Volume 4 - CH 2.1

Story II

There was once a family.

Who loved each other, and lived a modest life.

They were blessed, their happiness perfect as a sphere.

But one day a crack appeared.

Their grief was so profound that their tears beat upon the earth like rain.

Sometimes the misfortunes that befall people can be completely outrageous.

It doesn’t matter if they’re young or old, rich or poor.

Whether it’s a good family or a bad family.

A truly heartbreaking story.

So the Lord gave them grace.

Laughter returned to their home, and they continue to cut bread today.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

May they be showered with happiness and joy.

But come to think of it, who said that this Lord was God himself?

I remembered organs that had fallen on the road.

Staring at the boiling sun, I was reminded of a past incident. Reddish black uterus searing white as it touched the scorching asphalt. I didn’t actually witness it, but it was depicted clearly in my eyes. Then, a different image flashed through my mind.

Suicide victims falling in the darkness of the night.

Back then, I walked under the summer sky with the same red parasol in front of me.

“I don’t like summer, Odagiri-kun. Chocolate melts right away.”

Mayuzumi chewed on her melted chocolate. There was not a trace of sweat on her skin.

She seemed to be the only one spared from the summer heat.

We continued on our way under the boundless blue sky. The car that had brought us this far was parked behind us, partly blocking the road. I could only hope that we wouldn’t get a ticket for a parking violation.

I looked around, baffled. There was a field of rice paddies.

The fresh smell of earth and rice plants filled my lungs. Mayuzumi gave the directions to this place, a place that I had never seen before. Located on the edge of Nago City, far from the city center, the district was occupied by rice fields. A single straight road cut through the sea of green rice. Apart from what seemed like a retirement home in the distance, there were no other large buildings in sight. The unindustrialized landscape filled me with a sense of nostalgia. If I had to describe it, it was what Japan looked like originally.

But that too was ruined by the girl in gothic Lolita fashion walking down the road.

“Shall we hurry?” Mayuzumi said under the shade of her red parasol. “It’s too hot here.”

There was no shelter by the road.

A frog that had been run over was stuck to the asphalt, dried up.

It was currently over thirty-six degrees. Copious amount of sweat soaked my shirt. Mayuzumi walked faster. Her outfit, black as a mourning dress, stood out of place in the summer landscape.

I could hear the cicadas crying in the distance. A warm breeze blew past.

The contrast between red and green burned my eyes.

The sharp colors were blinding.

It was a clamorous season, and I sensed dark clouds on the horizon.

Mayuzumi stopped. “We’re here, I think.”

I looked up. An old Japanese-style house loomed in front of us. Flanked by rice paddies on either side, it looked like an elderly’s house in the countryside. Bicycles were parked in the small garage adjacent to the house. There were gardening tools lying around, probably from the yard. A chorus of cicadas was singing loudly.

Where are we?

Under the red parasol, Mayuzumi smiled slightly.

“The only survivor of a family suicide at an apartment complex in Nishi Ward, the case that triggered the string of suicides later, was a boy named Satou Haruhiro. He was taken in by his grandmother.”

This must be the house. I looked up at the old building, wrapped in black shadows created by the intense light coming from behind.

“Haruhiro, his two sisters and his parents, lived peacefully in an apartment complex. But one morning at the dining table, they suddenly cut each other’s throats with long bread knives, each twenty-four centimeters long. They were slumped over in front of their warm breakfast, dead.”

On the table was corn soup. Tomato salad and scrambled eggs. Fresh toast and butter.

A typical breakfast. As I listened to Mayuzumi, an image of a clothed table appeared in my mind, with the whole family seated around it.

But the family members were motionless, their necks torn open.

Blood had splattered on the table. And the seat at the head…

“But cutting each other’s throats in pairs means there’s one person extra.”

There was one person alive.

I shook my head to get rid of the gruesome image.

“Apparently Haruhiro took the devastating death of his family rather calmly,” Mayuzumi added. “The motive behind the suicide is still unknown. While the circumstances are unusual, there were no signs that suggested murder. In consideration of the survivor, any other information not directly related to the case was withheld from the public. Information only started leaking after the number of cases rapidly increased, when they were all labeled together as a serial case instead. A few people took notice of the first piece of the puzzle and reexamined the case. I’d started gathering information by then, so I welcomed it.”

Mayuzumi’s lips twisted in a sadistic grin. Mayuzumi Asato was suspected to be involved in this string of incidents. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the Mayuzumi clan took action, and Mayuzumi utilized that.

“Now, then. Let’s change the topic and talk about a ghost story, shall we? It happened recently, in the middle of July. A reporter who visited the bereaved was turned away at the door and was on the way home, when they heard a strange sound.”

Thinking back to all the cases we’d encountered, it was easy to guess what it was.

Mayuzumi’s smile deepened.

“The sound of a family’s cheerful laughter,” she said. “By the way, Odagiri-kun.”

“Yes, Mayu-san?”

Mayuzumi gently turned around. She rested the parasol on her shoulder and blinked languidly.

Her pale, glowing skin looked lovely, with no trace of sweat.

“I’m almost at my limit. I can’t stand summer.”

The next moment, Mayuzumi collapsed backward.

“M-Mayu-san! What’s wrong?!”

Mayuzumi let her gaze wander around. Her parasol was lying beside her.

She chuckled. “Sorry about that. I told you, Odagiri-kun. I can’t stand summer. That we have to hurry.”

“You were walking outside in the middle of summer before, and you were fine.”

“Well, yeah. I’m not a yuki-onna, so I’ll be fine as long as I don’t stay out too long. Which isn’t the case today. Walking down a road with no shade is too much for me.”

She talked a lot, as usual, but her empty eyes suggested she wasn’t joking. There was not a trace of sweat on her skin, however.

“Wait a minute… It’s not that you can’t feel the heat,” I said. “You just don’t perspire.”

“Unfortunately, I barely sweat at all.”

Mayuzumi smiled nonchalantly, but there wasn’t anything funny about it.

I looked around, but there was no shade for her to rest under. There was no ice to cool her down. Mayuzumi closed her eyes and stopped moving. I lifted her head from the scorching road for the time being. I was on my knees, panicking, when a shadow suddenly appeared above my head.

“Um, is something wrong?”

A young face was staring at me. An innocent-looking boy of about thirteen.

He had a blue rubber hose in his hand.

Then it hit me.

He must have come to the garage to get a hose to water the garden.

It was no doubt the survivor, Satou Haruhiro.