GOTH:GOTH

GOTH

1

About 20 days after the end of summer vacation, on a school day, for the first time in awhile, I spoke with Morino.

Before the start of morning homeroom, while they were taking attendance, through the crowd of noisily chattering classmates, she unexpectedly approached my desk.

We didn't have any history of exchanging greetings. Morino stood in front of me, took a notebook from her pocket, and placed it on my desk.

It was palm sized; the cover was fake brown leather. It was an ordinary thing you'd find in any stationary shop.

"I found this," She said.

"Well it's not mine."

"Well I know that."

Presenting the notebook to me, she had a somehow cheerful air about her.

I picked the notebook up from my desk. The cover was smooth to the touch.

I flipped briefly through the contents; the first half filled with small, meticulous writing. The second half was completely blank.

"Read from the beginning!"

It was as she said, the owner was unknown; I looked carefully through his writing. Line after line of itemized writing.

May 10th

In front of the station, I meet a female named Kusuda Mitsue.

Age 16.

I flirted with her; a while later we walked to my car.

Just like that, I took her to T mountain.

She kept staring outside the window, al the while telling me about her mother who is interested in column writing.

The car stops near the summit of T mountain.

From the boot, I take out the bag containing the knife and nails. She laughingly asks me what it is.

............

The words continued like that.

I recognized the name Kusuda Mitsue.

......Three months ago, a family went on a hiking trip to T mountain. It was a family of one boy and two parents. Since it was a long-awaited holiday for the father, he slept as soon as they arrived at the mountain. The boy tried to wake up the father so they could play, but it was no use.

In the afternoon, the boy took a walk alone into the forest.

The mother noticed her son missing. And then, she heard a scream from deep in the forest.

The couple searched the forest, and then found the boy. He was found looking upwards, frozen on the spot, as if glaring at something.

Following their son's gaze, the father and mother immediately noticed the nearby tree trunk was stained dark red. And then, they noticed there was something strange nailed down to the tree, at approximately eye-level. Looking around, they realized that all the surrounding trees had things attached to them with nails.

Those 'things' were Kusuda Mitsue. Someone had done a dissected her, deep in the forest. Her eyeballs, tongue, ears, thumbs, liver... They were all attached by nails to tree trunks.

On one tree, in order from the top, her left big toe, upper lip, nose, and stomach were attached; other trees had the rest of her remains, arranged like Christmas tree decorations.

The incident quickly had the entire country in a panic.

Within the notebook Morino had brought were details of the entire dissection: the killing of Kusuda Mitsue, where did the killer start from, which parts were attached to which trees, what kind of nails were used; page after page of detailed, precise notes.

I knew a lot about this incident, since I had followed it on TV, magazines, and the internet. But still, this notebook spoke exhaustively of details that no media outlet had covered.

"So as I see it, her killer dropped this notebook."

Kusuda Mitsue had been a high schooler in a neighboring prefecture. She had been last seen by friends who parted with her at the building in front of the station. And then Kusuda Mitsue became the first victim of the bizzare murders, even now able to cause a stir throughout Japan.

There had been one more incident with the same modus operandi; they were believed to be serial murders.

"And the second victim is written there too."

June 21

I flirted with a female holding a shopping bag, waiting for the bus.

She called herself Nakanishi Kasumi.

I offered to take her home in my car.

Upon realizing that I was heading towards H mountain and not her house, the girl began to cause a disturbance while in the passenger seat.

I temporarily stopped the car and struck her with a hammer; she became quiet.

I took her to a shed in H mountain.

............

The name Nakanishi Kasumi, a student at a vocational school, became known nationwide because of what happened one month ago. From the wildly spreading gossip sparked by the news and newspapers, I already knew about the discovery of the second victim while coming home from school.

She was inside a shed in H mountain. The building's owner was unknown, and remained that way for a long time. The roof leaked badly; the inside was covered with mold and stains. With walls and floor of wooden planking, it was three meters square.

An elderly man who lived at the base [of the mountain] had come to H mountain to collect wild vegetables, and in the early morning, had discovered that the shed's door had been unexpectedly left open. Wondering at this, he tried coming closer, and then a terrible stench hit his nose.

The elderly man checked the inside of the shed through the entrance. In the beginning, there was no way he could have realized what had happened.

On the floor of the shed, Nakanishi Kasumi had been dismembered. Like the first victim, each part had been separated. She had been distributed methodically, in 10 centimeter intervals over the floor, in a 10 by 10 pattern. In short, her body had been dismembered into one hundred small clumps.

Inside the notebook, the scene of the production process was described.

In two incidents, no one had seen the criminal; the person who had killed them had not been caught.

The mass media was still making a fuss about these two cases, as a bizzare serial murder case.

"I like seeing these kinds of cases in the news."

"Why?"

"Because they're abnormal."

Morino said indifferently.

I also constantly watched the news for that same reason. And so I understood well what she was trying to say.

That someone would kill and then separate the pieces. If someone did that, then that kind of person actually exists.

Morino and I held a special interest in these kinds of miserable stories. We would always seek out episodes that you'd want to hang yourself out of misery upon hearing them.

I had never directly mentioned this strange trait, but we had both silently sensed it in each other.

Perhaps normal people would grimace at this. Our emotional sensitivity was out of sync. Which is why, when talking about the different torture devices around the world, and different methods for execution, we would talk in especially low voices.

Morino raised her face from the notebook and looked out the window. I knew that she was imagining the scene of Nakanishi Kasumi's various parts being arranged on the floor.

"This notebook, where did you find it?"

When I asked, she began to explain.

It seems that last evening, Morino was at her favorite coffee shop. The owner wasn't nosy, and the shop was gloomy and quiet, she said.

She was drinking coffee that the shop's owner had poured, while thumbing through the pages of "Cruel Tales of the World."

Suddenly, she heard the sound of rain. She looked outside through the window to see a furious evening shower coming down.

Morino watched the customers standing up to leave, sit down again. They were likely thinking to wait a little in case the rain stopped.

At that time, there were five customers in the coffee shop, not including herself.

Morino left her seat to go to the restroom. On the way, she felt something strange under her shoes. On the floor of black wood, someone had dropped a notebook, which she had happened to step on. She picked up the notebook and put it in her pocket. Apparently she wasn't planning to return it to its owner.

Even returning from the restroom, the customers were regarding the scenery outside through the window; their number hadn't changed.

She could tell the fierceness of the rain by looking at the clothes of the shop owner, who had gone outside for a moment for some errand. They were completely soaked.

Morino forgot about the notebook and returned to reading.

The rain stopped, and once again, the sun came out.

Several customers stood up and left.

The summer sun's rays quickly dried the road.

It seems that it was only after she had returned home that she remembered the notebook, and read the contents.

"I went to the restroom twice. The first time, there was no notebook. After that, the rain started; which means the number of customers were fixed. I went for the second time, and this time, the notebook was there. The murderer was in that shop. The murderer lives in this neighborhood."

She made a fist in front of her.

Two corpses were found in places that were 2 or 3 hours away from the town we lived in. One couldn't ignore the possibility that the murderer lived in this town.

But still, it wasn't realistic to say that.

This incident had doubtless been talked about far and wide. Much was still unresolved, and there were seekers-of-the-bizarre still interested in it. It had been discussed all across the country, even in elementary schools.

It had become overly famous.

It was hard to believe that the murderer would be living here.

"Couldn't this notebook just be a work of imagination based on the news reports?"

"Just read the the rest of the notebook."

Morino said, with a tone resembling a saleswoman trying to promote her goods.

August 5th

I gave a ride to a female named Miguchi Nanami.

I met her at a soba restuarant near S mountain.

We went to the forest on the south side of the mountain, there was a Shinto shrine.

I took her into the forest.

............

Inside the forest, the owner of the notebook stabbed a knife into the abdomen of the female named Miguchi Nanami.

According to the contents of the notebook, her body had been destroyed. In meticulous handwriting, the way both her eyes had been plucked out, the color and luster of her uterus, had been described.

And then her body had been disposed of in the forest.

"Are you familiar with the name Miguchi Nanami?"

Morino asked. I shook my head.

There had, as of yet, been no reports of the discovery of Miguchi Nanami's body.