couldn’t change the speed of time, so I was defenseless before an-
other trap like that of the torture room...however, Mercury C had found a way
to break into that room. Would I be able to get there too? Still being guided to
the elevator and gathering everyone in the hall’s attention—probably be-
cause all the higher-ups were with me—I thought: Mercury C had said Took
me too much time despite giving a hint myself. What was that hint? It
must’ve been something he’d said. And from the context of then, he must’ve
addressed that hint to me. Then I should have gotten it too. And I must be able
to figure it out if I think enough.
The elevator arrived at the first floor, the doors opened, and the employ-
ees inside hurriedly descended upon seeing us except for the last one, who
maintained the doors open and invited us to go in. A few other people were
waiting to get in, but nobody boarded the same cab as us five. The last guy
removed his hand keeping the doors open, and everyone maintained a deep
bow at us until the doors were fully closed. Koyama, standing near the control
panel, said, “Let me take you to the highest floor, 27, where the chairman’s
room is,” and pushed the highest button. That made a gong sound as a mes-
sage popped on the panel’s display.
‘An unregistered passenger is on board. Do you wish for an examination?’
Koyama clicked on the no button, and an anime-style woman appeared on
the screen, bowed, then disappeared; the elevator slowly started its ascension.
Having seemingly followed my gaze, Shinozaki explained to me.
“My apologies. For safety purposes, pushing any button higher than floor
21 will result in a scan to verify the passengers’ identities...”
“What if you pressed yes?”
“...? Pardon?”
“The ‘examination’. What happens? Would it display my data and access
the criminal record database?”
“Ahh. To be completely honest, those enquiries are already sent and pro-
cessed instantly during the initial scan. The sentence you saw is smoothly in-
forming us of the results. After all, we are in an enclosed environment.”
 “Huh. So what did that sentence mean in reality?”
“...Ah, well, ‘Someone dangerous is on board. Do you want an examina-
tion?’ Something along those lines.”
‘Someone dangerous’? Hahaha. “So, what’s the ‘examination’?”
“You would be asked to leave the elevator and be guided to our special sec-
tion for a face-to-face interrogation, then a manager would be called.”
Seemed coarse. “I see. You don’t need to call them?”
“Not at all, Wednesdayyy-sama. We have been instructed to directly es-
cort you to the chairman.”
So JJ was waiting for me there.
The elevator reached floor 27 so quickly I had no time to think about a
method to alter the speed of time. It stopped so smoothly I couldn’t even tell
when we came to a stop, and the doors opened.
Unlike the first floor, which acted as an elevator hall, we came out in a
wide space furnished with long-fur carpets. The indirect lighting, high-class
furniture, and fresh flowers once again gave it a hotel atmosphere. Shinozaki
prompted me and we left the elevator in the same formation as before,
headed for the booth on our left. The two young women inside gave Shinozaki
a polite bow, then looked at me with curiosity brimming in their eyes. “What
did the chairman say?” Shinozaki asked. One of the two women replied “He
is waiting” while the other one pressed a button that opened the door. She
exited the booth, jogged past Shinozaki, stopped before the door beyond the
one that had just opened, knocked on it, and without waiting for a response,
twisted the knob and opened it. “Please, proceed inside.”
Shinozaki waved at the girl keeping the door open then passed through it;
we followed him. The three behind me were complimenting the girls and such,
but I couldn’t afford such distraction.
Inside the room was that good old nostalgic JJ.
Clad in a refined suit, Joaquin Joseph Styron was standing before a giant
glass pane extending from the floor to the ceiling, with his back to the Au-
tumn scenery of Chofu.
 His mischievous smile hadn’t aged a second...actually, everything apart
from his clothes and location were the same.
“Ahaha. How young we both still are! And I haven’t seen you in so long!”
He laughed like the 22/23-year-old JJ I knew and spoke in Japanese.

He had traveled through time as well, I thought.

He was way too young. He should’ve been 38 in 2019.
“I’m not sure how long it really has been, honestly. But JJ, I heard you be-
came Japanese?” I said and readied myself. First, I inspected my surround-
ings, but there was only a big desk and a sofa set, nothing that could be used
as a weapon...that said, someone capable of altering space could turn any-
thing into a weapon, couldn’t they?
“Ah hah hah. Well, I went through a lot, you see. Let’s sit over there and
talk about it, shall we?” He moved his jaw to point at the sofa set. “Shinozaki,
you guys can fall back.”
“Understood,” he abided, then faced me. “If you don’t mind, could you
come and see us on the 26th floor on your way back? ...We have always had
great respect for you, Wednesdayyy-sama, and we wish to—”
I was stunned, then JJ said, “Ahh~, nobody cares, stop it. Scram already.
Out of the way!” from behind me and waved him off like a nuisance. “Geez, I
can’t. Ah, Itou-san, bring us some tea. For two. ...Is tea okay with you? You’d
rather have a coffee?”
“Tea is fine.”
“Hot or cold?”
“Cold.”
“Alrighty. Tea it is, Itou-san.”
The girl laughed as she opened the door. “You are both from abroad and
yet act like bonafide Japanese people.”
“Arigato gozaimasu.”
“Ahaha. I will bring it right away, then.”
 The girl left, then JJ sat on the closest sofa to him and said,“Come, take a
seat,” so I sat. I was in the middle of a 3-seater sofa. Okay, what to do
now...what kind of traps were awaiting me?
“Wanna talk in English? Japanese? Of course, Spanish is A-OK too.”
“Japanese. I’d curse a lot more if we used English.”
“Like What the fuck in the fucking world are you fucking doing in Ja-
FUCKING-pan?”
Pfft, I chuckled. That was, without a shadow of a doubt, JJ. He always was
like that, constantly over excited and on the edge.
“I only repeated fuck, though. But well, Japanese is even more restrained,
since it can only have insults before and after words. The yakuza’s vocabulary
is so limited, they only know how to say ‘Aahn?’ ‘Huh, you’re picking a fight?’
‘Whatcha looking at, motherfucker, I’ll kill you,’ and ‘Die!’ That, and knitting
their eyebrows, opening their eyes wide, bobbing their head vertically, and
getting ever closer to you while pushing their jaws forward...at first I didn’t
get what they were doing, that was scary in itself. I thought they were gonna
drop on the floor and spit out foam from their mouths. Made me think Japa-
nese people started convulsing when their anger surpassed a certain thresh-
old, God I was worried for nothing.”
“...Quite a splendid company for a young drug king to be running, isn’t it?”
I cut to the chase and was already regretting it. The Hanged Man. His presence
in the Pineapple Home. If everything had a meaning, I would surely learn the
answer to these mysteries here and now, but honestly I didn’t wanna know in
the slightest. I knew I had to leave. I had to quickly return to Mercury C. I had
to turn Kozue into Inoue Kozue and live the rest of my days with Morinaga
Koeda.
“Ohoho, quite direct, I see,” JJ didn’t falter. “Hold on a sec, Disco, won’t
you? I’ve been waiting for so long, just for you. I trimmed down what I wanted
to tell you, but now that I’m seeing your face, I can’t find the words...”
For so long? I didn’t want to ask but did. “...When’s JJ are you?”
He gave me a weird look. “When’s...? The present, obviously.”
 “Where did you come from?” I changed my question. It had begun.
“I’ve always been waiting here. Just for you, Disco.”
“Always?” Shinozaki had said he was naturalized this summer. “I don’t
know what path you took to get here, but the word ‘always’ means nothing
for both of us.”
“Eh? It does... Wait, wait, what are you talking about? Oh, that. You know,
Disco, I can’t travel through time or space, not in the slightest. I was born
normally, have always lived normally, and never skipped anything, okay?”
...What was this smooth face asshole saying, I thought.
“You don’t look like a 38-year-old to me.”
He caressed his cheeks.
“Right?! Thanks♪!”
The fuck was wrong with him?
“But how would—”
He answered before I could finish asking.
“Self-care, simple self-care.”
“...”
“I’m telling the truth, Disco. We have something amazing now. A brand
new method of maintenance. It has nothing to do with old cosmetic surgery.”
So he just had good skin by chance? But I met Sharon when she was 35 and
her skin was much more tattered...well, with alcohol and drugs and violence,
Sharon’s life itself was in tatters.
“And that incredible maintenance service is provided by Styron Company!”
He said proudly. I asked him,
“Is Sharon...really dead?”
His smile froze in place.
“...She is. It was a murder.”
“Who’s responsible?”
“Me, naturally.”
So JJ set it up...that being said, he most likely acted as a pawn to the Amer-
ican and Colombian governments. Even so, Sharon was a casualty of the drug
war he was heavily involved with, so it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say JJ
killed Sharon... JJ interrupted my thoughts.
“I’m not being a sentimentalist and saying I was partly responsible for her
death, Disco. It was me in the sense that I killed her.”
“...?”
“I immobilized her with drugs, then cut her into pieces while she was still
conscious. In her bathroom, moreover. Even I couldn’t hold back my tears.”
His eyes weren’t joking... It wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t playing a trick on me
either.
“Why would you do that...” I knew how Sharon’s dismembered body
looked. Nail Peeler had instantaneously shred her into pieces in ‘Odoriba Mi-
zutarou’s’ office before heading for the Pinehouse Theater. With her head
sitting atop the other parts of her body immersed in a sea of blood.
“Because she betrayed me, obviously. I’m not in the mafia so we don’t
have an omertà, but I just snapped. She pissed me off~. I mean, Sharon kept
covering for you!”
For me? “What are you saying, she would never cover for me.”
“She would. She liked you a lot, I guess. She wouldn’t tell me shit about
your relatives.”
“My...what?”
“I was searching for you at the time. You were a real nuisance to my busi-
ness. I don’t care anymore, don’t worry.”
The back of my head was feeling numb. “My relatives? What were you
planning?”
“If they didn’t tell me where you were, kill them. I mean, obviously. Don’t
you know how I work? But well, I investigated myself, and turns out you really
didn’t have any. Meaning I lost Sharon for naught. I’d never have thought you
were actually an orphan, Disco...no, William Eady!”
JJ smiled and glared at me like he’d revealed some great secret, but what
on earth was this moron saying!?
Orphan!
 William Eady!
Ahhh!
I indeed told Sharon I was an orphan...to be accurate, I said I’m an aban-
doned child found in the middle of a disco house’s dance floor on a certain
Wednesday morning in 1971...though that’s what I make people think, and in
reality, I’m a normal orphan. I was found in the middle court of the Saint Paul
Cathedral on a Wednesday night. My real name is William Eady. But I didn’t
think the Snake in the Sun would believe what I’d said... Seriously!?
She liked you a lot, I guess.
Imbecile, you’re wrong, JJ! It’s the complete opposite!
She must not have cared about me!
That’s why she never investigated my lies and easily revealed everything
she knew to JJ!
JJ simply couldn’t believe her... Rather than JJ just not trusting Sharon’s
words, that showed he couldn’t trust Sharon herself. The tragic Styron sib-
lings...but I’d never have thought you were actually an orphan, what was that
about?
“How...did you find me to be an orphan?”
“How did I find out you are an orphan, you mean? That’s not how you
translate ‘find’, Disco,” he stood up while self-servingly correcting my Jap-
anese; that’s when the girl from earlier entered the room with a tea tray.
“Here is the tea and some confections. Here.”
She put down the saucers closed with a lid that contained the tea, and next
to it a small, square porcelain dish filled with orange confections.
“These confections are from a newly built confectionery, they’re pretty
delicious~. Can you handle anko, Wednesdayyy-san?”
“...Ah, yes. Thank you.”
“Not at all. There is more tea and confections, so don’t hesitate to ask for
a refill~.”
I settled my breathing while waiting for Itou to leave. I focused on my ex-
pression. I couldn’t let JJ get suspicious. I did have a family, and even though
I hadn’t seen them in forever, even back in 2006, they were my family. I loved
them.
And at the same time, I readied myself. At this rate, I would keep getting
surprised by JJ...I mustn’t forget this was the kind of world where he could
run a seemingly proper company. He had many Japanese subordinates and
seemed adored...
Those employees that welcomed me.
They had been made to wait. He had foreseen me coming.
Of course it might be a trap...
Still, I had to properly listen to what JJ was about to tell me.
No...to begin with, I had no obligation to listen to him, I simply paid him a
visit because I found him somewhere unexpected. Should I have left him
alone?
But JJ was in the Pineapple Home and was involved in the Hanged Man
Case.
Trap or not, I would’ve needed to ask JJ about it at some point. I had no
idea how he’d learned of me coming, but he might be waiting for me with the
same method at any point in time. Then it made no difference when I came.
And most importantly, I wanted to know. I felt a strong desire to know. The
future ‘me’ who’d appeared at the Pinehouse just before I left. You are no
longer permitted the luxury to stand still before fear. That ‘me’ had encoun-
tered JJ. I needed to know.
Don’t be afraid.
“I had it ready for when you’d come,” JJ put down a file before the tea and
confections, and sat across from me. He opened it and flipped the pages. “Ah,
this one,” he said and took out an envelope from a plastic bag. It had been
opened. “It’s your birth certificate. I had to go through a lot to obtain this.
You put way too much effort in hiding your identity. Didn’t think it would take
me two years... Yes, two years, you heard right! Two whole years!”
JJ kept bitching about stuff I had no memories of, so I picked up the enve-
lope he’d thrown on the table and took out the document from within. That
indeed looked like a real document, but next to the name ‘William Eady’ was
inscribed ‘orphan’, and my birth date was set to ‘11/30/1971’, so two days
later than the actual one...a Tuesday! And my guardian was apparently a
‘Chris McKay’. I’d never met any Chris McKay, but this said I was born in
Saint Paul Cathedral, New York...this piece of paper was like a materialization
of my fantasies. I thought: Could delusions and fantasies take shape in the
same way feelings could appear in the form of people? ...However, I soon no-
ticed. On the edge of the ragged envelope of a high quality paper unthinkable
even for official documents, the logo of Goldman & Burgh Law Firm had been
modestly stamped in a silver color. G&B was the biggest law firm in San Diego,
and it was run by the real William Eady...at least it had been until 2006.
Eady was involved in making this document...it existed to conceal the ex-
istence of my family. To hide them from JJ. To make sure JJ wouldn’t harm
my family while searching for me. I might not have ordered it myself, but I
should probably commit this to memory. G&B, 11/30/1971, Chris McKay.
Had he noticed a change in my expression? JJ was staring at me. Was he
trying to destabilize me by shoving this document into my face? But regard-
less of whether he knew this was fake, he’d presented it before me... “Why
were you searching for me?”
JJ shrugged. “To tell you to stop ruining other people’s business. But
you’re not the type to obey stuff like that, so one of us would have had to die.”
“...And am I no longer ruining it?”
“The company got bigger, you see. It’s pretty old fashioned now, the ‘cor-
poration vs individual’ thing, even movies don’t do it anymore.”
“...What in the world were you working on?”
“I will explain it, naturally. ...Haha, aa~ah, after all this time, I finally re-
alized. This will probably be the trigger to set you into motion. Ultimately,
I’m getting in my own way... In other words, I’d been chasing after you all
this time, but I’d sowed these seeds myself. History works in such strange
ways. The conclusions are always ironic in a way. I’m fine because I know I
will win, but if the me from when I was in a pinch was here, he’d murder me
to keep my mouth shut, for sure.”
“...”
“But I’ve always held you in high esteem, you know? You’re not particu-
larly right, you’re harming many by carrying your own justice, and you keep
eroding your life away with vain efforts, but you do things your way through
and through. The words giving up isn’t in your dictionary. How could that not
be beautiful? Moreover, you’re pushed by love, right? You have nothing to
gain. Just wow. What’s that ‘love’ thing? I don’t get it. Well no, I do, but not
quite like you do, I swear. ...So you see, I have no choice but to respect you for
doing something so incomprehensible with all your strength. Mhm... Well,
that aside, to be frank, you’re most notably the founder of my business.”
“...The fuck are you...”
“The Cozue Method.”

JJ took out a presentation pamphlet of the company from beneath the ta-
ble, laid it before me, and continued.
“As mentioned earlier, even I use my company’s products. You can’t be-
lieve how young I look despite being 38, right? I look 26-27, don’t I? But you
see, I’m actually much, much younger than that. My body is probably around
11 years old. Hahaha! I’m so full of energy I might start dancing if I don’t fo-
cus! Remember when you were a kid and ran everywhere, when you couldn’t
sit still?! That's it! It’s like that! In reality, I could behave more calmly, but
this is just the right amount for me. Anyway, I’ll stop chattering about useless
stuff like a kid. It’s been a while since I had to explain this from A to Z, so I’m
not sure where to begin... Okay, I decided, let’s start before the Cozue Method.
Our medicine got up to the point where clones and iPS cells became plausible,
right? We could borrow a part from someone’s clone or create a certain part
with iPS cells. The idea behind those is to replace parts of our body that
wouldn’t heal through stitches or medicine. In short, they create spare parts.
The Cozue Method, however, is much more innovative: instead of parts, we
replace the whole body. The idea of replacing the whole thing came up with
clones too, but we feared that not transferring the brain to an exact copy
would result in a loss of one’s identity, of the ‘self’, didn’t we? But learning
of the Cozue Method freed us from that restriction. Someone’s personality
isn’t stored inside that person’s brain, but in their consciousness itself, so we
could exist without being dependent on our physical body...well, I’m preach-
ing to the Buddha here, aren’t I? But there’s a whole process so I’ll explain in
order: First, the privileged rights holder, Blackswan Company, selects and
pressurizes the main child. It seems like other privileged users have popped
up since, but Blackswan’s techniques and reliability is on a whole other level,
plus, these days, harshness in humans is actually seen as a valuable resource.
Now, how does Blackswan manage to find that in this peaceful world, I wish
they would tell me...well, that doesn’t matter right now. Here we take care of
the delivery and retrieval of the sub-children’s vessels. We handle the up-
bringing, the manufacturing into jackets, and even the sales. That was quite
controversial ten years ago, but now we’re the biggest company worldwide;
all thanks to you...I mean it, seriously.”

Despite having no idea what the hell he was saying, I understood.

I’d learned something I didn’t want to know.
Cozue Method.
What a fucked up application.

“...So you’re making child abuse your business?”

I asked.
JJ’s tone turned terse, he pointed his index at me and replied.
“That’s just how it looks to you. I’m talking about ‘pressurization’. It’s
like vaccination in a way. Neither parents nor anyone would cry because a jab
stings. They’ll forget the pain anyway. And thanks to that pain, we can save
people suffering from incurable diseases or heavy injuries all around the
world, not to mention important people humanity can’t afford to lose. ...Heh,
I finally got to say it to your face. Hahaha. Still, I didn’t think that thing I’ve
always wanted to tell you would be so useless. You’ll continue marching to
the beat of your own drum even after hearing what I have to say. I see some,
from time to time, people like you who’d make anyone doubt the power of
words.”

Children were abused like how Kozue was.

They suffered like she’d suffered, and split their personalities to flee the
pain.
Children like Shimada Kikyou, Toda Erika, Horikiri Maki, Kawamura
Yukie, Tashiro Yurie, and Konno Narumi were born, raised, and disappeared.
And JJ sold these emptied bodies.
Calling them ‘jackets’.

On Styron Company’s pamphlet spread before my eyes, in the ‘business

partners’ section, I spotted Blackswan Company’s logo.
 “I can’t badmouth you forever though, for real. We make 300 trillion yen
a year thanks to you. Thank you. I’m not the only grateful one, you know? The
entire world is sharing the benefits. You found Kozue, filled the gap with the
six other children, contributed to the world’s wisdom in Fukui Prefecture,
healed Kozue, and released the six wounded souls. You’re an actual hero. Not
everyone supports your actions, but they understand.”

300 trillion yen...?

 “How many children...are you selling?”
My voice was shaking. JJ looked at me with a pitying smile. “Take a deep
breath and drink some tea. Calm down. My heart aches, too, thinking about
your life from now on. We might not be friends but...we’re kinda acquaint-
ances, you know.”
“How many children are you sacrificing?”
“In a year? In accumulation? Let me see, I can’t tell you the total without
looking it up, but the numbers worldwide for 2019, if we continue at this pace,
will be just over 6.7 million main children. We’ve been averaging around 7
million yearly for the past five years, but let me think...in the ten years we
might have done 200 million? The first five were spent heating up. You know
how it is, no? We attracted more attention back when we were controversial,
plus we advertised a bunch to raise the customers’ awareness, and lowered
our prices. Well, you get a country’s media to be head-over-heels for you, and
it’s in the bag. A real cinch to conquer. The fucked up part of that business is
that we sell healthiness, but instead of simply receiving money, we get a load
of guilt alongside it. You know, ultimately, it’s perfect for humans to live with
a touch of guilt in their heart. What was it called again, the original sin? We
all kinda lost that in the 20th century, didn’t we? The feeling that our lives
rest on many sacrifices. Heh. So we’re basically selling social order itself.
We’re crucial to society.”

I felt dizzy.

I hung my head, closed my eyes, and covered my face with my hands.

200 million?
That many children had gone through the same thing as Kozue...
“What happens to the kids...” I muttered, and JJ answered bluntly.
 “Well, I mean, it is the Cozue Method. I hear they’re being sexually stim-
ulated, following the manual. Apparently sexual stuff is more efficient than
pure violence like punching, kicking, scorching, or electrocuting them. Effi-
ciency is important. Not just in the economical sense, it’s better for the chil-
dren’s sake to end it fast, right? Even if they forget either way. Ah, but thanks
to 200 million children doing their best for an instant, 3 billion customers are
overjoyed. I’m sure you can appreciate the beauty of it too, no?”

I felt like puking.

I instantly bowed down and used the hands pressed against my face to
hold my mouth shut, but that wasn’t enough, so I dragged the garbage can
from next to the desk looking like JJ’s up to me and puked in it.
“Woah, are you okay man...? For real, that’s enough to make you puke...?
Tsk, you know, you should make a conscious effort to listen to others, to put
yourself in their shoes. Are children that much more important than people
of other ages? ...Wanna go to the toilet? At least to rinse your mouth?”
Peh, peh, I tried to spit out the vomit left in my mouth, but my jaw was
shaking so much I couldn’t get it out. Maybe I should’ve really gone to the
toilet, but I doubt my shaky legs would’ve allowed me to stand up.
“You’re helpless,” JJ stood up and operated a ridiculously thin computer
(?) from his desk. “Yes,” it emitted a voice. “Ah, Itou-san, sorry but could you
bring us some water? A towel, too.” “Sure.” “Thaaanks. ...Listen, Disco, sit
down and breathe. Deep breaths. Geez...hahaha, color me surprised. How
fucking evil am I? So much for taking apart every drug cartel in the world and
extending the average life expectancy to 110 years...ah, by the way that aver-
age is measured empirically, of course it’ll keep going up. Partly because
Christianism and Islam forbid suicide, but that’s besides the point. You know,
after experiencing some harsh feelings, the main children lose all memory of
the event; moreover, the sub-children only get a split share of that memory,
they never get to experience as much suffering as the original one. Generally
speaking, having them spend ten years in a normal family is enough to heal
them and make them disappear. Anyway, imagine the amazing stuff Styron
and Blackswan have achieved. And don’t think we only contributed to the
world of medicine. Thanks to Blackswan collecting malice all around the
world, the crime rates are at an all-time low, and wars or conflicts stemming
from resentment or hatred disappeared from the surface of the globe! Only
things left are the unavoidable legacy wars, where the war in itself is the main
purpose, then the combat sport of the rich. Oh, and the War Exhibition play
held every two years. We don’t die even when we’re killed, so you’d probably
laugh at our bloodthirst but, all in all, human emotions have become more
peaceful over the last ten years. The world is becoming brighter, merrier,
livelier, and more genteel.”
That’s when Itou came in, holding a tray with a plastic water bottle and a
wet towel in a small plate.
“My~, Wednesdayyy-san, are you alright?”
“He’s fine, he’s fine. Leave that there.”
“He is clearly not. Wednesdayyy-san, shall I carry you to the restroom?”
I shook my head. Not like I could stand up. Moreover, I had to stay and
listen to JJ.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
My voice was hoarse and I couldn’t control my tongue well, but Itou took
a long look at my face, said, “I see, but don’t hesitate to call me if anything
were to happen,” then left the tray behind and left.
“Now, rinse your mouth,” JJ said while picking up a tissue box and throw-
ing a bunch of them down the can containing my vomit. “You may spit out
the water in there.”
As I opened the bottle and let some fresh water enter my mouth, I realized
that even JJ’s personality had been pacified by living in this world...
 Now that he had finished emptying the entire tissue box, JJ said, “But I can
go further: Our achievements aren’t only about medicine and social order,
okay? Humans finally achieved eternity. And it’s not the long lifespan people
had always imagined, we can stay young forever with this. In other words, we
can pile up knowledge and experience while in our prime condition. Sports,
culture, technology, and many other sectors have been developing more rap-
idly than ever, and thanks to the way we view life completely changing, most
schools of thoughts and philosophies fell apart, so we’re currently rebuilding
it all from the ground up. We’ve accomplished a great, new revolution on the
same level—if not greater—as the 18th century’s Industrial Revolution! This
is the Human Revolution! An actual revolution concerning human existence
that occured in the early 21st century!”
I washed the inside of my mouth, spit the water on the tissue in the gar-
bage can, wiped my mouth with the towel, then said:
“Collecting malice...how do you do that exactly?”
“Mm? ...Ah, Blackswan does it. It’s another company’s trade secret, so I’m
not too knowledgeable, but apparently it’s simple? I’m not sure I really get it,
but basically, you only need to know that’s how things are. Haha, makes no
sense, right?”
I didn’t answer, but I understood what that meant.
Intelligence and knowledge.
They were using the great power that comes from those.
JJ continued. “Anyway, humans are basically machines that produce mal-
ice by thinking of horrible stuff or imagining the worst. Malice was a source
of problems even before Blackswan came to be. But in the same vein as the
sub-children’s pseudo-personalities, feelings disappear once they’re ful-
filled to a certain degree, so the masses’ malice couldn’t do much damage.
But then Blackswan arrived, disciplined malice, gave it a physical body, and
put its measly power to use for humanity’s sake, effectively turning it 180 de-
grees into a virtuous quality. That was a colossal discovery. People’s feelings
can merge into something concrete. And unbeknownst to the very people who
birthed those emotions, at that. So strange, isn’t it? As is most often the case,
words shine upon the truth. In this case, ‘being like-minded’ or ‘of one flesh’
are most relevant. So every country is currently funding research to check on
their idioms. Just to see if expressions we use in our everyday life might lead
to discovering new laws or properties. Corporates also changed their ap-
proach. Now they’re gathering linguists and authors in labs to try out many
words. Hahaha. Would be nice if they found something.”
The world had gone mad.
“Don’t the parents protest?” I asked. “Are they sitting in silence while
their kids get wounded?”
There’s no way they would...was I trying to provoke irony?
“The parents? You mean, the main children’s?” JJ said. “Yeah, they would
if their kids were being whipped. After all, in this modern...well, future for you,
I guess—in this era, mothers and fathers have become more tranquil and
their love has deepened. They would riot if they knew their own children were
actually being abused, I bet. It might even be the biggest riot the world has
ever seen. But it’s alright. Those Blackswan guys are amazing. You should
know, don’t you? They can do so much stuff in an extremely brief amount of
time, can’t they?”
“...”
BANG!
“It only takes an instant for the children to...as you’d put it, ‘be abused,’
then as you know very well, they unload their wounds onto their other per-
sonalities and act like nothing happened. The parents don’t notice. So they
obviously don’t know. So nobody gets angry or goes rioting. Of course, eve-
ryone knows about the Cozue Method, so they do understand what happens
to their children. But you know, you’ll get it when you become a parent too;
the only cute kid is yours. And so, everybody lives while thinking nothing bad
will happen to their kids. They believe nothing horrible will happen as long
as they are nearby to protect them, and that belief is reinforced by them al-
ways seeing their kids smile...so there’s actually no problem. You often hear
about how a married couple suspecting adultery tends to think it’s not a big
deal as long as they don’t know, as long as the other is hiding it well enough,
don’t you? It’s the same idea, the only difference is that adultery isn’t good
for anyone while what I’m doing saves many lives.”
But, I thought, “What about the parents whose children get stolen from
them?” I asked while recalling the voice of Shimada Kikyou’s father.
Ah~, Shimada speaking. I’ve been waiting after the doctor’s injection, but
Kikyou isn’t waking up at all? Get back at me at once when you hear this, I’m
waiting for your explanation.
A carefree tone seeping with inquietude.
If the name Cozue Method was to be taken literally, the split personalities
should push away other children’s original personality and graft onto that
body. I recalled the six round puppets looking like embryos...the real Shimada
Kikyou and co. I could remember much, much more. I had many examples all
through America of parents who, after losing their children, looked half-
crazy or lifeless or simply couldn’t deal with it, and were so shaken they made
their surroundings even more miserable than it was.
There are some parents who would accept handing their children to other
people because of poverty, self-preservation, or difficult circumstances, but
none would gladly have their children be killed for the greater good of society.
JJ then let out a great laugh and proudly answered. “That’s it, Disco. That’s
Styron Company’s greatest achievement. Well, it’s still part of the Cozue
Method. There was a hint hidden in the 2006 Pinehouse Case. Do you remem-
ber a great detective called Daibakushou Curry there?”
Sakai Tsutomu. Tsukumojuuku.
“He had three belly buttons, didn’t he?”
Orion Constellation.
“Why do you think one person would have three belly buttons?”
“...Someone stole the two other triplets,” I said, and recalled Runrun’s re-
quest. There was a Serial Twin Kidnapping Case going on. But I never had the
chance to investigate it...
 JJ continued.
“Did you know that one—or even multiple—out of many fetuses could
naturally vanish? And that kept happening since way back in time?

“It’s called a vanishing twin. It happens when a miscarriage happens to

one of the twins early in the pregnancy, the fetus that doesn’t grow gets ab-
sorbed by the mother’s uterus. It’s called a vanishing twin because it feels like
a kid we’d confirmed through ultrasounds and whose heartbeat we could hear
suddenly disappears, but since it took several weeks after insemination to
know someone was pregnant in your era, there hadn’t been many confirmed
cases. So it wasn’t well known, but actually, vanishing twins aren’t an abnor-
mal event in any way. They almost always happen early during the pregnancy.
It turns out the struggle for the survival of the fittest led by spermatozoa
when trying to reach the womb was merely a qualifying round. The few out of
many billions who survived the insemination and started the cell division
then entered the play-offs. The one who grows up strong can seize life for
themselves. And if two are of equal power and merrily survive, they are then
born as twins. But if you look at this system the other way around, the weak
ones die before getting a chance at life. All because of tiny differences be-
tween sperm cells that haven’t even developed a fetus’ body. Styron Company
gives a chance to those second and third places who have passed that one-in-
a-billion contest. Exactly. Styron collects these poor vanishing twins, raises
them, and injects the sub-children in them. We recycle lives that would nor-
mally fade away without anyone noticing. They only live for a short while as
they grow into a person, a fetus, before giving way to the sub-children, but
lives aren’t about their lengths, after all...don’t you dare say fetuses don’t
have a life, okay? After the seventh month they are human enough to be ca-
pable of surviving outside of the womb, you know? They can see, hear, and
think just fine. That’s why we strive to provide as much services and enter-
tainment as possible to the children we collect. To enhance their lives to the
best.”
JJ was talking with such pride to my face, but I was barely keeping myself
from vomiting again.
In short, three different personalities occupy a vanishing twin’s body in
turn...the original owners’, sub-children’s—which is another name for the
split personalities forcefully created during the abuse—and Styron’s clients’.
Cozue Method. The Pinehouse Case. Daibakushou Curry’s three belly but-
tons.
Blackswan Company.
Was it the Black Bird Man who’d mediated with JJ...? Was JJ’s name being
brought up by Mikami Nils in the Pinehouse a hint alluding to that?
Then that Black Bird Man must still be lurking somewhere in the Pine-
house...in spacetime, and observing us.
Could I change this future by finding him and stopping the information
leak...I wondered, but I knew. On this side of the folded universe, I couldn’t
even move a coffee cup, so even getting to work post the folding point would
be useless... My future will and actions were all gathered in this 2019. The
fixed destiny theory. The future couldn’t be changed.
I pitched forward and my entire head felt dizzy...
“So the parents aren’t saying anything. And no one is hurt.”
JJ proudly concluded, so I repeated to him.
“There’s no way the parents aren’t protesting.”
Everyone is grieving. O please, find the twins and return them where they
belong. That is my one and only, genuine wish. Runrun had requested me
with a deep bow.
There was grief.
Obviously. “I accepted a panda mother’s request to find her kidnapped
twins. Why did you lay your hands on pandas...” For animal experiments? Or
to sell them to panda-lover weirdos? ...I was about to say, but paused. Could
human souls enter a panda’s body? If so it wouldn’t be weird for a Japanese-
speaking panda to exist; so ‘Runrun’ might be a living panda plushie some-
one had entered all to deceive and manipulate me, couldn’t she?
I tried thinking so, but couldn’t manage to actually doubt Runrun’s plead.
She had a passive earnesty in no way inferior to human parents who grieved
and suffered for a long period after their children were stolen.
Heh, I snorted. “Your business even works with pandas? Do all animals
around here speak Japanese or what?” I continued, and JJ sent me a quizzical
look.
“Pandas?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you saying? Pandas...? Are you sleep-talking, Disco? Or did the
shock get to your head?”
I quickly observed JJ’s expression. That was the first surprise I’d gotten
out of him...it seemed he really wasn’t expecting that.
JJ was staring at my face and thinking, too. About the meaning behind
what I’d said...
I might’ve said something unnecessary.
I cast my eyes down, then JJ spoke. “So panda twins were kidnapped. And
you got a request to find them...by their parents? That’s what you said, right?
What does that mean? How could a panda...in Japanese? Could that panda
speak Japanese? Is that even possible...?”
Why was JJ not aware of the Serial Twin Kidnapping Case? I cogitated
about it, but my brain was still numb from the shock JJ’s story had inflicted
me. I desperately changed the topic.
“Say, why were you after me?”
“...Huh? What?”
“What you said earlier...that you were searching for me. Why was that?”
To tell you to stop ruining other people’s business. But you’re not the type to
obey stuff like that, so one of us would have had to die. I recalled what he’d
said. I harmed JJ’s business...at the very least temporarily. But that ceased to
be a problem once his company grew in size. It’s pretty old fashioned now,
the ‘corporation vs individual’ thing, even movies don’t do it anymore.
I would obviously try to stand in JJ’s way. What could I do?
Searching for children.
The kids called main children were only abused for an instant and weren’t
separated from their parents...the kidnapped ones were the vanishing twins
used to fit the sub-children. Should I be searching for embryos stolen from
wombs? But even if I did and found them, what could I do for their sake? Re-
turn them inside the womb? ...However, if JJ told the truth, these kids were
destined to lose the survival contest against their siblings. So wouldn’t re-
turning them to the womb be akin to killing them?
Who did I want to save?
The wounded kids, obviously, so that would be the main children. I
thought about Kozue. Even though it’s instantaneous and was bound to heal,
I couldn’t forgive the Black Bird Man.
Plus, if I could interfere with the main children’s abuse, there wouldn’t be
any split personalities, so no sub-children to replace the vanishing twins...
“Hm. I’d want to take my time investigating the panda thing later...but the
thing is, there’s no ‘later’ in this conversation,” JJ said and stood up. “I can’t
stand it. Once you leave me I won’t remember having talked to you, there
won’t even be traces of it left behind.”
JJ knew about the impermeability from outside sources between the
pre/post-folding sides.
This sequence of events would only live within me.
“Well then, Disco, are you ready?”
JJ touched a computer-like machine on top of his desk.
“...Oh wait, you probably came here to learn about that, so everything past
and future is set in stone. Anyway, you got my and everyone in the company’s
respect. You’re fucking amazing.”
JJ typed a keyword, and a hologram screen appeared before my eyes and
started playing a movie.
 Only I would remember what happened here. JJ would be left with nothing.
So why was he welcoming me? Why had he been waiting for me?
To inform me of something.
And that was about to happen.
A 3D credit sequence popped on the white screen.

‘Japanese Version — The Union of All Parents Who Love Their Children:
Japanese Branch’

Then a few company names appeared in the sponsor column. Styron Japan
was mentioned last.
JJ had kept waiting for me to show me this.
Then I ought to see it.
“Ah, lemme just say one thing: I didn’t make this,” JJ explained. “It’s not
staged or made up, okay? Well, you’ll see for yourself.”

The screen turned black, paused for a few seconds, then a white epigraph
popped up.

Lamia [\lä-ˈmē-ä \]
Daughter of Belus, son of Poseidon. She was so beautiful she earned Zeus’ love, so his wife
Hera killed her children, cast a curse on her, and transformed her into a monster who kidnaps
children out of jealousy for all mothers and eats them.
 It then displayed a video. It was a Caucasian household with two elemen-
tary-school boys and a girl even younger than that, all seemingly siblings,
leaning against each other on the living room’s sofa while shyly looking at
the camera. The probably-father man holding the camera said something. It
was Russian. To satisfy their father, laughing with his high-pitched voice at
the three, the two brothers started bouncing on the sofa’s spring and singing
while attempting to pull off a choreography in the air, but their sister was so
embarrassed she turned her back to the camera with an abashed laugh and
ran away. The camera slightly followed her going over the sofa’s back and
falling on the other side, but it soon returned to the singing brothers...how-
ever, the sister didn’t surface from beyond the sofa. A woman who was laugh-
ing nearby spoke. “...? Что случилось (Is something wrong)?” Her laughs
were filled with inquietude. Prompted by the woman, the two bouncing
brothers turned back and the cameraman stood up and took a peek behind the
sofa, but there was only the floor. The sister had vanished. The parents and
brothers were still laughing, and the oldest boy raised an incomprehensible
scream directed at his brother. The father brought the camera under the sofa,
fully confident she was hiding there, but yet again she wasn’t.
The screen started shaking more violently as if to reflect the increasing
worries in the family, and eventually they went full panic mode. One couldn’t
distinguish anything in the image by the end of the movie, there were only
some out-of-focus shots dubbed by the family’s yells and the boys’ screams.
The girl had vanished before the camera.
The video cut, then the scene of the girl going over the sofa got replayed.
It zoomed on the girl’s back.
She certainly went over the sofa, but there was no sound of her feet land-
ing nor of her falling.
That tiny girl had evaporated on the other side of the sofa.
The image froze on the scene depicting the empty area beneath the sofa,
then Japanese subtitles appeared.
 ...This was captured on home video by chance in a Russian household on November 13th
of 2006. Anna Dmitrievna Boradzova suddenly vanished at age five, and despite her family
desperately searching for her, she is still missing.
This phenomenon of children from age four to eight suddenly vanishing started occurring
in Autumn 2006,
and in that same Winter was named the Lamia Syndrome.
The image slowly faded out.

Music started playing. It was a disturbing melody. Just like the ones used
in Hollywood thrillers. Da-da-da-dan, the volume rose in crescendo, then
the title popped up in big letters, slowly becoming more prominent.

Lamia Syndrome

Seeing how the date ‘2019’ was written under the title, there might exist
multiple versions of this. The title crumbled into pieces in rhythm to the mu-
sic, and flew off into darkness. As silently as when Anna Dmitrievna Borad-
zova had been when she disappeared beyond that sofa.

The music changed tone and turned into a tranquil and comforting mel-
ody.
Next, a Japanese girl’s picture appeared on screen. She was about the same
age as Kozue. Her black bangs were adorned with a hairpin; she was smiling.
“My daughter is called Keika. She weighed 3200 grams when she was born
in West Akatsuki, Fukui Prefecture. Keika’s eyes look just like my father’s, so
her grandfather's; we raised her with lots of love. She was a docile child who
only rarely cried at night, properly drank breast milk, and was growing up
healthily, but at just over 18 months old she was infected with measles, and
due to complications developed a viral encephalitis causing harsh spasms
and vomiting. Her life was even in danger for a time, so I, her father, and the
whole family continuously prayed for her in tears...”
A woman, seemingly the mother, appeared, and pictures or videos of her
daughter popped on screen in sync with the narration. A photo of when she
was a baby. A group picture of her family with the daughter at the center. A
close-up picture of an old man holding her. A child connected to an artificial
respirator in an hospital’s intensive care unit.
“...Luckily Keika survived and recovered, but the sequela left her with
symptomatic epilepsy. She had four seizures at age two, one at age three, but
she was very calm from age four to six. The doctor told us to stay on guard for
a few more years, but we were overjoyed at the idea Keika was cured. Even she
was relieved.”
Another video of the girl sleeping on a bed played behind the woman. She
seemed to be at home, and her entire family was surrounding her. The girl
wasn’t tucked in her futon. Her mother, the woman in charge of the narration
before the screen, caressed the cheeks of the girl sleeping in pajamas inside
the screen inside the screen, then said, “Keika. You will be alright. Now you
have a brother who will be right by your side. He will safely catch you if you’re
ever to fall. You won’t hurt your head or your body anymore.” The camera
rotated to show a middle-school boy making a fist pump. Everyone laughed.
They all took a turn in telling her nice things, and eventually the girl opened
her eyes. “A~haha. What? Was I asleep?” Everyone laughed. “Good morning,
Keika~.” “Did you sleep well~?” “Ahaha. You see, Keika, we were taking a
video. I’ll show you later, okay~?”
The camera drew near the girl’s bashful smile, so much that she was the
only one left in the shot, then we got more scenes of her smiling amidst her
family. Enjoying the wind coming from the window in a car. Following the
shells rocked back and forth by the waves at the beach with her fingers. At
night, in a crowded festival with music coming from all sides, pulling on the
hair of her father, giving her a ride on his shoulders and bickering, “Wait,
wait, it hurts, Keika”... Then making snowballs bare-handedly and licking
her short fingers which got itchy because of the cold; the video froze on her
face then, and the mother surfaced before the screen once again, looked at us,
and said:
“In 2015, Keika was placed in a shelter the day following her third birthday
and began a complicated lifestyle, but she still lived a tranquil life despite her
worries. However, a full four years later, in March of 2019, she was suddenly
kidnapped. She was out shopping with her father for her monthly outing in
preparation of enrolling in elementary school starting April. Her father was
very careful and never once let go of her hand...however, she vanished while
holding his hand. We, the rest of the family, blamed him in our confusion, but
he was actually properly holding her hand. The images from the security
cameras confirmed that fact.”
We were shown a shopping mall’s pathway captured by the cameras. The
father and the daughter were holding hands among the customers. The nar-
ration didn’t mention it, but there were three guards stationed near them, all
carefully keeping watch of the area. The father was holding a bag with his left
hand and his daughter's hand with his right. They were both smiling and
looking at each other. The next moment, the daughter suddenly disappeared.
The father flipped his hand and stared at his palm for a second...then the
panic hit him.
“Having his daughter stolen from him before his eyes...moreover, in his
hands, the father blamed himself and, on three occasions, attempted to kill
himself. He is currently seeking treatment from specialists and is on a 24/7
suicide watch. Having our daughter taken away felt to me like our bond as a
family was lost...but we are still somehow holding up. We genuinely believe
our daughter will one day come back to us. Please...if you, watching this video,
are the one who took Keika away from us, or know that person, please, give
her back to us. She is very kind, patient, and smart; a wonderful girl. I’m sure
you would understand if you looked into her eyes. Keika has the right to live
happily under her real father and mother. I am not trying to invoke my or her
father’s rights. You have all the power in your hands. You can decide every-
thing. You can do as you please. Still, let me request one thing. Please, contact
us. We won’t ask you to atone for your sins, and we have prepared a reward of
275 million yen for our gratitude. Even if you are a serial kidnapper respon-
sible for the Lamia Syndrome, we will still not report you, and you will be able
to go home with 275 million yen and continue your life. You know there are
precedents for this, don’t you? ...Neither the police, judiciary organizations,
public institutions, nor citizen’s groups are blaming you nor want you to re-
pent through juridical means. You only need to give us Keika back...or tell us
where she is. Or simply release her, we won’t mind either way. As soon as you
tell us how you want to be paid, we will abide and deliver the 275 millions to
you. And if that amount isn’t enough for your needs, The Common Funding
Union of All Parents Who Love Their Children will provide the fundings to
satisfy your demand. ...I am a mere powerless mother. You have all the rights
and the power in the world. And I trust in your good will. Please, give us our
daughter back. That is the best way to exercise your power.”
Pictures of the girl appeared behind the pleading mother, next to images
of kidnappers receiving the ‘reward’. It was accompanied with subtitles ex-
plaining how even if the kidnapping itself was faked, they have no duty to give
the ransom money back to the foundation. Pictures of the mansions they
bought and the companies they built were proudly displayed along with their
smiling faces. Even a scene of a kidnapper enjoying a BBQ with the victim’s
family, or a child merrily giving them a hug. Or a group of kidnappers enjoy-
ing beers on a yacht bought with the reward’s money along with The Union
of Parents members...

While I was mostly positive these images were staged, I recalled what JJ
had told me earlier. Human emotions have become more peaceful over the
last ten years. The world is becoming brighter, merrier, livelier, and more
genteel. This might be plausible in such a world. It was indeed peaceful. Eve-
ryone was smiling.
...However, were they really merry? Could this really be called genteel?
To me, it looked like all these virtues were shown off to conceal an intense
fear and disquietude.

A sequence of letters and digits apparently used to contact The Union of

Parents appeared on screen, then the next mother appeared, this time with
the father; they stated their child’s name and started pleading.
“This part is boring so I’ll skip ahead,” JJ said and was about to touch the
machine on his desk, so I stopped him, “No thanks.”
“Really? Well, if you wanna, sure...the whole thing is barely an hour long
so I can keep you company, but you don’t have that time, do you?”
I could return to Mercury C in Princeton Hotel at the time I wanted...I
thought, but got reminded of my own voice. What the other ‘me’ had told me
in the Pinehouse. Go and dance, Discotheque. And presto. You are no longer
permitted the luxury to stand still before fear.
What was I in a hurry for?
No need to even think about it. I already knew.
Instantaneous kidnappings. Transcending space and time, but not for lu-
crative purposes...
“So...am I kidnapping those children?”
I looked away from the movie where a mother was presenting her child in
a different way than the last one, and asked.
As I asked, doubt rushed through my head. Would I be stealing and hiding
children instead of searching for and finding them?
JJ silently operated the machine on his desk and skipped a chapter; the
image following a group plea of the six families of the victims was a sudden
zoom on my face.
The ‘future me’.
 A ‘me’ from a much more distant future than the one I’d seen at the Pine-
house. He was visibly older. What era was he from...he looked way past his
sixties. His cheeks were hollow. His eyeballs had retracted into his skull. And
yet he was smiling, creating even more wrinkles on his face.
The movie started an analysis. I couldn’t hear the narration.
It was showing the shopping mall where the first introduced child, the
six-year-old Keika, had vanished. It was a silent video shot from another an-
gle by a security camera, composed of three frames: first, of the father and
daughter holding hands in the background, then of a man appearing between
them and the camera, taking most of the screen. That was ‘me’. And on the
third one, of ‘me’ and the girl disappearing together. The father, with his
hand grabbing nothing, was still staring into space, his face unchanged as of
then. The video returned to the second frame. The ‘me’ showin there seem-
ingly knew of the camera’s existence, as he was looking in its direction...and
not just that, he was holding a white, square sheet of drawing paper with the
following sentence written on it:

THE WORLD IS MADE OUT OF CLOSED ROOMS.

Mm? I thought. What in the world was ‘I’ saying?

That ‘future me’ was smiling at the camera and making a thumbs up with
his free hand I couldn’t see previously because of the zoom... What was he so
ecstatic about?
A plump, unshaven literature critic appeared on the screen.
“This is the English title of a mystery novel written in 1996 by Ehimegawa
Juuzou. The Japanese title is Sekai ha Misshitsu de Dekiteiru. It is the seventh
entry in the Great Detective Runbaba 12 Series that started with Ehimegawa’s
debut novel, Smokestack Runbaba Inexplicable. It depicts people who, after
the Locked Room Billionaire claimed he would murder a billion people in
locked rooms over ten years, quiver in fear and refuse to enter any buildings
or go home, and yet get murdered in locked rooms one after the other. It
would fall into the so-called Chasing Locked Room subgenre. Ahaha. Some
fine taste, indeed. The book in itself is merely a mystery novel about locked
room murders, but, although there are no obvious, direct correlations with
the Lamia Syndrome, we can take note of a few elements. First, in the case of
the shopping mall kidnapping, we can consider this a locked room made out
of the crowd of customers surrounding them. In other words, a locked room
of gazes, or a locked room of crowds, a relatively orthodox motif used in mys-
teries. The majority of the tricks used in The World is Made Out of Closed
Rooms use this mob situation. Many researchers are currently examining
whether that trick could apply to the Lamia Syndrome, but that seems un-
likely. Well, this novel was written 23 years ago, pre-Pinehouse Shift, so the
notion of spacetime depicted is quite old. Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be
a trick used for this girl’s kidnapping. There is merely an evil man stealing a
girl from her father.”
A zoomed image of ‘my’ face popped up again.
“Now, as for the identity of this white man involved in Keika-chan’s kid-
napping, there are actually many rumors about this, some suspecting him to
be none other than someone who participated in the Pinehouse Case. As eve-
ryone knows, the 31 great detectives and troupe members present in the
Pinehouse went missing right after the case and were declared deceased in
2013. And it so happens that one of them strongly resembles this mysterious
man. His name is Disco Wednesdayyy. Wednesdayyy resided in Japan at the
time, and his occupation was that of a missing child detective...in other words,
a professional at searching and finding children who had been hidden. Fur-
thermore, during his stay in Japan, this detective took Yamagishi Kozue un-
der his care, the original case that would result in the Cozue Method.”
The camera slowly closed in on the ‘future me’s’ face, then suddenly un-
zoomed and put it next to my current face.
 I recognized that picture. It was on my passport. However, I’d aged and
went haggard so terribly I doubt a stranger would identify these two to be the
same person. Despite adorning a smile, my eyes and expression had overall
become harsher...but an expert would be able to tell.
“Forensic scientists and doctors in physiognomy capable of reconstruct-
ing someone’s visage with only their cranium have assured us there was a
strong chance for these two to be the same individual.”
The image returned to the critic’s triumphant expression.
I recalled JJ’s words. Corporates also changed their approach. Now they’re
gathering linguists and authors in labs to try out many words. In this era,
words had a strong influence over many domains. That’s why they had proud
bastards like this guy present his opinion over the crimes.
“Also, needless to say, the Pinehouse was the place where the mystery
writer Ehimegawa Juuzou, later known as Anbyouin Owaru, met his end. So it
is most natural for this man to have chosen the title The World is Made Out
of Closed Rooms to draw attention to himself. And if he were to be the missing
child detective, Disco Wednesdayyy, he would be a modern-day Pied Piper.
Up until now we have imagined the culprit to be anything from an organiza-
tion obsessed with the children’s mental hygiene to an individual committing
crimes at random, but it might be time to correct these presumptions.”
Listening to the explanation of the Pied Piper of Hamelin—a man who
wasn’t given his due reward for having chased the rats outside of a village
with his flute and, on a fit of anger, used the flute to draw all the children
away from that village—I laughed out loud at how ridiculous that simile was.
I would never kidnap out of a thirst for revenge.
However, I soon wiped that smile off my face.
Was that really the case? Did I not feel any resentment or anger when see-
ing this state of the future?
...Of course I did. Fuck yes. Obviously. All these people sacrifice children to
make the world go on. This society was built solely on sacrifices.
 There was no way anger wouldn’t be part of my impetus to take these chil-
dren away from this world.
Hm. Then, sure enough, call me the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I thought. Or
whatever you want, really. I didn’t mind them speaking ill of me, nor did I
mind the resulting solitude. As if I would care when I was angry.
The literature critic went on.
“This title, The World is Made Out of Closed Rooms, is quite prophetic as
well. It describes the current situation very well, where we have children hid-
ing in shelters to protect them from the Lamia Syndrome. And if we take into
account that, in mystery novels, any locked room is to eventually be solved
by a detective, flaunting this title at us could be a bold claim stating that this
detective would solve these locked rooms, that he would find the hidden chil-
dren and kidnap them.”
But although I’d been a detective for a long time, I had only experienced
the usual hardboiled shenanigans. I had no idea how locked rooms worked
nor had I read any of Mitamura Saburou’s novels.
However, the ‘future me’ was holding that sheet of paper for the camera.
Wait, would I head for that shopping mall with the sign when the time
came because I had seen it happen in this video? Was this yet another loop
devoid of an origin occurring in this folded time? The sort where the outcome
becomes the cause...
The critic left and the narration continued.
“Here is what the survivor from the Pinehouse Case has to say about the
security camera images depicting that mysterious man:”
There was a caption informing us of who the man on the screen was, but I
didn’t need it. He was Dezuumi Style, and had properly aged 13 years since; I
was relieved.
“Wednesdayyy-san? I don’t think that’s him. The shape of his face might
look similar here, but this is merely one angle. It’s like for a cuboid: unless
you have a great angle, it’s really tough to judge the depth with a single image.
Even more so for this frontal shot, there are many missing elements, like the
height and depth of his nose bridge, his jawline, or the shape of the back of
his head. He might very well look like a different person from the side, don’t
you think?”
There was apparently an interviewer outside of the frame. A woman asked
a question, accompanied with subtitles.
“But when you look at him from the front you do think he resembles Mr.
Wednesdayyy, right?”
“No, not really.”
“But according to experts in physiognomy...”
“These people haven’t actually met him, have they? I spent my entire time
inside the Pinehouse at Wednesdayyy-san’s side. We were close enough that
I consider him a good friend.”
Pfft, I let out a laugh. Friends my ass. But I knew he was looking after me.
“Plus, Wednesdayyy-san would have been 48 years old this year, no? No
matter how you look at it, the man there is a full-on gramps.”
The camera panned away from Dezuumi, who was starting to get emo-
tional, and showed his room... Books were overflowing from his shelves.
Those that didn’t fit were made into high piles on the floor or to occupy the
space on the table and his desk. The rare, tiny gaps were filled with mugs,
dishes, and plastic trays...probably trash left over from bento or snacks. His
lifestyle gave the opposite impression to what the young and brilliant Dezu-
umi from the Pinehouse emitted, it was desolate and deplorable—of course,
the camera had moved to show us that.
The interviewer asked:
“Dezuumi-san, are you still working as a great detective to this day?”
“...The notion of great detectives disappeared from this world after the
Pinehouse Case. The people capable of operating as a great detective or of
writing mystery novels all became worthless in this post-Pinehouse indus-
try...to begin with, nobody needs great detectives anymore. After all, locked
room murders or alibi tricks do not function anymore in this day and age.”
 “There are no locked room murders...then what is your interpretation of
this man’s message, The World is Made Out of Closed Rooms?
“Isn’t it sarcasm?” Dezuumi said and put up a cynic smile. “He might be
saying that in this world, which has become so stiff that no opposing opin-
ions are ever born, where creativity has left us, instead of the locked rooms
typical of mystery novels, people’s minds, feelings, ideas, and values have
closed off and created a whole new locked room. Harsh statement, isn’t it?”
“Every single person in this modern age has turned into a locked room...I
see. But if someone comes up with an exceedingly idealistic and rational idea
that will be useful to the largest percentage of people, don’t you think the
correct choice would be to temporarily stop growing and obey that ideal until
a new, better one comes up?”
“There has never been a single case where giving up on thinking has been
the right choice. Humans should always be imagining and creating new
things.”
“Even if that means losing the current, wonderful state of the world?”
“Yes. We should actively aim to destroy it.”
“Wouldn’t this be considered terrorism against the system of thoughts?”
“Wishing for a system is terroristic in itself.”
“Do you think a system can ever be proven detrimental?”
“We used to think censorship and thought oppression should always be
chastised, didn’t we?”
“But that was back when total governance or supervision was impossible.
Shouldn’t this ideal be revised in this modern world where everybody spon-
taneously aims to fall under a single system? I think one should not cling to
outdated ideas and unabashedly abet others. Do you have any comments on
that?”
The scene cut right when Dezuumi was about to give an emotional answer
and showed an old man...he seemed familiar, but I couldn’t immediately tell
who that was... The caption popped up.
Taxi driver—Iwasaki Kousuke
 “Yes, yes, I drove him to the Pinehouse. From an inn that was managed by
the town at the time, yes.”
Ahh, I remembered. It was the old man who’d advised Mercury C and I to
stay away from the Pinehouse and instead go eat something delicious. He had
grown 13 years older as well.
They showed him the same images. “Ooh. Ahh~, how nostalgic. Well, he
sure looks similar to me. But ya know, I’ve been driving in the countryside,
we don’t get too many foreigners around here, they might all look the same
to me.”
Ah hah hah, Iwasaki laughed, so the interviewer asked him, “This is an
important matter, please give us a serious testimony. Even if you are not pos-
itive, do you think this man is Disco Wednesdayyy-san? Your personal opin-
ion is fine.”
“If ya want my opinion, he’s not. All this investigation is a pretext to bad-
mouth him anyway, ain’t it? But ya see, I think this man is doing something
splendid. I’d love for him to be that detective. He protects children because
he loves them, that’s consistent through and through.”
“But the parents are...”
“Do parents of today need that kind of pity? They all look deprived of mor-
als, at least to me.”
“Iwasaki-san, your son and his wife overcame their cancer two years ago
with the help of the Cozue Method, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. Well, that’s what the young ones decided. ...Lifespans became a
complex issue recently. Either you live for as long as possible or do it the old
way and stop when it’s time...”
“The notion of lifespan might disappear within the next few years.”
“Heh. I’ll be dead by that point. Not my problem. But I’ll be sure to die the
way I want it, and I will show it to the kids.”
“Don’t you want to see your children or grandchildren grow up? Aren’t
you concerned about what your great grandchildren or their children or even
further down your bloodline will become?”
 “A parent’s duty is over once their children grow up. Grandchildren are a
reward for the lucky. And further than that, great grandchildren are basically
a miracle.”
“Not at all, you can educate your grandchildren and great grandchildren
and even live with them. Also, they would probably be sad to see you depart.”
“If they grieve for me, I’ll have won in life. Growing old and dying is true
happiness. Even suffering and dying is a blessing. As much of one as children
and grandchildren. All the fun and sadness and struggles we experience in life
should be wholly welcomed. Sadness is pretty good, ultimately.”
“But that feels like you are giving up on your life...it’s too laissez-faire.
And isn’t it disrespectful towards the affection those around you have for
you?”
“That affection you’re talking about, to me, is only selfishness.”
“And isn’t that man kidnapping children out of selfishness as well?”
“Ya know...convictions and selfishness are two different things, okay?” ...
As I watched these interviews filled with off-topic tangents, JJ let out a
sigh and said,
“See? This ex-great detective and that taxi driver geezer are actually not
a minority, Japan is full of those. Can you believe it? Are their notions of death
different... No less from the country of samurai, you can see they used to
commit harakiri. They just wanna die, that’s the thing~. That’s why business
never made much progress in Japan and I had to come here myself. To give
Japanese people liveliness, vitality, and hope for the future.”
I found JJ’s view somewhat off, but I let it slide...I was more focused on
what the interviewer outside the frame had told the taxi driver next; I
couldn’t process it for a second.

“Doesn’t the term conviction refer to something more peaceful and with
a good influence over others? This mysterious man and the organization be-
hind him have kidnapped nearly 300 million children since the Autumn of
2006 when the first outbreak of Lamia Syndrome occurred, you know? That
is over twice the population in Japan as of 2006. And if we assume every child
has parents and grandparents, he has made at least 1.8 billion people miser-
able.”

300 million?
I’d kidnapped 300 million children...?

“Ah hah hah,” JJ laughed next to me. “Don’t be so surprised, you did it
yourself~~. Just kidding. You haven’t yet, of course you can’t believe your
ears. See? Do you finally get why I want to kill the shit out of you but also have
great respect for you? You’re amazing. I was seriously in a bind to find chil-
dren for the first two years. You took 80 percent of them away. At a point I
was for real nearing bankruptcy. But the Blackswan guys already told me that
in 2006. That you’d become a threat. And that once the Summer ends, I
wouldn’t be able to stop you. That’s why I panicked and searched everywhere
for you. I’d never have thought in a million years you’d be in Japan. So I
thought I could draw you out by killing your parents, investigated, and it
turns out you’re an orphan. I even inadvertently killed my sister while chas-
ing after you, that sucks hard. Once the company settled and I got some
money for myself I still asked Blackswan to take me to where you were and
killed you seven times. Even though I knew it was useless. You don’t remem-
ber...I mean, you’ve never experienced it, have you? I did some horrible stuff
too...like decapitating all your friends before your eyes then hanging you. Or
dismembering the children you worked hard to find. Well, the real bad guys
are Blackswan. They knew I’d freak out because of you and that my company
would recover in the end. So they stirred me to their heart’s content and ob-
viously suggested a tour to kill you for an astronomical sum. I’d never been
scammed this horribly before. Well, all’s well in the end and I got to let out
some stress, so I don’t mind now.”

Killed seven times?

Me?
300 million kidnappings, seven murders, I couldn’t follow the numbers
coming at me one after the other.
By this point my head was like a wok abandoned inside a desert and half
buried in sand...hard, hot, dry, and really light, yet unable to go anywhere...I
couldn’t think.
But no! I couldn’t afford to feel overwhelmed. I put my hands against my
forehead and pressed on my temples.
Think!
If JJ had killed me seven times and yet I went to live on and flaunt that
weird placard, that meant I’d died in the pre-bent universe. That bending
happened on the 15th of July 2006 at 23:26, and I’d come from that very day.
Unless he was going to kill me on the other side before the bending, I had al-
ready died multiple times but had lost all memories of it. Was there no traces
left on my body? Was it even possible for no memory nor traces to remain
over something that happened to my own body? ...I was desperately trying to
recall my deaths, but drew a blank. I sucked at imagining my own death. Even
though I’d died...but that death had vanished into thin air like that one sheet
of paper.
Any actions on the other side of the bending line will disappear the mo-
ment they lose their influence...that mechanism had unexpectedly saved my
life. A whole seven times, too.
Next, 300 million!
300 million children over 13 years meant I’d have to kidnap 23 million
every year. Moreover, from families aware of the danger and trying to protect
them... How big an organization would I need to accomplish that? How many
people transcending spacetime would I need to gather for it?
I wondered, but in reality, the only people around me that knew spacetime
could be altered were the people at the Pinehouse; the great detectives and
the troupe members. And they were destined to go missing in the Summer of
2006 along with me.
Right. If I were to have allies, it had to be them. I had no other option.
I recalled the future ‘me’s’ behavior when he arrived at the Pinehouse. His
disheartened expression was most natural. After all, he’d learned about the
future world and his fate. And what the future ‘Mercury C’ who appeared
alongside said. He laughed proudly then said, Wahahahahahaha! Nobody gets
to leave the Valhalla Palace until Ragnarök is over! So he said that to force-
fully recruit the great detectives...
Could 31 people, counting Mercury C, manage to kidnap 23 millions a year?
It’s still over 60 thousand a day...but those great detectives might be able to
recruit more trustworthy members. All in all, every one of them had high cha-
risma. However, even with that many people, it would still be utterly unat-
tainable by standard means, so maybe we should divide the workload into a
team to find the children, one to kidnap them, and another one to shelter
them afterwards...furthermore, we’d need a place to shelter them.
If they still hadn’t been returned to their parents in 2019, then these 300
million children must be hidden somewhere...where could such a land exist?
We’d need 30 Tokyos, a city already jammed with people.
No, these were no standard kidnappings. The perpetrator, us, could ma-
nipulate space, so fitting them all in one place shouldn’t pose a problem.
We’d simply need to stretch a tiny space. ...That said, it would need to be
stretched quite large to have 300 million children there. Plus, how would we
take care of them? ...I thought, but quickly shook my head.
Ahh, that was foolish too. I was using traditional kidnapping common
sense because I wasn’t fully accustomed to being able to alter spacetime. With
that ability, we could shrink 13 years into a mere instant. We’d only need to
adjust the time like how I would do when coming back to Mercury C in Prince-
ton Hotel. We didn’t even need to temporarily shelter them. If we planned on
eventually giving them back to the parents, we could simply send the children
to that set time.
However, ‘I’ actually still hadn't returned the children I’d kidnapped over
the last 13 years to this day, in 2019...I could’ve even set them to return right
after they were kidnapped, but hadn’t. It’s not like ‘I’ want to make the par-
ents suffer, so the reason I hadn’t given them back was because JJ had won.
The Cozue Method had conquered the world.
We had lost...we were going to lose.
I might make JJ temporarily suffer enough to make him try to find and
eliminate me...and actually murder me seven times despite knowing how in-
consequential that is. However, that only amounts to irritating a single per-
son. Ultimately, JJ’s company would take over the world with a yearly 300
trillion yen turnover. Every year 7 million children would be abused. Tens of
millions of fetuses had their bodies stolen—even though they would origi-
nally never have been born.
What we were doing was in vain. Everything was hopelessly inconsequen-
tial and meaningless. JJ and this place’s employees might say they respect me,
but that’s actually just pity mixed with derision.
...I could let myself be swept by profound despair as if I was carrying the
Daibutsu-den on my shoulders all I wanted, but I knew. I would eventually
get back up on my feet and start kidnapping children.
That was my future, that’s what I had chosen myself.

Dezuumi and the taxi driver were supportive of me, so they put a ‘voice of
the street’ corner full of people criticizing me afterwards to balance things
out. Listening to everyone disparaging me by saying my actions were hypo-
critical and illogical and didn’t accomplish anything except for spreading
sadness. I thought of something and asked JJ.
 “Hey, you haven’t harmed the parents or friends of people other than me,
have you?”
JJ wasn’t only searching for ‘me’ to eliminate ‘me’, he must’ve wanted to
get the hiding spot for the children out of ‘me’ as well. So he wouldn’t leave
the great detectives or the Angel Bunnies alone.
However, JJ shrugged.
“I haven’t. You’re talking about the Pinehouse Thirty-One, right? They’re
allegedly missing, but didn’t you actually kill and silence them yourself be-
fore I could do anything?”
I see. That’s how JJ interpreted it. Chills ran down my spine as I tried to
keep my expression from changing to not let JJ sense anything I didn’t want
him to know. I recalled what the future ‘Mercury C’ had said after returning
to the Pinehouse.
Don’t you dare run away. Anyone trying to escape, I’ll catch and murder
them for real.
Mercury C wouldn’t actually kill them if they panicked when learning
about the future, right?
“What, did seeing the faces of the parents whose children you kid-
napped...no, that you’re about to kidnap freak you out?” JJ said. “You’re look-
ing all composed. So what, do you not care about their feelings?”
What was this moron saying? “The guy abusing children should just shut
up.”
JJ sighed. “The abuse isn’t that big a deal. I mean, they do feel some pain,
but they forget it soon enough. Also the people at Blackswan are constantly
improving their techniques, so apparently it doesn’t take as long now...”
“Doesn’t that mean they’re being more extreme?”
“...Well, maybe. Whatever, I give up. Anything I could tell you would be
useless. Our values, culture, and the era we live in are too different for that.
The only thing I can do now is appeal to your feelings. Sure, you’re gonna
kidnap 300 million, but my efforts might make what would originally be a
billion into 300 million, you never know. Well, be it a billion or any amount, I
will survive it and strive. But letting all the business talk aside; please. Think
about the feelings of the parents. I’m now married and have a kid, so I really
understand how parents feel when their children get kidnapped.”
Oh right, he did say he got naturalized in Japan. “You have a kid?”
“Yeah. A boy.”
“Who’s the mother? ...Is she from Japan?”
“No, she’s American. She’ll come say hello later... Oh look, you got a spe-
cial message, Disco, prepare yourself.”
JJ said and flicked his chin, so I reverted my eyes onto the screen.
It showed a young man and woman, probably a couple. The girl was
quickly walking away from the camera, so we could only see her back, but I
could tell who that was.
Kozue.

Her face and stature were almost identical to Kozue when the ‘seventeen-
year-old Kozue’s feelings’ was inside her body, but her hairstyle and clothes
were more mature; she was without a doubt two years older. She should’ve
been 19 now, in 2019.
She never looked back at the camera, insistently chasing after her in the
middle of a residential area, and curtly answered questions that had been ed-
ited out with her eyes set straight ahead.
“I was a child, I hardly remember anything.
“That picture tells me nothing. I have no opinion on the matter.
“I feel sorry for the mothers and fathers who fell victim to this, I hope
their children will soon return to them.
“The Disco I know would never do that. Are you sure it’s not someone else?”

“Bwaaa~~~~hahaha!” JJ howled in joy. “Hear that? Hear that? Your pre-

cious Kozue just told you off. ‘The Disco I know would never do that’! Do you
finally get how much you’ve lost your mind and your way? Huh? Huh? Any
comments on that?!”

The man appearing to be Kozue’s boyfriend was Japanese but he looked

slightly like me, so I was a bit happy. He was constantly putting himself be-
tween the camera and Kozue to protect her. Probably out of an attempt to not
attract the eyes of strangers and making this fuss any bigger. He wasn’t vio-
lent and didn’t insult anyone, and only glared at the camera while staying
close to Kozue. The person I like is insanely smart and is kinda like a demon.
He comes off as kind but in reality he isn’t. It’s not anything as tame as ‘he’s
cold,’ the guy is extremely cold, a blizzard in the North Pole. He sometimes
makes me feel like humans are scary. Despite what Kozue had said about him,
he looked like a normal boy. Well, he still came off as cold and acted too com-
posed for his age, but not to an abnormal degree...I wondered if she dated a
different boy when she was 17, but after becoming Inoue Kozue she had lived
like a normal girl with commonplace problems, so it wouldn’t be unusual for
her to exaggerate that sort of stuff.

Probably unable to stand the forced interview anymore, Kozue turned

back and yelled at the camera.
“It’s from long ago and I have nothing to do with it! It’s done nothing but
inconveniencing me, really...I wish I had never gotten involved with Disco!”
She then slightly teared up before leaving. The camera merely saw off, the
boyfriend holding her shoulders as they disappeared into the distance.

It looked like Kozue hurt herself by saying that, but she was right in doing
so.
 “Oh hoh hoh hoh hoh~~~~,” JJ was now singing. “Ouch ouch ouch! Must
be tough, ain’t it, Disco?! Ain’t it?! That’s what going against society’s logic
gets you, being all alone! Even the people dear to you have abandoned you!
Think! Think more about others! At least about Kozue-chan!”

The screen faded right before Kozue and the boy left the frame, and sub-
titles appeared.
The woman formerly known as Yamagishi Kozue is intending on staying a virgin all her
life.
All throughout the world there has been an increase in people rejecting sex or giving birth
in fear of the Lamia Syndrome.
According to predictions, if the birth rate continues to decrease at this pace, by 2080 all
new lives will be consumed solely to keep the global population of 10 billion people alive, and
humanity’s history will likely come to a stop.

The movie ended on these unrelated tangents and the end credits started
rolling, so JJ operated the machine to erase the screen.
“You’re amazing, Disco, in yet another sense,” JJ laughed. “You’re the
man who ended humanity. Without you around, Styron and Blackswan would
have kept expanding and enhancing humanity, creating a glorious future for
all. So? How does it feel to barge into the big evil’s base, convinced you’re a
brave hero, only to learn that everyone thinks you are the worst out of all?”
How did I feel?
Awful, obviously. I could barely keep myself from puking, all my energy
had left me like mud spilling out of a toppled bucket, my legs wouldn’t move,
and I couldn’t even sit straight. But I was also starting to feel better. I didn’t
regret in the slightest having shattered this future. Far from that, I wanted it
annihilated. A future that only thrives by proudly trampling on children de-
serves to be destroyed.
The intelligence discovered during the Pinehouse Case hadn’t improved
the world one bit. It had merely twisted spacetime and consciousness into a
bad direction.
I randomly recalled Sakurazuki Tansetsu comparing the Pinehouse to the
Garden of Eden. Mikami Nils later corrected it to the Valhalla Palace, but both
were correct. That was where everything started and ended. The apple the
serpent made us eat had killed us.
The Venn diagram we drew at the Pinehouse.
Above spacetime and consciousness was intelligence, creations and in-
ventions, then above all that was preferences, regrouping logic, aesthetic
sense, safety, and functionality.
I was about to annihilate an evil spacetime and evil consciousnesses and
evil intelligence brought about by evil creations and inventions which mani-
fested as the embodiment of logic.
I certainly felt exalted at the idea.
Hah, I laughed. “Thanks,” I said, making JJ widen his eyes. “This film was
very educational.”
“Um, this isn’t really a film...” JJ muttered. His voice was filled with con-
fusion. “Huh~~~? You’re a pretty tough guy, Disco. Aren’t you depressed?”
For sure I was. But no way I’m showing you that. “That helped me confirm
I was right. I’ll gladly crush this world. I feel honored I’ll get to do it myself.
After all, it’s a world that supports you in acting all mighty. That’s solid proof
it has completely gone crazy, crumbly, and crappy, isn’t it?”
“Crazy, crumbly, and crappy... You still have the presence of mind to make
alliterations?”
“Yeah. No matter how high a mountain a monkey climbs, it remains a
monkey, JJ. You’re just an idiot so you got brainwashed by your own propa-
ganda. If you really believe this movie would move or stop me, your senses
must’ve seriously gone numb. I’m motivated by my inner love and justice.
Expecting me to care about what others think is ringing at the wrong door.
I’ll gladly throw away my own life for the sake of Kozue, who was forced into
saying that, and for every human who was deceived by health and peace so
deeply they forgot what ‘quality of life’ meant. That, regardless of how
harshly they might insult me.”
Of course, I was putting up a front. While saying it, I was mourning my life
for having turned into this; I still felt hesitation as to whether I really wanted
to shoulder that, and didn’t want to think about anything for a while, but I
certainly felt proud of it. I’d never thought I would transform from a missing
child detective into a super kidnapper, but I had a reason and a goal for it.
“Huh~~~? The heck...how can you be so optimistic...”
“Shows how little you understand humans. Actually, you don’t get Japa-
nese people either, do you? I mean, you’re imagining everything revolves
around samurai and harakiri. I do somewhat understand why the Japanese
people would reject the Cozue Method. It’s not that they want to die. Dying
must be as scary all the same in every country. But they’ll receive the life they
were bestowed as is, no more nor less, and live and die by it. I bet they find
that beautiful. The reason Japanese people love cherry blossoms isn’t that
light-pink color, you know? It’s because they find beauty in the sight of their
ephemeral lives scattering away in accordance to the lifespan they were at-
tributed. Japanese people would never stick cherry blossom petals onto
branches. Nor would they try to lengthen its blooming period through selec-
tive breeding. They simply look at the petals falling, then wait for the next
spring to come. Humans, too, should live out the lifespan they were given.
The next generation will come anyway. To begin with, can you even write the
kanji for ‘lifespan’? The first one is kotobuki, a celebration, and the second
one is life. It means we should celebrate the life we were bestowed as us, that
it was long enough. I’m glad I came to Japan. It saved me from getting de-
ceived by your shitty advertisement.”
 JJ was glaring at me. “...So you’ll trouble everyone with your unwanted ka-
mikaze attack? The fuck are you preaching about lifespan, you life-trivializ-
ing shithead.”
I’d only been bluffing my way through this conversation, but I’d gotten
my energy back before I knew it. “If you think kamikaze attacks trivialize life
then you still have a long way to becoming Japanese, JJ. The Japanese people
scream banzai because they are quivering with honor for being able to burn
their lives for a greater good. It’s the opposite of suicide. It’s not for death.
Banzai is for life. Same goes for what I do. Didn’t you see my face on the se-
curity camera footage? That smile is my banzai. I already know. My future is
bright. I’ll spend every day kidnapping children feeling fulfilled. With a crys-
tal clear conscience.”
“...Hmm. I see. I didn’t think it would turn out like this, nor was I told, but
I guess it was inevitable. Whatever. I’ll go work on my next job for a mood
changer.”
JJ’s look had completely reverted to the one from his delinquent days,
making me shudder. Seemed like a bad omen.
“You weren’t told? By whom?”
“...The guys at Blackswan. ...They scammed me a second time. Fucking,
I’m letting them off the hook this time...”
Someone unable to bend spacetime couldn’t win against people who could.
“Keep your King of the World act in check, JJ. I mean, looking at facts, you’re
far from being a messiah, you’re a sadistic, scummy pimp selling off chil-
dren’s purity. Somehow one step closer to trash than selling women. You
should know what happens to the ones who made children prostitute them-
selves once they go to jail, no? In normal times, you wouldn’t go anywhere
near the shower room, too scared to sleep at night, constantly trying to get
into solitary cells, and at best be made to suck off prison guards all day.”
“...”
“See you, JJ. You should either seriously question your morals or at least
study about Japan,” I said and was about to head for the Princeton Hotel. Even
if we wouldn’t settle things with the Black Bird Man for good this time, I had
to quickly return to the Pinehouse. By now I understood why the ‘future me’
told me to hurry up. I had to start kidnapping children from the future as soon
as possible. Unlike the people from the future, my lifespan was limited.
Meaning I only had a set period during which I could kidnap. To save the most
children, I shouldn’t waste any more time...yet, JJ put up a grin and said,
“Come on, don’t be in such a hurry. There’s someone I want you to meet. You
know her very well, and I’m pretty sure you’re dying to see her as well,” so I
stood in place.

Someone I knew very well and wanted to see?

Who could it be in 2019...
JJ touched the machine on his desk. “Itou-san, has my wife arrived?”
“Yes! Shall I send her to you?”
“Please do.”
“Understood~.”
JJ faced me.
“Oh, that reminds me, I hadn’t introduced myself. Disco, what do you
think my Japanese name is?”
“Huh?”
“My name. You know, I got naturalized.”
“Didn’t you write Styron with kanji?”
So it would sound like Sutairon?
“As if. That wouldn’t sound Japanese at all, would it? I’ve been doing my
due diligence too, you know.”
“...”
“My new name is Fuyuno Shinji. No idea what the kanji mean, but that’s
me.”
 Fuyuno Shinji.
My heart disintegrated. All my neurons shut down at once.

The door opened; the woman who came in froze when she saw me. I heard
JJ laughing. “Hah hah! Nostalgic, ain’t it? For both of you.”

The woman standing next to Itou was Norma Braun.

No, Fuyuno Braun Norma.

10

I didn’t fail to notice that the Norma putting a hand before her mouth and
exclaiming “Oh my god, Disco Wednesdayyy” looked as young as JJ. “Why are
you here? Disco, you...what happened?” She rushed to me while speaking in
Japanese and, to my surprise, hugged me. “I’ve been searching for you, Disco.
For the longest time.” I’d also noticed she wasn’t a brunette anymore; her
hair was of an Oriental dark tint. Even her skin wasn’t white anymore. These
arms holding me and this body belonged to someone else simply shaped like
Norma Braun.
I grabbed her shoulders and, without hugging her back, pulled her away
from me. Her black pupils set on me made me waver, but that was because the
current Norma looked like the girl now named Morinaga Koeda = the ‘seven-
teen-year-old Kozue’s feelings’ who was in Shakuko’s body with Norma’s
face. My brain was scrambled. Everyone had gone too far with their identity
remodeling.
Norma looked at me with a saddened expression and said, “I’ve always
sought to meet you again, Disco. You were the goal I was striving for.”
 “Norma...why...” but I interrupted my questions. Why was she in this fake
body? Why did she come in to be introduced as JJ’s wife with this timing? To
begin with, why was she acting that way?
“I get it, Disco. You’re displeased with this body, aren’t you?” Norma said.
“Rather, you despise it, don’t you?”
Exactly. Why in the world did she, out of anyone, have to steal someone’s
body and wear it?!
Unable to express myself, Norma continued with her gentle voice.
“This isn’t one of those poor vanishing twins’ bodies, however. We’re no
longer stealing fetuses nor making any children suffer, Disco. Didn’t you tell
him that, Shinji?”
JJ, now named ‘Shinji’, shrugged his shoulders. “We haven’t reached that
point in the explanation yet, sorry.”
“That should be the first thing to say!” she rebuked him, then faced my
way and peered into my eyes. “It’s alright now, Disco. Be at ease. I did my best
to catch up to you. At first nobody believed in me, but I pushed through and
succeeded.

“Nowadays the bodies used for turning into jackets by the Cozue Method
are cultivated in artificial wombs. Moreover, we are now injecting the alter-
native personalities after the zygote starts its cell division phase, right when
it becomes a person and would develop the original’s soul. Therefore, the
sub-children are no longer pushing the originals out, they grow as the orig-
inals. And even after their birth, we stopped having nursing staff mechani-
cally take care of them in insular facilities; they are sent to one of many reg-
istered volunteering mothers where they experience a normal family... Plus,
no matter how short that lasted, the main children were undeniably made to
experience horrible things they would soon forget, but in the past four years
we started using drugs, electric signals, and electromagnetic waves to create
a new stimulus different from pain, and now it feels nothing like abuse. The
old Cozue Method made children unload memories of grief or pain onto other
personalities, didn’t it? Now that signal has been changed into weight, so the
new personalities are created to share the weight of that ‘heavy luggage’.
Isn’t it amazing? Recently, research about the brain, personalities, and con-
sciousness has been progressing quickly. And now that wars are no more, the
budget previously spent on defense is used for research...so Disco, the chil-
dren are no longer crying. We certainly used to sacrifice children for an in-
stant, but nobody is persecuting them anymore. I really did my best. ...You
don’t need to fight anymore, Disco Wednesdayyy.”

“Haha, you got it wrong, honey. He’s not the current Disco who kidnapped
a ton of kids,” JJ laughed. Norma bent her upper body back with her hands
still around my torso and re-examined my face.
“Ehh...? You do look young...but Disco is still Disco. Dear, where do you
come from?”
JJ answered for me as I was searching for words.
“Hard to tell, but he’s originally the Disco from the 15th of July 2006. He
came here right after the Pinehouse Case ended, so he hasn’t kidnapped an-
yone.”
“What...that...fuck that!” Norma screamed, then hugged me again, how-
ever, I didn’t have the strength to push her away this time. “Pardon me for
the foul language...” she laughed with a tearful voice. “I hadn’t used that
word in so long...it seems like seeing your face made old memories surface.
Haha, God dammit! Just horseshit, man! Aaah, Disco, so you’re about to do
it? Your immense suffering will...! Say, can’t you unload it onto others?! Disco,
you don’t need to be the only one to suffer. How about you stop this foolish-
ness and be reasonable?! Right, you can just stop. As you can see, it will serve
no purpose in the end!”
Norma said while staring at me. She knew her plea was useless. She simply
wanted to say it to me.
 “Gee, you’re such an idiot, Disco! You’re so stubborn and obstinate, do
you really want to make the entire world an enemy?”
I wasn’t stubborn or obstinate, and I didn’t mind making the world an en-
emy...I would merely protect what I wanted to protect.
But who cared about what I was.
“Norma...the guy you mentioned at that class reunion, was that JJ?”
The tears flowing on her cheeks temporarily stopped. “...”
The ring finger of Norma’s left hand standing behind the cooked duck on
the round table. Norma’s beauty was boundless back then, and she never
seemed scared... “Why did you decide on this moron?” I asked, and Norma
giggled.
“That’s a real mystery, Disco. But you know, he might be sort of reckless,
and calling him a good person wouldn’t be anywhere near honest, but...ahaha,
but I did fall in love with him, okay? You can’t find anyone else like him. Also,
I felt like it was my duty to correct and guide him.”
JJ suddenly burst into a loud laughter; though it sounded like a scream to
me.
“Hah hah hah hah! Hearing that makes me happy, darling! But be honest,
do you like me as much as you liked Disco?”

With her arms still enlaced behind my neck, Norma twisted her shoulders
and neck to sexily turn towards JJ.

“Fufu. You finally asked, honey. I do love you, Shinji. And only you. I
wouldn’t marry or live for years with someone I don’t like. I’m serious in that
regard.”
 Somewhere deep in my brain ravaged by a violent tempest, there was a
spot ruled by silence, like the eye of the typhoon; I was there, mindlessly
thinking...I knew. There was no way JJ would randomly encounter Norma and
start a romance. There was no way JJ would have called Norma here, today, at
this hour, by chance. I’d noticed that the instant Norma had appeared, and
ever since stepping foot inside Styron Company I was perpetually on my
guard for any trap. So if JJ were to pull out a gun or make any funny movement,
I was ready to chop his head off. Inside my hands were one of the knives Mer-
cury C had provided me with at Princeton Hotel and that I’d shrunk to hide.
But JJ didn’t move an inch.
He was simply surprised.

Druriririririririririri...I heard an electronic sound, then poof, it was fol-

lowed by another small sound as I felt my crotch getting wet and warm, so I
thought Norma’s words were so vexing and sad I’d pissed myself, but the
moment I tried to confirm that, Norma’s body which had its arm around my
shoulders suddenly collapsed, so I hurriedly put my hands on her hips but
that was drenched too, so I thought Crap, I might’ve urinated so hard I got
some on her, that’s the fucking worst heartbreak ever, but then I finally
looked down; Norma was missing the lower half of her body, and the blood
massively drenching my dick and Norma’s hips was forming a pool on the
ground in which both of Norma’s legs fell like broken mannequin parts.
Norma’s stomach had exploded.
Her pancreas and kidneys were rolling on the floor and her guts were lan-
guidly drooping from her body, ready to completely fall any minute. However,
my hands fully supporting her upper body were stopping that, so I promptly
raised a knee, but her hot organs slid on both sides of it and continued falling.
They wouldn’t stop. Norma was breaking, crumbling, and falling apart. As I
hugged her body to at least keep her upper half together, Norma murmured
in my ear.
 “You are my hero, Disco. I told you, didn’t I? You have always been my goal
in life.”
Aaaaaah, Norma!
My eyes had kept going back and forth between the blood and legs and or-
gans of Norma’s dismembered body and wouldn’t calm down, but it then fi-
nally settled down on Norma’s eyes peering into mine. But only the black pu-
pil of her right eye was locking gazes with me, her left eye was looking upper-
left of me and wouldn’t move. I finally realized how beautiful Norma’s face,
which I’d been accusing of being fake, actually was. Then I witnessed the last
light in her right eye slowly fading away. She had completely crumbled...but
that’s when I recalled what I could do. Right. I could manipulate spacetime. I
could heal Norma just like how I’d done with the great detectives!
However, although I’d been completely fine with seeing the crushed, pale
eyes of the great detectives’ corpses, I couldn’t bear looking at the broken
Norma. There was nothing left of her hips. She had exploded from inside. A
bomb installed inside her body beforehand had been set off. I recalled the
beetle-shaped bomb I’d pulled out of Nils’ body. Was that it? Did Norma have
one too?
Go to Hell, JJ!
“What the fuck, Norma...” JJ said in a shaking voice next to me.
“Shut up! JJ! Shut the fuck up!”
I had to focus.
I yelled and considered for a second to first kill JJ for some peace and quiet,
but decided against it.
Norma came before anything else.
But too many things had happened at once, my mind was in pure
chaos...why had Norma appeared here just to die before my eyes, in my arms!?
“That can’t...why did you phrase it like that...” JJ staggered and hit his
waist on the desk. Thump.
It was his fault. “Shut up JJ! Don’t speak! Don’t move! I’ll heal Norma! I’ll
fix her!”
 “I never...was it Sharon? Is this Sharon’s curse?” He once again wandered
with hazy steps and seemed like he could fall anytime. He was glaring at an
empty space...I left him alone, I had no time for him.
I laid Norma’s upper half on the ground. Her hair would absorb the heavy
blood from the pool, but that was of no concern. I would return all of that
blood inside her body.
My eyeballs behind my eyelids were convulsing in all directions. My brain,
too, was doing somersaults and lamenting. I could barely breathe, I was on
the verge of having a panic attack and my vision was turning dark.
Ooh, that’s how I’d escaped to the Pineapple Home. When it was Kozue.
When I abandoned Kozue.
But I couldn’t afford to run away!
“Raaaaah! Norma! Come back! I won’t let you die! Come back to me,
Norma! Please, Norma! Please, come back!”
With the scent of her blood filling my nose, I sandwiched her face between
my palms and turned back time.
The blood spreading radially around Norma started flowing back to the
center. Blood and bits of flesh piled up, formed round clumps, and assembled
into their former shape and state as they returned inside Norma. I held myself
back from trembling with joy. I couldn’t let my concentration falter. Eventu-
ally her stomach closed so I used the occasion to revert every bit of her dress
and underwear back to normal, then aligned her eyeballs to look straight, but
there was no light in her pupils.
“Norma,” I called for her.
JJ spoke from next to me.
“It’s useless, Disco, it’s all futile.”
I ignored him. “Norma, come back. Your body is right here.”
“But that’s not her original body,” JJ said. “So now that she has left us,
she can’t find it.”
 That fucking convincing logic! I wanted to shut my ears, but mixed up and
closed my eyes. I opened my mouth and all the air I’d been retaining left me
at once, making my diaphragm shake. “U-uuugh, ugh...” I clenched my teeth.
My voice leaked. I wasn’t crying. No tears were flowing from my eyes. I was
repressing everything.
“We already have stats on that. One’s soul can only return to their original
body. If they die in another one, they must be moved to a different body by
about now.”
“Then do that!” I put down Norma’s fake body which wouldn’t retrieve its
light despite having been cleanly restored, and stood up. “Where’s her real
body?!”
“Nowhere. Disco, any and all parts of Norma have already vanished.”
“You must have spare child bodies, right?! Where are they?!” Was I going
to use a child’s body? Would I sacrifice a child for Norma’s life?
However, that dilemma ended as a hypothesis.
“Norma’s soul went far, far away, Disco. Without her original body around,
her soul won’t remain. If there is a world after there...she must have already
set out for it.”
I suddenly remembered Sakurazuki Tansetsu’s words. Everyone goes
somewhere that’s exactly as they imagined and live in the world they believe
in, Wednesdayyy-san. What kind of place had Norma gone to? Could I find
her if I went there with Sakurazuki Tansetsu? I realized my consciousness
was about to jump to the Pinehouse to grab Sakurazuki, so I instantly stopped
myself. I shouldn’t move carelessly. I’d come here from the other side of
spacetime. The moment I left, any phenomenon I had a part in or caused
would be canceled and history would instantly return to its original
course...thinking that, I changed plans. Wasn’t that precisely what I wanted?
Everything I’d done here would count for naught. So wouldn’t Norma’s death
go away like how that sheet of paper vanished in the air?
 Right, I thought. JJ could come up with that crap because he knew that. He
was feigning being hurt, but in reality he knew he would get Norma back. He
only kept silent to make me suffer.
Then I should at least laugh at him. I cleared my throat and looked up so JJ
would notice. “That was close, a bit more and I would be dancing in your palm.
Give it a rest and ditch that thirst for revenge...also, you now know how
Norma feels, don’t you?” Norma stayed herself and chose JJ. “You’ll forget
this by the time I leave, but I won’t. Make some efforts! Apologize to Norma
for having killed her, and try to redeem yourself a bit, scumbag!”
However, JJ didn’t put up the forced smile many other villains had after I
meticulously saw through their plans, nor did he waver at this being an op-
portunity to become a decent person—perhaps his last, even. He simply
stood in place, his lips shaking.
I wanted to rub more salt in the wound, but didn’t. If JJ were to remember
anything I’d said, that would be a trace of my visit here, and it might interfere
with the annulment of Norma’s death. I should simply leave.
I gave a last look at Norma, lying on the floor. Even though it was merely
a puppet that used to contain Norma.
Enough, I looked away, and JJ spoke. “If you leave, everything will seri-
ously vanish.”
He must’ve followed my thoughts. JJ continued. “It’s futile even if you
disappear...Norma won’t return to me.”
“...? Once my visit here gets revoked, the world will return to its original
flow, won’t it?” Hadn’t we both been talking with that premise in mind?
However, JJ shook his head. “...Norma died. This is indeed a fictional fu-
ture, but you’re not the one who made it fictional. This world can only exist
after Norma’s death because your existence acts as proof that she died...that
she had lived; still, regardless of the authenticity of this world, Norma is dead
and won’t come back. That past cannot be restored. Everything she has
achieved persists while you are here and guarantees she lived and died, but
the moment you leave it will all vanish.”
 “...How could that be?”
“Norma was the same as you. She came from the past. Right after meeting
you at the school reunion in 2003. You’re not the only one who meddled with
this future. Norma, too, stayed in a future she wasn’t meant to be in, and lived
her fullest without realizing. Haha.

“Norma married the me of 2007, back when I was losing my mind. The
peeps at Blackswan acted as the matchmaker and arranged our honeymoon.
They pulled all the strings from start to end... Three days after your school
reunion, I took Norma to Japan and we got married there, then I sent her
alone in 2008. Five years into the future. Since, you know, that was roughly
the period I was in a frenzy searching for you, plus the company was getting
dire because of your interference. I couldn’t even give Norma the liberty to
research what she wanted. Plus, I didn’t want to show her me engaging with
the drug cartels...nor did I want her to know I was looking to kill you...more-
over, she never put it like that herself, but Norma wanted to get away from
you. Not just distance-wise, but time-wise too.”

Norma was from the past...? She had come from beyond the folding point?
Then what would happen when she died here?
“Norma’s research...”
“Didn’t you listen?! All of it’s obviously gonna disappear!” JJ said and put
up a crazy smile. “Wahaha! I’d left Norma in charge of the whoooole project.
And just now, ten years and ten trillion yen worth of research evaporated into
thin air. Just as planned! Of fucking course! As if Blackswan would tolerate
such a research! It would be fucking moronic for them to reduce their own
market share! The idealistic and optimistic Norma just couldn’t understand
what ‘business’ or ‘power balance’ meant!”
I couldn’t even form a fist.
 “You saw that, Disco?! I fucked your beloved Norma for years and kept her
around with the sole objective of killing her before your very eyes. Hah hah!
Got you good! Serves you right! It’s your fault! It’s because you got in mine
and Blackswan’s way! You made Norma into collateral damage! It’s your fault
for ever getting close to her! Because of you, the studious, honest, rightful,
and wholesome Norma died, erasing all the admirable and beautiful parts of
her soul for good! She won’t even get a grave! She died all alone in a hypo-
thetical future that doesn’t even exist!”
I wanted to shut his mouth, but couldn’t move an inch.
“Heh heh heh, hehehehehe! So inane. The ‘you who stooped to kidnap
children’ knew this would happen. That's why he never answered her pleas
and kept hidden... Hah hah. No wonder! Still, now I feel refreshed. Time to
redo my life. I won’t get to savor the differences, but I’m looking forward to
my true life devoid of Norma!”
I didn’t have to look at the intrepid smile JJ was desperately maintaining
to know his lips were shaking. Norma’s death must have been quite a shock
to him...he’d spent such a long time with her, there’s no way it was merely a
scheme to spite me.
He was just incredibly stupid. That, and annoyingly weak...
I searched inside Norma’s stomach and took out the intruder. That nos-
talgic, beetle-shaped bomb I’d fixed when rewinding Norma’s time.
“JJ, what was the keyword for this bomb?”
“...”
JJ was stunned when he heard Norma’s last words...despite showing
barely any confusion when her stomach blew up in pieces.
“It wasn’t what Norma said, was it? ...It must have been your silly ques-
tion.”
That pathetic question trying to confirm Norma’s love to which he got an
unexpected answer.
That question he’d always put away had set off the bomb.
 JJ was glaring at me in silence. I threw the beetle at his stomach. It disap-
peared inside him without creating any wound; JJ didn’t even attempt to
dodge it, he stood stock still and accepted it.
“She was too good for a slouch like you, don’t you agree?”
He didn’t answer. I wasn’t expecting him to, either. Any words exchanged
here would be meaningless; that went for both of us. Everything was over.
Norma had died. We had both lost her. Plus, a part of me was blaming myself
for staying here too long and causing her death—but that was wrong.
Everything was fixed in stone. Even those striving to change the past are
actually playing their part in it.
“...Just for your info,” JJ opened his mouth. “I’m as clueless as you are. In
the end, we were merely dancing in Blackswan’s palm; you, me, everyone
around the world, and even God, I bet.”
They’d messed with Kozue and Norma and pushed me to the edge, but
even then, surprisingly, I was raring to go. I’d always fought against people
who thought themselves to be great shadow puppeteers acting evil in safety.
And against all of those, I’d always thought for myself, acted, and gotten re-
sults.
This time was no exception. Not the me right here, but the ‘future me’
kidnapping and hiding children, was giving JJ a run for his money.
Moreover, JJ’s frustration should be shared with the people at Blackswan
manipulating him...my actions were undoubtedly effective.
Then, I finally recalled the question I had to ask JJ.
“JJ.”
“...?” He absentmindedly looked at me with his reddened eyes.
“What were you looking for when you crushed all the drug cartels?”

He couldn’t immediately understand the question.

 “Eh? Huh...? Partly to collect funds...and because Blackswan wanted to
eradicate the hallucinations people saw when they tripped through drugs. It
became ‘noise’ for the world or something...I don’t really get it, though.”
I did.
Sakurazuki Tansetsu was right in that the world was a mishmash of eve-
ryone’s ideals.
To someone aiming to establish a global domination over conscious-
nesses, the influence of junkies getting high must have been a hindrance.
“Hmph. Ever heard the saying ‘the only thing Switzerland has invented in
all its peace and democracy is the cuckoo clock’? Want me to guess? Sure, the
world may have become peaceful, but no meaningful pieces of art have
emerged in the last ten years, have they? No new Spielberg or Jimi Hendrix.”
“So old school,” JJ chuckled. “But San Diego has become such a pretty
town now. You won’t find any detritus on the ground, it’s that clean. Every-
one’s thrilled with it.”
Such a San Diego isn’t worth shit.
“And one more thing, JJ, wasn’t there a case where some of your subordi-
nates got murdered in quick succession soon after you became a drug king?”
“...Oh, that. But those were—”
“Suicides disguised as murders. I know. My question is about all of them
having been found with a foot hanging. Do you know what this meant?”
“Eh...was there any meaning to it?” I was observing his expression and
reactions. I was still a detective, and since I’d always been around liars, I was
pretty confident in my ability to snuff out lies. However, I didn’t pick up an-
ything from him. He said with a quizzical expression, “...That kid from the
Pinehouse, Nils Mikami, was there too. You should ask him for details.”
“I see, I’ll try that,” I said.
Could The Hanged Man = Odin be a simple coincidence? Could seven peo-
ple all die in the same way without anyone’s interference?
I then recalled one more thing.
“My last question. ...JJ, do you know what ‘Pineapple Home’ is?”
 The question mouthed, I wondered to myself...what if that was a real or-
phanage?
I was anxious. A huge orphan massacre had occurred there.
Lord Whiplash.
But JJ knitted his eyebrows and said, “Pineapple Home? ...Not the Pine-
house?”
“Yeah.”
“Beats me...what’s that?”
“You don’t need to know.”
It was better if he didn’t.
Now, only to go home, I thought. I had to recruit my allies in the Pinehouse,
and there was probably still a lot I had to think about or learn, but my busi-
ness here was done. I didn’t want to know anything more about this future.
“See you,” I said and was about to jump to Princeton Hotel, when JJ spoke.
“You’re going back, Disco? Are you okay with that? The moment you dis-
appear, all the methods to ease the children’s burden Norma had come up
with will disappear, too, you know?”
“...”
Norma’d said no main children had been sexually abused in the last four
years...but there had been prior to that. There was until 2015, so they had been
made to suffer for a whole nine years. There were many children I ought to
save.
Plus, the ‘future me’ who was still kidnapping was living proof I would
inevitably leave this future.
“Norma was upright...but by no means special,” I said. “There are many
like her. Some, even more competent. Any world has people capable of re-
placing her at work. Even more so here, since sacrificing children made this
world prosper.”
“...Wait, hold on, Disco...don’t go. Stay some more. Everything will truly
end when you leave... I’m not telling you to come along for her burial, but stay
around a bit more. I mean, it’s that Norma’s burial, the only one she’ll ever
have.”
The fuck are you saying after killing her, I thought, but didn’t say any-
thing; I looked at Norma’s corpse on the ground, but that wasn’t Norma to
me. Even though that body was shaped like Norma, it was a mere shell to my
eyes.

“You’re...not angry?”

JJ asked, startling me.

“...You’ve got Norma’s corpse lying right beside you but you keep asking
bullshit questions...don’t you see a problem? Did you lose all interest in her
now that you know I’ll steal her from you and break her?”
Despite these reproaches being stuffed into my face, I seriously couldn’t
muster any energy. My blood wouldn’t boil for Norma anymore...I agreed this
was problematic...thinking that, I looked at JJ’s face; he’d finally managed a
machiavellian smile.
“You can’t get angry. ...Ain’t that right? Heh. All in all, my job is done...”
He retracted his grin. “You’re such an idiot, Disco. How could you not love
Norma as strongly as you love kids?”
I was once again taken out of the blue and stood still.
“You’re to blame for running far away when Kozue was on the line,” JJ
said something cryptic. “I may be weak, but so are you. No matter the era, the
weak always get exploited.”
I recalled the characters Lord Whiplash had written on the window.
弱悪強罰.
Did JJ actually know about the Pineapple Home and was deceiving me?
 However, JJ continued as such: “No...you might actually be strong, unlike
me...? You did hug Norma when she was on the brink of death instead of flee-
ing...”
“The fuck are you saying, JJ?” I couldn’t help asking. “What’s your point?”
“Well, you see, here’s the gist of it: ...Thinking it through, in the
end...Norma never gave me a proper answer to my question. She said...she
loved me, but what I asked was...”
The glitter in JJ’s eyes faded away; I caught that.

“‘Do you like me as much as you liked Disco?’”

Before he could finish mouthing it, I exerted my concentration to throw

the bomb I’d inserted in his stomach earlier outside the building, high above
Chofu.
Bang, thanks to the thick glass panes of the chairman room we only heard
the muffled explosion of the beetle-shaped bomb, moreover, given how
crowded with cars and people the streets had become after the redevelop-
ment, it must have blended with the bus and car engines or the cacophony of
the city, and almost no one picked it up...it was a small bomb. With just
enough explosive power to kill one person.
JJ, who had closed his eyes and was waiting to blow up, eventually opened
his eyes, then breathed out all the air he’d stored up.
“...! Why...”
“As if I’d let you commit suicide, moron. You’re gonna wait here alongside
Norma’s shell for the moment all turns to void.”
I hadn’t saved him out of kindness or duty. This was a punishment.
It’s not that I was strong and JJ weak. Nor like I had won against him. I...in
the end, was dragged left and right at JJ’s pace. That was a fact.
 Even so, this wasn’t my retaliation...this punishment was simply the big-
gest task I was charged with by the righteousness of the world I believed in.
I could tell JJ had become empty inside. No grief or anger was left in him,
not even despair.
But I still had hope and things to do.
This future had nothing...even Norma had departed. I gave her corpse a
last look, then averted my gaze; however, that’s when I found the last string
of fate remaining here.
Next to her corpse, on the glass table, next to the plate of orange confec-
tions I’d half eaten, there was a paper bag with black inscriptions on its side;
it was the name of the confectionery.

Makuriya

Itou’s voice surged in my mind.

These confections are from a newly built confectionery, they’re pretty de-
licious~.

11

How strongly can people influence others?

How clearly can that influence be conveyed?
How long can it last, how far can it reach, and is it possible to measure any
of that?
Could one fine-tune that with enough experience interacting with others?

“JJ, thank you for these confections.”

 Hearing that shortly after he’d failed to blow himself up, JJ gave me a
blank look for a second.
“...? Ah, sure.”
He said.
“Do you often get some from there?”
“Eh? What?”
“The confections from this Makuriya.”
“I don’t really know...I leave that stuff to the girls... Why?”
I observed him again; he didn’t seem to be hiding anything. Of course, he
could still be a pathological liar...
I headed for the door.
“Hey Disco, where are you going?” JJ was confused seeing me quickly walk
away, but I ignored him.
I opened the door; Itou and the other girl behind the counter on the side
were shaking and looking frightened. They must’ve heard all the screaming
and explosions. Itou raised a brief shriek and covered her mouth with both
hands. She must have peeked at the door. “Madam...” I looked back. Norma
was visible from here. Well, not like this future would last long enough for
this to become a problem.
“Itou-san.”
“...”
“Itou-san.”
“Ah, yes.”
“You have more of these confections, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry, was there maybe a problem with those...”
“Nothing wrong with them, but tell me. The store you bought them from
is called Makuriya, right?”
“Yes, yes. It is.”
“Didn’t you say it was built recently?”
“Ah, yes, I’m not entirely sure, but yes. But...yes.”
“Which is it?”
 “It was. Ah, please hold on a second...” Itou said and plunged her hand
below the counter, hurriedly searching for something. “Ah, I-I found it.
Thank God. This is their pamphlet.”
I received the CD case-size pamphlet Itou presented me with shaky hands,
and looked at it. It had pictures of confections and the store. It had a list of
their products and their slogan, but no info on the company… However, in-
side, there was a square bookmark advertising the three years anniversary
since the opening. Under the line ‘To thank you for your daily support and
affection...’ were pics of the time-limited dango and mochi. Three years since
opening. I checked the pamphlet again but still nothing on main or branch
shops.
“Um...Wednesdayyy-san.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Ah, no...what happened to Madam, could that have been you...”
Me? Not in a million years. But be as it may. “Yeah. I killed her.”
She went silent, looked at me, then said, “No, I take that back.” Itou’s
voice wasn’t shaking anymore. “That can’t be the case, given your relation-
ship with Norma-san.”
What had she heard from Norma? Still, regardless of what she knew, her
memories were ephemeral.
I went back inside the room without saying anything more to Itou, closed
the door, and asked JJ while taking quick steps at him.
“Do you know Mercury C?”
My approach was in the same style as my steps: straight to the point.
However, JJ didn’t react to my probing.
“What’s that Mark Urisi...what language is that?”
He didn’t? Wasn’t this odd...? JJ obviously was interested in the Pinehouse
Case, he must’ve looked into the other members who went missing along
with me. I changed my question.
“You mentioned the Pinehouse Thirty-One, didn’t you? Tell me who they
are.”
 JJ’s puzzlement looked genuine... “Geez, so much for your last question,”
he said while manipulating the machine on his desk. On the screen he’d used
to torture me earlier was now displayed what appeared to be from a newspa-
per article. It had the title ‘The Missing 31’ with the names under it.

◯ Great detectives:
Mikami Nils-san
Disco Wednesdayyy-san
Judy Dollhouse-san
Choukuuji Keraku-san
Choukuuji Kiyuu-san
Hakkyoku Sachiari-san
Sabayama Nigouhan-san
Kakiuchi Mamajump-san
Hizuki-san
Mame Gen-san
Nekoneko Nyannyannyan-san
Runbaba 12-san

◯ Angel Bunny troupe members:

Fukushima Manabu-san
Hongou Takeshi-san (great detective ‘Hongou Takeshitakeshi’-san?)
Katou Junichi-san (great detective ‘Sakurazuki Tansetsu’-san?)
Kimura Daisuke-san
Kawai Kazuhiro-san
Hayashi Hiroyuki-san
Kamimura Tetsurou-san
Tanaka Masatsugu-san
Satou Kazuhiro-san
Yoshida Yukino-san
Hanada Sawako-san
Kawabe Keisuke-san
 Miyazaki Natsue-san
Hiraki Takako-san
Mizorogi Fumie-san
Kajiwara Ayako-san
Nomura Rie-san
Nonaka Mami-san
Obata Aki-san

Mercury C wasn’t there.

Compared to the 31 I’d counted at the Pinehouse Mercury C had been re-
moved and Runbaba 12 added.
It wasn’t unnatural for Runbaba 12 to be on this list. He was the seven-
teen-year-old Mitamura Saburou who came from the past and returned there
soon after...for someone who wasn’t inside, there was no reason he would be
treated any differently from the other missing members. That was fine. But
why was Mercury C missing? How could no one remember the guy who sent
Dezuumi flying, used the policemen as his slaves, and never hid his violent
behavior in front of the media? Could he have disappeared from the footage
the camera present there captured?
If Mercury C had crossed the wall of space and came from this future, his
rampage and any trace of it would be swept clean with him returning to this
side, with only the outline of the Pinehouse Case remaining...I imagined, and
realized something. If Mercury C was an intruder from the future, then my
entire experience at the Pinehouse, from start to finish, would have been a
fiction maintained by him...just like this future eleven years in the future that
had been maintained by Norma. That would mean I knew absolutely nothing
about the actual Pinehouse Case left in history. This power of manipulating
and traveling spacetime came from my experience at the Pinehouse, so would
I lose all of that if Mercury C the intruder were to disappear...?
 However, according to the newspaper article displayed before me, I would
go to the Pinehouse regardless of Mercury C’s existence, play my role as a
detective there, and disappear along with all the other great detectives... What
would have happened to me without Mercury C? What wouldn’t have hap-
pened to him?
Reminiscing on his achievements, I was once again left aghast. He had re-
told me Daibakushou’s theory of the twelve words arranged radially, Doll-
house’s horoscope theory, and even Choukuuji Keraku’s theory of looping
around to accelerate blood loss, even though he’d come up with it on a whim.
He’d repeatedly told me Think, Detective, but also never gave me any time to
think. He’d kept a reasonable distance from me after Hakkyoku’s deduction
started, but when Sakurazuki Tansetsu sent me to the Pinehouse Theater, he
was the one who came and brought me back. Aah...and most importantly,
Mercury C was the one who sent Dezuumi, the one who solved the case and
its only survivor, to the hospital!
Without Mercury C, wouldn’t the great detective Dezuumi Style have
ended the case in a completely different way?
I’d checked the post-case articles in the 2017 library, and at the time the
story of Mitamura Saburou’s suicide written there only looked like bullshit
Dezuumi had fabricated on the spot...but what if that was based on reality?
What was reality?
What did I know?
...Thinking further, I realized more.
Was I, too, not the ‘real me’ but a ‘fictional me’? Not only had that thug
been in the Pinehouse with me the whole time, he had also brought me back
to the real world from the Pinehouse Theater, went to the Princeton Hotel
with me, and sent me to the year 2019. There’s no denying I’d been strongly
influenced by Mercury C...then when he would leave the other side of
spacetime, would I disappear too? Would I vanish in thin air?
But what would happen if he never did and stayed on the other side for-
ever? Would this become the actual future? Or maybe this fiction would
merely survive for a long time, but eventually his life would vanish, causing
a reset...wait, no, in this future it wasn’t guaranteed that one would eventu-
ally die. Right. If one looks past the child sacrifices and has the necessary fi-
nancial power, they can use the Cozue Method to live half-eternally. And it
wasn’t impossible for Mercury C to never cross to this side, either. So, if this
fiction were to never end, would it be any different from reality?
What would happen if Mercury C were to be on the other side of spacetime
when it reaches the 15th of July 2006 at 23:26? Would this fictional spacetime
disappear? Or would it continue to exist as a fiction even after the folding?
To begin with, wasn’t this Cozue Method-ridden future I’d seen the con-
tinuation of a fictional past?
Then, when that fictional past on the other side of the wall disappears,
how much of this fictional future would remain? What exactly was set in
stone? What did the true future look like? Hakkyoku and I both visited the
future and read articles about the Pinehouse Case, but those articles belonged
to a fictional future carrying on from an equally fictional past...so we had no
guarantee any of them recorded events that had actually happened, did we?
Mercury C had arrived at the Pinehouse after the case started, so there was no
changing Mitamura Saburou had died there. Him crawling around the hall-
way on the brink of death and drawing a circle of blood, as well as the great
detectives being gathered to decipher the reason behind that should still have
happened. But there was no way of measuring how much we deviated from
reality after Mercury C and I joined. Was the Pinehouse really a result of
roundening the Cottage Natsukawa? If consciousness could bend spacetime,
wasn’t the round Pinehouse actually severed and straightened into the Cot-
tage Natsukawa due to Mercury C’s guidance? Couldn’t he have prepared the
parking lot hidden between rooms 8 and 9 ahead of time, before any of us got
the chance to witness it? ...Or had he simply connected the space of the Pine-
house to a random parking lot without any of us noticing...?
I could keep on doubting forever.
 But that’s not what I should’ve been doubting. There was something much
more fundamental.
What had been Mercury C’s initial objective when coming from the future?
It couldn’t have been mere horseplaying, could it?
Well, given the guy, it’s not totally impossible, but would he really do that?
I gave up. Thinking about Mercury C’s personality wouldn’t lead me any-
where. He was such a blind spot to me, I couldn’t make any rational judgment.
Let’s instead think about what he’d done. Right. Even if the entire spacetime
was fictional, his behavior and its consequences were real. Just facts. That’s
the fundamentals.
What had Mercury done? First, he came into our room in Princeton Hotel
along with Hoshino and beat me up, then it was somehow decided he’d come
along with me to Fukui, after that, despite saying we’d go home quickly, he
took the lead in the Pinehouse and partook in the deduction competi-
tion...then we both gained the ability to transcend spacetime, or so I thought,
but if he’d come from the future, then he already possessed that. If that was
the case, he’d have been acting in front of me all this time...tsk, being the guy
who got constantly deceived by the people I’d thought would never ever be-
tray me, I couldn’t bring myself to reject that hypothesis.
Mercury C’s shenanigans went on. Even after we got Kozue back and con-
cluded the case he stayed at the Pinehouse, then accompanied me to the scene
of her abuse in Princeton Hotel where the two of us pondered together over
how to get past the spacetime barricade the Black Bird Man had erected.
Did he have a particular intent behind that? Or was he once again putting
up a long act to lead me somewhere?
Or was it exactly as it seemed, and Mercury C simply reacted to the inter-
esting stuff appearing before him without any fixed intent, half for fun, and
him siding with me for so long was a mere coincidence?
I realized I was once more distrusting someone for no good reason, and
stopped. The only thing I knew for sure was that, even though I had no idea
whether I would’ve come that far without Mercury C, thanks to him being
here, things had gone relatively smoothly. He’d explained to me the gist of
the case at the Pinehouse, brought me back from the world that was neither
here nor there, forced me to go to the Princeton Hotel I was too scared to ven-
ture into alone, and sent me to this world beyond Ragnarök.
Had Mercury C foreseen I’d spot the Styron Japan building here? ...I bet no
amount of thinking could confirm that. But JJ and his employees knew I would
come here. That was a fact.
Thinking from another angle, there were not many reasons for one to ap-
proach me. According to Mitamura Saburou and Runrun the panda, the Pine-
house Case had been prepared for me, so if Mercury C still had any business
involving me now that we were done with that, it would be related to the kid-
nappings starting past the folding point. After all, I would be hiding 300 mil-
lion children somewhere over 13 years. If someone from the future wanted
anything from me, it would obviously be the hiding spot for the children.
So wasn’t Mercury C still sticking with me because I didn’t know where
that was yet?

I jumped from the Styron company’s chairman office to the address writ-
ten on Makuriya’s mini pamphlet. JJ was about to say something but there
was no stopping me anymore. I no longer had any regrets about leaving
Norma’s corpse behind. I disappeared, then appeared before a small confec-
tionery further in the residential area than the Chofu Station south entrance
roundabout. ‘Makuriya’ was written in big letters on the white store banner;
I walked past it into the shop which had many trays showcasing their various
confections. This store must’ve been quite popular as 80% of the trays were
empty in the evening.
“Welcome~,” a girl wearing oriental-style three-quarter sleeves adorned
with an apron spoke to me. “Many of our products are sold out at this hour, I
apologize for the inconvenience~.”
 The orange confections Itou had served us were only present as a picture.
The price tag had been flipped over.
“Excuse me. Can I ask something?” I said.
“Please.”
“Is a man called Mercury C working here?”
“Eh? Marc Sea, is it?”
“Mercury, followed by C. Mercury is the planet, and C the letter from the
alphabet.”
“Mercury C...is that a person’s name?”
“As far as I know, yes.” Of course she’d have questions. “But it could also
be a fake name...”
“Ahaha. Erm, I don’t think anyone working here is named that. What is
their real name?”
“Well, the thing is, the person in question maintains that’s his real name.”
“I see. What kind of person are they? A man?”
“Yes. A well-built man of average height, short hair, and a young face...he
is around 25 years old I would say?”
“Mhmm. We have three men working here as artisans, but they are all very
young, around 20. And none of them are particularly muscly...”
“Ah, I see. Does Makuriya have any other locations?”
“It doesn’t~, at least not in Chofu.”
“This place was built three years ago, right?”
“It was.”
“Had this store been around somewhere else before that?”
“Eh, of course not~. It was newly made by young people.”
“Hmm.”
Ruminating, I recalled what Mercury C had told me in the bullet train
headed for Fukui.
It’s behind the University of Electro-Communications.
The University of Electro-Communications was approximately one kilo-
meter north of Chofu Station’s north entrance. This place was near the south
entrance, on the complete opposite side. Nobody living in Chofu would get
that wrong.
Also, after that I asked whether it was fine for him to skip work, and this
is what he replied:
I’m the owner, so no problem.
“Excuse me. Who is the owner of this store?”
The girl behind the counter smiled.
“It’s me~.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“I will have a dango, please.”
“Ah, right away. Thank you very much. Is this one fine with you?”
“Yeah. Oh, and I don’t need a bag, I’ll take it like that.”
“Thank you.”
I received the green dango. I had no idea what ‘yomogi’ was, but its re-
freshing and calming scent reminded me of absinthe. Absinthe was the li-
queur that killed Verlaine. Also it was cheap, very addictive, and could cause
hallucinations when the addiction got bad. However, my worries were rather
about whether the coins I handed to the owner were still accepted in 2019.

Could Mercury C’s statement about being the owner of Makuriya have not
been a lie, but just random stuff he’d made up and that would become a reality
ten years down the line? Through a sort of butterfly effect. Previously I’d
never have seriously considered this hypothesis, but now that I knew con-
sciousnesses influenced the shape of the world, I couldn’t easily reject it. Our
consciousnesses had a strong reliance on words. JJ had said the same thing,
hadn’t he? In 2019 all cutting-edge technology stemmed from analyzing lan-
guages.
 Or, I constructed yet another hypothesis. Was it possible that both Maku-
riya and Mercury C working as its owner actually happened, but those facts
got forgotten over the last ten years?
That was conceivable in many ways. To begin with, that would’ve hap-
pened when the girl who opened the shop and her colleagues were in middle
or high school, so they might’ve spotted it around the town and forgotten
about it. Or they might actually remember but are feigning ignorance in fear
of getting criticized over plagiarism of a brand name...
I could think of many more ways, but I had to soon stop. I might’ve been
attempting to deceive myself to get rid of the idea Mercury C had purposefully
lied to me and approached me with an evil plan in mind. I might’ve simply
wanted to deny that Mercury C had betrayed me.
I could come up with any reason for anything inside my head. But getting
ahead of myself through words was dangerous. Especially since I knew how
powerful those were.
Anyway, I had to reassert what was most important to me. Something fac-
tual and real. What was that?
The children, obviously. The ‘future me’ was frantically hiding children.
Even if that was in a fictional future built upon a fictional past, I was just as
fictional as those, so they were my reality. In this given situation there was
nothing I could do except giving it my best. If, upon Mercury C returning from
whence he had come, the past was corrected to match the actual flow of
events and everything that had happened here counted for nothing, so be it.
It would not have been useless for ‘this me’. ‘This me’ would be gone too,
anyway. I would have no influence over spacetime after it got corrected. It was
best for me to focus on kidnapping, hiding, and protecting the children.
300 million in 13 years. How many people would I need to gather 300 mil-
lion children and shelter them...but before I thought about that, I needed to
think of where I would hide them...I needed to find that place. A place nobody
could ever discover.
A place not even Mercury C could discover.
 To do that, my best shot was investigating this post-Norma’s death 2019
that was bound to vanish. A ‘future me’ was here, somewhere. Given how JJ
had foreseen my visit there might still be someone monitoring me, but it
didn’t matter what people on this side learned, it would get reset once I left
anyway. Naturally, I had to be careful about getting captured and restrained,
but that risk was low. After all, I had met the ‘future me’ that would come
back to the Pinehouse. I would inevitably come back. ...Along with Mercury C.
I had no idea what would be waiting for us after getting back to the Pinehouse,
but one thing at a time. I racked my brain for a way to somehow find the chil-
dren. The children I was about to hide. That was equivalent to searching for
the hiding spot.

A spot nobody would ever discover; where could that be? Moreover, one
where I could hide 300 million children I’d kidnapped from all over the
world...it had to be a flat land. I didn’t know the state of international affairs
in 2019, but even back in 2006 there wasn’t anywhere on Earth one couldn’t
check through spy satellites if they really wanted to. ...But if I didn’t have to
gather them all in one spot, there was a much simpler solution. I had no giant
dome capable of hiding 300 million children, but there were countless roofs
that could each cover one child. I didn’t even need to cover them fully. They
only needed to be taken out of their parents’ sight...so the room next over
might do the job. If for a few minutes...that might be too much, but for a few
seconds, if I could move the children prior to the parents noticing their ab-
sence, they should have some trouble finding them. And if I could use the few
minutes or seconds I’d gained from this to eradicate the Cozue Method, then
the parents should find the kids on their own...but then the parents should
get their kids back so quickly they hardly notice they had disappeared, so
given the parents’ uproar in 2019 either that plan wasn’t going well or hadn’t
been carried out. Moreover, this method might keep the children out of sight
from parents or other normal people for an instant, but it wouldn’t work
against those manipulating time. Even I could open and check the contents of
a building composed of walls, a roof, and a floor in a matter of seconds.
I guess I had to hide them in a crevice in spacetime. Somewhere nobody
would suspect a space to be.
I once again recalled Mercury C’s words.
Listen well. When two spacetime benders face off, victory is decided by
how much you can surprise your opponent. It all depends on how far ahead
you can read, how much you’ve predicted. And how inventive your ideas are.
Even if he had said that to deceive me, it was true in essence.
I had to be inventive.
I had no idea how many people worked at Blackswan, but I needed to hide
children somewhere no amount of them could ever hope to find. Somewhere
that would make them jump out of their seats.
Then how about making them think I’d choose a crevice of space but going
for a star far away from Earth? We had yet to discover a habitable planet for
humans in 2006, but how about in 2019? I could gather as much information
as needed through time travel. If we ever were to find a livable space, I could
travel to that era, check out that place, and hide them somewhere there in a
different time; how about that? Or what about sheltering the 300 million chil-
dren on a planet yet to be born for an instant?
It wouldn’t work, it’d get found out, I quickly realized. It was futile to
choose a place others had discovered. JJ and the Blackswan guys would surely
check any place people could venture to. But I wasn’t an astronomer, I
couldn’t find new planets on my own. I could reach the outskirts of the uni-
verse in an instant, but I wasn’t left with enough time to randomly search for
inhabitable planets.
Where would I hide them?
Asking myself that, I realized. In times like this, I always profiled the cul-
prit, put myself in their shoes, and followed their steps.
 But this time I was running after myself. Was I capable of locating where I
myself was hiding? Did I know myself well-enough for that? Could I really
outdo the me who was trying to fool me?
Hold on, to begin with, I was searching for the future me. He had been me
and then lived for some more, so anything I could think of or do, he had al-
ready experienced. It was exceedingly easy to fool me. He only had to go
somewhere I hadn’t been and choose a method I hadn’t thought of.
As long as I was hiding from myself, I had no chance of ever winning.
Then I’d change sides and command to myself:
Now is the 31th of October 2019 at approximately 15:45. I will remember
this. And I will without fail come to meet myself at this time. Come. If you
cannot, send someone in your stead!
I walked away from the south entrance’s roundabout, into a narrow, de-
sert street as I promised, swore, begged, and prayed to myself; however, the
‘future me’ never came out, nor did any representatives. Had I forgotten
where this random street was? I considered, and changed my location.
There was no way I would forget about the Villa Hapira Kojimacho; I
jumped there.
The maisonette-style condominium Kozue and I had occupied for a mere
two months had its walls repainted and received some modifications, chang-
ing its mood completely. At least the shape of the house and the trees in the
yard had stayed the same, plus, despite the moving ins and outs, the area
seemed to still be for the same social class, so the overall atmosphere hadn’t
changed much. I headed for room 303, and to my surprise no one was living
there; it couldn’t be a coincidence. I jumped inside without opening the door.
The dim living room and kitchen were unfurnished, but they were undeniably
the same rooms Kozue and I had shared. I opened the patio door and walked
outside. To me, only a few days ago, as soon as I went out in the backyard I
would be greeted with the frenzied cries of cicadas going shawawawawa-
wanwanwanwaaaaaaah as if I was standing atop a mountain composed of
millions of shaking bells, and yet I couldn’t hear any bugs now, the only
sound came from the Autumn breeze passing by me and greeting my ears. I’d
come from Summer, so I was feeling the cold in short sleeves.
I was rubbing my arms, faced by a single ginkgo tree. It must get great
sunlight, as its leaves were dyed in a pure Autumn yellow. Ooh, so that’s the
color ginkgos take, I stood still in front of this new experience and admired
the golden leaves looking ready to start pouring down any minute. I then low-
ered my gaze and found out my unfinished attempt at writing my name at the
base that had ended with ‘DISC’ was still slightly visible. What had become of
the knife and fork from the Uno Chiyo dining set I’d buried under? ‘Kozue’s
feelings’ = Morinaga Koeda had told me she unburied them back when she
was stealing Kozue’s body as the ‘future Kozue’, but Koeda thought herself
to have come from the future at the time, her testimony was invalid.
I looked up at the ginkgo and thought once more to myself.
Future me, come here.
There is no one around. I just teleported, so it would take anyone some
time to find me again.
Now is a good time to come.
Come.
But no one appeared. Still, having nothing to do while I was waiting, I dug
below the ginkgo with my hands. After going through ten centimeters of cold
dirt, I came across a fork and knife wrapped in plastic wrap. The rainwater
and mud had penetrated the wrap and made them rust, but I could still dis-
cern the nostalgic cherry blossom pattern. For a second I had light expecta-
tions this wrap would contain a letter addressed to me, but there was none of
that. No one else had touched this knife and fork since I’d buried them. Koeda
must’ve unconsciously taken a peek inside the dirt when she appeared as the
‘future Kozue’. She was born from Kozue who possessed the same
spacetime-bending powers as me. That was child’s play to her.
I peeled off the wrap, took out the knife, crouched, and started carving the
last ‘O’ after the ‘DISC’ when certain letters surged in my mind.
 C→O→C→O→C.
九十九十九.

What was that again?

Tsukumojuuku was the name of a great detective Daibakushou Curry = Sa-
kai Tsutomu had taken during his second coming to the Pinehouse. Appar-
ently he also appeared in one of Mitamura Saburou’s novels but I hadn’t read
that.
C→O→C→O→C.
What about that?
Pa-chom-pa-chom-pa.
What was it?
I recalled.
The first five letters in Coco Chanel.
Dana ‘Chanel Chanel’ Strummers whom Norma Braun despised.
When I was living in the orphanage Pineapple Home as ‘Odoriba Mi-
zutarou’ I’d made the connection between these five letters and the video
game Pac-Man, but engraving a ‘O’ next to a ‘C’ had made me remember
something else, so I thought further.
Moments before I could first see the Cottage Natsukawa in the Pine-
house’s hallway, I looked at Mercury C and thought that The ‘C’ of his name
he wouldn’t explain to me might’ve been an indicator to destroy the barrier
of this ‘◯’. Maybe it was another symbol telling me this round Pinehouse was
split. And then we actually reverted the Cottage Natsukawa that had been
roundened into the Pinehouse to its original shame, then roundened it again
after the case to my instructions...
C→O→C→O.
If this actually meant ‘The Cottage Natsukawa is to be roundened into the
Pinehouse twice,’ then,
 C→O→C→O→C.
Wouldn’t this be indicating ‘The Pinehouse is to be straightened into the
Cottage Natsukawa twice’?
Or was this merely an impromptu idea? Speaking of impromptu, thinking
of Coco Chanel’s first five letters in the astronomy club room with Norma be-
fore my eyes was, too, but I had constantly been discovering meanings in
these internal thoughts of mine.
If the Pinehouse were to be opened once more, what in the world would
appear before me? The only reason I’d roundened the Cottage Natsukawa a
second time was simply that I found the gazes of the media and police people
surrounding it to be a distraction, so wouldn’t it open like normal?
Wait...would the Pinehouse even open a second time? I recalled
Hakkyoku’s testimony.
No matter what I tried, I couldn’t enter the Pinehouse in the moments
prior to that time.
And the 31 people including him trapped inside the Pinehouse disappeared.
Then who would open the Pinehouse?
Could it be the one missing from the Pinehouse Thirty-One, Mercury C?
If ‘C’ was the open form of ‘O’, then Mercury C would be fit for the role.
However, why would he do that?
...Was that somehow related to the 31 of us disappearing?
Opening the house would reveal a space. The first time led us to the Cot-
tage Natsukawa’s parking lot, but would it be the same the second time? Had
we spent over ten years inside that parking lot and were now considered de-
ceased? Really?
...If I was there, was I hiding the children there as well?
To begin with, was it possible to hide 300 million children inside the Pine-
house?
I admonished myself; I should not be overwhelmed by the number 300
million. I could partition spacetime. I couldn’t imagine how many I’d need to
look after these children for their whole lives, but at least there was no prob-
lem in securing the space. I knew how to. Plus, even the six-year-old Kozue
was made to wait alone in the Pinehouse. Pineapple Tunnel. It was cylindrical,
but not nearly tall enough to be called a ‘tunnel’. Anyhow, she had spent a few
days inside the Pinehouse...thinking that, I remembered about Pineapple-
chan.
‘Yukizuka Pineapple’ was a character in a novel Mitamura Saburou wrote
under the name Anbyouin Owaru after moving into the Pinehouse.
Pineapple-chan was the ghost of a child said to frequently appear in the
premises of the Pinehouse ever since its construction...seeing on the net that
Pineapple-chan wanted to dance, I thought Kozue was calling for my name,
so I kinda looked past the discrepancy in time because she was involved in
timeslip shenanigans, but was this Pineapple-chan really Kozue wandering
through spacetime?
Could the voices Mitamura Saburou had heard at the Pinehouse when he
was living alone be the voices of children I’d hid in a crevice in spacetime,
leaking out at an unknown frequency, calling for me...?
There was a tear in spacetime right between the writer Mitamura
Saburou’s office and bedroom.
Maybe the children were hard to find...or to even search, because instead
of hiding them in the future, on this side, I’d done so past the wall, beyond
the folding point.
I was writing the ‘O’ deep in the trunk with the tip of the knife. I was writ-
ing ‘◯’. I carved it over many times. With the knife going around and around
and around, in circles.
Was this ‘O’ = ‘◯’ I was finally carving telling me this idea was ‘correct’?
The moment I completed the ‘DISCO’, I heard my own voice.
Go and dance, Discotheque.
I was Odoriba. I was made to keep on dancing.
Nobody would come here, waiting any more was useless. I understood that
under the ginkgo. It was partly because myself and those around me were
busy and meeting me was risky, but most importantly, I had already gained
enough here. And by keeping on dancing, I would reach what I needed with-
out relying on the ‘future me’ or others.
And because I learned that now, I would ditch my promise with myself 13
years from now.
This world’s events are all decided by the interactions between destiny
and wills, they say. Did you know?
I knew. Me coming to the year 2019, finding the Styron Company, and
completing my name on the ginkgo tree in Villa Hapira Kojimacho were all
made possible by destiny and wills. As long as I had a correct and strong will,
destiny would follow suit.
Let’s go to the Pinehouse, I thought. It had yet another secret I had to dis-
cover. If the children were hidden there, there must be some hints in there.
I threw away the knife and stood up. I looked up at the ginkgo tree and the
high Autumn clouds covering the sky.
I clearly remembered the Pinehouse’s location.
At the summit of a mountain about ten minutes East of West Akatsuki Yuu
Yuu in West Akatsuki, Fukui Prefecture, by taxi.
There were even higher mountains to the West, not to mention the sun set
early in Japan in Autumn, so it must be in the shadows by now. However, there
was no doubt in my mind the sky would still be bright.
I jumped from Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s room 303’s backyard to the 2019’s
Pinehouse.

12

The weather in Fukui was clear except for a light layer of sunset clouds;
that beautiful and delicate crimson carp-looking sky was obstructed by the
dark silhouette of a mountain. I descended in front of the Pinehouse and was
basked in a cacophony of insect noises I couldn’t hear in Villa Hapira
Kojimacho. I looked around. The atmosphere was wholly different from when
I’d come with Mercury C for Mitamura Saburou’s case, but that wasn’t just
because of the absence of media-related people; nobody seemed to be main-
taining the building, yard, or fence, so weeds had infested the grounds, ivy
had taken over the surface of the building’s walls, and the surrounding forest
had engulfed the fence as part of its territory—with the Pinehouse being next
on its list. The path connecting to the mountain’s foot was full of cracks,
overridden with grass, and had become as dry as a rice cracker, meaning no
cars would dare venture on it and nobody was coming here. As for the build-
ing...it was certainly dirty and damaged by nature, however, the entrance
door and all the glass panes were still in place and intact, and there was no
graffiti anywhere.
That was very unusual for a building in the far countryside which was
abandoned after a murder case that made the news. Places like that always
attract the attention of stupid, local youngsters that force their way in, make
it their hang-out spot, and accelerate the decay of the building.
And yet, although it had been conquered by the forest’s vegetation, the
Pinehouse showed no trace of human impact.
It kinda felt like it had accelerated the forest’s encroachment as a means
to keep people away.
The tall weeds separating the main gate from the building and the ivy cov-
ering the walls from the foundation to the roof looked almost like a disguise
to mimic the forest, didn’t it?
The Pinehouse I was observing from before the gate looked as if it was
feigning ignorance while actually being slightly frightened inside.
The Pinehouse was still closed and round. Probably because no one saw it
as the Cottage Natsukawa. My consciousness hadn’t changed from when I’d
closed it in 2006 either, and I wasn’t going to carelessly open it. I knew how
easy consciousness could be fooled. I also knew how hard it was to overcome
misunderstandings, personal preconceptions, or hasty assumptions. One
shouldn’t instill superfluous vision onto things. C→O→C→O→C indicating the
Pinehouse was to be opened and closed twice might also mean it wouldn’t
open or close a third or fourth time. On the second time it should be opened
in a new way...to reveal the Pinehouse’s secret.
I warped past the surrounding grass, skipped the door and windows, and
entered the Pinehouse.
The cries of the forest’s insects faded in the distance.
It was even darker inside, but the skylight above me was bright. None of
the pizza slice-shaped glass panes separated by the steel frames were cracked,
they were almost unblemished. Wet fallen leaves had piled up in a corner, but
these were awfully scarce given the situation.
However, the strangest thing of all was how the air hadn’t stagnated. I
could barely see any dust floating around. The air was much too clean for a
building which was closed on all sides for a long time and that no one had
maintained.
That being said, the marble floor in the hall was properly covered in dust.
I crouched and confirmed no one had walked on it. No children’s footsteps
either.
All the doors on the first and second floor surrounding the hall, 24 in total,
were closed.
I strained my ears. Was Pineapple-chan still around?
...I heard nothing. But it’s not like I didn’t sense anything. Rather, I was
convinced.
I was not alone here. There was something in this building, living or not,
hiding its presence.
Now, I had returned to the Pinehouse, but what came next? I could try
opening every one of these doors, but I didn’t believe that would lead to any
discovery. Splitting the walls between rooms 8 and 9 and checking the Cot-
tage Natsukawa’s parking lot was another option, but I’d rather not for as
long as I could. I had more to think about before that.
I would hide the children.
I would decide on where to hide them.
Somewhere convenient.
 After all, I was in a hurry. I had a quota. There were many children I wanted
to save, I ought to save, and even 300 million of them wasn’t nearly enough.
I had to decide on that secret spot based on my situation and the condi-
tions I was given. I had to think of it only based on ideas I could come up with
now.
Put another way, I could find the place I’d kept hidden from JJ and Black-
swan for 13 years. Be confident. I’d managed to do it, so I could do it.
I was inside the Pinehouse. What ways did I have here to hide something?
I could manipulate space. But the people at Blackswan could, too, and I bet
they could manage more difficult stuff. The Black Bird Man. He probably be-
longed to Blackswan. Based on the era, he might be the founder. Kozue’s
abuse room he’d set up. He had defiled her twice in front of my eyes. I couldn’t
do anything...I wasn’t sure the current me could rival that fucker. But I’d
faced them for 13 years without losing much ground.
I knew I could find it.
I had to think.
Everything was inside me.
That was true for the Pinehouse case as well. I could very well have solved
it as soon as I reached the Pinehouse. I had the answer by the time I talked
with Kozue. Mitamura Saburou had killed Mitamura Saburou. SS Nail Peeler’s
existence. Even the Cottage Natsukawa wasn’t hidden by any means. I simply
couldn’t see it. And because I was so slow in noticing that, many great detec-
tives had died...
And now I was left alone, with no great detectives around to give me hints.
But I would find what I was looking for in spite of that, so I already had all
the hints I needed inside me. I merely wasn’t seeing the truth yet.
What did I have inside me?
Experience.
Did I have any oversight in my experiences?
Oversights, huh. Oversights.
 Everything had meaning. I’d said so myself while crossing the Stairway to
Heaven above the forest at night.
Had I grasped all the meanings?
However, I couldn’t afford to go over every single element individually
and investigate them. The Pinehouse contained a gargantuan amount of
meanings. And had from the very start. The twelve words laid out on the
mountain. ‘To wash and peel off,’ ‘to wash and peel off,’ ‘wednesday,’ ‘van-
guard,’ ‘ovary,’ ‘sixty,’ ‘repeat,’ ‘october,’ ‘when,’ ‘orchestra,’ ‘now,’
‘twenty-sixth day.’ We ended up erecting Stairway to Heaven in the direction
of ‘wednesday,’ but I had no time to ponder about hidden meanings behind
the other words and cook up some great detective’s deduction. Anyway, the
next stop was horoscopes and Western astrology, then Kabbalah, The Bible,
and black magic—even Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology all came into
play. No amount of time would suffice to cover all of these fields in detail, and
I was in a real hurry.
I needed a more straightforward idea. I’d get the meaning afterwards an-
yway. Right, that’s how it worked. The right answer was to seek for things
that would make anyone think they were set in stone from the get go.
What had I put into question in the Pinehouse? Even if I hadn’t noticed my
queries, what had I not understood? Well, thinking of things I hadn’t even
noticed I was doubting is no easy feat...
The sun was setting as I was thinking, coloring the sky beyond the skylight
in a darker, purple hue.
Was there still electricity here?
But if I turned the lights on, the locals might notice my intrusion. Would
it be fine if I only turned on the hall’s lights? The skylight would emit light,
but this was the summit of a mountain, the people downhill might not see it.
And if someone was hiding here, I might really need some light...thinking
that, I approached the light switch on the wall, extended a hand to it, then
recalled.
 The Pinehouse’s hall had two kinds of lights. The chandelier on the ceiling
and the normal lights on the wall around the hallway.
Wasn’t there a thing where if I turned the chandelier off and the hallway’s
lights on, the magic circle drawn on the ground would reflect on the skylight?
The circle on the ground had been mirrored to display the correct image
onto the skylight, and even the word-ridden paintings hung in every second
floor room were upside-down...
Upside down.
Mirror.
My hand still aiming at the switch, I looked up at the skylight. The hall was
dark, but the sky was still kind of bright, so nothing reflected on the glass
panes.
With the chandelier on, the reflection would be tougher to distinguish, but
with just the hallway’s lights it should display a clear picture of the hall’s sit-
uation. It should display me, the only person here, standing near the
wall...but hold on, what would I do if I saw a bunch of children’s corpses in
the skylight?

My body froze; the reason I couldn’t reach that light switch was my mem-
ories of that carnage at the Pineapple Home. Lord Whiplash. 弱悪強罰. Whu-
pshhh! Wailing children. Blood-ridden children who died after having their
flesh torn apart.
What if I was shown that again?
If Lord Whiplash told me I am you once more, how was I meant to refute
him?
I shook my head. This wasn’t the fictional Pineapple Home. It was the
Pinehouse, an actual building that existed, though a bit more ancient.
But wasn’t this a fictional future?
Who could guarantee nothing would happen?
 I was frightened, yet couldn’t get my eyes off the skylight.
I slowly realized.
My body wasn’t only frozen by fear.
I was also having a revelation.
Upside down.
Mirror.
That wasn’t the only time I’d seen mirrored scenery.
Hadn’t I seen one in the Pinehouse Theater at Point Loma, in San Diego?
Darrr-garr-darr-garr!
The all-black-leather-clad SS Nail Peeler was standing atop the round
stage lit up by spotlights while the rest of the theater was dim, and above him
the ceiling was made out of a mirror; that’s how I could see the audience seats
on the second floor and Mitamura Saburou’s circle of blood running through
them...
Pinehouse. Pinehouse Theater. Pineapple Home.
Upside down. Mirror.
I recalled a question I had regarding upside down.
It was something I’d asked JJ just earlier.
The Hanged Man Case that happened to JJ’s subordinates.
The Hanged Man = Odin.
Odin = me.
Then should I hang myself as well?
I jumped up, locked my ankles around the chandelier—the ‘center of the
world’—and dandled from there, but couldn’t see anything new.
The Pinehouse was merely dark and silent; nothing happened.
Except blood rushing up my head.
Ahaha...uhhh? Was I wrong? Embarrassed, I thought of getting down, but
stopped myself. I was convinced there was a portion of truth in there. But
something was amiss.
Maybe the idea was good, but not the execution.
 Or even the idea itself was wrong, and only the general direction I was
thinking in was correct.
I thought some more while hanging like a bat from the ‘center of the
world,’ then took my right foot off the chandelier, bent it behind my left knee,
and formed the digit 4 to recreate the correct Hanged Man posture.
Even so, nothing occurred.
Maybe, I thought. According to Norse Mythology, when Odin was staring
at the runes he wasn’t hanging upside-down but from his neck, so should I
mimic that? Yggdrasil had been made from rearranging the two snakes and
the pole they were coiled around which was originally placed next to a plant
right under the ‘center of the world’...should I hang myself from that?
But then I wouldn’t be upside-down and I’d die.
It didn’t mean I should actually carry it out. Same for Odin the One-Eyed,
it’s not like crushing one of our eyes had let us see something new. I should
just think further about that.
As soon as I got down, the blood that had climbed to my head quickly de-
scended. Phew. I breathed, made sure my feet were on the ground, and
thought. The Hanged Man on the Tarot card was depicted with a composed
expression, wasn’t that because neither the upright nor the reversed position
was the only correct option? In other words, the man depicted was simulta-
neously both The Hanged Man and The Man Floating a Bit in the Air After
Coiling Some Rope Around His Feet.
However, earlier, I was merely The Man Hanging From the Ceiling With a
Red Face. Gravity was pulling me down, so I couldn’t even maintain an un-
concerned smile.
Was it possible to be both upside-down and not upside-down?
Could I be walking on the floor and on the ceiling at the same time?
In the real world, where I couldn’t ignore gravity unlike a drawing on
some card?
What should I do to cancel the gravity I was convinced couldn’t be ig-
nored? Would something happen if I simply trusted I could ignore it? So
would changing my consciousness automatically change the way things were,
just like how it worked with time and space? Would misconceptions take pri-
ority over gravity...thinking that, I recalled something.
When I’d reverted the Pinehouse to the Cottage Natsukawa, I was sent fly-
ing by the inertia of my misapprehension being corrected and hit my head.
Wasn’t that proof that misconceptions were greater than gravity?
Right. I had experienced that. Then I could believe in it. If I fooled myself
correctly, I bet I could ignore gravity.
But how should I deceive myself? At that time I got caught off guard be-
cause I hadn’t seen it come, but could I really fall in a trap I’d set up myself?
Could I really pull off something crazy like seriously playing rock-paper-
scissors by myself with both hands?
No idea.
Even so, I got thinking about the trap.
How could I fool myself into thinking I was standing on the ceiling...clos-
ing my eyes and imagining it would never succeed. My legs were touching the
ground, reliably supporting my weight. The vivid sensations in my legs would
easily blow that lie out. It might work if I started in the air...thinking so, I tried
raising my body in the air through teleportation, but immediately fell down.
My legs were tingling from the landing shock, but I sucked it up and pondered
if I should try going higher, but gave up on that. No matter how high I went,
I could never imagine myself being upside-down if I immediately started
falling; I would crash onto the ground while concentrating, and that would be
the end of the book.
I then wondered if there was any way to rise while standing on the ground,
so I cut up a round portion of the floor of radius 30 centimeters under my feet
and manipulated its space while staying still on it like a mannequin atop a
podium; I wasted no time and moved it upside-down onto the ceiling. Heaven
and Earth had flipped. I wasn’t hanging from the ceiling, I was standing. Oooh,
I was in awe internally, however, that only lasted a second. I looked at the
floor above me, saw the skylight’s glass circle I’d exchanged with the floor
portion, then looked around the skylight I was standing on, and spotted the
dim sky under me—Heaven and Earth shook...the sky was vast, so were the
ceiling and floor, and I was miserably tiny.
The gravity I’d brought along me faded from beneath my feet. The world
I’d temporarily flipped in my head was reverted. I’d been persuaded by a sight
where something ceiling-looking should be above me and something floor-
looking should be below me.
I manipulated space to rise right before colliding with the ground, then
nyanparari. 20 I put both hands onto the marble floor and landed.
How my surroundings looked was important, I realized, still crouching.
Same for the Pinehouse, if there was no building here, nobody would walk
around this roundened space. To fool my head, first, I had to deceive my eyes.
That was the basics.
The hall not being lit up was also a problem. My brain had corrected which
way was up and which way was down because I could see the sky beneath my
feet through the skylight.
I flipped the switch I hadn’t been able to touch earlier in fear of Lord
Whiplash. The lights on the first and second floors turned on. I looked up the
hall enveloped by a dim light coming from all sides; as Sakurazuki Tansetsu
had claimed, the magic circle on the floor was correctly lit and reflected onto
the skylight.
The opposite magic mirrors.
I could see myself in the skylight along with the magic circle. ‘I’ was my-
self, not Lord Whiplash.
I could no longer see the ultramarine blue sky beyond the skylight now
that it was covered by the magic circle, so if I exchanged the whole floor and
the whole ceiling, I might actually not realize I would be upside-down—I

20
A famous catchphrase which originated from the late 60s/early 70s manga Inakappe Taishou.
Nyanko-sensei, a talking cat walking on both feet, would scream this while falling and do three
frontflips before safely landing.
thought, and tested it. I cut out the entire ceiling, chandelier included, and
switched it with the floor I was standing on.
I was once again upside-down, and once again realized my mistake. The
Pinehouse’s structure wasn’t that complex and, if you ignored the floor and
ceiling, there was barely any decoration on the wall, even so, it wasn’t so sim-
ple I could look past it when it was upside-down after the ceiling-floor ex-
change. I intuitively understood the origin of the discomfort...the stairs con-
necting the ceiling and the hallway, the handrail, and the ‘twelve constella-
tions’ objects arranged along the hallway.
I managed to hang from the ceiling longer than last time, but even then
my brain corrected my consciousness in not even ten seconds. I reverted the
ceiling and floor I’d switched the moment my feet left the inverted floor, then
carried out another nyanpararari landing through space manipulation. How-
ever, I kinda panicked this time around, hit my knees on the marble floor, and
struggled to stand up due to extreme pain.
“Gugh~~~~~~...”
I groaned and rolled on the floor, holding my knees, while thinking. I
couldn’t fool myself by simply exchanging surfaces. The Pinehouse had op-
posite mirrors, but it wasn’t built with a horizontal symmetry in mind. Obvi-
ously. People lived alongside gravity, of course they would design ceilings
and floors differently. And yet, why?
Why was it so?
Why, when it should be the first floor’s ceiling? What was the meaning
behind the other side of the hallway being furnished with carpet?

Lying on my back, holding my knees, I stopped my breath.

The carpet on the ceiling.
It was the same as the one in the second floor’s hallway. The second floor’s
floor was sandwiched between two layers of carpet.
Carpet was made to walk on it.
 That’s why it was laid out.
One could walk on the ceiling in the Pinehouse.

Until I discovered the carpet on the other side of the hallway, the plan I’d
come up with while rolling on the floor had been to flip over the entire Pine-
house. I thought that was bound to have me fooled. However, that method
was mistaken. I’d been too obsessed with standing upside-down. Even if I
flipped the Pinehouse and stood on a floor inverted compared to the sky, that
wouldn’t mean the Pinehouse or the world had lost its orientation. I’d simply
have devised a way to reverse the top and bottom.
But now I’d finally figured out a way to get rid of all traditional orienta-
tions.
The answer wasn’t in reversing.
It was in twisting.

I recalled the way to make a Möbius strip I’d learned when I was a kid.
Connecting a long strip of paper the normal way would get you a ring, but
if you twist it once beforehand, you’ll get a Möbius strip. If you run a finger
along its surface, you’ll eventually get to the inside of the strip, then back to
the outside...
How could I walk on the other side’s carpet?
Should I split the single, round plank the hallway was made out of between
rooms 8 and 9—on both ends of the Cottage Natsukawa’s passage—twist the
hallway on room 8’s side, then stick it back together?
However, I didn’t feel like I could walk beneath the passage with that.
I’d tested that earlier. I couldn’t fool my brain by merely twisting a surface.
To begin with, the hallway had a handrail on one side and a wall on another.
I couldn’t twist the hallway alone.
 It was time to apply something I’d thought of for the idea of flipping the
entire Pinehouse. Twisting entire chunks of space.
I focused. I’d do it all at once. I’d think of the details later on. I cut out the
space sandwiching the hallway’s floor consisting of the second floor’s pas-
sage and the space on the first floor—including the walls and handrail—from
the skylight to the floor, rotated it 180° at the border between rooms 8 and 9,
then connected it.
The Pinehouse was disfigured, it had achieved a shape that had been im-
possible in regular space. And I witnessed an effect I’d never calculated nor
expected.
The ceiling was loosely connected to the marble floor, and in the middle
of that, the ‘ten planets’ chandelier was split on both sides and had its arms
extending both on the floor and on the ceiling. And I was in a pretty unstable
position, lying on the hall’s floor...I could sit still as long as I thought myself
to be on the floor, but if I started doubting whether I wasn’t in reality on the
ceiling when seeing the chandelier’s arms right before me, then I’d promptly
fall upside down.
I shouldn’t be here if I wanted to stand straight, I realized, hurriedly
jumped through space, and landed on the second floor’s hallway. The carpet
was the only stable spot.
 As I started walking from before the second floor’s room 3, I saw the entire
Pinehouse undulating, but that didn’t mean the building itself was squirming.
The vertical orientation inside my head was being adjusted as my position
changed...the framework of my world itself was squirming while maintaining
its twisted structure. Rooms 4 and 5 seemed to be tilted, and yet I felt none of
that as I walked past them. The ground was where my feet were, and the sky
where my head was pointing at. I tried to take my senses by surprise by sud-
denly turning back and running in the inverse direction through the hallway
I saw to be twisted, by my feet constantly came into contact with a level sur-
face; I’d effortlessly returned to my starting point, room 3, then continued,
passing by room 2, then 1, then 12, etc...without a hitch. The disfigured sky-
light was blocking my sight so I couldn’t see the other side of the hallway, but
room 12 was on the far opposite side of room 6 where I’d been earlier, so the
floor should’ve turned 90° since, yet I was standing straight. My subjectivity
was setting the Pinehouse’s shape. Then if I continued progressing, if I con-
tinued walking straight, I should be able to walk on the ceiling after passing
the border between rooms 8 and 9 where the twisting took place without feel-
ing anything amiss...as I thought that, I recalled a truth I’d discovered back
in Princeton Hotel.
People can’t keep up with abrupt changes, with discontinuous things.
Right. People can walk on ceilings as long as they are smoothly connected.
Alright, time to put it in practice, I thought and sped past rooms 11 and
10...and came across something unexpected that stopped me in my tracks.
Past room 9 there was not the first floor’s ceiling.
There was instead a pure-white wall. It prevented me from continuing
further down the hallway, and extended up until where the ceiling and the
floor vaguely mixed—where the chandelier, that was now truly the ‘center of
the world,’ and the part of the floor where the Tree of Life was drawn joined.
Having previously experienced this, I recognized what that was.
That bright yet not dazzling wall of a pure and deep white was the out-
skirts of the world.

13

I slowly walked to that wall and touched it with the palm of my hand. It
had that same non-texture. No matter how hard I pressed, it wouldn’t push
me back, and caressing it procured no sensation. A forced act of pantomime.
Why was the outskirts of the world here?
 It was my third time running across a sensation-less, texture-less wall;
the first time was in the small bedroom of Princeton Hotel’s room 1201, where
Kozue was abused, but at the time, it wasn’t white. I could see past it.
The second time was at the border with the folded spacetime, at the out-
skirts of the universe; it was white then.
What caused this white element to differ?
My conclusion had been that the wall existed due to a difference in the
flow of time, so going off from that, we’d get the following law: When only
the speed of time is different, the wall is transparent, and when it is flowing
in the opposite direction, it is white.
Then was there a counterflowing space beyond the wall inside the Pine-
house?

I took some steps away from the wall, then ran from room 9 to room 10,
then 11, and so forth down the hallway. I passed by room 1 feeling like I was
surfing down a giant tube, then room 5, 6, 7, and when I finally got to room 8
there was a white wall blocking my path.
There should’ve been the ceiling of the first floor’s room 9 beyond this
point... Earlier too, there should’ve been the first floor’s room 8, which was
now under my feet.
I jumped over the handrail, down to the first floor. However, that motion
must’ve lacked smoothness, since I wasn’t able to walk on the ceiling beneath
the hallway. I found myself standing on the first floor’s original floor, still
unable to go past the white wall. Then I might as well run on this floor, I fig-
ured, and hurried my way from room 8 to room 7, then 6...and so forth, mak-
ing my way back beneath the hallway, but when I got to room 11, then 10...I
came to see the wall. This was unmistakably the outskirts of the world.
However, there’d been no white wall when we opened the Pinehouse into
the Cottage Natsukawa. We’d discovered the hidden bowgun and the ladder
leaning against the side walls of the Cottage Natsukawa, and we could clearly
see the forest beyond that.
But now the outskirts of the world were manifesting themselves here. I’d
simply twisted the hallway between rooms 8 and 9 before sticking it together,
so there shouldn’t have been anything between these two white walls. And
yet, the presence of these walls meant that...there indeed existed a counter-
flowing world compressed to a surface of width zero between them.
Was there anyone inside that counterflowing world?
There should be, I thought.
And they were the ones who’d invited me here.
I’d come here using the hint of The Hanged Man. I was one step away. That
space beyond the wall must have the answers I was seeking for.
Would that answer be the hidden children?
Had I hidden the children inside a counterflowing world?
Hard to tell. But if I had, the ‘future me’ should be commuting in and out
through that wall, and even if he wasn’t, my ‘future allies’ should be there. In
any case, there should at least be one person that knew about me.
I shouted.
“I’m Disco Wednesdayyy! I’m right here!”
I slammed the white wall, but felt no shock coursing through my hands.
“I’m here! Let me in!”
Despite my yells, I knew it was futile. On the other side was a counterflow-
ing world. My voice and any kind of vibration would stop at the wall, nothing
had the slightest bit of hope to reach the other side.
I’d come this far, I was really one step away. Think! Think of a way to de-
ceive yourself!
Had I overlooked anything? Had I overlooked a clue telling me how to get
past this wall?!
I pressed my forehead against the outskirts of the world in an attempt to
scan through my brain, but was too confused to parse through my memories.
I couldn’t classify them. I couldn’t sort them. I couldn’t tell what was
what...in that suffering, I pressed my head harder against the wall as I faced
my right. The white surface extended from nearby room 9 up till the ‘center
of the world’; it both seemed to pause and continue throughout in the parts
where the floor and skylight mixed in bizarre shapes...
If I followed along this wall, would I at some point come out on the other
side? I wondered to myself, but knew it couldn’t be done. If there were any
interruptions in the wall, it would mean there were no gaps between the floor
and the skylight, and if it continued, it would go on endlessly.
I reverted my gaze to my feet while sighing, then looked left this time.
Before my eyes was a rounded wall covered in wallpaper, and a door.
Beyond the door was a room, and in that room were windows.
Not just a window in the back to see the outside scenery.
In room 9’s wall, there was a square hole connecting it to room 8.
The vestige of the bay window from when this had been the Cottage
Natsukawa.

I removed my forehead from the wall and grabbed the door knob. I tried
my luck at twisting it; it wasn’t locked. I slowly opened it.
The books that formed a mess during the Pinehouse Case in what had pre-
viously been Mitamura Saburou’s office had either been confiscated or dis-
posed of, and only a few remained on the shelves. The desk had been cleared
and the chair put away beneath the desk, both only accumulating dust. The
window hole in the wall connecting to room 8 had been once again covered
by wallpaper.
Given the atmosphere I got from this office and the whole Pinehouse be-
fore I twisted it, it didn’t seem anyone had inherited the building after the
case, so would someone bother replacing the wallpaper? Would someone
abandon the house after putting that much care into it?
Or maybe, as I’d suspected, the outside look of the house was merely a
disguise to keep people away?
 Right behind the window was the head of a silver grass about as tall as me,
and further beyond that, in the forest, dark bushes were silently fluttering.
How would this scene appear in my eyes when I was walking on the ceil-
ing? I wondered for a second, but I would just need to check how it actually
worked later.
I stood by the wall which had its bay window hidden and put a hand
against it.
If I peeled this wallpaper I would merely be faced with the white wall. I
could predict that in my head. When I twisted space, I’d naturally created a
discontinuity inside the window.
And because I could comprehend and predict that, I shouldn’t carelessly
go ahead and peel the wallpaper. Once I looked at it, I would hit a dead end.
This window was my last chance. That’s what my sixth sense was telling
me. That sense which had helped me survive through many dangers was des-
perately ringing on my spine just above my hips.
I had to deceive myself. If I saw the white wall beyond this wallpaper, any
chance I had would vanish, but it would live on if I didn’t. Ultimately, I was a
detective. I searched for ambiguities and dug deeper.
What I needed to lead me to the truth and deceive myself were facts and
experience. As shown when I kept walking on the floor and nearly got to walk
on the ceiling earlier, the sensations I got when moving my body were much
stronger than any logical thinking or prediction I could come up with inside
my head.
So I would rather move. I jumped past the wallpaper without tearing it. It
was easy. I remembered how the interior of the wallpaper looked, and I could
enter even closed spaces as long as I knew their location.
It was dark inside the walls. I pushed my elbows to the side. Rub, it touched
something, and I understood. This rough, flexible surface could not be the
outskirts of the world.
It must have been the wallpaper from room 8.
The outskirts of the world weren't here.
 The wallpaper on room 8’s side had been restored, too. There was no hole,
tear, or missing parts. Sitting in the darkness on the concrete-made, square
window frame, I recalled something. At the end of Choukuuji Kiyuu’s demon-
stration, when he peeled the wallpaper off and exposed the hidden window,
there was Mitamura Saburou’s corpse someone had stolen from the hospital
inside. ‘Tsukumojuuku’ had said ‘Daibakushou’ put it in there to dissimulate
the traces he’d left when moving the corpse, but that deduction was wrong.
I’d overlooked it in the uproar of the many deductions, but what was that
about, then? If the corpse wasn’t moved using Stairway to Heaven...even if
that was ‘Tsukumojuuku’ = ‘Daibakushou Curry’ = ‘Sakai Tsutomu’s’ deed,
what meaning was there behind it? Thinking that, I came up with a theory.
Could this have been, just like The Hanged Man, a message addressed to me?
Could it have been hinting at me sitting between the wallpapers? The face of
Mitamura Saburou who was dead, naked, covered in blood, had his chest
pierced with an arrow, a metal implant on both sides of his torso, and yet
maintained an almost tranquil smile.
Was that smile confirming I was on the right track?
I couldn’t know, but regardless, I felt enthralled by the conviction that I
was once again climbing the correct stairs. The numbness in my shoulders
was keeping my whole body from shaking.
Then, hugging my knees in this dark, tiny space sandwiched between the
wallpapers, I started questioning what had happened to the flow of time. Was
there no wall here because time flowed in the same direction? Was there just
an upside-down room 8 with its furniture and bed on the ceiling beyond this
wallpaper, and I didn’t need to enter the space compressed between the white
walls, the outskirts of the universe?
No, earlier I’d wholeheartedly believed that white wall would continue
even inside the wallpaper. It wasn’t there now because I’d doubted and de-
ceived myself; in fact, it wouldn’t have been strange for the white wall to be
here and cut me in half. It must’ve been here originally. I had doubted my
understanding myself and removed the wall.
Then should the next step be to get out on the ceiling of room 8 on the
second floor?
Would I discover something new by standing on the ceiling?
Likely not, I thought. It’s like I’d thought earlier before twisting the Pine-
house: I shouldn’t actually be hanging from the ceiling, I only had to think
more deeply about it. And I’d arrived here by accomplishing that.
My newest discovery was the white walls of the outskirts of the universe,
and my destination wasn’t room 8, it was somewhere in the compressed
space in-between those walls.
I could obviously leave and stand on the ceiling of room 8 on the second
floor by now. I could visualize it and imagine mostly how it’d actually feel. To
begin with, I’d already basically walked on the ceiling many times in my trips
through the twisted hallway between rooms 8 and 9. I was convinced I
wouldn’t make any new discoveries by merely standing on the ceiling of room
8 on the second floor.
But there was bound to be something beyond the outskirts of the world.
Something I didn’t know, something I couldn’t imagine. Many such things,
perhaps.
Then I should be heading there.
I slightly lifted my body inside the pitch-black space. I also removed my
elbows from the wallpaper and curled my back, still carrying my knees, to
make sure none of my body was touching anything.
With just that, I lost track of all orientations...had I started spinning,
maybe? I couldn’t tell which way I was facing, or if I was upright, perpendic-
ular, or upside-down. I’d forgotten which way was up or down despite having
a head and a bottom.
I stuck my elbows on both sides, however, the wallpaper I’d felt earlier
wasn’t there. I got anxious, took my right hand off my knees, and extended it
out, but even then I couldn’t reach the wallpaper.
 The darkness was expanding.

Right. I could manipulate spacetime. I was also a normal human who

couldn’t fully grasp himself. I could’ve been unknowingly expanding the
space inside the window’s frame or shrinking myself.
I started to seriously panic, thinking I might disappear inside the darkness
or get stranded alone, but held it in.
Calm down.
It’d be fine.
I could move through spacetime. I could go home from anywhere, anytime.
If my body had shrunk, I could always revert it to normal after returning to
someone.
I retracted my right arm to my knees and entrusted my body to the dark-
ness. I slowly breathed in, then out.
I was like a baby, I thought. What do fetuses think about while floating in
the amniotic fluid in the darkness of the womb? Do they calmly wait for their
body to slowly grow until they’re ready to venture into the outside world?
But my body wasn’t growing anymore. In that sense, my time had stopped.
Then was the time frozen inside this dark ‘womb’?
Hold on, but I could still think, so time must still be flowing inside me, and
since I was alone in this darkness, the time here should flow similarly to
mine...I was the one imagining that, and by this point even I couldn’t tell how
big the darkness was.
Did I really have a grasp on how time flowed outside?
Moreover, at the core, were my thoughts not actually continuous? Were
they merely intermittent, with some momentaneous stoppage at some point?
And not just once, wasn’t that halt in thinking occurring very frequently? And
when that once-stopped thinking resumed its flow, how did I know whether
it conserved the same direction in time? How did I know I wasn’t thinking in
a counterflowing time?
 Weren’t people’s trains of thought literally going back and forth, pro-
gressing and regressing, because the actual time ruling our thoughts had its
direction repeatedly shuffled at random between a proper and counter flow?
How could I prove my current thoughts were occurring in the same
timeflow as the one I had when standing inside room 9?
But hold on, to begin with, did people’s internal timeflow ever match the
exterior timeflow?
Even though they were completely distinct spaces?
Even though there were numerous people outside influencing each other?
If there was someone else nearby and we were cogitating about the same
matter, our internal flow of time might sync up to an extent, but I was alone
in the dark, and that darkness was atop a countryside mountain nobody ever
approached, in the walls of an abandoned building, so was it even possible for
anyone—anywhere, at any point in time—to share the exact same train of
thoughts I was having, me, a guy floating in that nonsensical situation?
Hell no.
But I was free.
I could feel that.
If I couldn’t tell which way was my time flowing or how fast it was going,
I could just set that myself.
Then I could even enter the counterflowing world.

I then realized.
This darkness itself was the device.
It worked like a decompression chamber; it was an intermediate space to
let me enter spaces ruled by different flows of time.
Right. I wasn’t on either side of the world delimited by the white walls, I
was nowhere.
 Now that my sensation of time had become vague, I could freely choose
my destination.
Naturally, I would head to the other side of the Pinehouse’s white wall.
I let go of my knees in the darkness, straightened my back and legs, and
jumped.
I passed through the wall on the outskirts of the world and, as per usual,
felt nothing. For how hard it felt, now that I’d gone through it, it was no dif-
ferent than a concrete fence, a wooden door, or a paper sliding door. Just
something I could pass through.
However, that letdown was blown away by the surprise awaiting me at my
destination.
On the other side of the wall was decidedly not the second floor room 8’s
ceiling. It wasn’t anywhere inside the Pinehouse either. I couldn’t even im-
agine this place actually existing.
Before my eyes was a giant collage world. As far as I could see, a bunch of
miscellaneous stuff were loosely collected in various spaces.
I was standing in a savanna-style grassland with the sun high above my
head, but at some distance on my right there was abruptly a rocky mountain
towering over its horizon, and on my left, although at first glance I thought
the ground was gradually rising, it turned out there was a beach and an ocean,
but the problem was, the blue surface was leveled diagonally towards the sky.
The summit of the ocean was round and—probably due to the high altitude
wind—was spilling some white foam. Just as I was admiring it in awe, com-
paring it with the Himalayas, a cloud appeared behind the water, flew over
the blue summit, and started descending the diagonal ocean, but the ocean
stayed calm and gave no sign of flowing down.
However, when I returned my gaze to the front, something much more
surprising appeared amongst the big summer clouds, high in the sky between
the ocean and the mountain. It was a giant ball of moss looking like a curled-
up jungle. It was floating in the air, splitting the incoming clouds in half.
However, that moon-sized jungle ball wasn’t alone. Two, three, four...more
and more of them showed up from beyond the clouds, then bounced away in
random directions. A few round shadows of nearby jungle balls arrived onto
the grassland, but then I saw other shadows of the same size on the moun-
tain’s sturdy cliff, and realized. There wasn’t just one sun. I could see two...no,
three. I checked my legs and saw seven shadows extending from me.

“Um, ’scuse?”

I got called out in Japanese, so I raised my face and saw that next to me,
about two meters away, there were two cheetahs.
I froze in place. The cheetah on the right with denser spots said, “’Sup
there,” and lowered its head, followed by the left one, with some hair sticking
above its head, who said, “’Sup.” It looked like this one only dropped its jaw
instead of lowering its head, but it was clear they’d both meant it to be a
greeting.
“Hi...” I spontaneously replied, but my voice was hoarse. I cleared my
throat. (Ahem) “Hi there.”
“You’re a human, eh?” the denser spots one said. Its plump mouth
seemed to hinder its speech, and yet it could articulate just fine.
“Ah, yes.”
“Huh? Where’s your buddy?”
“Eh? My buddy?”
“Sibling.”
“...?”
“Eh? You’re alone?”
What was the right answer here? “...Yes.”
“Woah shoot, seriously... Then can we eat it?”
“Eh? Eat what?”
“You.”
 “Uhh...”
“Hey stop that, dummy,” the cockscomb one rebuked him and clicked his
tongue.
“Ahaha, sorry. Was joking. Y’know, cheetahs don’t even attack people,”
the spotted one laughed, but I couldn’t calm down. It observed me intently
then added, “Your skin’s kinda white, and you’re shaped differently...I guess
not all humans look the same? Are you of a different breed?”
“What? Different from who?”
“Ichirou-san and Jirou-san. I think they’ll be here in a sec... Oh, here they
are.”
I looked at the direction the spotted one faced and saw two humans walk
in our direction from the rocky mountain.

Ichirou and Jirou?

“Hey, let’s go now,” the cockscomb one said. The spotted one faced me.
“What’s your name?”
“Ah, Disco...”
“Ah Disco, got it.”
“No, no, it’s Disco Wednesdayyy.”
“Heh. Weird name.”
I guess it really was, if even cheetahs thought so.
“I’m Lightweight. And this guy’s Middleweight,” it ran towards the ocean
while introducing itself and its partner. “See you around, Discotte. Bye!”
They accelerated further. They ran past me at incredible speed, and the
grassland I was standing on suddenly started following the two animals, so I
hurriedly jumped up. When they were overwriting the beach at amazing
speed and the golden grass went away from beneath me, I caught a glimpse
of a concrete road. I knew that white, dry, flat-looking yet bumpy surface.
Even if I hadn’t actually seen it in the past, I could tell. That was a road from
my hometown, The Finest City, San Diego; I’d driven over it many times. I
couldn’t tell what street or avenue it was on, nor at the corner of which block
it was, but it was undoubtedly my homeground, my very own hood.
However, that somewhat salt-smelling road soon got covered by green
lawn and disappeared.
That lawn had come along with the two Japanese boys.
“Hello, Disco-san. It has been a while.”
“Right? Ah, but it’s technically our first time meeting him, no?”
“Oh, I see.”
“Yeah.”
They talked between themselves and extended their right hand to me with
a grin. For starters I silently gave the two a handshake, then they introduced
themselves.
“I am Mitamura Ichirou.”
“I am Mitamura Jirou.”

But their faces looked nothing like Mitamura Saburou’s. Rather, they were
the spitting image of Sakai Tsutomu, who’d appeared under the names Dai-
bakushou Curry and ‘Tsukumojuuku.’ I hadn’t put it into words yet, but I
could feel another mystery clearing up inside me.

14

The two unused belly buttons among Daibakushou Curry’s three ones
were standing before my eyes.
“Sorry, I know it’s sudden,” I said, “but do you two have a belly button on
your stomach?”
Ichirou and Jirou widened their eyes.
“I’m sorry. What is a belly button?”
 “Eh? ...This.” I rolled up my shirt and showed them my gorgeous belly
button.
“Ew, you even have blonde hair on your stomach...” Jirou grimaced.
“No, no, I’m talking about this.”
I hurriedly pointed at it with a finger. The twins were astonished.
“Woah! What’s that!?”
“A scar? You were stabbed?”
I laughed. “No, no. This is a belly button.” I was about to explain how a
tube extended from that to their mother’s womb to feed nutrients, but
stopped. Their mother was...
They both rolled up their shirts and showed their stomachs, but there was
no droop whatsoever anywhere on their slender, tofu-white bellies.
“Nothing, see?” “See?” The twins were wearing matching yellow T-shirts,
jeans, and sneakers. They were indeed the FREAKISHLY BEAUTIFUL & BRIL-
LIANT CURRY DE DAIBAKUSHOU’s brothers. They were remarkably hand-
some and had a seductive charm that made my heart skip for a second, but I
had no time for this.
I faced away from them.
There was no Pinehouse in any shape or form behind me. Nor any white
wall. I’d jumped from that black box when I lost track of my body’s size and
all orientations in the darkness, so I couldn’t gauge how far beyond the wall
I’d gone.
I reverted my gaze to the boys caressing each other’s stomach, and
thought.
They knew me. And they apparently knew I would come here.
Had the person who informed JJ about my visit also told them?
No. I’d known JJ for a long time, but not them. If they knew my name, then
either someone from the Pinehouse Case told them, or they were present then.
Where were they?
I recalled when Dezuumi called us inside the Pinehouse.
 Runbaba 12-san was brought in for an examination earlier, but the results
of his blood test indicate this wasn’t appendicitis. Instead, he had a weird,
small pouch inside his stomach. And that pouch was empty...
The pouch in Mitamura Saburou’s stomach.
Daibakushou was born with three belly buttons. His brothers had vanished
before they were born.
Where had they gone to?
Normal fetuses couldn’t bend spacetime. So this must’ve been a sort of
accident. If Daibakushou had three belly buttons, then they must’ve first
vanished inside his body.
Teratoid cystomas?

“Acchonburike.21”

I let slip, and the twins swiftly looked at me. They were staring at me with
a slight smile, but didn’t say anything. They were trying to follow my train of
thought.
However, in the case of teratoid cystomas, most of the time only some hair,
teeth, or parts of a hand or an organ were found, it was basically unheard of
to find an entire body. Moreover, premature cystic teratomas were a type of
ovarian cancer to begin with. So were they a kind of chimera, like joint fetuses,
conjugating cells, or fused embryos? Was it a composite of those condi-
tions...?
Anyway, I didn’t know how it’d come to that, but these two must’ve been
absorbed inside their real brother’s, Daibakushou Curry AKA Sakai Tsu-
tomu’s, body as parasites—or fused with him—and lived that way for 38

21
Pinoko’s catchphrase in the manga Black Jack. She was originally a teratoid cystoma, a sort of tu-
mor, on her twin sister’s body where she slowly grew in size and developed a brain and such, and
was eventually removed and saved by Black Jack.
years. So they came across the Pinehouse Case from inside the great detective
Daibakushou Curry’s body, experienced it, and learned from it.
Just like how Kozue had learned.
And when I was on the Stairway to Heaven above the forest, they tele-
ported inside the boy standing before me: Mitamura Saburou claiming to be
Runbaba 12. Mitamura’d said The right side of my stomach hurts, that’s my
appendix, so either he didn’t know or he said that to keep in line with a past
(which would be the future for him) lie. The twins chose this timing to escape
because Sakai Tsutomu = ‘Daibakushou Curry’ = ‘Tsukumojuuku’ they’d
fused with had crushed one of his eyes twice, made a mess of his brain, and
was on the brink of death.
And so, with someone else’s twins inside his body, Mitamura Saburou
naturally fell ill, was brought to the hospital, and had his stomach opened,
only to find a mysterious pouch...that must’ve been the organ Ichirou and Ji-
rou were residing in as a replacement for a womb. And that pouch was empty
because the twins had floated inside it for 38 years in a state of infancy and
were in no condition to live in the outside world, so they fled from the danger
across spacetime, and thus entered Mitamura Saburou’s mother’s stomach
when she was pregnant with him. They met up with Saburou there, were born
together, and named Ichirou, Jirou, and Saburou. The twins were probably in
great health, no less so than Saburou.
I knew that people capable of manipulating spacetime could change their
shape with strong feelings. Morinaga Koeda with Norma’s face. Ichirou and
Jirou must’ve done so at some point. And thus, after 38 years spent mending
themselves, they were finally born and ventured into the outside world.
Before vanishing again when they turned 14.
Was that when they couldn’t hide their differing appearance and nature
from Saburou anymore? Or maybe they’d consciously or unconsciously
adapted their outward appearance to match Saburou’s, however, when pu-
berty finally hit them, they chose to stay loyal to their roots. But then they
wouldn’t look like triplets anymore, and that would raise some dubious ques-
tions...
And after vanishing, their destination was probably here.
Beyond the outskirts of the world hidden inside the Pinehouse.
A highly-free spacetime, not bound by any of the common sense I knew
of.
The two cheetahs. Lightweight and Middleweight.
Ichirou and Jirou.
I scrutinized the landscape.
The birds flying near the jungle balls’ surfaces were in pairs. There were
two whales with their backs emerging from the diagonal ocean. A different
savanna from the cheetah’s had giraffes, hippos, gazelles, baboons, aard-
varks, and snakes; two of each.
But Lightweight and Middleweight both seemed to be males, so if they
weren’t mates...
I asked.
“Are Konkon and Denden here too?”

Ichirou said, “They sure are~,” and Jirou pointed in a direction. There was
a bamboo forest moving while slowly fluttering on the other side of the rocky
mountain. “They’re over there.”
“Did you two bring them here?”
“Indeed.” “But we didn’t force them or anything.” “They simply came
here to play.” “Right? They can go home whenever they want.” “Right? Eve-
ryone is here because they like it, right?” “Right?”
The culprits behind the Serial Twin Kidnapping Case were just here.

“So you live here...what do you do to eat?” I asked, and the twins answered
in turn.
 “Eh~? Everyone cooks for themselves.” “Right?”
“Cook? They don’t hunt?”
“Nah, we’re not fans of blood, hunting’s banned here.” “Yeah. Everyone’s
understanding, they won’t go out of their way to eat others if we have meals
ready.” “True, true.” “Plus those kids all come from zoos.” “Ahaha. You see?
They seriously don’t care as long as they can eat.” “Instincts aren’t that im-
portant as people think, after all.” “Well, they’re not wild. It all depends on
the environment.” “Hahaha.”
Made sense, I thought. This wasn’t a single world but a mishmash of each
twin pair’s world, so there was no environment to ‘depend on,’ they all cre-
ated one suitable for themselves. They could do whatever they wanted, no
matter how crazy that may be. They could even pull their habitat anywhere
they go. And if they ever felt the need for challenge, they could dispatch an
appropriate one onto themselves. The perfect amount for their world...on
that train of thought, I recalled the 200-meter-wide disc of grassland the two
cheetahs carried around. Was that the upper limit of these young cheetahs’
dash, so also the limit of their world? Thinking so, I had another realization.
Runrun had told me, The people before 2006 and after 2006 live next to
each other, with their spaces dominated by counterflowing times.. The out-
skirts of the world might’ve seemed so close to her because she was a panda
who’d spent her whole life in zoos.
The world’s width or size differed for everyone. That’s how Mercury C hit
his head just above the clouds in Chofu’s sky. And how I reached what I clearly
thought to be the outskirts of the universe.
“I see,” I said. “But aren’t you lonely?”
“Eh? Why would we?” “We’re with everyone, though?”
“But you two are the only humans, right?”
“Nobody cares about species. We’re all friends.”
“Huh... Is everyday fun?”
“Oh, it’s been a good while since I last heard the word ‘fun.’” “Right? We
just can’t picture something not fun now.” “We’re always having the same
amount of fun, so there’s no real ‘fun’ or ‘not fun.’ But it feels pleasant.”
“Right?”
“I see.” Didn’t they want to see their parents? ...Asking them would be
useless. I changed my question: “Do you have no desire to go back to the pre-
vious world?”
The pair gave me an unexpected answer.
“We don’t care either way. Right?” “Yeah. We don’t mind going back.”
Don’t care, huh...
They continued.
“The previous world was fine too, but it’s filled with useless things.”
“Right? Like fun or grief.” “Yeah. Or pain or joy.” “Haha.” “Or efforts or te-
diousness.” “Ah, tediousness is seriously tedious.” “Right? Efforts are way
better.” “True, true.”
I looked away from them and observed the world once again. Three jungle
balls flew above me, then a giant disc of sand came in from somewhere else.
The cheetahs’ savanna was making an island in the ocean which might’ve
pissed off some fish who made a sphere of water and flew away in it.
Anything could exist as one wanted, as much as one wanted.
I asked.
“Um, would you mind if I brought a bunch of people in here?”
The two replied.
“Not at all.” “They can come. I mean, they’re free to do whatever.”
“Right? Not like we’re this place’s rulers.” “Yeah, we don’t have that power.”
“Disco-san, this isn’t our place.” “Right? This is just a world, anyone is free
to come.” “That’s normal, is it not?”
I finally realized something and giggled.

The world had always been that open.

 “But isn’t this place hidden so others can’t come?”
I asked, which made the twins widen their eyes.
“We didn’t hide it, though.” “We just found it.” “Right?” “Yeah.” “We
just expanded this place.” “Also we brought some kids from zoos.” “Just that.”
“We’re twins, so we figured it’d be easier to play together with only twins
around.” “Right?”
They’d simply found it? This was inside the Pinehouse in 2019 while
Ichirou and Jirou’s disappearance happened in 1982, so in 2030 on this side.
“You guys have been here for 11 years already, haven’t you?” I asked.
“That’s right.” “Yeah.”
“And you didn’t create this world yourself?”
“Nope~.” “As if we even could.” “We just found it.” “Yeah.” “It was there
before us.” “We just wanted some fun and relaxing time together, so it was
the perfect occasion.” “Yeah.”
I was amazed at their ability to find this place beyond the outskirts of the
world inside the Pinehouse, but quickly revised that assessment. The lawn
they’d brought with them was wider than the cheetahs’, but it was still a kil-
ometer-wide at most. With their narrow inner world, the white wall on the
outskirts of the world must’ve seemed close. On top of that, they’d spent 38
years in a black box inside Daibakushou’s body. Crossing the world’s border
might’ve been child’s play for these two, who jumped from body to body di-
rectly after learning how to manipulate spacetime. If their time when inside
Daibakushou flowed in the counter direction like for fetuses in a womb, they
might have reached the twisted Pinehouse without needing the Hanged Man
hint.
“Was there anyone?” I probed further.
“Nope.” “Not a soul. Not a thing.” “Right?”
Then had someone twisted the Pinehouse in a future later than 2030 and
prepared this world? Who could have...I began to ponder, but future events
shouldn’t pose such a big problem. If the need arose, I could always take a
short break in the kidnappings to carry out the deed.
 Anyway, I’d found a spot to hide children in.
It wasn’t hot nor cold and had a completely different sunlight from the
one in Japanese Summer. I could bring the children here, I thought and filled
my chest with hope, when the twins spoke.
“But Disco-san, people from the future can’t come here.” “Yeah. We don’t
really get it, but they just can’t.” “Right?” “Yeah. Not just people; animals
too.” “We heard the news of a new deer species discovered in Nepal in 2015
giving birth to twins in Japan, so we headed there, and yet...right?” “Yeah,
yeah, we couldn’t get them in.” “They were so dejected.” “Right?” “Same
problem for the new bandicoot rat species found in 2007.” “We even went all
the way to Indonesia, too. These two were chill and really funny, a true
shame~.”
Oooh, I thought. The time flowed counterwise inside the future Pinehouse,
so in the same direction as the past. That’s why they could only bring in twins
from before Ragnarök, like Konkon and Denden.
So I would have to hide the children kidnapped on this side somewhere
else... Was this counterflowing world, hidden inside the Pinehouse, present
there even before Ragnarök?
Thinking that, I recalled Pineapple-chan. Mysterious voices of children
heard inside the Pinehouse since its completion. If they’d been from the chil-
dren I would hide, this hidden world must exist inside the Pinehouse on the
other side too. And contrary to this side, only people and animals from after
Ragnarök could enter. And I would begin to kidnap children right after Rag-
narök passes and stuff 300 million children here...
I had to protect this world.
I had to keep it a secret.
“How many people know about this world?”
“Only us two.” “And you, Disco-san.” “Oh, right.” “Right?”
“Anyone else? Like Saburou-kun or Sakai Tsutomu-kun?”
“Ehh~? We haven’t told them.” “Right?” “I mean, we came here to take a
break from their violent nature.” “Yeah, yeah. All that bloody or S&M stuff is
just scary.” “Or stabbing chopsticks or fingers in their eyes.” “Yuck~, so
gross.” “Right?”
These two had observed the entire Pinehouse Case from inside ‘Daiba-
kushou Curry’ = Sakai Tsutomu’s body. They also knew about their past
friend Sakai’s depression, and the brother they’d grown up alongside,
Saburou, frequenting the S&M club Shimiya. But if Chokuuji Kiyuu was cor-
rect in his claims, Ichirou and Jirou’s disappearance had heavily influenced
Saburou and even Sakai Tsutomu.
Was this another case of causes and consequences being flipped, of his-
tory’s inherent irony?
“What about the animals? Have any of the twins been making frequent
trips back and forth?” If all the animals here could talk Japanese like the
cheetahs, one of them might’ve leaked the secret about this world.
However, Ichirou and Jirou shook their heads and spoke in a proud tone.
“They haven’t, right?” “Yeah. Once they get here they don’t want to go
back anymore.” “Right?” “Right?”
That made a lot of sense, I thought. The zoo animals must experience a
never-before-felt sense of freedom devoid of hardships when coming here.
“By the way,” I asked. “Why do you keep it only at animals from zoos?”
The twins answered.
“I mean, don’t you feel bad for them?” “Yeah. It’s so narrow.” “And small.”
“And stinky.” “Ah yeah, it’s kind of dirty.” “Cleaning is a big ordeal, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” “But this place is clean.” “No need to clean.” “Yep.” “It smells nice.”
“Yeah, it smells so good.” “Right?”
Smells nice, huh. Haha. I took a big breath in with my nose and savored
the smell of the sunlight, the grass, the wind, and the ocean.
The sunlight and grass’ smell reminded me of when I brought the sofa out
into Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s backyard and took a nap, but it was mixed with
some salt and a sweet scent emanating from the jungle, which messed with
the mental image I had of the sleeping Kozue.
“Don’t the animals want to return to their parents?” I asked.
 “Nope,” Ichirou replied. “Not even one bit.” “Right?” “Right?”
“But the animals’ parents might be sad to see their children go.”
“But they’d get separated either way.” “Yeah. Only humans stay together.”
“Yeah. They feel a bit lonely but get used to it.” “Yeah. It’s normal to have no
idea what your children are doing for anyone other than humans or zoo ani-
mals.” “Yeah.”
Well, that was a way to look at it, I guessed.
Still, I’d accepted a request, I couldn’t end it with just that.
I took another look at the bamboo forest at the bottom of the rocky moun-
tain. They were now in the middle of the savanna.
Who else could know about this secret world?
...The person who’d created this world, huh.
Was that the future ‘me’?
‘I’ could keep on kidnapping children because it was in a complex location,
hidden inside a building existing in the future side of the folded universe
while following a counterflowing time, that’s also how Ichirou and Jirou
could expand this twins’ world without hindrance.
But I had no clue about how to fold spacetime, just finding this world was
already tough enough for me.
However, finding it taught me further about how this world was built.
 Was this yet another case of causes and consequences being flipped, of
history’s inherent irony?
“Ichirou-kun, Jirou-kun,” I asked.
“Yes?” “Yes?”
“Could you please make sure the animals here never leave this place?”
“Ahaha. I mean, that’s not a problem, nobody wants to leave anyway.”
“Yeah. Nobody ever left. Except us.”
“Sorry for asking that, but could you two stop leaving, too?”
“Ehh~, if you ask us not to...” “Now we kind of want to.”
“I beg of you. It would spell big trouble for me if anyone followed you in
here.”
“But, like we said earlier, anyone’s free to come.” “Yeah. The door is wide
open.”
“But those people are the kind to abuse children. They do horrible things
to them.”
“...Eh?” “How horrible are we talking about?”
The people at the Pinehouse didn’t know what happened to Kozue, so
Ichirou and Jirou, who were inside Sakai Tsutomu then Mitamura Saburou at
the time, wouldn’t know either.
How horrible was it, actually?
“Enough to end the world.”
I recalled the last scene of the Lamia Syndrome movie. The Cozue Method
would put a stop to our history.
Ichirou and Jirou glanced at each other.
“I see. Got it. That would be really bad, yeah.” “Indeed. That sounds scary.”
“Then we won’t leave this place anymore.” “Yeah.”
“Is that really okay? Can you wait for at least another 13 years?”
“It’s okay.” “Easy peasy.” “There’s not much difference between 13 years
or 13 days to us.” “Or one day.” “Or one second.”
Right, the Pinehouse in 2019 was the equivalent of 1993 on the other side
of spacetime, so the 1968-born Ichirou and Jirou should be 25 years old, and
yet they looked nothing like it. They looked 14, the age at which they’d gone
missing.
I’d expect no less from a resident of this world. They could even control
the speed of time.
“Thank you,” I told them. “I’ll come back again.”
Along with the children.
“Feel free to drop by anytime.” “You too, Disco-san, be careful not to get
followed.”
As he said.
But even if we carefully kept the secret and hid the children, how long
would this world last after Ragnarök? The Pinehouse would only exist for six
years after the folding of spacetime, or about 20 years at most if the twins’
world was preserved in the Cottage Natsukawa. The ‘me’ I saw in that 2019
movie seemed pretty old, but I would keep on kidnapping as long as my body
allowed me to. The Pinehouse didn’t exist on the opposite side of 2019, but
the Cottage Natsukawa would for a decade more. If I managed 300 million in
13 years, I might be able to add 200 million on top of that.
I’d strive for that.
“I’m going,” I said. Ichirou and Jirou waved me off.
“See you again.” “Bye bye.”
“Yeah.”
Before leaving, I warped inside the bamboo forest in the middle of the sa-
vanna and found Konkon and Denden.
The two pandas were seated back-to-back amidst the luxuriant bamboo
grass; they put down the bamboo branches they were munching on and
looked at me.
“Hi there.”
I spoke, and the right panda replied,
“Oh, Japanese.”
He sounded so surprised I chuckled.
“...What?” said the left panda, seemingly peeved by my laughter.
 “You see, I’m a missing child detective, and your mother asked me to find
you guys.”
“Huuh~,” the right panda resumed his munching. “Well you did it.”
Munch, munch.
“Yeah.” They were so rude it was hard to think they came from that polite
panda mother, but I guess that’s how youngsters are. “It was pretty tough
coming here.”
“So?” The left one said.
“Do you guys want to return to your mother?”
“Well, to be frank,” the left one said. “I’d rather have mom come here. We
get as much bamboo as we want here, and it’s kinda fun. Can’t you make that
happen?”
Hearing that, I wondered. That would be safer than moving two young
missing pandas from here to a zoo.
Plus, I’d actually be in a bind if they’d said they wanted to go home.
“Sure. Fair enough.”
I said, and the right panda stopped eating for a second and remarked,
“Oh, English now.”
So I bursted in laughter once more. The left one glared at me.
“Hah hah. My bad, my bad. Okay, I’ll bring your mother here someday.”
I said and made to leave when the left panda tossed me his half-eaten
bamboo branch; I caught it.
“For starters, hand that to mom. It should calm her down to see we have
food where we are.”
“...Good idea. Okay. I will.”
The left one wasn’t even looking at me anymore, but the right one meekly
raised a hand in my direction.
“See you,” I said.
I jumped high in the sky to get a good overview of the world, but I couldn’t
see all of the land even by going higher than any jungle ball. The world was
bending and twisting left and right, half-assedly changing shape, and con-
necting and disconnecting areas; it was constantly changing. Seeing this
vivid proof of what would happen if independent consciousnesses ruled the
world, I thought: the Old Testament’s God made mutual understanding
harder to achieve by confounding our speech to make the Babel Tower fall,
but even so, people in the outside world had a much more developed common
understanding than here. It’s not like one was better than the other to begin
with, but if no children were abused here, then it was muuuuuuuuuuuuuch
better.
I really couldn’t get an entire overview, and no state of the world was fully
representative of it, so I left the place.
First, back to the black box. I could somehow go back somewhere I’d been
previously even without clear geographical awareness.
A few seconds in the dark was more than enough. I still remembered that
sensation of orientations blending together.
The next time I’d come, that duration would be even shorter, and I could
probably skip it entirely after my body grew familiar with the feeling.
I reverted the twisted Pinehouse to normal and restored its spacetime to
when it was dusty to erase all traces of my visit.
Even if the current future was a fictional one created by Norma Braun’s
influence and it would revert to its original state once I returned to the past,
would the Pinehouse conserve its state? Would some change occur to the
twins’ world? Would Mitamura Ichirou and Jirou remember our conversa-
tion?
It would probably work all right. Despite all the people who must’ve
checked and fiddled with the Pinehouse by Norma Braun...Fuyuno Braun
Norma’s orders, they’d never reached the twins’ world. Nobody had experi-
enced the same things as I had, and nobody had the same origins as Ichirou
and Jirou. Moreover, the twins’ world was beyond the other side of the out-
skirts of the universe, so in a space where time flowed in the same direction
as the spacetime I’d come from. No matter what happened to the outside,
counterflowing future, my actions and words should remain engraved in that
world’s history.
...Well, nobody cared about history there, though.

I departed from the Pinehouse and returned to Chofu’s sky at 07:29 on the
15th of July 2006, before Ragnarök. I could see the Princeton Hotel from
roughly one minute after I’d left below me, but recalled something, moved to
the University of Electro-Communications a kilometer North of there, and
descended.
After walking for a minute or so, I didn’t find any confectionery called
‘Makuriya’. I asked a lady riding her bike who looked like she lived there, and
she’d never heard of such a store before.
Why had I trusted that weirdo Japanese with a name as bizarre as ‘Mercury
C’?
Had my sensors for weirdness gone numb from having a weird name my-
self...
I took out the dango skewer from my back pocket, stared at it for a bit,
then shrunk it alongside the bamboo branch I was holding in my other hand,
put them both in my pocket where I stored the shrunk knives, and there, I
finally realized how Mercury C barged into that small bedroom in Princeton
Hotel and beheaded Hoshino Masato.

It was elementary.
The only people who’d entered that torture room were Kozue, me,
Hoshino Masato, and the Black Bird Man. Entering that locked, complex, and
impregnable spacetime after Hoshino and the Black Bird Man made their ap-
pearance was impossible unless one could alter the speed of time. Now that
I’d experienced the black box I felt like I could somehow deal with it, but I
couldn’t see myself teaching Mercury C that method. The black box was the
key to the Pinehouse’s secret world. I couldn’t hand it to anyone.
Then how had Mercury C entered that room?
If access was impossible once it got locked, he could’ve simply done so
before then.
Four people had entered that room, he just needed to tag along one of
them.
He could shrink himself like the knives, dango skewer, and bamboo
branch in my pocket, and sneak his way into there like that.

Back when we were powerless against the invisible wall dividing the room,
the door in the back got slammed open, Mercury C appeared, and Hoshino
Masato’s head flew off, but that door opening was a bait to distract our gazes.
A smoke screen to prevent the Black Bird Man from finding out his infiltra-
tion route and altering the past with his supposed spacetime-shuffling abil-
ities.
A simple yet brilliant trick, I was in deep awe. When faced with that room
locked from all directions by time manipulation, I could only think of adjust-
ing the speed of time, and that guy came up with a solution from a wholly
different angle, ignoring all of that. If one could sneak past one’s awareness,
they could infiltrate any place.
As I was commenting on my impressions, I recalled that I, too, had a secret
spot I couldn’t tell anyone about, and stood stock still behind one of the uni-
versity’s student dorms.
Had Mercury C clung onto me with the same method? Had I unknowingly
led him to the twins’ world?
 I desperately relaxed my frozen body. I shouldn’t let my confusion appear.
If Mercury C was hiding somewhere on me, he would be cautious of any
change in my behavior and might escape.
How could I snuff that mini-Mercury C out? I was maintaining an impas-
sive facade while thinking, but I’d just searched for ‘Makuriya’ behind the
university, so if Mercury C was hiding on me he should’ve already been cau-
tious and probably escaped some distance away.
Still, I ought to check, I thought.
How about abruptly warping into deep water? Wouldn’t he literally bubble
up to the surface?
But he, too, could manipulate spacetime. He wouldn’t pop out his face
above water to breathe so easily. If I had to guess, he would evacuate some-
where far away. He was rough around the edges, but not an idiot.
Then... I intuitively found my new idea nice, so I went ahead and carried it
out before analyzing it.
When two spacetime benders face off, victory is decided by how much you
can surprise your opponent. These words came from Mercury C, but still...
I enclosed my surroundings with a wall of vacuum, and instantly shrunk
my body.
To find something small, I would become small too!
Likely because the tiny bit of air I’d left myself to maintain a reasonable
pressure felt at a much higher frequency to my now-smaller eardrums, a
powerful ringing like nmmmmmmmmmm assaulted my ears and was about
to burst my head open, but I endured it and observed my surroundings.
The only things afloat were the contents of my pockets: my wallet, a
handkerchief, my home keys, the knives, the skewer, and the bamboo; no
sign of Mercury C.
I couldn’t spot anyone anywhere.
I reverted my body back to normal and touched the vacuum wall. Zing, it
broke off and ripped some of my skin, forming a round sphere of blood on my
fingertip.
 But that wall being intact was no proof nobody had clung onto me. It was
invisible, but someone with good intuition could have jumped past it. And
even if they’d broken it, they could’ve instantly recreated a similar one.
I was a detective, and had a hard time clearing up my inner doubts...

15

“Yo, welcome back,” Mercury C was grinning inside the semi-suite’s cor-
ridor. I’d come back to 07:29 before descending into Princeton Hotel’s room
1201. I’m ready to barge into that room, he’d told me earlier, and indeed, he
seemed fully ready for battle, with his breathing heavier than usual. Though
I used ‘usual,’ we had known each other for under 24 hours according to the
room’s clock.
“Did you find your outskirts of the world?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Kinda.” A few other things had happened, but did he know
about them?
“Oh. Figured it out? Heh heh. But hey, I was faster.”
“As long as I made it in time,” I said.
“Heh heh. True.”
Talking to him head-on, he didn’t come off as the type to put on some
puny act, but a grandiose charade might be his style...
I didn’t explain the infiltration method I’d deduced and Mercury C didn’t
bother questioning me about it.
When I asked him, “Mercury, who are we sticking onto?” he merely re-
plied, “Let me see...”
But no matter whose name would come out of his mouth, my apprehen-
sion wouldn’t change. No matter who we stuck onto amongst the four—‘me,’
‘Kozue,’ ‘Hoshino Masato,’ or the ‘Black Bird Man’—to enter the room, I’d
still have to endure Kozue’s suffering at least for the duration it took Mercury
C to decapitate Hoshino. And there must be a reason for why Mercury C
couldn’t slay the Black Bird Man along with Hoshino, and that unknown ob-
stacle scared me as much as not knowing Mercury C’s identity or his schemes.
However, Mercury C met me with an unexpected question.

“Detective, say, do you believe we can change the future?”

Eh? My mind went blank for a second. Why ask this now? He should’ve
gotten it from the experiences we’d shared. Both the past and future were set
in stone, and any consequences of a phenomenon were accounted for in its
realization. If that phenomenon happened on the complete opposite side of
spacetime, then its effects were null. He was aware of Dezuumi’s case with
the hospital, and had seen the sheet of paper vanishing in thin air. Why would
he ask this at this point?
Ignoring my confusion, Mercury C spoke.
“I will stick onto you to get into that room. I dunno where the ‘Black Bird
Man’ is before he appears, and although I could get a hold of ‘Hoshino’ back
when we barged into this room together, there’s always a chance the ‘Black
Bird Man’ would find me out when he approached ‘Hoshino’. The point is to
take him by surprise, so I’d rather avoid any encounter.”
It made sense to me, but...
“So I’ll strike the moment I catch a glimpse of their faces.”
Mercury C stared at me.
“But...” as we both knew, the future was bound to not go as planned,
wasn’t it?
“You look like you’re foreseeing failure, Detective,” Mercury C said, not
smiling. “But that’s precisely why you have to come along. I’ll effortlessly
change the past you know of, so don’t miss a second of it.”
 “...!” Where did his confidence come from?! I gasped, then recalled: This
man was capable of having the outskirts of the world be a few hundred meters
above Chofu.
“I’m not so fucking weak as to be stopped by things like ‘the past’ or ‘the
laws of the universe.’ Don’t look down on me, Detective, okay?” Mercury C
said, then grabbed my shoulder; I was enveloped in darkness.

Where was I!? I panicked, then heard a nmmmmmmm ringing in my head

and realized Mercury C had shrunk us both.

“Kozue.”

My tiny body swayed along the oscillations of invisible waves. That voice
big enough to shake me came from ‘me’! My cells were actively trembling and
were on the verge of popping out! My entire body had become the membrane
of a drum.

“Ah, Disco, good morn-

ing~.”
 Kozue was there!
Ahh! It was the morning before the abuse!

“What are you doing?”

“Eh~~? Thinking about
the panda name. Kozue
panda.”

And that’s when I realized.

‘◯N◯N’ = ‘0202’
And after that... As I was reviving my memories once again, with my body
frozen stiff in fear despite Kozue’s voice making every cell in my body oscil-
late, I heard a normal-volume voice coming from nearby.
“Let’s go. Peel your eyes open, Detective.”
It was Mercury C.

I felt the whole darkness surrounding me suddenly crashing down. I hit

my back on a giant wall and fell along with that darkness.
 “Hahahahaha! Dum-
bass! Die!”

That loud voice stabbing through my ears directly into my brain was
Hoshino Masato’s!
And the darkness was somewhere on the ‘past me’s’ body, and that giant
‘past me’ got pinned down by a giant Hoshino Masato!
And the low drumming sounds I could hear came from Hoshino punching
‘me’!
Aaaaah!
It was starting!
Please, don’t make me hear Kozue’s screams this close at this volume!
However, that’s when my re-experience got disturbed.

“Ah!”
“Wah hah hah hah hah!”
“W-woah! I’m so sorry!”
 The fuck!? What was happening!?

“Now! Come out, Detec-

tive! Take a look!”

It was Mercury C! He was calling for me!!

The next moment, either by Mercury C’s manipulation, my own will, or

the inertia, my body regained its normal size, and I was faced with a headless
Hoshino Masato spewing blood out of his cleanly-cut neck. Mercury C’s
hand-katana had done the job!
“Disco~!”
I turned back and saw Kozue and the Black Bird Man on the bed; the man
was opening his narrow eyes behind his glasses as wide as he could.
“Die! Motherfucker!”
Seeing me rush to him, he created a transparent wall before the bed, how-
ever, I instantly applied my experience of the black box right after I came in
contact with it and crossed the wall.
“Uohh!” the man screamed; I sent him a punch.
Pow!
It landed! It was a face of flesh and bones! A bit cold, but it was without a
doubt a skull wrapped in soft skin. Alright! One bare-handed punch was
enough for the moral victory! I’d end it without giving him a chance for re-
taliation. I returned a knife I got from Mercury C to its original size, gripped
it tight, and went for the Black Bird Man’s head. Right before the hollow-
cheeked head flew off, I covered Kozue with a blanket. Splatch!
Zbaaaaaaaaaahh, blood sprung up like a fountain and softly covered the blan-
ket protecting Kozue. The man’s head hit the wall behind the bed and fell on
the floor while his body collapsed at my feet.
“Raaaah!” Screamed Mercury C who did a fist pump before smiling at me.
Hoshino Masato’s decapitated corpse at his feet.
Hah, I briefly breathed out, then bent my knees and sat down onto the bed,
when I heard Kozue’s voice from beneath the blanket.
“Disco~.”
“Kozue!”
When I removed the blanket and took her in my arms, she started crying
for real, “Ughhhh, waah, Disco~!” but at least those weren’t half-crazed
screams.
I swiftly checked over her body. Her pajamas hadn’t been taken off. I
looked inside the pajamas without removing them, and her pants were clean
and her vagina devoid of foreign bodies.
Then, the ‘me’ on the floor finally turned around and stayed static in a
daze.
We’d saved them.
Both the ‘past me’ and the ‘past Kozue’.

I thought while hugging the crying Kozue.

What would happen to the future from then on?
Would the ‘me’ before my eyes, with his jaw shaking, connect back to me?
Wouldn’t changing the ‘past me’s’ future mean denying the existence of
the current me?
Would I vanish shortly?
And Kozue too, for the same reason?
 “I know the future can be changed,” said Mercury C, sitting on Hoshino’s
trunk on the floor.
“What? But how...”
“You went to the University of Electro-Communications and searched for
my shop, didn’t you?”
“...Yeah.”
“But it had disappeared. I mean, it just wasn’t there.”
“...”
“I know, okay? Don’t think I was just sitting here waiting for you to come
back. I started investigating this room right after you left. Then the hotel and
its surroundings. So I saw you appearing in the sky but not coming down, in-
stead you headed for the university, didn’t you? I found it weird so I followed
you there.”
“...Mercury,” I said. “Where do you come from?”
“I told you, didn’t I? I’m a Japanese confection artisan at a shop called
Makuriya. I don’t lie.”
He said and took out his phone, operated it, turned the screen in my di-
rection, and handed it to me. I took it and looked; it was displaying a picture
of several employee-looking people in front of a white store banner with
‘Makuriya’ written on it. Mercury C was at the center. He was grinning from
ear to ear with his white chef clothes and his hat on. I’d seen the motif on the
three-quarter sleeves the three girls were wearing somewhere. I’d also seen
the vending machine right of the shop and the laundry left of it...just earlier,
it was near the university’s dorm. But this white banner or this store wasn’t
there. Moreover, it looked exactly like the other Makuriya I’d seen past the
Chofu Station’s south entrance on that Autumn evening in 2019...
“If the present has changed, that means something happened in the past,
right?” Mercury C said as he took his phone back. “And the present changing
means the future can be changed, too. And I know that.”
 I didn’t know the ‘Makuriya that should be existing,’ so I couldn’t speak
on that. But the present had indeed changed here. And so would the future,
most likely.
“Mercury...aren’t you sad to have lost your past, present, and the future
you were destined to experience?”
I asked, and he snorted at me.
“The past didn’t go anywhere. All of Makuriya remains within me, and its
various recipes too. It’s no different from the past others have experienced,
though I have nothing to back that up. And as for the store, the employees,
and my friends, well, I’ll just have to start over. Sure, the store might’ve
peaced out, but the people must still be around. It’s not like they were my kids.
Anyway, I’m the current me at this point in time. What else can I do but start
building the future? I’ll make a bunch of choices and direct it in a good direc-
tion.”
“...You might be fine, yeah,” I said. “But won’t I likely disappear?” The
‘past me’ and I had surely diverged. I couldn’t imagine the ‘me’ over there
would connect the loop to me.
I just realized ‘I’ was sitting on his knees—an unusual posture for him—
before Mercury C and I, his head lowered.
“‘Mercury’, the other ‘me’, thank you.”
The Kozue inside my arms stopped crying, probably overwhelmed by ‘my’
atmosphere.
‘I’ spoke, his face still facing down.
“Hearing ‘Mercury’s’ story, I think I kind of figured it out. How to change
the future.”
Mercury C must’ve found ‘me’ in that stance funny as he started cackling.
“Good job, Disco-kun. You may raise your head and explain it.”
“Yes.”
 It was tedious seeing ‘me’ replying so obediently to Mercury C, but in his
eyes we had saved Kozue. Scrubbing his forehead on the floor in pure Japa-
nese tradition was but a small price to express his gratitude. Of course he’d
do it.
His knees still on the blood-drenched floor with two headless corpses ly-
ing around, ‘I’ took a deep breath, then started talking, “In the flow of time...”
It was a weird sight, but whatever. I, myself, wanted some explanation as to
what happened here.
“If someone comes from the future to the present and prevents an event
from happening or makes an event that shouldn’t have occured occur, the
flow of time changes and the route to the future shifts; that time travel cre-
ates an incoherency where the starting point X in the future won’t be
reached...up till now we’ve avoided that, treating it as a paradox, but actually,
in reality, that can work just fine. Therefore, it’s possible to alter the past, the
present, and of course the future. In short, a real person from a fictional fu-
ture can come over here and make their future disappear, thus demoting their
history and world to being fictional, and alter the overall flow of time. And
that’s what you two did. The ‘me from a fictional future’ and the ‘Mercury
from a fictional future’. My screams and prayers reached you, so you came
and saved Kozue and me. Thank you. Seriously...you guys are angels.”

Mercury C and I looked at each other, held it in for a second, then began
laughing.
A hysterical laugh.
But that wasn’t because we’d found it stupid or wrong. Far from that, that
was probably spot on; that’s why we laughed. Mercury C and I were self-sac-
rificing angels from a fictional future. That was a new idea that hadn’t come
up in the discussion with the great detectives back in the Pinehouse. And be-
cause I was as cognizant, if not more, of my strong wish as ‘me’, I could in-
tuitively understand. That ‘me’s’ deduction was most likely correct. I’d come
here, surged by my own strong will.
Seeing us laugh our hearts out, Kozue started to smile a bit, but the ‘past
me’ was still sitting on his knees with a docile expression.
He would take over my legacy as me.
And I might disappear as the fictional ‘me’ I was...but neither Mercury C
nor I were that admirable to begin with, so maybe we’d manage to live on
without denying our own existences?
If that were to pass, we’d be living parallel entities. Well, that would be
great in itself. We’d have taken upon ourselves the now-gone hardships of
the future and swallowed them whole, so we could live and die.
Kozue was saved.
I finally gained that realization.
Then the six alternate personalities were no longer, so neither were the
six poor girls, therefore no Cozue Method and no filthy 300 trillion yen in
sales per year nor the 300 million kidnappings.
Now that it was all gone, I felt nothing towards the past or the future!
As I was laughing and holding my stomach due to the overwhelming sense
of liberation, I lost my balance and caught my fall by putting a hand on the
headless Black Bird Man’s hips.
His blood-drenched shirt slid.
English words appeared beneath it.

Obviously I’d seen it before, it was my writing.

 I stopped breathing, removed the man’s pants, then took his underwear
off.
No dick.
I understood: That’s why he cut off my fingers and used them to abuse
Kozue.

I reverted the ‘man’s’ time. His head that’d flown away came back and
stuck onto his neck, then after a while the ‘man’s’ face and body turned into
a woman’s.
It was ‘Kawamura Yukie.’
The Black Bird Man had taken over ‘Kawamura Yukie’s’ empty body.

Fsshh...
I heard a sound and turned back to find a knife stabbing Mercury C, who’d
been laughing with me until a second ago, going from the top of his head to
his neck. Half his right eye and his entire left eye had left their socket. A mo-
ment later, blood spewed out his nose and mouth.
“There’s no telling what this fucking guy will do, is there?”
Said another Black Bird Man who’d appeared from God knows where and
was standing behind Mercury C. Glasses. A tattoo of a black bird on his right
arm. The same shirt and pants.

“True. It’s a shame, but we can’t have him here.”

This voice came from another direction; looking at its source, four other
Black Bird Men were standing near the window. Four men wearing the same
clothes and the same grin.
 One of them spoke to me.
“Now, let’s move onto round two, dad.”

Dad?

“Because we came from you, dad.”

“You couldn’t summon any anger at Norma’s cruel death because you
were bestowing us life.”
“Thank you, dad.”
“Surprised?”
Black Swan Company, dealing with materializing feelings into human
form.
...You’ve got Norma’s corpse lying right beside you but you keep asking
bullshit questions...don’t you see a problem? Did you lose all interest in her
now that you know I’ll steal her from you and break her? I finally get why JJ
was being so provocative. You can’t get angry. ...Ain’t that right? Heh. All in
all, my job is done...
JJ, go to Hell.
The ‘past me’ was looking at us in a daze.
Please understand, I thought. History was being pulled back towards a fu-
ture I hadn’t wished for.

I slaughtered two Black Bird Men, but got overwhelmed by the remaining
three.
The ‘past me’ was screaming behind the wall, but he lost consciousness
midway through and vanished. Likely headed to the Pineapple Home, follow-
ing history.
As for me, I had no leeway to escape to the Pineapple Home.
 All my energy went to enduring Kozue’s wailing and trying to get the three
Black Bird Men off my back.

“KYA––––––––––––––AH!! AAAAGH, GAAA––––––––––––H!!

AAAAH, AH, GHH, EEEEEK–––––––––––!!”

After having had the fun of their lives, the Black Bird Men threw the un-
conscious Kozue onto the floor and punched my head to finish me off.
When I finally felt my consciousness fading away, one of the Black Bird
Men spoke.
“Both life and history must accept the fate they were attributed, dad. If
you let your righteousness guide you into sticking your head where you
shouldn’t, you will more often than not experience more pain than needed.”
The four fingers these dickless fuckers had inserted in Kozue’s vagina had
come, once again, from me...
One of the Black Bird Men laughed. “Will you even remember how you felt
so relieved for a moment? Heeh heeh heeh. Must be quite a letdown, huh?”

16

I woke up to Koeda’s sobbing voice. I was on my bed in Villa Hapira

Kojimacho’s room 303, and she was clinging onto my chest while crying.
“Waaa, s-so-sorry, I’m sorry, uugh, I, b-boo hoo, I, I, aaaaaaaaah, aaah,
I-I couldn’t, I was too s-scared, uuuuugh, Disco, Dis...I-I couldn’t go, I
couldn’t bring myself to go, waaaah, guuh, in the room where you were, I...”
My broken bones and injuries all over my body were healed.
“S-sorry. I, aeeeggggh, waaaaaaa.”
I patted Koeda’s head.
“Thank you. You healed my body, didn’t you?”
 “Gh, mmmnn, I...did. I’m sorry, Disco, s-sorry, sorry.”
“It’s okay. Were you out of danger?”
“Mm, mm. I-I was hiding.”
“Then it’s all good. If you were caught in that too we’d have been doomed
for real.”
Koeda began sobbing once again.
The door opened and Mercury C peeked inside.
“Oh, you’re awake?”
“Mercury, you’re alive...but you died, no? So you came back to life.”
“Haha. Thanks to Koeda-chan, yeah. It was my first time dying, got me
startled.”
“Hm, I see...” I’d apparently been killed seven times by JJ so I thought of
saying ‘It’s the eighth time for me, hahaha,’ but Mercury C wouldn’t even
smile at it so I didn’t.
“The toddler Kozue woke up too.”
Mercury C noticed me getting tense.
“Don’t worry. She doesn’t remember anything. She’s as bright as ever.”
I then heard “Disco~” coming from down the hallway and Kozue’s run-
ning footsteps. She popped her face next to Mercury C’s hips and smiled.
“Disco, woke up? Lunch is ready~.”
“Oh, is it? What’s on the menu?”
“Confections! Mercury made them!”
Ooh, really?
Mercury C laughed . “They’re finger lickin’ good~, hoh hoh hoh.”

There were really Japanese confections on the plates. Nerikiri, manjuu,

warabi mochi, bota mochi...
“Making them is insanely easy when you can control time, but that makes
it so boring,” Mercury C said while Kozue went crazy over the food.
 “It’s sooooo cool~. He went pew pew pew and bim bam boom and the
paste was done~.”
I wasn’t hurt but I had no appetite...or so I thought, but when I sat down,
every dish was so good I finished my plate in no time.
“Thanks for the meal,” I joined my hands, then told Mercury C, “You
didn’t need to prove yourself to me, you know.”
“Dummy,” Mercury C replied. “I’ve never once prepared confections for
a reason other than fun. I never need to prove myself to anyone.”
Well, of course he’d say that.
The TV in the living room was on.
“It is now 07:45 on the 15th of July. Let us start each region’s morning
news section by Shizuoka...”
Good, I thought, then felt glad I was able to think that way.
I’d remained pre-Ragnarök thanks to Koeda, so there was still a lot I could
do, and I wasn’t lacking in motivation.
Mercury C, playing with Kozue as he ate the confections he’d baked him-
self, spoke to me.
“If sweets aren’t enough for you, should I make some udon?”
Where in the world was that kindness coming from?
Still, despite those words, I knew.
Mercury C was angry. He was pissed off from the bottom of his heart. He
simply came off as tranquil to others because the hatred spiraling within him
was focused in one direction and converged at a single point.
After leisurely enjoying some tea, Mercury C spoke.
“’Kay, let’s go.”
I silently put down my teacup.
Koeda seemed to have something to say, but she didn’t, and instead asked
us,
“Can I go with you?”
Hmm, I thought for a bit and concluded it was better that she didn’t. “No.
Please stay here and protect Kozue.” I still didn’t know what would happen
in the Pinehouse, but my hopes weren’t high. “Also focus on protecting your-
self. You’re the only one I have left, Koeda.”
Seeing me look at her with utmost sincerity, she replied, “...I’ll do that.”
“Counting on you,” I said. “But I won’t make you wait. Once I’m done dis-
cussing with the great detectives at the Pinehouse, I’ll return to the time right
after I leave.”
That said, I’d have to start kidnapping pretty quickly, so I may not get to
relax with Kozue and Koeda for too long.

“We’re going.”
We left through Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s entrance for the symbolism.
Once Koeda and Kozue disappeared from behind us, Mercury C took out three
envelopes from his pocket and said, “Let’s stop by the post office.”
“What? Letters?”
“Nah. Condolence money. For the Kawamuras, the Horikiris, and the Ta-
shiros.”
‘Kawamura Yukie’, ‘Horikiri Maki’, and ‘Tashiro Yurie’ were the three
girls I’d killed in room 1201 among the ones the Black Bird Men took over.
Koeda had restored their bodies, but since they lacked consciousness to begin
with, they didn’t come back to life. Koeda had temporarily shrunk their bod-
ies and stored them inside room 1201’s fridge, but Mercury C then returned
each girl’s body to their bed at the time right after the Black Bird Man pos-
sessed them, and disguised the situation as them drawing their last breath.
The disguise was Koeda’s suggestion and Mercury C wasn’t on board at all,
but considering the emotional stress and the additional burden for the fami-
lies, her option was the best.
“I split my entire fortune in three through postal money orders. Though
it’s just what I had in the bank, so it’s really not that much.”
 “There’s no need for you to do that,” I told him. Their souls had been
driven away by Kozue while she was in my care, and I’d killed their bodies
myself. “I’ll pay you back later.”
“Screw that. I lost everything anyway. It’s refreshing to be penniless.
More importantly, make sure to pay for the other three.”
‘Shimada Kikyou’, ‘Toda Erika’, and ‘Konno Narumi’...they, too, had
passed away. They’d vanished while they were still fetuses. Then once more
when Kozue was healed, and they would do so once more.
However, the fight against Blackswan could wait for after Ragnarök
passed. Whatever we did now wouldn’t affect other spacetimes.
We mailed the envelopes with the recipients’ names inscribed in a pretty
handwriting, then warped to the Pinehouse at dawn, right after the case
ended.
I felt kind of weird, but having died once made me feel much more re-
freshed.

17

“Yo, this is your signal. Time to act. Go and dance, Discotheque. And
presto. You are no longer permitted the luxury to stand still before fear.”
I said, confusing the ‘past me’. After Mercury C urged him too, he disap-
peared along with the ‘past Mercury C’.
Hakkyoku received a phone call from Dezuumi.
“Yes. Runbaba 12-san was brought in for an examination earlier, but the
results of his blood test indicate this wasn’t appendicitis. Instead, he had a
weird, small pouch inside his stomach. And that pouch was empty...”
He reported Ichirou and Jirou’s now-vacant home found inside Mitamura
Saburou.
I hesitated on whether I should tell Dezuumi about the situation or not,
and ultimately decided against it. He had a duty to inform society about at
least part of the Pinehouse Case’s truth. Since he couldn’t go missing along
with the other great detectives, letting him in on unnecessary information
would bring more dangers to us and, most importantly, to the children we
were about to take into custody.
“A pouch? In his body...an organ, perhaps?” “Seems so.” “Please priori-
tize the analysis and inform us of the results ASAP.” “Got it.” “But Dezuumi-
san, it has to be by the end of the day or...” Hakkyoku started, but swallowed
his words. He, too, must’ve been wondering whether he should share infor-
mation about the future to Dezuumi, who was fated to remain a public figure.
I walked to Hakkyoku and whispered in his ear. “I can explain that myself.
Don’t get Dezuumi involved any further.” Hakkyoku looked at my face, then
spoke. “Nevermind, no need to, Dezuumi-san. We’ll handle it on our side.”
“Eh? On your side...?” I butted in. “Dezuumi. It’s Wednesdayyy.” “Ah, yes.”
“Focus on resting. We’ll get this done quickly then go pay you a visit.” “Eh~,
oh please. I’d be too embarrassed.” “Don’t worry, we’ll bring Mercury C
along.” “Eh!? ...Uhh I’m not sure the hospital allows visitors right now...wait,
is Mercury C-san over there?” “’Course I am, moron!” Mercury C said. We
heard Dezuumi scream “UAAAAH” before the sound cut. ...Beep, beep, beep...
“Oh, he hung up,” Hakkyoku said, making the great detectives and the troupe
members laugh.
Hakkyoku put the phone away, then spoke as a representative to everyone
present.
“We have enough intelligence and feelings on our side, so you’ll probably
get to disappear...what did you mean by that, Wednesdayyy-san?”

I talked about the future following Ragnarök. I kept the name Cozue
Method hidden, but explained its gist and the details. The main children and
the sub-children. The intentional abuse and the creation of split personalities.
The emptying and filling of bodies with consciousnesses. The Styron Com-
pany and the Blackswan Company. The seven million children sacrificed
every year and the yearly 300 trillion yen in sales. And fighting against that,
me and the Pinehouse Thirty-One. The 300 million hidden children.
As expected, they reacted strongly to the big numbers and the ‘Pinehouse
Thirty-One’. However, they were dubious on Blackswan gathering people’s
aggressive emotions and personifying them, or on how transferring a con-
sciousness into a body remodeled it, so they cascaded me with questions.
Even I wouldn’t be anywhere close to comprehending it if I hadn’t met Kozue,
Koeda, and ‘Shimada Kikyou’. I was thinking about sending them to the fu-
ture to have them witness it firsthand when Mercury C butted in.
“Then I’ll show you actual feelings that took the shape of a human.”
He said, making me recall. ‘My feelings’ he’d hung from the tip of Stair-
way to Heaven.
Could The Hanged Man clue have been hinting at him?

Seeing Nail Peeler, which Mercury C brought in instantly by manipulating

time, the great detectives and troupe members all took a few steps back. Some
of the girls screamed.
“Okay, start by introducing yourself,” Mercury C ordered the man entirely
covered in leather and tied up with a rope.
“I’m SS Nail Peeler. I was created from Disco Wednesdayyy’s feelings.”
The troupe members murmured among them. “He spoke...” “Isn’t he
transparent under that?” “Do feelings know they are feelings...?”
Nail Peeler spoke. “Untie me, Disco. Why are you treating me like this?”
Not yet. We had to check a few more things. “Which of my feelings are
you?” I asked. “And why that name?”
Nail Peeler answered. “You forgot? SS stands for Super Sadistic. Nail
Peeler means I peel people’s nails off. Quite SS, ain’t it? I’m craving to peel
your nails off, you know. One by one, slowly. Starting from the side, from the
tip, or even ripping it all at once.”
More screams coming from the troupe members.
 “...You’re not part of Blackswan?” A personified aggressive feeling. I
asked again. “Why do you wanna peel my nails off?”
“’Cause I hate you! Taking your fucking time...that’s why I wanted to keep
you in the Pinehouse and also why I guided you to the Pinehouse Theater!”
“Taking my time? What are you...” I was about to ask, but thought twice
about it. The Pinehouse Case existed for my sake. That was undeniable. “Are
you saying I should have solved it faster?”
“No! Without me you wouldn’t have solved shit! That’s why I came!”
I got confused. “So...I failed to solve it? In another past?”
“That’s not it, but still!”
I didn’t, yet I did? “I sent you back in time to change the past and erased
that history...” That was yet another method to change the past, different
from the one ‘I’ talked about in room 1201 of Princeton Hotel, a new idea. “If
one goes to the past themselves to change it, the altered flow of events will
nullify their time travel. So instead, they stay there and send in ‘their feel-
ings’...” I’d gotten so used to thinking about that stuff I cogitated aloud.
“Ah, that’s it,” Nailed Peeler exclaimed. “You got it.”
The Angel Bunnies giggled.
I asked, “Why don’t you have a body?” But as I mouthed that question, I
found the answer within myself.
Nailed Peeler said. “Whose body do you want me to enter? I won’t imitate
that fucktard. Never.”
Of course. As expected from my feelings. He wouldn’t steal someone’s
body. ...At least not a living person’s.
Nail Peeler went on.
“Plus, if I had one, I’d have to shoulder some of your duties. Doing what’s
in one’s power is the normal course of action, after all. But that would be
wrong. I’m merely a feeling, and you are you. I can’t take your responsibilities
upon myself. Speaking of responsibilities, even just being alive is a big deal.
Having a life means having responsibilities or duties and accomplishing
many concrete things, no? And not just that. There’s also interacting with
others, loving them, or loathing them, right? I came here with a firm objec-
tive. Once I accomplish that, it’s an adieu from me.”
“And you still haven’t accomplished that?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I? Think.”
“So you’re not going to tell me what it is?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t be a detective. Why were you even called here?”
“So my role isn’t over yet.”
“Not everything’s over, is it?”
Exactly.
“As long as you understand that, it’s basically over,” Nail Peeler said, then
squeak, the mask serving as his face that was covered in darkness on our first
encounter slightly bent.
A smile?
“I came from the ‘me’ who failed, so I don't know the full answer. Anyway,
I’m basically done telling you all I needed, so it’s soon time for me to die.”
“...Die?”
“I won’t just disappear. Feelings, too, die. Don’t look down on us, asshole.”
“I see...thank you. Seriously.”
“Tsk. I’m dying because of you. Feelings are alive too. Show some respect!”
“Sure.”
“...Then get these ropes off from me for the end. I’ll peel your nails off
before dying.”
I thought for a bit. He’d already peeled ten of my nails once, and I’d gotten
the middle finger of my left hand cut off eight times. Could I endure another
wave of intense pain?
Wait, what was I thinking? “No fucking way I’m letting you do that.”
I said. Nail Peeler then cackled.
“Hah hah hah! That’s the way, Disco. Listen, there’s no satisfying peo-
ple’s aggressiveness. They’re never sated. They always seek more. Disco, do
you think a pure-bred sadist would ever give up on the kids you’re hiding?”
 Chills ran down my spine.

“Don’t forget, only think about Kozue, Disco! That kid is your true guard-
ian, she’s the light that will guide your path!”
Nail Peeler screamed, then vanished. His bondage attire and the rope fell
onto the floor. These were no longer a body nor skin, but mere matter. Look-
ing down at them, I found a tag in the inner collar. It read ‘Shimiya’.
Pfft, I laughed. He must’ve borrowed it from Mitamura Saburou’s hidden
hobby.
Now this leather was no longer skin nor even unknown matter from wher-
ever, it had degenerated to being attire that should be returned to its secret
closet.
Nail Peeler had completely died.
Accomplishing his goal?
By making me think.

Neither the great detectives nor the troupe members were doubting me
anymore.
We started discussing.
Mame Gen spoke.
“...So we’re really going to go missing. All to kidnap 300 million children...”
Nekoneko spoke.
“But how are we meant to kidnap 300 million people...hmm, I guess we
can manage? But where are we hiding them? They might be kids, but still,
isn’t 300 million about half the number of kids on Earth at present? Taking
those from age four to eight...”
Hizuki spoke.
“If we bend space, can’t we create a spot wherever?”
 Hakkyoku spoke.
“And we can shrink that space to hide it. Not to mention, we don’t need
the kids to be at their original size, either. Also we only need to hide them for
a brief time...well, if we win this kidnapping war, that is.”
“But our enemies can change bodies, which makes them basically immor-
tal. Also, hadn’t they kinda already dominated the world by 2019?”
“No, didn’t Wednesdayyy-san say a few elements of that future were fic-
tional?”
“Because someone from this side resided there, right? But no matter how
important someone is, there’s a limit to how influential a single person can
be, no? I know a figure can be really impactful, but I don’t mean it like this;
my point is that, once the general direction is settled on, technology pro-
gresses at basically the same pace no matter who actually works on it. Even if
that all-important figure doesn’t do it, someone else would probably make
the same discoveries or inventions in their stead at a faster or slower pace,
but all in all I think they’d progress at similar speeds. What do you think?”
“We don’t have other scenarios to tease apart, so we can’t run a compar-
ison...no, we couldn’t, right. Now that we can travel through spacetime and
change the future, we might be able to.”
“Yeah, according to that black-clad guy, there are cases where it’s possi-
ble...”
“How do we achieve a strong will?” ...

Next to them, who gathered in one spot to progress the discussion, the
troupe members were still shaken.
“So we can’t return home anymore?” “I think so?” “What do we do?” “I
mean, it’s not like we have many options, no?” “No, but like, what can we
even do?” “Acting...” “...” “...” “...” “Still, there must be something else we
can do, right?” “Yeah. Like cooking.” “Or humoring kids.” “Oh~, that’s re-
alistic.” “Reminds me of the acting fairs...” “Aaah, that was such a pain, the
kids just wouldn’t sit down.” “300 million...” “No, it’s not like we’re getting
all of them at once. They’ll increase little by little.” “Eh? But if we’re putting
them all in one place, why not place them all at once? It’s not like we’re keep-
ing them for ten or twenty years there, no? So we could hide the 300 million
children there for a single second.” “OOOOOOH~~~!!” “So smart.” “Woah.”
“Wait, so we don’t even need to act, do we?” “Ah.” “True.” “So I guess we’ll
just snatch the kids outside.” “Hey, don’t say snatch!” “Kidnapping isn’t any
better...” “Isn’t this a crime?” “Well, society is messed up, so...” ...

They’d split into two groups, but still met me with the questions I’d ex-
pected.
The great detectives:
“Disco-san, where and how are we going to hide the children?”
The Angel Bunnies:
“Disco-san, can we go home just one last time?”
Where to hide them...I still couldn’t decide whether I should tell them
about the counterflowing world inside the Pinehouse.
Ahaha. Sorry, but no going home. I couldn’t let them go outside the Pine-
house. My biggest fear was information leaking out. Nail Peeler’s question
instilled terror in me.
Disco, do you think a pure-bred sadist would ever give up on the kids
you’re hiding?
The 2019 JJ said he’d used 200 million children as sub-children over ten
years. So my 300 million was worth about 15 years. The Styron Company
seemed content where it was, with its yearly trillion yen in sales and the world
at its feet, but if a company could double its revenue, it would strive for it. So
wasn’t JJ actually feigning having no interest in me with all his might to lower
my guard?
In other words, they were after the children I’d hidden even in 2019, even
then, even after then, constantly.
 I had no reason to rest, nor did I have a place or the time to do so.
In the end, I shouldn’t share any more information than I already had.
For starters, I spoke.
“You can do anything as long as you stay inside the Pinehouse. Call your
family or friends or whoever.”
A boy from the Angel Bunnies then said.
“But we can’t explain why we’re going to disappear, well, to go missing,
can we? Partly because that would be bad, but also I don’t really get it myself...”
“But there’s still a ton more I want to do in life. Do we have to save the
children at all costs?” Nils said. Even the great detectives around him wid-
ened their eyes in surprise. He continued. “...Haha, just joking... There’s no
job more important than this, right. Ahah ahah.”
It was indeed an unreasonable request.
There were many scandalous things in this world, and he’d gotten
dragged into the biggest one of them all.
But that kind of thing just happened. I could tell him life was full of those,
but even then he wouldn’t resign to his fate. That’s natural, painful things are
painful.
I was fine with it. No, not quite, how should I put it...well, I couldn’t really
choose anything else. There was no greater joy than saving children to me.
That occupied the top place in my values. However, other people had different
priorities. Child abuse existed even before the Cozue Method, and it’s not like
everyone thought about it the most and priorized dealing with it over every-
thing else. That was the case for me, too. After a day of work I, too, would
drink some alcohol, sleep with women, sleep alone for ten hours, watch bor-
ing television, or sit in a daze, doing nothing.
But that wouldn’t be the case anymore. I had to be frantic about it. I was
forced to. Urged by reason. Despite everyone else leisurely leading their lives
as usual, I had to push through many restrictions, kidnap everyone’s children,
sadden parents, and be loathed by many people. I would probably be blamed,
have lawsuits filed against me, and be persecuted. Relentlessly and thor-
oughly on all fronts. And my parents, siblings, and friends would get dragged
into it.
I had no choice but to say this.
“Those who don’t want in...can leave. Though it’ll have to be past mid-
night today.”
The Pinehouse Thirty-One were merely missing. There was no guarantee
they were all involved with the kidnappings.
Yet, a girl from the Angel Bunnies spoke.
“I...want to be useful.” Her voice was meek, but it didn’t seem to be out of
consideration for me or the others. Her tone was overflowing with conviction,
despite some confusion; these thoughts seem to have spilled from her as she
then covered her mouth and let out an embarrassed laugh at the members
around her. She continued. “Sorry. It’s not out of desire to throw my life away
or anything. I just hold my future dearly, so I want to do the best I can for
what’s in my power.”
The girl next to her asked, “Eh...but Hiraki-chan, what about your dream
of being an actress?” resulting in a few boys behind them bursting in laughter,
so Hiraki and a few girls kicked them. “Ouch ouch, sorry sorry, hahahaha. But,
I mean~.”
“Say whatever,” Hiraki said. “After all, I just want to stand out!” she
spread her arms and started dancing a bit before everyone. “Plus, chances are,
I won’t get to appear on a bigger stage than this one! The stage is the world
and the spectators are all of humanity!” she sang. A few boys then took a step
forward, spread their arms, and announced:
“I’m giving up on IT!”
...Well, that was Kimura, so everyone went “Yeah, I bet that’s better for
you.” “Man, why can’t you aim at being a normal salaryman?” “The heck is
this future NEET acting almighty about...” and teased him, but a few mem-
bers still followed him.
 “Then, I give up on becoming a pilot!” “Doctor for me!” “Politician here!”
“A housewife for me!” “Housewife here too!” Plus all the chatter.
“Hold on, if we really won’t meet anyone anymore, aren’t we limited to
falling in love with one of us? Of these 31...” one of the girls said. The Angel
Bunnies all froze at once and appraised their surroundings. “What about the
romance ban among the troupe...?” a boy murmured. “Then I’ll take Nils-
kun!” “Nils -kun, come here!” “Eh!? Then me too!” Looking at the Angel
Bunnies getting excited yet again, I found myself glad I was stuck with them.
Their boisterousness was, of course, partly a performance. There are things
one couldn’t swallow without fooling around, so this was a good way of deal-
ing with them.
I ought to reward their brightness.
I wanted to show them that vast, nonsensical yet beautiful twin world. As
well as the smiles of the children they would save...
No, I hadn’t witnessed them myself, so I purely wanted to see them.
Even now, there might be children being brought inside the Pinehouse.
Between rooms 8 and 9.
However, that world existed in the spacetime after Ragnarök. I wasn’t part
of it right now, so I couldn’t enter it.
I got away from Mercury C, who was grinning at the troupe members’
ruckus and the great detectives getting dragged into it, and hid inside room 9
on the first floor, Mitamura Saburou’s office. I warped to the Pinehouse right
after Ragnarök, at midnight.

I didn’t know what had happened, but the presences I’d felt were gone.
The chandelier and the hallway lights were on. But there wasn’t anyone. I ob-
served the furniture and decorations, but nothing seemed out of place. No
signs of quarrels. The people present here had simply vanished, but it seemed
they’d prepared for it. The doors around the hallway were all closed, the sofa
set in the hall was put back in place, its cushions fluffed and laid out, and the
table wiped clean.
How had the Pinehouse Thirty-One vanished?
Should I check how things looked at 23:26?
I thought yet again, but stopped myself. Even Nail Peeler had warned me.
If I told you, you wouldn’t be a detective. In short, my work here was to think.
There were places I couldn’t reach by taking a peek at the answer. To begin
with, different consciousnesses will see things differently, just like how I
hadn’t noticed the Pinehouse was the Cottage Natsukawa. Even if the current
me were to witness Ragnarök, I might not make any sense of it. It might just
increase my confusion.
I still had time.
I jumped in front of the door to room 8 on the second floor and twisted the
Pinehouse.
The white wall appeared.
I could omit the blackbox process. I learned how to adjust my own time in
that battle against the Black Bird Man.
I went past the wall. The bright sunlight came pouring in and a gentle
breeze not cold nor warm blew; in this world, the Sun shone on those who
liked it and the night covered the sky for those who didn’t.
I’d landed on a patch of lawn, so I understood Ichirou and Jirou were here.
“Disco-san,” I heard someone call me and turned around; the twins were
there.
As expected, the twins had barely grown since I’d last seen them. Where
had the time from 2019 to 2006, those 13 years, gone? Or maybe time didn’t
progress at all here. Even so, time flowed enough for them to change clothes.
Today the two of them were wearing white polo shirts with blue and ultra-
marine blue stripes. Same pattern for the jeans and sneakers.
“Yo,” I said. “Good morning.”
The twins laughed. “Good morniiiing.” “Morning~.” “But isn’t it noon?”
“Not morning?” “All of them, I guess.” “Ehehe.”
 I took out my phone and pointed its camera at the two cute boys.
“Oh.” “Pictures.” “Our first ones.” “Right?” “Ichirou here.” “Jirou here.”
“Should we gather everybody?”
“No need, you two are enough,” I said, and filmed the two of them despite
having a hard time fitting both of them in the frame due to the twisted space.
However, I had no idea if the data would remain. Well, if I pressed the shutter
feeling like it would, it probably would.
I then filmed the world under many angles from next to the playful twins.
There were many diverse sceneries one couldn’t believe were captured from
the same spot. All of them were beautiful. The children would be overjoyed to
be taken here. After all, only pleasant emotions existed in this world.
Picking up the scent of a flower whose name I didn’t know floating to me
from afar, I thought: If many people and animals with diverse conscious-
nesses were gathered somewhere, even here, they would influence each
other’s worldviews. And since that phenomenon resulted in this state, there
must be a rule to this world. To not bring someone’s bad feelings. Rather, that
shouldn’t be possible.
Therefore, even if someone with knowledge or experience about the Cozue
Method, its past, and its future were to come here, that part of them would
surely stay unused and slowly fade away.
This world’s future would shape up to be completely different from the
post-Ragnarök outside world.
A tranquil yet powerful confidence filled my heart.
“Alright,” I said and put away my phone in my pocket. “Oh? Are you going
back?” “Ehh? Stay longer,” The twins complained, but I still had a lot to do.
Plus, I wasn’t the one meant to come here to have a fun time.
“I’ll bring in many children here,” I said, “so be nice to them, okay?”
The twins then happily laughed. “Ooooh.” “Ooooh.” “Children?” “Many?”
“How many?” “What can we play at?”
 Enough to play baseball, softball, even national leagues and have count-
less stadiums filled to the brim. And they were all young, so they’d surely
adapt with ease to this world’s rule.
“When are they coming?” “Really soon?” “How many minutes?” How
many hours, minutes, and seconds?” The twins asked questions like how
small children would.
“In about 30 minutes.”
I’d come here a bit after midnight, so there really was a mere 30 minutes
before 23:26 to this counterflowing world. We should start kidnapping and
hiding the children right after the folding of spacetime. With this vastness we
shouldn’t need to worry, but it might feel crowded with a sudden influx of
hundreds or thousands of children...
I said, “Well then, I’ll come again,” to the twins performing their original
dance, and they waved at me.
“See you!” “Bye bye!”
“Transmit my regards to Lightweight, Middleweight, Konkon, and
Denden.”
“Sure.” “Roger.”
The next step would be taking pictures of the kidnapped children. Cross-
ing Ragnarök should be a breeze in this world, I thought and tried to do so,
but I didn’t jump.
I couldn’t jump?
I just awkwardly rose in the air. The twins tilted their heads seeing me land,
then burst into laughter. “Ahahahahahaha!” “Disco-san, you failed hard!”
“Right?!” “Ahahahahahaha!”
Right, I thought, and looked at the sky where many jungle balls were soar-
ing. Many Suns, blue tints forming the darkness of the night, dawns, and twi-
lights... The time here flowed as desired by the twins under the sky. So I prob-
ably did jump through time, I was simply unaware of it. I’d only moved my
internal time, I hadn’t gone to this world’s future. This twin world didn’t
have a unified past or future.
 “Huh~?” I said and made Ichirou and Jirou laugh harder, then, “See you
then, I’ll come back,” I waved at them. It was a drag, but I would have to leave
once, shift the time to before Ragnarök inside the Pinehouse, then come back
in again.
“Bye bye~!” “See you~!” the twins waved at me; I jumped, returned to the
desert Pinehouse, and for starters restored the twisted Pinehouse to normal.
This was the key.
Now, I thought. The current me should have no way of entering the coun-
terflowing hiding spot for the children without crossing the folding point.
Although the people after Ragnarök could... I checked the outside; there were
still many media-related people around the Pinehouse. They seemed trou-
bled to not see the great detectives come out nearly a full day after the case
got concluded, so they talked loud enough for their voices to reach inside the
building. Unaware it was deserted. I manipulated space to snatch a camera
from a journalist.
Okay.
I then returned to the Pinehouse at dawn. In reality I wanted to search for
a time where nobody was there, but the great detectives and the media hadn’t
left since Mitamura Saburou’s death, right before that the Angel Bunnies
were here, and before that, well, Saburou lived alone, and he could manipu-
late spacetime too, so I couldn’t sneak past him. Saburou was even there dur-
ing the Cottage Natsukawa days, so ultimately there was always someone.
So—I returned to the first floor’s office right after I’d departed. I twisted the
hallway’s space from the inside; I’d gotten accustomed enough to the hall-
way’s sensation that I managed without having to directly look at it. I left the
study to check, and indeed there was a white wall. The troupe members and
great detectives were standing or hanging in that nonsensical mishmash of
floor and ceiling, but looking at the inconsistencies in their positions or
movements for too long would confuse me, so I averted my eyes and returned
to the office. I then turned on the camera I’d taken with me, started recording,
and softly sent it beyond the wall in my stead. The camera itself didn’t have a
flow of time, so as long as I kept exercising my influence on it, I should be
able to see the video afterwards.
I didn’t know what was going on inside nor where the children were, so I
lifted it a bit and slowly rotated it from an overhead angle, then returned it to
me.
The camera came back. It seemed fine. I couldn’t know how the weather
would be in that twin world 20 hours after that, but I’d expected the camera
to break if it had rained due to a pair of twins’ whim. Or if it had plunged in an
ocean...
I checked the display; it had recorded for roughly as long as the time here.
Losing no time, I checked on the monitor how the world beyond the wall
looked.
The screen suddenly switched and showed a loooooooot of children eve-
rywhere.
However, they look nothing like I’d expected.

The image wasn’t showing the dazzling twin world.

It was the inverted ceiling of a Pinehouse’s bedroom.
The children using the ceiling as a floor filled that room to the brim, but
they only appeared for an instant before disappearing, leaving space for more
children to appear and disappear...as if someone was creating a messed up
neon sign using children as lights. No, it flickered faster and in more detail,
like a TV’s scan line zoomed in. A giant TV made out of children...
The fuck was that!?
Children were laid out on the ceiling more densely than chicken in a poul-
try farm, then replaced...
Was that what we were doing!?
Did that count as saving the children!?
Where had the twin world disappeared to!?
 18

What had happened to the twin world during Ragnarök? Why didn’t it
carry over to here?
Would the world beyond the white wall change or be replaced right before
Ragnarök?
Which ceiling was that? It was beyond the wall on the first floor’s twisted
office, so room 8 on the second floor? Then, were invisible children filling the
second floor’s ceiling like bats in a cave even now? But if they were inside the
Pinehouse and not in a counterflowing time, why would there be a white wall?
Why were those children flickering? I’d imagined them leisurely playing
in that twin world, and yet they were merely crammed for an instant, ran-
domly disappeared, and replaced...where to!? Where from!?
Calm down, only asking questions wouldn’t lead me anywhere, I thought.
Think through things in order.
I’d always used my head, thought about things I didn’t understand, and
deepened my understanding to progress. I’d climbed cliffs after cliffs.
If there was a mystery, that just meant there was a new perspective to be
gained from solving it.
We would never treat children roughly.
And that situation only lasted a moment for them, they would barely re-
member it.
They were installed on the ceiling out of a lack of options. That was the
only space available. After all, we were hiding over 300 million children. If it
only lasted an instant, why bother putting them to sleep in a bed or having
them sit on a chair.
However, where did they go the next moment? Where was I taking them
to? Had I made another hiding spot?
No, their next destination must be that twin world, I hypothesized, half-
praying. What if the twin world hadn’t disappeared but was simply moved
somewhere else? So I was temporarily hiding the children in the Pinehouse’s
new ceiling world, then moving them a second time to the new twin world...?
But why was I taking such a roundabout route? Why was I hiding them
here once?
Naturally, that was simply because one could only enter the new twin
world from the pre-Ragnarök’s ceiling world. Meaning the ceiling world and
the twin world were connected.
Then, how exactly were they related?

I’d only just understood the Pineapple Tunnel’s ‘sourness’ Kozue talked
about. With her vague conception of the world, she must’ve reached the ceil-
ing world on a spur of the moment and either licked a child’s tear or picked
up a scent, no? If so, I might’ve been able to reach this place by following Ko-
zue...or was that too conceited?
I fell into thought. It seemed like it would take time, so I reverted the
twisted Pinehouse to normal. I was getting impatient. As I secluded myself in
the office, noon came and everyone was getting hungry. I was too. Some even
wanted to go to the toilets. However, the kitchen and toilets were in the de-
tached building, outside the Pinehouse, so I checked it, carried some people
there while leaving the Pinehouse to Mercury C, and stayed on guard until
they finished their business.
The Angel Bunnies’ leader, Fukushima Manabu, quickly made onigiri for
everyone. “We won’t need to clean anything with onigiri,” he claimed. Good
idea. We finished eating, and I returned to the office.
But I still had a hard time gathering my thoughts, so I got the idea of draw-
ing something. I’d organized my thoughts through drawings up to now.
In the office with a bunch of blood-ridden books on the floor, I first found
a pen on the desk. I then searched for paper or a notebook, but there weren’t
many books left on the shelves; Joseph Eidelberg’s The Japanese and The Lost
Tribes of Israel, Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777, and a Western book sandwiched
between those two.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas
Taleb

I grabbed it and checked its contents. It was a business book.

It was about the influence unpredictable events (black swan = something
highly improbable) had...
Its first publication date was the 17th of April 2007.

Hmm.

19

“Yo,” I called out, and Mitamura Saburou turned around, making his ro-
tating chair squeak.
26th of March 2000, a Sunday. At 01:24 in the dead of the night, in the
Pinehouse’s office.
The Black Swan was already on the shelf next to me.
“Disco Wednesdayyy,” the 31-year-old Mitamura Saburou said. A bit of
the cuteness he had as ‘Runbaba 12’ remained on his face. “You, huh.”
“Been a while.”
“Indeed. What brought ya here this late in the night?”
He was surprised, but seemed to expect it to some degree.
“I’m still at the Pinehouse. There’s a few things to investigate.”
“Hoh. ...But ain’t the case over? Thanks to ya. What’s there to investigate?”
“Aren’t you the one investigating, actually?”
 I bet he could time travel when he was seventeen thanks to Ichirou and
Jirou’s influence. They’d grown up as triplets, so he had many chances to ob-
serve them up-close. Ichirou and Jirou must’ve told him something concrete,
too. However, they fled when they were fourteen, before he could fully un-
derstand it, and then he learned about the Pinehouse Case when time travel-
ing to 2006. And since there’s no way a time-traveling seventeen-year-old
would stay still, he must’ve gone to the future past Ragnarök and learned
what would have value then.
That being the Cozue Method.
I took out The Black Swan from the shelf, making Saburou’s fake smile
tense a bit.
“I bet,” I started, “when you first found and bought this book, it was out
of pure curiosity as an author. It was merely part of your hobby of reading all
kinds of stupid stuff.”
Saburou maintained his smile accompanied with a glare, but I was used to
it. I wasn’t going to piss my pants because a writer was glaring at me. I locked
eyes with him and continued.
“However, when you found the Blackswan Company in the future, didn’t
you develop the ambition to obtain immense power? Didn’t you become set
on abandoning writing novels and becoming a shitty entrepreneur, a money-
worshiper devoid of any ethics? Heh. Geez, you’re dumb, Saburou. You really
think a guy from the sticks who’d only ever written books could suddenly go
out and dominate the world?”
He kept himself from replying on reflex.
“You’ve been reading too much into weird contexts. Maybe that’s your
occupational disease as an author. But actually, you read lines you weren’t
supposed to. And that made you dream too big for your guts.”
Saburou finally spattered what he had on his mind along with a bold smile,
but his tone had some anxiety mixed in.
“I will create Blackswan, Disco Wednesdayyy. I’ll torment the children ya
love so much and make a killing. And without a hint of remorse.”
 “...”
“I checked the future and confirmed it. Heh heh heh. No matter how hard
ya try, an old detective alone can’t rival big-caps.”
Who’s the old one here. Tsk, so pushy for being a mere author, teasing me
with the same small-time thug energy as JJ. I bet he didn’t know one person’s
anger could change the future.
“Your face has become deplorable since you lost yourself to greed. You
were quite charming when you were Runbaba 12, too. So, all this big talk is
good and all, but were you able to find the children? The 300 mil-
lion? ...They’re hidden right next to you, you know? Hehehe.”
“...”
“Well, you were on the right track with roundening the Cottage Natsu-
kawa. ...But it seems you’ve yet to discover where the voices leaking from be-
tween rooms 8 and 9 calling ‘Disco, Disco,’ actually come from.”
His smile disappeared from his face. “You came here expressly to tell me
the answer?”
Now I was the one grinning.
“The only thing I’m here to tell you is why you’re gonna start writing nov-
els under the name Anbyouin Owaru instead of Ehimegawa Juuzou starting
today.”
“Huh?”
Saburou lowered his guard for a moment; I stabbed him from behind with
the centaurs’ arrow I’d removed from the decoration in the hallway.
Sbam!
The arrow poked its head from Saburou’s chest. One strike to the heart. I’d
nailed stealing the first attack.
I told him,
“You’re going to die today.”
However, Saburou didn’t die. He, too, could manipulate space. He tried to
promptly remove the arrow from his body and heal his heart back to nor-
mal...but I didn’t let him. I fixed the arrow in place and stopped his heartbeat.
 “...! Ughh...”
Our offense-defense battle around the arrow continued, but of course I
had the advantage. As time passed, Saburou was slowly dying.
I glanced at the unfinished novel displayed on the computer he’d been
facing. “Saburou, you still have a job to finish.”
Having noticed my gaze, he looked at his novel.
“You wrote those because you liked it, right? Then I’ll forgive you—by
leaving behind your feelings of wanting to write novels.”
He glared at me once more, but out of astonishment this time. It was his
turn to fully experience history’s irony. The only reason for him to change his
pen name was his imminent death. Therefore, he couldn’t escape that death.
He looked at me and grinned.
“Hah. I know, Disco Wednesdayyy. You’re gonna lead an awful, terrible
life.”
That badmouthing was proof he’d given up on living.
“Yeah, we’re sharing the pain,” I said and laughed. “My life will be dark
and full of suffering, and yours will end now, Owaru-chan. Now, gather your
pure feelings of wanting to write, of wanting to write even more.”
His eyes were closed and his face pale. I didn’t need to check to know his
heart was barely moving by now. And yet, I felt someone’s presence popping
up near me.
Naturally, he’d made it in time.

After confirming ‘Anbyouin Owaru’ entered Saburou’s skewered body and

started writing novels, I left the office and took care of the finishing touches
that were impossible for Saburou to accomplish in this freshly-made Pine-
house. I copied the hallway’s carpet and stuck it onto the first floor’s ceiling
beneath the hallway. ‘Anbyouin’ would probably continue to search and think,
but it was written in history that he wouldn’t find them.
 ‘Anbyouin Owaru’ was Saburou’s feelings of wanting to write novels, just
like Koeda and Nail Peeler. People’s feelings were intricately made. ‘An-
byouin Owaru’ would cause troubles for many people, be especially awful to
Sakai Tsutomu, and eventually cause the Pinehouse Case. However, that was
inevitable. There was nothing I could do about it.
If there were tens of thousands of me I could summon and concentrate my
strong wishes to cancel everything, but there aren’t...thinking so, I returned
to the office. ‘Anbyouin Owaru’ was sitting on his chair and tapping on his
keyboard without paying heed to my existence... I took a peek at the monitor
and checked the title.
That was the novel ‘Anbyouin Owaru’ would painstakingly finish writing
in 2003 and publish three years from now under the name ‘Ehimegawa Juu-
zou’.
Tsukumojuuku.
The same association surged in my mind.
C→O→C→O→C.
Pa-chom-pa-chom-pa.
Right. I’d gotten this far. So why couldn’t I take it to the next step?
The Pinehouse is to be straightened into the Cottage Natsukawa twice.
And between rooms 8 and 9 that served as the opening, there was that gi-
ant, free twin world.

20

My brain was about to explode. All the many images I’d drawn were surg-
ing up in my mind.
I couldn’t let go of that opportunity!
I returned to the 2006’s Pinehouse, grabbed a pen and a notebook, sat at
Saburou’s desk, and thought. I knew the general direction of my rumination.
How to open the Pinehouse.
 Not opening it as in reverting it to the Cottage Natsukawa once again. With
that transformation I could only see the parking lot.
I had to open it much wider.
Because the opening wouldn’t merely free a compressed parking lot.
We’re talking about a seemingly boundless world.
With grasslands, oceans, mountains, jungle balls flying through the sky,
cumulonimbus clouds, and many suns.
And the twins Ichirou and Jirou had gathered.

That world was as big as the one we were currently in.

I first revisited Norma’s folded universe theory. A steady-state, inflating,

and oscillating universe theory. I knew this graph and this elegant thinking
wouldn’t merely end as a theory. I’d confirmed time folded itself and created
two counterflowing times at the point we called ‘Ragnarök’. I’d even seen the
outskirts of the universe myself.
However, while I could only imagine the secret space compressed inside
the Pinehouse to be continuous pre/post-Ragnarök, it actually didn’t seem to
be. Thinking about it, when I failed to travel to the future inside the twin
world, landed, and got laughed at by Ichirou and Jirou, perhaps that wasn’t a
feature of that world and it only meant it had no future? If so, where had the
twins gone? ...I pondered, but couldn’t find anything through sheer imagina-
tion.
I would base my thinking on a graph. In my previous one I’d denoted each
of the compressed, overlapping spaces as ‘hidden Pinehouse,’ but if they
weren’t connected through Ragnarök, from now on they would be two dif-
ferent spaces simply existing in the same spot. One of them only had twin
animals that could live in complete freedom, and the other one only had hu-
man children that were laid out on the ceiling. The ceiling world dated from
Ragnarök at the latest and flowed away from it, so it would surely disappear
as soon as the Pinehouse reverted to the Cottage Natsukawa or when it
reached a date prior to the Cottage Natsukawa being built...no, we were hiding
children in there. As long as there were potential targets for the Cozue
Method, we would maintain it by simply moving the entire space elsewhere.
Then what about the twin world? It was headed straight for Ragnarök. Where
would it go after the collision with that folding point? Would it disappear?
That whole world? I couldn’t understand why.
No. It wasn’t about understanding or not.
There was just no reason for it.
Spaces succeeding each other in the same spot should be continuous. Yet
they were not. The mystery standing in my way was merely that, so there was
no need to think about why either of them would disappear.
I’d been in that twin world 30 minutes before Ragnarök. There was no
danger in sight nor any omen there would be one. Since one could control
spacetime more freely in that world, there was no way they wouldn’t notice a
danger ahead of time. I still couldn’t believe that world would suddenly van-
ish.
If it didn’t vanish, then what had happened to it?
I should think simply. If it didn’t continue into the ceiling world, then it
must do so into another space.
I tried imagining the twin world extending straight and passing through
Ragnarök’s wall. Beyond that wall where everything should bend, only the
twin world would push through and keep its course...
I didn’t like this image because it ruined the elegance Norma’s folded uni-
verse theory had.
However, what peeved me more than its appearance was that none of the
twin world’s freedom, vastness, or size were reflected in that graph.
Right. The twins there took their own personal worlds along with them
anywhere they went. Even if each individual pair’s worldview was limited in
range, the world itself was endless.
 Meaning I had to rework the graph once more to reflect that.
I recalled what I’d thought earlier.

The twin world was one giant world.

That world was as big as the one we were currently in.

I altered my drawing to incorporate those ideas.

The time past Ragnarök splits two ways. The twin world rapidly expands
once Ragnarök ends and becomes as big as the two folded spacetimes...that’s
how I imagined it.
Looking at it from a size of the universe standpoint, it might not totally
contradict the steady-state theory. Two counterflowing worlds complete
each other until Ragnarök, and past that another world created within the
previous ones expanded; each of these probably being equally infinite...
A world switch had occurred.
 I stared at my drawing.
While this illustrated the birth of a new world on a single time axis, it also
expressed the death of the old world.
And if we were to look at it as a giant cell division, it could be interpreted
as one of the twin universes dying while still small.
Meaning the old world was a cosmic vanishing twin that would suffer a
miscarriage in the shadow of the new one...

According to this diagram, where were the children in the ceiling world
going?
We couldn’t return them to the post-folding future. Same for the world
before the folding, they would be taken back and abused if we didn’t hide
them well. The Black Bird Man and Black Swan were operating before Ragna-
rök, even involving JJ.
Could I create another space with the same flow as the future in addition
to the ceiling world?
It would be easy in the future after the folding, however, it would be im-
possible to get a security as tight as the Pinehouse’s. Styron and Blackswan
had total control over that future.
Also, depending on the spots we decided on in the pre-folding world, we
might manage to hide them well...but how long could we keep them hidden?
After all, we’re talking about 300 million growing children. We were
merely 31 to carry out the job 600 million parents were giving their all to ac-
complish. We wouldn’t keep them crammed like chickens like in that ceiling
world, but still, not giving them a proper lifestyle was another form of abuse.
We would end up debating which one was worse; this or efficiently abusing
them sexually for a brief time.
Ultimately, I wanted to bring the children to the twin world. I wanted them
to live among safety and kindness without risking falling victim to anyone.
Was that possible?
I stared at my graph.
I then noticed.
I’d overlooked one point in the folded universe theory. There was one and
only one singularity point. That was, obviously, Ragnarök. Any other point in
time was an overlap of two spacetimes flowing in opposite directions—like
even for the start and end of the universe, the far end of the spacetime’s past
was overwhelmed by the far end of its future, but without being reduced to
zero—there were two counterflowing universes everywhere except at Rag-
narök; there, the universe was unified. In other words, these two universes
became one for that one moment.
And if time flowed in the same direction, the white wall was sure to dis-
appear.
 Then, only during Ragnarök, any person, thing, or animal was free to
travel between the two spacetimes. Even the 300 million children in the ceil-
ing world could be moved to the twin world during Ragnarök...and I bet they
were doing just that. There was no doubt in my mind; after randomly flicker-
ing and experiencing that ceiling world for but an instant, they were brought
to a vast new world.

Okay, now I could finally return to that question: Why were we using the
ceiling world as an intermediary? Couldn’t we directly bring them to the twin
world during Ragnarök?
No, that would be difficult.
I recalled.
This twin world didn’t have a unified past or future.
We couldn’t get the right timing outside of the ceiling world, where clocks
worked normally.

Okay! Okay! I felt strength coursing through me from looking at that

graph.
Then, I thought.
What did I need to do to make this graph a reality?
How could I expel the twin world outside of the old world?
Thinking that, I realized.
That’s what opening the Pinehouse wide meant.
Opening it wide meant opening it up to the outskirts of the world.
Stretching it out of the world.
Then, the phrasing ‘out of the world’ reminded me.
The 2019 ‘me’s’ message JJ had shown me.
 THE WORLD IS MADE OUT OF CLOSED ROOMS.

This was the English title of one of Ehimegawa Juuzou’s mystery novels,
with the Japanese one being Sekai ha Misshitsu de Dekiteiru, which I’d kind
of forgotten about. However, I’d felt something out of place when seeing the
English one.
Mm? What in the world was ‘I’ saying?
Here is the reason for that discomfort:
‘Be made out of’ meant ‘have been produced using,’ there was nothing
wrong with it. However, the sequence ‘out of closed rooms,’ that is, following
‘out of’ by a place was evocative of being ‘outside of closed rooms.’ If we were
to read it that way, the title’s meaning would heavily change and become The
World is Made Outside of Closed Rooms.

The world is made outside of a closed space.

Wouldn’t that title be most appropriate to explain my graph?

Because of the folding in spacetime one couldn’t pass through the out-
skirts of the world. Even if one were to cross Ragnarök, they had no influence
over the other half of spacetime. In other words, history had been closed shut,
thus the future ‘me’ was urging me to create a brand new world outside of the
folded, guarded universe, wasn’t he?
And that was in my power.
I’d been to the outskirts of the universe.
And somewhere I’d been to once, I could return to anytime I wanted.

I then gave another look at my graph and wondered.

 If history was definite and originally couldn’t be altered, then wasn’t I not
creating a new world beyond the folded universe, but rather the old world
bent itself because the new one was there? Wouldn’t the new world’s birth
and the old world’s death occur at the same time?
In short, wasn’t the one folding and killing this world none other than
myself?
If that was the case...however, I could understand.
I’d wished for Ragnarök, a bizarrely convenient condition to hide, protect,
and move children to a new world, stronger than anyone else.
My anger and hatred had bent over destiny and ended this world.

I stood up from the chair, ripped the sketch out of the notebook, rolled it
into a ball, lit it on fire with a lighter I found on the desk, and manipulated
space to scatter its ashes here and there along the outskirts of the world. Do-
ing so, I regauged the distance between me and the outskirts.
I could do it.
I could, and I would.
My course of action was settled.
Having both destiny and will on my side, I felt my blood boiling with a
strong sense of duty, and yet I was bizarrely calm.
I looked at the clock.
14:35.
I had plenty of time...I felt relieved, then saw the shadow of the desk clock
quickly streaming to the side. The window frame’s shadow then crossed my
field of vision. I sensed a strong light passing outside of the window and
looked; it was the Sun quickly setting before my eyes. I took another look at
the clock, however, the hands were still displaying 14:35 and the second hand
didn’t seem broken.
And yet the evening clouds outside were burning of a red as bright as the
notebook page I’d burnt moments ago, with the same intensity, and were
consumed. The parting red clouds didn’t leave behind ashes but a dark night
sky with twinkling stars.
What was happening?
I rushed out of the office.
The troupe members and great detectives merrily having fun in the hall
were no longer there. To my surprise, I heard a voice coming from above me.
“When the night falls and it becomes dark outside, like this, we can turn
the hallway’s lights on, not the chandeliers’, mind you...”
It was Mercury C.
He seemed to be explaining the opposite magic mirror with the floor and
the skylight. The magic circle appeared and reflected on the skylight.
I looked up. Everyone was on the floor above, listening to Mercury C.
What had started?
Noticing me, Mercury C spoke.
“Oh, Detective. Close the door and join us here. I’m in the midst of ex-
plaining to everyone the hidden spot of the kidnapped children.”
The fuck...? Why now?
Mercury C paid no heed to my gaze and continued. “Using the hint of The
Hanged Man, we can...”
He was reproducing the same path I’d gone through.
“Stop it, Mercury C. Don’t decide on your own,” I said.
He then replied,
“The fuck are you saying now? I’m Mercury too. The Roman god Mer-
curius. The Greek god Hermes. In other words, the Norse god Odin. The
Hanged Man hinted at me too. I, too, have a duty to uncover the truth.”

21

The big moon was drawing near the center of the skylight. Time was ad-
vancing rapidly. The office’s clock must’ve been advancing normally because
time inside the Pinehouse was made slower.
 In short, Mercury C could now alter the speed of time, too.
He had obtained himself a black box somewhere.
“Actually hanging from the ceiling would prove useless,” Mercury C ex-
plained. “The Hanged Man has an upright and a reverse position, and both
are valid. However, if I hung from the ceiling I would merely be The Upside-
Down Man. Meaning, to witness the new world, we must be hanging from the
ceiling while walking on the floor and hanging from the floor while walking
on the ceiling.”
Mercury C’s reasoning felt like it was tracing mine.
“Mercury, stop! We don’t know what could be lurking...”
He popped his head above the handrails.
“It’s okay, I’ve secured this spacetime. Stop throwing a fuss and come up.
It’s dangerous down there, you know?”
The office’s door closed shut behind me, then Mercury C resumed his ex-
planation.
“What should we do to walk on the ceiling as if it was the floor? Easy. Con-
nect the floor and the ceiling.”
I jumped to the second floor’s hallway. Everyone’s eyes were glued to a
round sheet of paper Mercury C was spreading flat. He’d cut a disc in the mid-
dle.
“This is the Pinehouse’s round hallway. As everyone knows, the Pine-
house is actually the Cottage Natsukawa, and there is a cut in the round hall-
way. So we gotta sever this piece of paper in one spot. ...”
Mercury C ripped the circle open.
“This cut is the border between rooms 8 and 9; this is the actual state of
the Pinehouse’s hallway. However, in reality, these aren’t connected planarly,
they’re twisted in 3D space then linked. To show you, you reverse one of the
cut ends once before connecting it...and it becomes like this.”
Mercury C twisted the circle, put the ends together, and made it hold to-
gether with a stapler.
The people in the hall awed in admiration.
 “The point here is that someone walking normally will be walking on the
ceiling before they even know it. And the carpet beneath the hallway I showed
you earlier was laid out for that exact purpose!”
Mercury C said and raised his Pinehouse Version Möbius Strip above his
head, making my anxiety peak. I had to stop him at all costs, even forcefully,
I thought, and in that exact moment Mercury C spoke.
“Hah hah hah. Don’t be so flustered because you noticed your own mis-
take, Detective. Exactly. Your deduction was wrong. You can’t push every-
thing onto dead people. Mitamura Saburou didn’t commit suicide. He was ac-
tually killed!”

What the fuck was he saying?

Mercury C continued. “Upon learning the secrets of the Pinehouse’s space,

the culprit shot a bowgun from the first floor. The bowgun’s elevation barely
differs between someone standing on the floor readying it and someone
standing on the ceiling readying it. The arrow expelled by the bowgun looped
around the first floor once counterclockwise, entered the second floor’s hall-
way, then looped some more before stabbing Mitamura Saburou’s chest from
behind as he was standing before room 7 on the second floor.”
The troupe members and great detectives let out voices of admiration, but
my confusion didn’t lessen.
“Because of the nighthawk morons in the hall and the time of death, only
a few could have carried this out. The people from rooms 1 and 7, which have
stairs before their doors. Which are respectively the shit leader of the shit
troupe, Fukushima Manabu, and the poop vice-leader, Satou Kazuhiro. And
who isn’t present right now?”
Fukushima Manabu raised his hand. “Fukushima here. Satou’s missing.”
“Where the fuck is Satou?!”
 Mercury C yelled. Fukushima answered in a meek voice.
“I-I think he’s sleeping in his room... Could he have run away?”
“What kind of bullshit is that?! If he’s not here then Satou’s not the cul-
prit! The culprit is the one present, you, Fukushima! Say your last prayers!”
Ehhhhhh, everyone let out cries of surprise and looked at Manabu, how-
ever, he seemed as surprised as them.
“What do you mean by that...?”
“You’re gonna carry out the deed because you heard me now! In short,
you’re planning on going back to the past and murdering Mitamura Saburou
now that the case got superficially resolved and the investigation ended!”
“No, that can’t...” an Angel Bunny muttered, but the center of everyone’s
attention, Fukushima, slowly changed his expression.
“Heeh heeh heeh. Since you’ve seen through me, I have no choice any-
more. I just now understood why everybody went missing inside the Pine-
house,” Fukushima said and took out a knife he’d been hiding. Had he taken
it from the detached building when cooking? “Corpses don’t talk. If you’re
frustrated, please curse Mercury C-san instead.”
The tranquil expression he’d always kept was now cold and cruel. The
troupe members were too scared to mouth anything...
However, “Hah—ufufu. As if I would,” Fukushima suddenly changed be-
havior. “I’m guessing Mercury C cooked up this discussion upon noticing I
was hiding this knife, but it’s wrong, sorry. I’m simply keeping it on me for
self-defense. I had no intention whatsoever to hurt anyone. Ufufu.”
“Mannn~~!” “Your acting was too real.” “Our leader doesn’t disappoint.”
“Well, I believed in Fukushima-kun, though.” “Your acting was realistic, but
your lines are so cliché~.” The relieved troupe members rejoiced while Mer-
cury C was still glaring at Fukushima.
Not averting his gaze, Fukushima spoke.
“Mercury C-san, moreover, that deduction has a huge flaw.”
“...Wha...”
 “As if you’ve never actually seen a twisted space. Everyone, please, try
cutting the hallway between rooms 8 and 9 and twisting it for yourself.”
I had no time to stop them; first, the great detectives raised their voices.
“Ehhhh...?” “OOOOOH!” “The heck’s that?” “Seems like there’s a white wall.”
“What could it mean...” And a few moments later, the troupe members came
to see it too. “Woah! They’re right!” “Wooow...” “What’s up with that white
wall. It’s so hard.” “It goes from the ceiling to the floor...” “Oh, try taking a
peek from the handrail. Looks like it’s on the first floor too.” “Oooh, true.”
“Isn’t that bad?” “Ah...now that you say it.” “So it doesn’t work.”
I stayed on alert of my surroundings.
Hadn’t the Black Bird Man infiltrated this place via a route I didn’t know
of?
Why had Mercury C started this completely futile explanation so defense-
lessly!?
After everyone had taken their time getting accustomed to the white wall,
Fukushima spoke.

“However, thanks to that, I have now figured out the truth. Anbyouin-san
actually really committed suicide. Or, he killed himself, should I say...? But
still, as Mercury C claimed, Wednesdayyy-san’s deduction had an error.”

Huuuuuuuuh!?

22

Fukushima spoke.
“When hearing Wednesdayyy-san’s deduction I actually found an aspect
to be weird. That was the ladder left next to room 8. Wednesdayyy-san
claimed Anbyouin-san used that ladder to climb to the second floor’s hallway
after sneaking out of his office, but, like, how should I put it, isn’t it a mont?”
‘Isn’t it a mont?’ I didn’t know the meaning but could imagine it through
context.
Fukushima continued. “I mean, he could bend, stretch, and do many other
things with space, couldn’t he? So sneaking out the window during the night
and setting up a ladder somewhere people couldn’t see...seems so useless,
couldn’t he have just warped through space to get up on the second floor?”

Ah, that made sense, I thought.

“There’s more to it. Isn’t the arrow’s looping kind of meaningless?” Fu-
kushima pushed further. “A door might suddenly open while the arrow was
flying. Plus, to begin with, if he could warp, then there was no need to leave
out a loop’s worth of space between them, he could’ve warped behind himself
and shot. Then he would never have missed. To go further, he didn’t even
need to aim at himself, he could have warped the arrow itself into his back,
couldn’t he? Not on the second floor, in his office.”
Everyone listened to Fukushima in dead silence. However, I couldn’t let
myself falter.
I had to protect this exposed white wall. All of my hopes lied in it.
“That said, if he had died in the office, the mystery of the blood circle
wouldn’t have been a thing. In reality, he probably chose another way of dy-
ing...well, of killing himself. For now, let’s enter this room before I explain
any further,” Fukushima said and opened the door to room 9 on the second
floor, right before the wall. “Please, do come in.”
As everyone was making their way in, as urged, one of the female Angel
Bunnies asked, “Fukushima-kun, are you a great detective?” “Ufufu. Kind of.
It’s more like You Wanna Be the Manabee, I guess?” Fukushima laughed.
“Ahaha. The Manabee? That’s cool.” “Thank you. Now, come in, come in.”
In the background of the troupe members teasing Fukushima, my brain
was in mayhem. Once the great detectives and the troupe members had made
their way in, Fukushima followed, and I whispered to Mercury C.
“The fuck did you start? It’s dangerous, dummy.”
However, he paid no heed to me and walked in. Before I stepped inside the
room last and closed the door, I undid the Pinehouse’s twisting. I knew alter-
ing only my perception wouldn’t do anything and that seeing something or
not didn’t make it any more or less present, but even so, if my consciousness
was stronger, it should make it harder to perceive.
Fukushima waited for me to close the door, then resumed.
“Well then, let’s start Fukushima Manabu’s Ultimate Deduction.”

“It’s elementary. Since Anbyouin-san could warp, he stood before room 7

on the second floor while being inside the office, and shot his back with a
bowgun. But he couldn’t warp the bowgun’s arrow into himself through his
mind. Although he was consciously committing suicide, he wanted to avoid
missing with the arrow due to fear. Anyone is afraid of death. However, the
will of someone resolute to commit suicide is quite solid. To die for sure, he
needed to shoot straight with the bowgun. That’s why Anbyouin-san was in
the office while standing before room 7 on that night. Put another way, for
the arrow to fly straight from the office, he had no other choice than aiming
at the space in front of room 7. As you already know, the office has a hole in
the wall, and in the twisted Pinehouse that hole leads to an inverted room 8
on the second floor. And beyond that door was the hallway; so if he could see
through the hole and the door, he would’ve seen himself standing before
room 7 on the second floor. So, he aimed at himself and shot the arrow
straight, making sure not to damage the wallpaper nor the door. Not warping
the arrow, but the two sheets of wallpaper and the one door.
 “Then, he looped his corpse along the plane hallway after dispelling the
twist, and once again went to stand on the second floor, before room 7.”
The Angel Bunnies shivered as they let out sighs of astonishment, but I
didn’t like it.
 Where had the part about Kozue entering Mitamura Saburou’s corpse and
crawling around the hallway to search for me gone?
Fukushima spoke, paying no heed to my confusion.
 “Anbyouin-san created this circle of blood to dissimulate the twisting of
space that had occurred between rooms 8 and 9... With this, my ultimate de-
duction is now over. As you may have noticed, I have crafted it using
Choukuuji Kiyuu-san’s idea and Mercury C-san’s shocking new revelation. I
simply put these two ideas together. So all credits should go to these two, not
to me. Big applause for them, please!”
All the Angel Bunnies started clapping at once; Choukuuji Kiyuu shrugged,
but Mercury C didn’t react, he merely looked away, seemingly uninterested.
The applause stopped, then Fukushima resumed.
“Well then, how about we conduct a demonstration in addition to the de-
duction. It is tedious, so let’s take a peek from the second floor’s room 9 at
the spot before room 7 on the first floor through room 8 on that same floor...”
Fukushima said and casually tapped on the center of the wall, which resulted
in a drum-like, sharp and hollow sound due to the hole behind the wallpaper,
then, from the other side,
“Heeere!”
A reply came.

A child’s voice?
Had someone waiting for the next transfer of kids picked up the knocks!?

“I’m heeeere.”
The voice spoke again. Right as I panicked I heard a loud laughter echoing
as fiercely as an explosion.
“Hah hah hah hah! Found you! Found you!”
Looking there, three Black Bird Men were standing.
They were here!
I knew it, they were hiding!
They’d found the children!
 “Mercury!” He’d finished killing one Black Bird Man before I could
scream. Stabbing a knife through his head up to the base. Eye for an eye, tooth
for a tooth! I jumped at another Black Bird Man and landed a kick on his head.
The neck keeping his head in place snapped, letting the head rotate rapidly
behind his shoulders before the whole body slowly fell to the ground due to
the inertia. His glasses flew off high in the air.
However, the third one disappeared before our eyes. I could see him. He’d
warped beyond the wall!
“Waah!” he screamed once from the other side, but nothing else came af-
ter.
The room we were in was starting to panic because of the Black Bird Men’s
intrusion, the blood splatters, and the falling corpses, but I couldn’t waste
my time on that. I had to head for the space beyond the wall. Suddenly, the
image of Lord Whiplash in the Pineapple Home surged in my brain. A single
evil adult could easily massacre many children. Loud laughters. The blood-
ridden children piled up on the floor. 弱悪強罰. Lord Whiplash had told me.
That’s the kind of person you are. An onlooker specialist in children’s suffer-
ing. You want to be in the front row when children scream or shed blood.
Would I gather 300 million children in one spot only to witness their suf-
fering all at once?

No!
I shook off these stupid fears of mine.
I was too quick to blame myself. Because I was an idiot. Even though my
misfortune had only just begun.
I had to save any child I could.
Wait for me!
I’m heading your way!
I was about to cross the wall when someone firmly grabbed me by the nape.
I turned around.
 It was Mercury C.
This guy really was a traitor!
He must’ve made up that forced deduction to guide the Black Bird Men!
Fucking Hell!
Even so, I didn’t have time for him.
I would kill him later for sure, but first I had to save the children!
However, after dodging every punch I threw at him, Mercury C said, “Stop
that, calm down, Detective!”
Shut up! I threw everything I could, but couldn’t land a hit on him with
how flustered I was.
“Get out of my way, Mercury! Move!”
“Dumbass! You’ll die if you go!”
“Who cares, you cocksucker! Die!”
“Really, stop it! Listen to me!”
“Run away! Children! Run awaaaay!”
I screamed at the other side of the wall. Exactly like how I’d screamed at
the Pineapple Home.
...Stop it! Don’t lay a hand on the kids! Don’t be violent towards kids!
Why were some people violent to kids?
I vacantly wondered, being pinned down by Mercury C. And maybe that
vacancy hit the spot as I landed a clean hit on Mercury C’s face in my fury.
He rolled on the floor; I stood up and was about to warp when the wallpa-
per got torn before my eyes.
Someone had escaped!?
I ran up to it and saw through the hole an adult man waving at me.
He was an Angel Bunny.
What the fuck was he doing there!?

“Onii-ta~n, I’m doing fine~.”

 Satou Kazuhiro said with a child’s tone, so for starters I punched him in
the face.
That damn troupe member!

I then collapsed on the floor and didn’t feel like standing up for a while.
Though I obviously checked the other side of the wall. When I took a peek at
it through space manipulation, there was no ceiling world nor children, just
spears made out of bamboo set up in the direction of the wall. The third Black
Bird Man was impaled on that.
I looked at Mercury C’s face.
He was grinning like crazy.
He was satisfied to get his revenge, plus he’d gotten a kick out of seeing
me struggle.

“Sorry, Wednesdayyy-san, are you unhurt?” Fukushima crouched beside

me and looked at my face.
I could only sigh.
“I’m really sorry. In reality we should have let you in on our plan, but...”
“...I bet Mercury C ordered you not to, didn’t he?”
“Ah, yes.”
I checked the inside of the wall. There was a hastily-made, crumbly hole.
The room beyond the wall wasn’t room 8 on the first floor. The bed there
wasn’t the luxury hotel-style one Mitamura Saburou had in his bedroom, and
the other furnishings were different too. And it wasn’t the second floor’s
room 9 either.
“Where are we? Which floor? What rooms?” I asked.
Fukushima answered. “Rooms 10 and 11 on the second floor.”
 So they had rotated the space of the rooms around the hallway by 60 de-
grees and connected it. And then put up a performance in room 11, the fake
room 9.
“Did everyone know?”
“Yes. Everyone but you.”
“Tsk.” I complained to Mercury C. “Your bets are too risky. What was the
plan if they’d attacked as soon as they saw the white wall?”
“I’d have simply killed all three on the spot,” he said with a composed face.
“Listen, I didn’t use you and the bamboo spears because I couldn’t do it my-
self, okay? I just let you share the glory, and the bamboo was because seeing
a moron fall in a trap and self-destruct is funny as hell. Heh heh. T’was pretty
funny, don’t you think? Also it’s them we’re talking about, so I knew full well
they wouldn’t cross that wall. These motherfuckers always choose the timing
that would hurt us the most. And I hadn’t yet created the context of children
being inside the wall when in the hall. Attacking then would be boring for
them too. So I anticipated that. Pretty much. I nailed my ambush! Hah hah
hah!”
Seeing Mercury C cackle made all the will I had to move go away, but I
couldn’t stay like that forever.
I asked Mercury C. “What time is it actually?”
“Eh? Ah, half past ten.”
Half past ten!? “There’s barely an hour left until Ragnarök!”
“It’s okay,” Mercury C said and stood up. “You found your role for Rag-
narök too, didn’t you?”
Mercury C helped me get up.
“Yeah, kinda.”
Saying that, I wondered: Although I’d gotten used to it, why could this guy
constantly read my thoughts and actions?
I then looked at the white wall beyond the door. It was covering the dis-
tance from the hall to the border between rooms 10 and 11, but the rest con-
tinued between rooms 8 and 9 which had been rotated 60 degrees clockwise.
Gazing at that wall, I realized that this ruckus Mercury C set up was destined
to happen too.

The cut between rooms 8 and 9 was currently facing true East.
Almost exactly East of the Pinehouse in West Akatsuki, Fukui, there was
Villa Hapira Kojimacho in Chofu, Tokyo.

Don’t forget, only think about Kozue, Disco! That kid is your true guardian,
she’s the light that will guide your path!

“Mercury,” I said. “Instead of reverting the Pinehouse to normal, could

you rotate the hall 60 degrees clockwise too?”
Mercury C looked at me.
I added, laughing.
“Israel, too, is almost East of here.”

23

We restored the corpses of ‘Toda Erika,’ ‘Shimada Kikyou,’ and ‘Konno

Narumi’, who had been turned into Black Bird Men, back to normal and sent
them back home. I’d been there once in the past so I could softly deliver the
bodies without heading there myself. As promised with Mercury C, I accom-
panied it with the money for these three. My entire fortune split in three. The
family would probably find it creepy, get pissed off, or suffer when finding it,
but that’s all that was in my power.
And so, eleven o’clock rolled around, and I started to waver.
 I’d already had my revelation.
I was standing in the middle of the hall, atop the drawing of the Tree of
Life, in the middle of the magic circle, right under the center of the chandelier
acting as the ‘center of the world,’ facing East.
In the Pinehouse rotated by 60 degrees clockwise, the border between
rooms 8 and 9 was facing East. The new world was compressed and hidden
there.
If we continue further East along the Earth—though it would be closer go-
ing West—there was Israel. However, I wouldn’t be cutting open the world to
let Israelis escape; I would reenact Noah’s Ark. The many animals gathered
just before God’s ire hit the world and annihilated humanity. Although there
were twins and not couples aboard, they could create whatever they lacked.
Just like how there were grasslands, oceans, and jungle balls without anyone
bothering to carry them inside. If one believed they should have mates, then
mates would appear for them. I would leave it to the animals’ primal instincts.
But I absolutely couldn’t let the humans do whatever they wanted. With-
out some binding code of ethics, nothing good ever comes out of them. So
they needed proper chaperonage.
For the Pinehouse, East indicates the word ‘outrider’.
‘Outrider’ meant ‘vanguard’. The one who escorts vehicles.
If I had read destiny and fate correctly, the one in charge of escorting the
Ark setting off at 23:26 on the 15th of July 2006 was situated East of the Pine-
house in Fukui, West Akatsuki, in room 303 of Villa Hapira Kojimacho in
Chofu, Tokyo; my partner, Morinaga Koeda.
Koeda would never betray my will. She would instill the most fundamental
ethics of all into the new world’s humanity: that we ought to love children.
However, I was wavering over whether I should send Koeda to the new
world without telling her anything. Would she resent me if I did that? Would
she be angry or saddened?
Yeah, she probably would, I thought. She was a normal girl too. No girl
wouldn’t be angry when abruptly sent somewhere far away.
 But having Koeda be angry, cry, scream, or wail was still infinitely better
than having her remain in this rotting old world.
It would still be better than keeping with my life of turning old, kidnap-
ping children, and escaping dangers without having much time to spend with
her anyway.
On that line, I couldn’t help but be reminded Koeda was originally ‘Ko-
zue’s feelings’ of wanting to see me, so I felt bad for sending her away after
she came from eleven years into the future, but most importantly I felt dearly
for her.
I didn’t want us to be separated.
After the Black Bird Men killed us and Koeda resuscitated us, I’d told
Koeda she was the only one I had left, and that was sincere; I’d lost Norma,
Shakuko had died long ago, I couldn’t approach Kozue, and at the end of the
world I was destined to consume myself for a good only I believed in.
I had enough compassion to love someone, and I wanted to pour that love
into Koeda.
So much that I felt like abandoning the 300 million children was worth the
trade. Really. Haha. The current me came to feel like humans had that right.
People really had a right to be virtuous in a limited scope without exerting
themselves, just like how the people in the future wouldn’t do anything de-
spite feeling some guilt.
However, people aren’t all about rights. Duties are more important. One
ought to protect the purpose they were bestowed in life.
And I had no time to waver. I had an inflexible schedule.
I’d explained the future beyond Ragnarök when the troupe members and
great detectives gathered in the Pinehouse and once more when Mercury C
and I came back after dying once, or so I thought, but when I said, “Well, I
hope you’re all ready, it’s finally time to disappear,” while a few troupe
members laughed, the majority made an overtly gloomy expression. But
when I followed that up with, “Here's what will happen next. First, you’re all
gonna enter the world full of twins. Mitamura Ichirou and Jirou are waiting
for you there. As well as pandas, cheetahs, and a bunch of other animals that
can speak Japanese,” they suddenly lit up in awe and surprise.
“Japanese!?” “Really? Pandas?” “Crap, I’m getting diabetes.” “Wait, that
doesn’t work, what happened to their vocal chords?” “Do they talk while
munching on bamboo? That’d be sooo cute.”
And so forth with their banter. I hoped they wouldn’t be too shocked at
Konkon and Denden’s curt attitude...
Still, the mood had become much brighter and lighter, so I asked them.
“Are you guys done accepting your fate? You have no regrets left in this
world? You won’t be able to go back, you know?”
A few answered.
“We’re A-OK, Wednesdayyy-san~. I’d be on my own once I became an
adult anyway.” “They’re giving up on you because all you do is pursue acting.”
“When children drift apart, so do parents.” “Call it becoming independent!”
These guys were on the same level as pandas... Well, mostly because they
tended to act overly optimistic...
“Thank you, everyone. I’m entrusting the new world to you all. This one
will perish, so I’m earnestly relying on you. Please make the children happy.
Have them be born in a proper society.”
I said, and the troupe members went silent.
In their stead, a great detective solemnly asked.
“Aren’t we meant to help you, Wednesdayyy-san?” Hakkyoku inquired.
“I mean, there are 300 million children to kidnap.”
“No need.”
“So it’s not impossible alone?”
“This world is destined to go under.” A world switch. “So I must have you
guys live on.”
“But it’ll still take a while to die, right?”
“No, it’s right around the corner.” I recalled the end credits of the movie
Lamia Syndrome. According to predictions, if the birth rate continues to decrease at this
pace, by 2080 all new lives will be consumed solely to keep the global population of 10 billion
people alive, and humanity’s history will likely come to a stop. Even though that was
merely information from a virtual world, it shouldn’t be all that different
from the actual one. It would come really quickly. “Humanity on this side will
rot while still warm. At an alarming pace, too.”
“...And yet you will remain, is that right?”
“Yes.” Well, I was the one ending it—I chose not to say. “Someone has to
save the children, and someone else has to teach them. To each their own.
And I’m on the stupid side.”
“...Children will probably still go missing over there, though.”
“No worries. I’ll send my partner over there.”
Hakkyoku looked at Mercury C.
“I’m not his fucking partner.”
I laughed, still unsure whether I seriously intended on sending my partner
= Morinaga Koeda over there.
Seeing some Angel Bunnies still hesitating, I told them, “It’s all good.
You’ll get it once you get there, the twins’ world is really free. You can do
whatever you want with time and obtain anything...”
Kimura Daisuke then jumped in. Jumped in? Where in the world had he
gone?
“WOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAH! GUYS! It’s so good over there! A real-life par-
adise! I swear! Even dolphins, turtles, and impalas speak Japanese!”
Had that damn troupe member figured out a way in the twins’ world from
Mercury C’s trap from earlier? I was half-exasperated and half-impressed...
It really hit the nail on the head about intelligence spreading. Anyway, thanks
to that, most of the Angel Bunnies jumped inside the twin world at once, so,
well, all’s good.
The only ones left were Fukushima Manabu, Hongou Takeshitakeshi, and
Sakurazuki Tansetsu.
I shook their hands in turn.
“Thanks for everything,” Fukushima said. “Sorry for being so boisterous
all along. Leave taking care of the children to us. We often go acting in schools
and all, and despite what they may seem like, they all like kids. ...Well, they’re
basically children themselves, though. Haha. But, actually, they just want to
do something for the children. They’re entertainers down to the bone.
They’re brimming with service spirit.”
Well, have fun over there.
“Yop. Do your best, then. Eheh eheh,” Hongou said. “That’s all I can say,
really. I mean, if I can stay behind, I will.”
You had Mercury C stir your brain with a chopstick and nearly died. Take
some rest.
“Yuck. Cringe memories. Well then.”
“Hi, hi,” Sakurazuki Tansetsu scratched his head. “I’ve gone places in my
life, but I never thought I’d end up somewhere like that.”
Thank you. I learned a lot from you.
“Nah, not at all. Uehehe.”
Gross.

Once all the troupe members left, the great detectives came asking for a
handshake, but I told them, “We don’t have much time, hurry up and go.”
“Ehh~~~~!?” they complained, but I ignored them.
“Thank you for everything,” said Hizuki. “I didn’t get to talk much, but...I
learned a ton!” said Kakiuchi Something. “I don’t want to just say ‘do your
best,’ but that’s all there is to say, so do your best!” said Something Nigouhan.
“Disco-sa~n. I love you!” Mame Gen kissed me on the cheek, so Nekoneko
Nyannyannyan did the same. “Me too~~! (kiss)” “Woah, lucky. Though I
guess that’s not enough for your efforts. Thank you very much. Take care.”
said Choukuuji Kiyuu. “Wednesdayyy-san, thank you kindly for resuscitating
me. I’m truly grateful. On top of that you’re doing so much for the world’s
sake...thank you so much!” Choukuuji Keraku knelt before me with his head
on the floor and teary eyes, making his little brother shudder, come back, and
take him away. The next one, Judy Dollhouse, was smiling. “Disco-san, your
Nihongo is really guddo!” That!? Wait, wasn’t she born in Shizuoka... Mikami
Nils was crying agaaaaaain. “Disco-san, thank you~! You’re doing so much
for the kids...” Make lots of normal friends over there. And so, the last one,
Hakkyoku Sachiari, gave me a powerful hug despite being Japanese. “We all
properly understand that you are forgoing and sacrificing countless things
solely for your inner justice, Wednesdayyy-san.” This guy... I felt parts of my
heart loosening and crumbling down inside his arms, but desperately put
myself back on my feet. Hakkyoku knew I was holding it in too, so he
promptly took some distance, and put two fingers on his forehead. “Bye.”
Yeah. Bye bye.

And so, I was left alone with Mercury C.

“Now, you go too,” I said.
“Yeah. See you,” Mercury C said and started walking.
Looking at that muscular back I felt like saying many things, but in the
end, I couldn’t get them out as words.
Mercury C didn’t turn back, he just raised a hand and disappeared.
I was finally all alone in the Pinehouse.
I looked at the clock adjusted to the outside time. 23:23.
Only three more minutes. I was running out of time, but obviously, I could
stretch time at this point.
What should I do about Koeda? I could hesitate forever. There was no
doubt she’d want to stay with me. I knew, that’s why I couldn’t talk to her
face-to-face. Not being able to give her the time of day because I'm kidnap-
ping children...that would be half-assed.
Kidnapping 300 million children in 13 years meant I had to keep a rhythm
of one per second for 17 hours a day everyday for the whooooooole time to get
there.
17 hours was a pretty realistic number...I giggled. The fact it seems kinda
feasible makes it even more painful, doesn’t it?
 Now, it was 23:25.

As I was facing true East, a Black Bird Man appeared before my eyes and
flicked a hand to the side, slashing open my belly and making my organs gush
out.
The knife still in hand, the Black Bird Man laughed.
“Now we’re really sharing the pain, don’t you think, Disco Wednesdayyy?”
The Black Bird Man said and took Mitamura Saburou’s appearance. His
voice was the same, too.

24

But he wasn’t Mitamura Saburou. Saburou didn’t come off as the type to
toy with me.
Collapsing on the marble floor already drenched with my flesh and blood,
I spoke,
“Woah, so fucking obstinate...”
Ah hah hah, the man laughed as he reverted to being the Black Bird Man.
“Isn’t that natural? I love being obstinate. I love being hated and pissing peo-
ple off. Don’t you remember what I said? There’s no satisfying people’s ag-
gressiveness. They’re never sated. They always seek for more.”
As he recited SS Nail Peeler’s line, the Black Bird Man’s face turned pure
black, then reverted to normal.
I was too surprised to be burning with rage, but my stomach sure felt like
it was burning...
Like it was on fire.
I hadn’t licked my blood, and yet it was spicy.
 “Oi oi, are you dying, Disco Wednesdayyy? Don’t you know weakness is
evil?”
弱悪強罰. I didn’t even need to look. The Black Bird Man had Lord Whip-
lash’s face.
I tried to gather my feelings and heal my stomach but it kept vanishing
from the edge; was that the Black Bird Man’s doing?
“Who the hell are you...”
I asked, and got an answer from him.
“I’m nobody.

“I’m evil itself.

“You seem to only be concerned over where I came from or who I am, but
that’s futile. I wasn’t born from anyone. I’m not an emotion or a feeling. Evil
exists. It’s simply there. So—I’m just supposing, okay? So, unlike with God,
I’m not something humans created or produced, but simply something that
popped into existence. You know, abruptly. Without any preamble, I’m just
here. You know, it’s not like I thought ‘This is my time to shine!’ either, I just
found myself here, so I cut your stomach. That’s all. So, from now on I’ll exist
in that world too~. Your so-called ‘new world’. Because, you know, it’s bor-
ing without evil, to be honest. Even people like you couldn’t sustain them-
selves without evil. Well, let me just add this to finish it! Both life and history
must accept the fate they were attributed. If you let your righteousness guide
you into sticking your head where you shouldn’t, you will more often than
not experience more pain than needed. Bye bye!”
I extended an arm and grabbed the Black Bird Man’s foot.
I wouldn’t let him go.
“Oh, what is it? Don’t worry. I’m not going there to annihilate that new
world or anything. I’m simply going there. To balance things out, kind of.”
 I wouldn’t die.
“Whoops,” the Black Bird Man raised the leg I wasn’t grabbing and kicked
my face. Blam! He broke multiple teeth at once.
“Here it comes again!”
This time he inserted the tip inside my mouth. Gegh! I felt like my mouth
exploded and came to doubt whether I had even one tooth left.
“Whoopsie!”
He squished my head, making both of my eyeballs pop out.
I was dying.
What crossed my mind right before dying was...

“Stop that.”

Hearing that trembling voice, I directed my hollow eyes up. Even if I

couldn’t see, I could tell.
That voice, the person there, was my dear Morinaga Koeda.
“Disco~.”
My dearest Kozue called.
My everything was gathered here.
Koeda, however, claimed with a frightened voice.
“If weakness is evil, then evil is weak.”
The Black Bird Man stayed silent for a little while, then spoke.
“...Heh. You have your way with words, don’t you?”
Koeda spoke.
“Evil is weak! Get him, Mercury-san! And Kozue, you close your eyes!”
This time the Black Bird Man clearly widened his eyes in surprise.
I returned my eyeballs while hearing a merry voice chanting, “Oh hoh
hoh,” then came to see Mercury C. “Oh,” the Black Bird Man gasped aloud.
 “Don’t ‘Oh’ me,” Mercury C laughed. “Talk about existences or creations
or whatever, that doesn’t matter. My name is Mercury C. Look at my face!”
The Black Bird Man stared at him.
Mercury C repeated. “Look at my face!”
“I’m looking...”
“Look at my face!”
“I told you I am!”
“Look at my face!”
“...?”
“Look at my face!”
“Ehh...?”
“Thanks for the meal!”
“Eh? Wha—”
Mercury C roundened and shrunk Evil, then pounded and rubbed it to
make it tender, flung it in his mouth, munched on it, and swallowed it whole.
Gazing at that scene, I recalled the Venn diagram.
That transcendent C engulfing everything in a bite.

25

Mercury C spoke.
“‘Evil itself’? So stupid. That thing? Doubt it. That was merely your fears
which called themselves Evil to frighten you. Heh. In short, he was a portion
of you, a pretty big one, too. So you were in charge of everything; aren’t you
satisfied with that answer?”
“...?”
“You know how Odin will meet his end? Eaten by the gigantic wolf Fenrir.”
Mercury C pointed at himself with his thumb.
“Wah hah hah hah. One day I might eat you up.”
Having received treatment while he was rambling about, I hurriedly made
to split the world open.
 My consciousness’ long, long arms passed straight through the space be-
tween the Pinehouse’s rooms 8 and 9 and reached Villa Hapira Kojimacho’s
room 303 where Morinaga Koeda whom I thought would be the outrider and
Kozue were no more. Destiny and revelations weren’t absolute orders. I then
continued East, always East. I quickly extended the cut up to the outskirts of
the world. I then slammed my arms open, opening the world wide. The Pine-
house was fully opened as well.
That was the signal for Ragnarök. A giant world emanated from the cross
section of the Pinehouse; I caught a glimpse of it, however, that dazzling and
fragrant world got quickly engulfed by the new wall = the new outskirts of the
world, and disappeared.
That new wall’s color wasn’t white, but a beautiful though grotesque
patchwork of many different colors squirming about. Its surface was bumpy
too. It had a strange smell, but the children would only go through it for an
instant so it shouldn’t be a huge problem.

I thought about the world sprawling beyond the wall and everyone who
ventured inside it. Farewell, great detectives. Farewell, Angel Bunnies. And
farewell, all the children I would carry in there.
There wasn’t a fitting equivalent for ‘sayonara’ in English, so I kept mum-
bling ‘sayonara’ to myself until eventually I couldn’t understand what in the
world I was saying, so I stopped.
Was that another kind of gestaltzerfall?
Would grief and pain cause a gestaltzerfall, too, if one were to experience
them repeatedly?
Same for fun and joy?
Same for seriousness or the desire to lead a proper life?

Koeda spoke from next to me.

 “You’re so dumb, Disco. You tried to take all the burden on yourself, didn’t
you? That kind of abnegation might be hardboiled and all, but you should
never become truly alone. You can’t make a world without others, can you?
Being alone makes you really weak; you saw that earlier. And weakness,
though it pains me to use that guy’s words, can be thought of as something
pretty wicked. After all, people grow stronger simply by being with others.
You need to make some effort. Okay? So Disco, don’t ever leave me.”
弱悪強罰 had come from my guilt who might’ve thought of it to harass me,
but I’d keep silent for now.
I only felt gratitude for the wise Koeda.
My spacetime-traveling partner Morinaga Koeda wasn’t the type to sit
still if left alone, so apparently she followed and aided me from the shadows
while protecting Kozue.
When she healed my sliced belly, she wasn’t sobbing like before.
Experiences made people stronger.

Did that mean the new humanity would be stronger and wiser thanks to
the old world’s experience?
I hoped that would be the case.
Praying for that, Koeda and I kept kidnapping child after child, and wit-
nessed our world rapidly rotting.
Should the new humanity's lifespan be limited?
If good things were to lose in meaning and value as they were repeated,
righteousness and logic had no chance of triumphing.
Even if evil would ebb in the same way, it would never confuse its meaning
and turn into good.
If so, humans would get slowly eroded by living in the shitty system of
eternal return.
If they lacked wisdom, the twins’ Ark that started a new world might
eventually rot away.
 However, I knew people could create good things or suddenly exhibit their
inner goodness. With these occasional fuel injections, the world has no choice
but to keep navigating in a good direction.
Despite being constantly scorned and insulted by many, a few people were
supporting my actions, and I could smile with Koeda every day.
Others were huge gears.
And the chaining of many such gears produced a brand new world; the
birth of something new and better in that gigantic system proved that, all in
all, this world wasn’t only filled with bad things.
However, sometimes, when I get tired, I start doubting that system itself.
As the old world’s putrefaction and the new world’s creation gets repeated,
that whole cycle of regeneration might weaken, rust, and crumble away.
Though there was no way for me to know in this world.
There were many gloomy or tired people here, and neither this world nor
I could avoid being influenced by them.
Koeda smiling by my side was my only saving grace.
Everyday was hope itself.
That said, there were other sources of hope, too.
Even the world I was currently in had many decent people. William Eady
and Chris McKay. Chris was a famous DJ in New York that William personally
recruited, and he’s been leading the anti-Styron resistance from Manhattan
forever. Because of that, some youngsters would sometimes hasten towards
their deaths, but that was fine. That island had always been a dangerous city
where those things happened.
The scenery was beautiful, too. I kidnapped kids all around the world, and
I’m not only talking about the Himalayas, Alaska, or Bora-Bora. For instance,
when I found a smooth, green frog on the rim of an old enamelware wash ba-
sin forgotten next to a handmade wharf on a small shore in Mumbai at noon,
I stood still for a while, eagerly awaiting to see in which direction it was going
to jump. The midday’s Sun, the mud, the river, and the frog. There was right-
ness and beauty in such small things. Like when that frog croaked in English
with a strong Indian accent, “There is no dead end. Only exhausted frogs stop
on their path,” I was so moved I looked up and admired the sky.

When I handed Runrun the bamboo branch Konkon and Denden had en-
trusted me with, she ate it on the spot.
“Thank you for this meal,” she said with tears in her eyes, solely bowing
at me; I had no need to console this mother panda. Because these tears
weren’t only born of sadness.
I knew.
The hopes for the future that children held were equally wished upon by
the parents.

I recalled Kozue. She, who became Inoue Kozue in Suitengu and grew up
as a normal girl.
Actually, when I was on the brink of death during Ragnarök, it seems I felt
strongly about Kozue, and my feelings of concern for the future took form,
healed Hoshino Masato’s body, entered it, delivered Kozue to Hoshino’s
home, changed his face after Hoshino’s divorced mother married her lover
and Kozue grow old enough as Inoue Kozue, and loitered around her. What
was the plan if he ended up becoming her boyfriend, I thought, but that
wasn’t really my problem; Kozue was fine, so I was happy, end of the story.

Oh, and one more thing, a secret hope even Koeda didn’t know about.
When I sent off the new world during Ragnarök, I sneakily set up some-
thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but well, I did it on a whim.
 You see, I recalled the rotting old world’s structure where the start and the
end were linked, and forcefully made a ring out of the new world. I linked both
rings by having them pass inside the other...

After all, I wanted to avoid the shaky situation where both worlds were
only connected through the one point that was the Pinehouse. I was scared of
the Pinehouse’s past vanishing on an error and the new world drifting far
away.
To be completely frank, when the time were to come, I would abandon the
old world and escape to the new world along with Koeda. Hahaha.
Although I would feel sincerely bad if the ring I created out of selfishness
produced a sort of eternal return which ended up making that world rot. I’m
just a human. Forgive me.
 I could do my best because Koeda stayed right by my side everyday. At this
point, I couldn’t believe I was planning on sending her to the new world on
Ragnarök’s day. No matter how close these worlds were, being close enough
to touch her by extending a hand, to see her smile, or to hear her whispers
couldn’t be compared to anything.
Today again I kidnapped 70 thousand children at the pace of one per sec-
ond.
Neither good nor evil existed anymore.
I was grateful to this gestaltzerfall.

Koeda and I reminisced about Mercury C all the time. And every time we
did so, we burst into laughter.
That guy swallowed the Black Bird Man whole!
After swallowing evil itself or my own fears—we weren’t sure, but it def-
initely wasn’t anything decent—Mercury C disappeared from before us.
Where was he and what was he doing?
Was he making confections somewhere?
Mercury C left us with the words “Don’t think I’ll come to save you every
time you’re in trouble” before departing somewhere in the old or the new
world, but one’s hopes couldn’t be controlled.
If people’s hopes created that new world, then the source of all creations
might be hope, and if everyone desired a better world, then no matter how
many evils came to be or how much history repeated and ebbed itself, a new,
better world would be bound to arise and even overcome the erosion of such
a loop of resurrections.
Among all that music, I kept dancing along with Koeda, my muse.
Annex – Character Page