Baka-Tsuki - User contributions [en]

User:Setherzam

2007-06-15T05:59:01Z

60.52.178.202: Edit

'''Psycho-Loli''' (サイコ-ロリ) is a Baka-Tsuki term for a female character that display sudden signs of violence and mental instability. It is a character archetype in many Japanese anime, games and manga. The term is exclusive only for women (who are usually under the age of consent), while the term ‘Psycho-shota’ may be applied, in rare cases, to male characters who display similar traits. Like nekomimi and tsunderekko, Psycho-Lolis are considered to be moe-inspiring characters.

The term ‘Psycho-Loli’ is not to be mixed up with the term Yandere, which has a similar meaning. While ‘Psycho-Loli’ applies to any female character that displays signs of mental instability, ‘Yandere’ only applies to characters who appear kind and loving on the outside but is actually brutal and psychotic on the inside. As such, ‘Psycho-Loli’ could be considered to be a more general term.

==Famous Psycho-Lolis:==
Note: This is not a complete list. Additional characters may be added over time.

===Ryuugu “Rena” Reina===
[[Image:Rena.jpg|thumb|right|Ryuugu Reina in the horror mystery anime, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]
Anime series: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

Often seen wielding a large cleaver, Ryuugu “Rena” Reina is one of the most famous examples of a ‘Psycho-Loli’. While she appears to be generally nice and friendly on the outside, all it takes is a mention of a Shrine God named ‘Oyashiro-sama’ for her to start displaying signs of psychoticness. She is a fervent believer of Oyashiro-sama and his so-called curse, one which affects any villager who dares leave their village of Hinamizawa.

She also appears to have an insatiable liking for things cute and sweet, including (but not limited to) stuffed bears, dolls, broken rice cookers, old tires and broken figures of the Colonel.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Smashing all the windows in her school with a baseball bat.
:* Apologizing in the middle of the rain.
:* Taking an entire school hostage with a home-made time bomb.
:* Chopping up her dad’s girlfriend with a cleaver

Memorable Quotes:
:* USO DA!! (You Liar!!)
:* “… kana, kana?”

----

===Dokuro-chan===
[[Image:Dokuro.jpg|thumb|right]]
Anime Series: Bokusatsu Tenshi: Dokuro-chan

Dokuro-chan is an angel from the future who has come to the present to protect a certain boy named Sakura. She brandishes the large spiked club named Excalibolg, which she uses to protect Sakura from harm. The club also doubles as an excellent tool for punishment, and more often than not it is used to bash Sakura to death. In addition, it allows Dokuro-chan to transmogrify annoying people (such as the class representative) into various animals (like monkeys or dogs).

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Killing Sakura during the first 5 minutes of any given episode
:* Having explosive diarrhea as her halo is removed
:* Turning the class rep into a monkey

Memorable Quotes:
:* Pipiru piru piru Pipiru Pi!
:* Oh no, Sakura-kun’s brains are going down the drain!

----

===Suigintou A.K.A Gin-sama===
[[Image:Suigintou.jpg|thumb|''Suigintou with her wings extended'']]
Anime series: Rozen Maiden

The first doll of the Rozen Maiden collection. Her desire to win the Alice Game is the strongest of all the dolls, and is primarily driven by her wish to gain the attention of "Father". Sadistic, spiteful, and arrogant (all as a result of her spectacular inferiority complex), Suigintou has no inhibitions in the Alice Game. She will use any method possible, regardless of how brutal, to win.

In the Anime Suigintou is missing her stomach section and a Rosa Mystica but through sheer desire to meet her father she is still able to move. Later she is granted a Rosa Mystica but was still missing a middle section which leads to Shinku believing that Suigintou still wasn't a Rozen Maiden. This sparked the intense hatred that Suigintou has fro Shinku which will be played on the rest of the series. In the manga she is complete but utterly miserable without her father. She derives a sadistic pleasure from causing pain and suffering to her sisters.

She is a cold, spiteful doll to everyone but her medium Megu, a hospitalized girl who suffers a terminal heart disease. Megu wants Suigintou to drain her of everything leaving her dead but Suigintou refuses saying she does not need a medium.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Protecting Shinku from Barasuihou
:* Killing her sister Souseiseki
:* Destroying a field of roses
:* Holding Souseiseki's grandmother and grandfather hostages
:* Ripping her own servant dolls apart

Memorable Quotes:
:* JUNK! I'LL TURN YOU ALL INTO JUNK!
:* Have your Lactic Acid bacteria yet?
:* Father!
:* Now I can say it proudly. I am Suigintou, the first Rozen Maiden.
:* The one who will become Alice ... is me! Me, who loves Father more then anyone else!

----

===Morino Yoru===
[[Image:Yoru.jpg|thumb]]
Novel Series: GOTH

'''NOTE: Do not update this section with descriptions regarding details that haven't been translated in the wiki in order to minimize spoilers.'''

Morino Yoru is a high school student obsessed with death. She has shown deep interests in torture devices and execution methods, and is seen frequently discussing these matters with the narrator of the novel.

Morino dresses in nothing but black. When asked for her reason for enrolling in her school, her reply was that it was 'the only school that had a black uniform'. She has jet black hair that extends till her waist. On the other hand, her skin is deathly white, juxtaposing with her black outfits.

She has also been the target of several criminals, none of which she was actually aware of.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Slashing her own wrist in order to vent out her frustration.
:* Dressing up as the murdered Nanami Miguchi.

Memorable Psychotic Quotes:
:* Could you teach me how to make that expression too?

User:Setherzam

2007-06-15T05:57:34Z

60.52.178.202: /* Morino Yoru */

'''Psycho-Loli''' (サイコ-ロリ) is a Baka-Tsuki term for a female character that display sudden signs of violence and mental instability. It is a character archetype in many Japanese anime, games and manga. The term is exclusive only for women (who are usually under the age of consent), while the term ‘Psycho-shota’ may be applied, in rare cases, to male characters who display similar traits. Like nekomimi and tsunderekko, Psycho-Lolis are considered to be moe-inspiring characters.

The term ‘Psycho-Loli’ is not to be mixed up with the term Yandere, which has a similar meaning. While ‘Psycho-Loli’ applies to any female character that displays signs of mental instability, ‘Yandere’ only applies to characters who appear kind and loving on the outside but is actually brutal and psychotic on the inside. As such, ‘Psycho-Loli’ could be considered to be a more general term.

==Famous Psycho-Lolis:==
Note: This is not a complete list. Additional characters may be added over time.

===Ryuugu “Rena” Reina===
[[Image:Rena.jpg|thumb|right|Ryuugu Reina in the horror mystery anime, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]
Anime series: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

Often seen wielding a large cleaver, Ryuugu “Rena” Reina is one of the most famous examples of a ‘Psycho-Loli’. While she appears to be generally nice and friendly on the outside, all it takes is a mention of a Shrine God named ‘Oyashiro-sama’ for her to start displaying signs of psychoticness. She is a fervent believer of Oyashiro-sama and his so-called curse, one which affects any villager who dares leave their village of Hinamizawa.

She also appears to have an insatiable liking for things cute and sweet, including (but not limited to) stuffed bears, dolls, broken rice cookers, old tires and broken figures of the Colonel.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Smashing all the windows in her school with a baseball bat.
:* Apologizing in the middle of the rain.
:* Taking an entire school hostage with a home-made time bomb.
:* Chopping up her dad’s girlfriend with a cleaver

Memorable Quotes:
:* USO DA!! (You Liar!!)
:* “… kana, kana?”

----

===Dokuro-chan===
[[Image:Dokuro.jpg|thumb|right]]
Anime Series: Bokusatsu Tenshi: Dokuro-chan

Dokuro-chan is an angel from the future who has come to the present to protect a certain boy named Sakura. She brandishes the large spiked club named Excalibolg, which she uses to protect Sakura from harm. The club also doubles as an excellent tool for punishment, and more often than not it is used to bash Sakura to death. In addition, it allows Dokuro-chan to transmogrify annoying people (such as the class representative) into various animals (like monkeys or dogs).

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Killing Sakura during the first 5 minutes of any given episode
:* Having explosive diarrhea as her halo is removed
:* Turning the class rep into a monkey

Memorable Quotes:
:* Pipiru piru piru Pipiru Pi!
:* Oh no, Sakura-kun’s brains are going down the drain!

----

===Suigintou A.K.A Gin-sama===
[[Image:Suigintou.jpg|thumb|''Suigintou with her wings extended'']]
Anime series: Rozen Maiden

The first doll of the Rozen Maiden collection. Her desire to win the Alice Game is the strongest of all the dolls, and is primarily driven by her wish to gain the attention of "Father". Sadistic, spiteful, and arrogant (all as a result of her spectacular inferiority complex), Suigintou has no inhibitions in the Alice Game. She will use any method possible, regardless of how brutal, to win.

In the Anime Suigintou is missing her stomach section and a Rosa Mystica but through sheer desire to meet her father she is still able to move. Later she is granted a Rosa Mystica but was still missing a middle section which leads to Shinku believing that Suigintou still wasn't a Rozen Maiden. This sparked the intense hatred that Suigintou has fro Shinku which will be played on the rest of the series. In the manga she is complete but utterly miserable without her father. She derives a sadistic pleasure from causing pain and suffering to her sisters.

She is a cold, spiteful doll to everyone but her medium Megu, a hospitalized girl who suffers a terminal heart disease. Megu wants Suigintou to drain her of everything leaving her dead but Suigintou refuses saying she does not need a medium.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Protecting Shinku from Barasuihou
:* Killing her sister Souseiseki
:* Destroying a field of roses
:* Holding Souseiseki's grandmother and grandfather hostages
:* Ripping her own servant dolls apart

Memorable Quotes:
:* JUNK! I'LL TURN YOU ALL INTO JUNK!
:* Have your Lactic Acid bacteria yet?
:* Father!
:* Now I can say it proudly. I am Suigintou, the first Rozen Maiden.
:* The one who will become Alice ... is me! Me, who loves Father more then anyone else!

===Morino Yoru===
[[Image:Yoru.jpg|thumb]]
Novel Series: GOTH

'''NOTE: Do not update this section with descriptions regarding details that haven't been translated in the wiki in order to minimize spoilers.'''

Morino Yoru is a high school student obsessed with death. She has shown deep interests in torture devices and execution methods, and is seen frequently discussing these matters with the narrator of the novel.

Morino dresses in nothing but black. When asked for her reason for enrolling in her school, her reply was that it was 'the only school that had a black uniform'. She has jet black hair that extends till her waist. On the other hand, her skin is deathly white, juxtaposing with her black outfits.

She has also been the target of several criminals, none of which she was actually aware of.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Slashing her own wrist in order to vent out her frustration.
:* Dressing up as the murdered Nanami Miguchi.

Memorable Psychotic Quotes:
:* Could you teach me how to make that expression too?

User:Setherzam

2007-06-15T05:57:03Z

60.52.178.202: Added Yoru

'''Psycho-Loli''' (サイコ-ロリ) is a Baka-Tsuki term for a female character that display sudden signs of violence and mental instability. It is a character archetype in many Japanese anime, games and manga. The term is exclusive only for women (who are usually under the age of consent), while the term ‘Psycho-shota’ may be applied, in rare cases, to male characters who display similar traits. Like nekomimi and tsunderekko, Psycho-Lolis are considered to be moe-inspiring characters.

The term ‘Psycho-Loli’ is not to be mixed up with the term Yandere, which has a similar meaning. While ‘Psycho-Loli’ applies to any female character that displays signs of mental instability, ‘Yandere’ only applies to characters who appear kind and loving on the outside but is actually brutal and psychotic on the inside. As such, ‘Psycho-Loli’ could be considered to be a more general term.

==Famous Psycho-Lolis:==
Note: This is not a complete list. Additional characters may be added over time.

===Ryuugu “Rena” Reina===
[[Image:Rena.jpg|thumb|right|Ryuugu Reina in the horror mystery anime, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]
Anime series: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

Often seen wielding a large cleaver, Ryuugu “Rena” Reina is one of the most famous examples of a ‘Psycho-Loli’. While she appears to be generally nice and friendly on the outside, all it takes is a mention of a Shrine God named ‘Oyashiro-sama’ for her to start displaying signs of psychoticness. She is a fervent believer of Oyashiro-sama and his so-called curse, one which affects any villager who dares leave their village of Hinamizawa.

She also appears to have an insatiable liking for things cute and sweet, including (but not limited to) stuffed bears, dolls, broken rice cookers, old tires and broken figures of the Colonel.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Smashing all the windows in her school with a baseball bat.
:* Apologizing in the middle of the rain.
:* Taking an entire school hostage with a home-made time bomb.
:* Chopping up her dad’s girlfriend with a cleaver

Memorable Quotes:
:* USO DA!! (You Liar!!)
:* “… kana, kana?”

----

===Dokuro-chan===
[[Image:Dokuro.jpg|thumb|right]]
Anime Series: Bokusatsu Tenshi: Dokuro-chan

Dokuro-chan is an angel from the future who has come to the present to protect a certain boy named Sakura. She brandishes the large spiked club named Excalibolg, which she uses to protect Sakura from harm. The club also doubles as an excellent tool for punishment, and more often than not it is used to bash Sakura to death. In addition, it allows Dokuro-chan to transmogrify annoying people (such as the class representative) into various animals (like monkeys or dogs).

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Killing Sakura during the first 5 minutes of any given episode
:* Having explosive diarrhea as her halo is removed
:* Turning the class rep into a monkey

Memorable Quotes:
:* Pipiru piru piru Pipiru Pi!
:* Oh no, Sakura-kun’s brains are going down the drain!

----

===Suigintou A.K.A Gin-sama===
[[Image:Suigintou.jpg|thumb|''Suigintou with her wings extended'']]
Anime series: Rozen Maiden

The first doll of the Rozen Maiden collection. Her desire to win the Alice Game is the strongest of all the dolls, and is primarily driven by her wish to gain the attention of "Father". Sadistic, spiteful, and arrogant (all as a result of her spectacular inferiority complex), Suigintou has no inhibitions in the Alice Game. She will use any method possible, regardless of how brutal, to win.

In the Anime Suigintou is missing her stomach section and a Rosa Mystica but through sheer desire to meet her father she is still able to move. Later she is granted a Rosa Mystica but was still missing a middle section which leads to Shinku believing that Suigintou still wasn't a Rozen Maiden. This sparked the intense hatred that Suigintou has fro Shinku which will be played on the rest of the series. In the manga she is complete but utterly miserable without her father. She derives a sadistic pleasure from causing pain and suffering to her sisters.

She is a cold, spiteful doll to everyone but her medium Megu, a hospitalized girl who suffers a terminal heart disease. Megu wants Suigintou to drain her of everything leaving her dead but Suigintou refuses saying she does not need a medium.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Protecting Shinku from Barasuihou
:* Killing her sister Souseiseki
:* Destroying a field of roses
:* Holding Souseiseki's grandmother and grandfather hostages
:* Ripping her own servant dolls apart

Memorable Quotes:
:* JUNK! I'LL TURN YOU ALL INTO JUNK!
:* Have your Lactic Acid bacteria yet?
:* Father!
:* Now I can say it proudly. I am Suigintou, the first Rozen Maiden.
:* The one who will become Alice ... is me! Me, who loves Father more then anyone else!

===Morino Yoru===
[[Image:Yoru.jpg|thumb]]
Novel Series: GOTH

NOTE: Do not update this section with descriptions regarding details that haven't been translated in the wiki in order to minimize spoilers.

Morino Yoru is a high school student obsessed with death. She has shown deep interests in torture devices and execution methods, and is seen frequently discussing these matters with the narrator of the novel.

Morino dresses in nothing but black. When asked for her reason for enrolling in her school, her reply was that it was 'the only school that had a black uniform'. She has jet black hair that extends till her waist. On the other hand, her skin is deathly white, juxtaposing with her black outfits.

She has also been the target of several criminals, none of which she was actually aware of.

Memorable Psychotic Scenes:
:* Slashing her own wrist in order to vent out her frustration.
:* Dressing up as the murdered Nanami Miguchi.

Memorable Psychotic Quotes:
:* Could you teach me how to make that expression too?

User:Jumpyshoes

2007-06-14T18:19:23Z

60.52.178.202: Replacing page with '<Insert missing Oni quote here>'

GOTH:Translator's Notes

2007-06-12T13:37:35Z

60.52.178.202: HC here. Typo.

<center>Translator's Notes and References for 
<big>GOTH リストカット事件</big> 
GOTH: Wristcut Incident</center>

== GOTH 暗黒系==

=== Pierrot ===
A French clown who has a black teardrop under one eye.

=== photo booth pictures ===
The Japanese is プリクラ; purikura, short for "Print Club." You take photos in a booth and get photo stickers.

=== keychain mascot ===
The Japanese is キャラクターもの; kyarakutaamono - small, cute, character keychains. It may refer to anime character keychains, like those you get from a Gashapon Machine. It can also refer to normal, character keychains (for example, a cute looking cat).

=== wordplay ===
語呂合わせ "goro-awase" literally means "combined words". It is basically a game with words/numbers. For numbers in particular, you can use them to make sentences, which are often rude or shocking. Some examples given in the [http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AA%9E%E5%91%82%E5%90%88%E3%82%8F%E3%81%9B Japanese Wikipedia article] are:

427 = "死にな" = "shinina" = "shininasai" = "die (command)"

37564 = "皆殺し" = "mina-goroshi" = "everyone killed; the murder of everyone" = "mass murder; total annihilation"

So the numbers '37564' can be easily remembered with the phrase 'mass murder'.

=== prefectural road ===
Prefectures are akin to states in the US. So prefectural roads are like state highways -- meant for traffic within the prefecture.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:GOTH|GOTH 暗黒系]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== Wristcut リストカット事件==

=== Death and Motive ===
'Death' (死亡) and 'Motive' (志望) share the same pronunciation (Shibou, しぼう) in Japanese.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:Wristcut|Wristcut リストカット事件]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== DOG 犬==

{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to DOG 犬
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== TWINS 記憶==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:Twins|Twins 記憶]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== GRAVE 土==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to Grave 土
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== VOICE 声 ==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to Voice 声
|-
|}
</noinclude>

GOTH:Translator's Notes

2007-06-12T13:35:05Z

60.52.178.202: HC here. I'm getting tired of typing in this otherwise useless box :\

<center>Translator's Notes and References for 
<big>GOTH リストカット事件</big> 
GOTH: Wristcut Incident</center>

== GOTH 暗黒系==

=== Pierrot ===
A French clown who has a black teardrop under one eye.

=== photo booth pictures ===
The Japanese is プリクラ; purikura, short for "Print Club." You take photos in a booth and get photo stickers.

=== keychain mascot ===
The Japanese is キャラクターもの; kyarakutaamono - small, cute, character keychains. It may refer to anime character keychains, like those you get from a Gashapon Machine. It can also refer to normal, character keychains (for example, a cute looking cat).

=== wordplay ===
語呂合わせ "goro-awase" literally means "combined words". It is basically games with words/numbers. For numbers in particular, you can use them to make sentences, which are often rude or shocking. Some examples given in the [http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AA%9E%E5%91%82%E5%90%88%E3%82%8F%E3%81%9B Japanese Wikipedia article] are:

427 = "死にな" = "shinina" = "shininasai" = "die (command)"

37564 = "皆殺し" = "mina-goroshi" = "everyone killed; the murder of everyone" = "mass murder; total annihilation"

So the numbers '37564' can be easily remembered with the phrase 'mass murder'.

=== prefectural road ===
Prefectures are akin to states in the US. So prefectural roads are like state highways -- meant for traffic within the prefecture.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:GOTH|GOTH 暗黒系]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== Wristcut リストカット事件==

=== Death and Motive ===
'Death' (死亡) and 'Motive' (志望) share the same pronunciation (Shibou, しぼう) in Japanese.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:Wristcut|Wristcut リストカット事件]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== DOG 犬==

{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to DOG 犬
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== TWINS 記憶==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:Twins|Twins 記憶]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== GRAVE 土==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to Grave 土
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== VOICE 声 ==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to Voice 声
|-
|}
</noinclude>

GOTH:GOTH

2007-06-12T13:28:09Z

60.52.178.202: HC here. Same reason for not logging in. Made some minor changes to the infamous 'friends and phone calls' line to make it sound better in English.

== '''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, having come to school, 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 a notebook I'd never seen before.


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 somehow had a 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 started talking with her; a short while later we walked to my car.

:Just like that, I take her to T mountain.

:She keeps staring outside the window, all the while telling me about a newspaper column her mother is interested in.

:I stop the car near the summit of T mountain.

:When I took out the bag containing the knife, nails, and other tools, from the trunk, she laughingly asked me what it was.

:............

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 slightly upwards, unable to move.



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


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


On one tree, in order from the top, the 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.

Inside the notebook Morino had brought: how Kusuda Mitsue was killed, which parts were attached to trees, what kind of nails were used; page after page of dry, detailed 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 bizarre 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 there's something written about the second victim too."

:June 21
:I talk with a female who was holding a shopping bag, waiting for the bus.

:She called herself Nakanishi Kasumi.

:I offer to take her home in my car.

:Upon realizing that I was heading towards H mountain and not her house, the girl begins 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. The walls and floor were wooden planking, and 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 arranged. 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 turned 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 bizarre 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.

People had been killed, and then separated into pieces. People who had that done to them, and people who did that, actually did exist.



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.

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, for example, 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 that had been standing up to leave, sit down again. They were likely thinking to wait a little for the rain to stop.

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 just watching the rainy scenery 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. Immediately after that, the rain started; which means the number of customers were fixed. When I went the second time, the notebook had been dropped there. The murderer was in that shop. The murderer lives in this neighborhood."


She made a fist in front of her.

Two corpses had been 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 rest of the notebook."



"Please, welcome." It was with that kind of feeling that Morino spoke.


:August 5th
:I gave a ride in my car to a female named Miguchi Nanami.

:I met her at a soba restaurant near S mountain.

:When we went to the forest on the south side of the mountain, we found 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, and so on, 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.

=== 2 ===

My first introduction to Morino was when we ended up in the same class upon graduating to the second year. I had felt from the beginning that there was someone else like me, living life unconcerned with others. Even during break time, even walking the halls, she would always shun others. In short, she didn't seem to like crowds.

In our class, I only noticed this particular trait in Morino and I. Even so, I didn't coldly regard our classmates' merry-making like Morino did. For me, if someone struck up a conversation, I would reply, and to smooth the mechanism of human relations, even joke. I did the minimum required to have a normal life.

However, the superficial socializing, and the smiles I gave to my classmates, were essentially lies.

From our first conversation, Morino had seen through to that part of me.

"Could you teach me how to make that same expression too?"

One day after school, Morino had stood in front of me, expressionless, and said that. Maybe she was scoffing at me inside. That was around the beginning of May.

After that, we would talk from time to time.

Morino only wore black. Everything, from her long, straight hair, to the tips of her shoes, was wrapped in darkness. In stark contrast, her skin was whiter than anyone's I had seen; her hands were as if made of porcelain. There was a small spot under her left eye, in a similar design to that of [[GOTH:Translator's Notes#Pierrot|Pierrot]], giving her an atmosphere of black magic.

It's not that her face was less expressive than that of normal people. For example, when happily reading a book about the horrific murder of 52 women and children in Russia. There was no trace of the deathly green face she had when in the midst of noisy classmates. Rather, her eyes sparkled.

Only when talking to Morino would I not fake my facial expressions. If I was talking to someone else, they would probably wonder why I had such a blank, unsmiling expression. When talking with her, there was no problem with that.

Perhaps she had similar reasons, because during idle times, she would choose to speak with me.

We both disliked standing out. In the classroom, we were hidden in the shadow of our boisterous classmates; we quietly lived our lives.

And then, summer vacation came, and then I came to read the notebook.

Following the school day, after we met at the station, we boarded a train headed for the base of S mountain.

Both for meeting outside of school, and seeing Morino in normal clothes instead of the school uniform, it was the first time. As usual, she had chosen dark colored clothes. I noticed from her glance, that she must have thought the same about me.

The inside of the train was quiet; it was free of crowding. Without talking, we both started reading. She read a book about child abuse; I read a book written by the family members of a famous juvenile delinquent.

Upon getting off at the station, we asked an old woman working at the tobacco shop in front of the station, how many soba restaurants there were near S mountain. We learned that there was only one, and that it wasn't far. Afterwards, Morino made a sharp observation.

"Tobacco kills many people, but tobacco vending machines snatch away and kill that old woman's livelihood."

An especially clever reply didn't seem to be necessary, so I ignored her remark.

We walked along the side of the road until we reached the soba restaurant. The road began to slope upwards; it was curving near the mountain side.

The soba restaurant was part of a row of restaurants at the base of the mountain. Business looked to be bad there; the atmosphere was lonely, without many people or cars. The soba restaurant's parking lot was completely empty, yet even though it might as well have been closed, there was still an "OPEN" sign. We went inside.

"Ah, so this is where the murderer met Miguchi Nanami."

Morino looked around the restaurant as if sightseeing some famous place.

"Excuse me. I'm just speculating; what you would call the hypothetical stage. Since whether it's true or not is what we came here to find out."

I ignored her and read the notebook.

It was written with a blue ballpoint pen.

Inside the notebook, there were more than just the accounts of the murders of the three women. In addition, the names of a few mountains were written. That was on the first page, so it seemed to have been written before any of the accounts of the women's murders.

In front of the names of the mountains, there were markings like ◎ and ○, △ and ×. For the three mountains where the bodies had been disposed of, ◎ had been marked, so I inferred that maybe this was a list of mountains that were convenient for disposing bodies.

There were no indications as to the owner of the notebook.

There had never been any thought of giving the notebook to the police. Even if we didn't do anything, he would be caught sooner or later.

If we sent the notebook to the police, perhaps the murderer would be caught sooner. And the number of victims in the end would probably be less. Obviously, there was an obligation to give this to the police.

Unfortunately, our consciences didn't bother us for acting as if we hadn't picked up any kind of notebook, and keeping silent; we were cruel, reptilian high school students.

"If there's a fourth victim, that would definitely be our fault."

"That's terrible."

Morino and I slurped at our soba while having that talk. She didn't have any "That's terrible" face; her voice was casual, as if only interested in the soba of a second-class restaurant.

We asked about the Shinto shrine at the soba restaurant.

While walking, Morino looked at the notebook. She traced the front cover many times with her fingertip, perhaps touching the same place that cold-blooded murderer had touched. From those actions, I could tell she felt a sense of awe for the murderer.

Inside, I felt a little like that too. I also knew it wasn't proper to feel that. Criminals, of course, must be punished. One should not think of them as revolutionaries or artists.

At the same time, I knew that famous murderers would be worshipped by some abnormal people. I knew that it was wrong to become like that.

However, we were in thrall to the horror of deeds of the notebook's owner. This criminal had, in the moments of everyday life, crossed over a line; crushing people's individuality and dignity, and completely destroying the bodies.

It had the irresistible charm of a nightmare.

In order to reach the Shinto shrine, from the soba restaurant, we had to walk even further towards the summit, up a long flight of stairs.

For both of us, the idea of moving our bodies stirred up an almost irrational anger.

So we had no love for the mountain slope and the stairs.

By the time we reached the shrine, we were exhausted. We sat for some time at a stone monument that had been constructed on the grounds, and took a break. On the trees that had been planted on the grounds, high branches spread out, and looking up, you could see the midsummer sun peep through the leaves.

We sat beside each other, unconcerned by the voices of the cicadas falling from above. Drops of sweat started to form bit by bit on Morino's brow.


Before long, she wiped the sweat away while standing up. The search for Miguchi Nanami's body had begun.

"Ah, so the murderer and Miguchi Nanami walked in this place together."

Morino walked beside me while humming.

Leaving the shrine, we headed towards the forest.

For what distance, and in what direction the murderer walked, I did not know. For that reason, the search was fumbling and uncertain.

While randomly searching, one hour passed.

"I think it might be over there."

So said Morino in parting; before long, from far off, she called my name.

I walked towards the voice, and then, at the bottom of a cliff, I saw her from behind. Her arms hung loosely by her sides. She turned to the side, so I looked there also.

And there was Miguchi Nanami.

In between the forest and the cliff, in the shadow of a large tree, in the middle of that faint summer gloom, she sat naked.

Her lower half was resting on the ground; her back was resting against the tree trunk. Her arms and legs, devoid of power, were sprawled carelessly.

From the neck up, there was nothing.

The head had been separated, and placed in her stomach.

Both eyeballs had been plucked out, and placed respectively, in the left and right hands.

Instead, the eye sockets, now just holes, had been packed with mud. Even the mouth; moldy leaves had been plastered inside.

Around the tree trunk that the back was leaning against, something had been wrapped. That something had once been the contents of Miguchi Nanami's abdomen.


Signs of blood remained black upon the ground.

Slightly further off, her clothes had been dumped.

We stood in front of her, unable to move, looking quietly.

Unable to say anything.

Only looking quietly at the corpse.

The next day, I got a text message on my cell phone from Morino.

"Give me back the notebook."

Her text messages were always concise and short. She never added anything unnecessary. Likewise, I knew that she held a kind of hatred for clattery and noisy keychains and straps.

I was the one who had taken the notebook home. When we had left the place where Miguchi Nanami was, I hadn't returned it to her. On the train home, Morino, not yet recovered from the shock, had only stared into the distance.

When we were leaving that place, Morino had picked up Miguchi Nanami's fallen clothes, and stuffed them into her bag. The clothes had been almost completely torn into pieces, but the hat and the bag, and its contents, were untouched.

Inside Miguchi Nanami's bag, there were things like makeup, a purse, and a handkerchief. On the train home, I looked through them.

According to the student card in her purse, I found out that Miguchi Nanami had been a high school student in a neighboring prefecture. Inside the bag, there was also a notebook for sticking photo booth pictures. From her student card, and the [[GOTH:Translator's Notes#photo booth pictures|photo booth pictures]], I could see what her face had been like when alive.

Miguchi Nanami's many friends were all smiling in the small photo booth picture.

The afternoon that I got the text message, Morino and I met at the McDonald's in front of the station.

Morino, unlike usual, was not wearing dark style clothes. Because of that, I didn't realize who she was at first. Since the hat she wore was the same as the kind she had picked up from beside Miguchi Nanami's corpse, I realized that the clothes she picked were meant to resemble hers as well.

Her hairstyle, makeup - everything resembled the Miguchi Nanami in the photo booth pictures. Since the original clothes were torn up, she must have searched for something similar.

She accepted the notebook, and seemed extremely happy.

I asked about that.

"Are you going to tell Miguchi Nanami's family about the corpse in the forest?"

She thought for a moment, and then announced her intention to stay uninvolved.



"I wonder when the police will find her."

Morino, while looking like Miguchi Nanami before her death, talked about her death.

I wonder what Miguchi Nanami's family is doing right now? Does she have a boyfriend? I wonder what her grades were like?

Morino was a little bit different from usual. During the conversation with her, her style of talking and gesturing had diverged from her usual manner. She paid attention to how her bangs fell, and created the atmosphere of a couple sitting in separate seats, with the topics she brought up. This was behavior that Morino had never displayed up to now.

Miguchi Nanami and I had not known each other. Still, looking at Morino, I had to wonder if Miguchi Nanami would have created the same impression.

Morino placed her elbows on the table, while acting cheerful. She had beside her what was once Miguchi Nanami's bag. Attached to the zipper pull was a [[GOTH:Translator's Notes#keychain mascot|keychain mascot]].

"So are you planning to stay dressed like that for awhile?"

"Of course, it's amusing, isn't it?"

This was Morino's make-believe play. But it was more than just a normal smiling manner, and looking into the mirror, checking her eyelashes type of imitation of a normal female high school student. It was more as if Miguchi Nanami had enroached upon Morino's basic nature.

When leaving McDonald's, Morino suddenly and spontaneously took my hand as we walked. She herself didn't notice this until I pointed it out.

I was almost certain that I was being embraced by the dead Miguchi Nanami.

After parting with Morino in front of the station and arriving home, I immediately turned on the TV. On the news, they covered the bizarre murder case.

There was a report about the first and second victims. Up until this point, they were still going over old news; nothing new was being said.

Miguchi Nanami's name didn't appear at all.

There was a slideshow about the two victims, pictures of grieving friends and family.

On the TV screen, a large picture appeared -- photographs of the two victims......

I thought of Morino, and a bad premonition came over me. Yet, the odds of something like that happening were extremely low. And so I dropped that thought from my mind.

The two victims, as they had appeared in the photographs, in their hairstyle, and their clothes, both resembled Miguchi Nanami.

So, in short, you could say that today, Morino was the same type that this cold-blooded murderer went for.


=== 3 ===

One evening, 3 days after having met at McDonald's, the ringtone sounded on my cell phone, indicating that I had received a text message from someone.

It was from Morino.

"Help"

A short message with only that, showed on my liquid crystal display.

My reply message was a question.

"What happened?"

I waited for awhile, but she didn't reply.

I tried calling her, but her cell phone wasn't connected. Did the power get cut off, or was it destroyed maybe?

That night, I called Morino's house. She had told me her home phone number previously. I hadn't been told it in case I wanted to call her home. She had told me previously that her home phone number, unexpectedly, using [[GOTH:Translator's Notes#wordplay|wordplay]], worked out to a deranged sentence. And so I had remembered that.



Her mother answered the phone. She had a high voice, and a fast speaking style.

I said I was a classmate, and that there was a message from the teacher, so I would like to speak with her to pass it along.

She had not returned.

I started to wonder if maybe she had been attacked.

Because what was written in the notebook was truth, it could also be true that the murderer had been in the same coffee shop as she had. The potential that the criminal had unexpectedly happened to see Morino's current look somewhere downtown was not zero.


For the criminal, to see Morino in her current style, a girl dressed in exactly the same clothes as Miguchi Nanami, who he had killed a few days ago, must have seemed miraculous. And then it must have moved his heart, I think.

There was a low chance at best that this would cause the criminal to decide to aim for Morino. Probably it was a trend for girls to be dressed like that, so you would expect to see that kind wandering around town.

If we considered the only possible way Morino might have been attacked by the criminal, it was the potential that Morino and the criminal had some overlap in their normal routines. After all, they had been in the same coffee shop. Unless the criminal had made a special long-distance trip, and just happened to stop by that coffee shop, then in his normal activities, Morino would have walked into a place he would have noticed her. In other words, the chances of the two meeting were high.

I thought about it late into the night.

Probably, about right now, Morino had undoubtedly been killed. I suppose her body has been scattered at some mountain.

I imagined that kind of thing while I fell asleep.


The next day, I called her house one more time.

As expected, she still hadn't returned. From what her mother said, this was the first time she had stayed out for the night without calling. Her mother was worried.

"By the way, are you her boyfriend?"

From the other side of the receiver, Morino's mother asked that.

"No, definitely not, ma'am!"

"Now, now, you don't have to deny it that strongly! I can still figure it out."


Morino's mother had no doubt that I was her daughter's boyfriend. She explained that her daughter, had no friends to be truly called 'friends', and that getting a house telephone call from someone was something that hadn't happened since elementary school times.



"Lately that girl's clothes have gotten brighter, so I'm positive she must have found a boy."

I started worrying about the telephone bill.

"In her room, would there happen to be a small brown notebook?"

Her mother immediately went to check for me. She left the telephone receiver, and there was a moment of silence. Before long I could hear a voice again.

"There's a notebook like that on that girl's desk, but I wonder if this is the one?"

It seems that Morino had not been carrying the notebook. If that hadn't been so, I would have considered the possibility that Morino had opened the notebook somewhere outside, and had been accidentally seen by the criminal, who had then attacked her in order to keep her silent.

I am going over to get the notebook, so I would like to know the address, I asked Morino's mother.

After hanging up the phone, I headed to Morino's house. I already knew that she lived close to the station, but this was the first time I had visited her house.

Her home was on the third floor of an apartment building in front of the station.

When I rang the doorbell, the woman with the voice I had heard on the phone answered while she opened the door. This was unmistakably Morino's mother.

"My my my, welcome!"

Morino's mother wore an apron; a normal household-centered housewife. This was quite different from the atmosphere of the Morino I was used to seeing, so I started wondering how, with a mother like that, that Morino had turned out that way.

I was invited inside, but I declined. I intended to complete my business at the entranceway.

When I mentioned the notebook, she immediately brought it, as if already prepared. While receiving the notebook, I asked her if she had read the contents, to which she shook her head.

"Since it's hard to read small words."

It seemed she was far more interested in me than the notebook.

"That girl, ever since she became a second year, she's decided to be conscientious about going to school, so it must have been for that reason, right?"

When Morino had been a first year, she had said school was boring; she didn't seem to have attended very often either. This is the first time I'd learned of that. Her tastes were a little unique, and on top of that, she wasn't good at blending in with the people around her. So no matter what, it would have probably turned out like that.

I asked when Morino was last seen.

"Yesterday, sometime past noon maybe. I saw her leave, too!"

"Did you ask her where she was going?"

Morino's mother shook her head.

"So you'll look for my daughter?"

When I parted from the entranceway, Morino's mother requested that.

I replied with a nod.

However, it's possible she won't be alive, I added. Her mother thought it was a joke, and smiled.

While walking towards the station, I opened up the synthetic leather front cover, and turned to the page where the names of the mountains were lined up.

The criminal had made a list of mountains he was thinking about dumping bodies at. The ones with a ◎ mark were undoubtedly mountains that the criminal had judged were especially convenient for dumping bodies. Because there were four mountains marked with ◎, and three had already had bodies dumped there, meaning up until now, the mountains where bodies had been found had been chosen exclusively from those.

So then, from the four mountains marked with ◎, three had already had bodies dumped there. So that meant that you had to wonder if Morino had been taken to the last remaining mountain.

And that was N mountain.

I asked a station employee which train I should take to get to N mountain, and I bought a ticket.

I got off the train at the closest station to N mountain, and from there, had to ride a bus. At the base of N mountain, grapes were being grown; I saw many "grape picking" signs from the bus window.

Riding in his car to visit N mountain, where would the criminal leave the body? Probably the criminal would perform his ceremony somewhere remote where no one would hear the screams. I had no idea where that place might be.

The only ones on the bus were the driver and me. I looked at the route map attached to the inside of the car, talked with the driver; I decided to try a place I thought the criminal might have stopped.

From the area Morino and I lived, to N mountain, most cars likely went by the [[GOTH:Translator's Notes#prefectural road|prefectural road]] that passed by N mountain's east side. Originally, there were not many roads that went to N mountain; aside from that prefectural road, there were no others in the area we lived in.

Whatever place the criminal was taking Morino to at N mountain, undoubtedly he must have taken that prefectural road. According to what the driver said, the road the bus was on currently was definitely that prefectural road.

I got off the bus at a bus stop. If I was headed by car to a place deep within N mountain, there was one wide road that went near the peak. The bus stop was very near to that road.

I walked on the road to the summit. The surface was asphalt, but a car would almost not be able to make it.

There were a few side roads that stretched towards the inside of the deep forest. I considered which one the criminal and Morino could have entered.

As I climbed the ascent, the altitude gradually increased. Looking from in between the trees, the town had grown small and hazy.

It was a struggle to get near the summit. There was a small parking lot, and building that appeared to be a viewing platform. A car would not go beyond that point. Since it had not been much time since I'd started walking, I wasn't tired.

I searched for Morino's corpse.

I walked down a road that went into the trees; on the way, I entered a side road I had noticed.

The sky was cloudy, and the forest was pushed into darkness. A dense stand of trees peeped from in between a tangle of leaves and branches.

There was no wind; only the voices of cicadas filled the surroundings.



N mountain was too vast to find a one human body that had been rendered into pieces. Perhaps it would be impossible in the end to find Morino, I judged.

On the way back to the bus station, my entire body was sweating, tired from walking.

On the prefectural road that the bus ran on, there were a few scattered private houses. Even near the road going towards the summit, there was one house, and in the garden, there was an elderly man, who I asked whether there had been a car on this road last night, headed into the mountains. He shook his head. Afterwards, he called some of his family regarding my question, but in the end, it didn't seem that a car had been seen.

What kind of situation was Morino in yesterday when she sent that text?

Was she kidnapped by the criminal using brute force, I wonder?



I didn't think she was that weak of a fool.

Or maybe, her having been caught by the criminal was just me over thinking things?

I sat near the bus stop and reread the notebook. From the descriptions of the three murders, I was not skilled enough to be able to understand the criminal's personality to the detail of a psychographic analysis.

Sweat fell onto the notebook, and the ink blurred; part of one sentence became unreadable. Apparently, the criminal had used water-soluble ink to write his descriptions.

In the first place, where did the criminal write into his notebook? Right after the crime, in his car, or after returning home, maybe? Probably he didn't write them in the middle of the crime, right? Without a doubt, he recalled the crime, and then while completely entranced in imagining, wrote.

Since the bus had come, I stood up. I looked at my watch; three hours had passed since noon.


I decided to come down from the mountain.

Just maybe, it was also possible that the criminal was keeping Morino locked in his house without killing her. The only way to determine whether or not that was really true would be to ask the criminal himself.

If she had already been killed, I needed to find out where her body had been dumped.

Because I wanted to look at it.

Either way, I had to descend N mountain, and meet with that criminal; there was no other way. Of course, I had every intention of doing so.



=== 4 ===

The coffee shop that Morino had become a regular customer of was located far back from the shopping district in front of the station. I had heard of it before, but this was my first time entering.

As I had been told, it was only lit moderately, and wrapped in a comfortable darkness. Peaceful music played, blending in with the unassuming atmosphere.

I took a place at a counter seat.

In the store's interior, there was an indication showing where the toilet was. I examined the floor in that vicinity. Morino had told me that that was where the notebook had been dropped.

There was one other customer in the store besides me. A young female customer, wearing a suit. She was sitting by the window drinking coffee while reading a magazine.

Since the store owner was coming by, bringing an order, I tried asking him.

"Is that person over there a regular customer?"

He nodded. And then he tilted his head in doubt as if to say "Is there something the matter with that?"



"Nevermind, I didn't mean anything by that. Anyway, won't you shake my hand?"

"Handshake? Why?"

The owner was an honest-faced looking man. He wasn't young, but he certainly wasn't middle aged yet. His skin was white, and he was wearing a black T-shirt like those sold anywhere.

His beard was neatly trimmed.

It seemed that from the beginning moment, he had considered me to be a strange customer. I stared too much.

The coffee I had requested was soon ready.

"I'm a friend of a girl named Morino. You know of her, I think?"

"She's a regular customer."

I tried asking him whether or not she was still alive.

The owner froze. He carefully put down the coffee cup he was holding, and faced me squarely.

His eyes lost their luster, like holes, they turned black, devoid of light.

I had felt before that, more than the potential of any of the customers in that shop during that evening rain shower, that the potential that this person was the criminal, was the highest. I learned that I had been correct.


"......I wonder, what do you mean?"

He made a pretense of not knowing.

I presented the notebook. When he saw that, the shape of his mouth twisted into a smile. Sharp white canine teeth peeked out.

"Morino-san picked this up the other day."

He took the notebook in his hands and turned the pages.

"So you knew clearly that I was the notebook's owner, I see."


"At least half of it was guessing."

I explained how I had gone to N mountain to look for Morino's corpse and how I had thought it would be there.

What does the criminal thinks of this, I wonder.

I had first, exercised my imagination concerning the criminal who had dropped the notebook.

For what reason had this notebook been written? In order to commemorate? In order not to forget? Undoubtedly, he must have read it repeatedly, many times, so that it soaked into his memory.

Therefore, it is unlikely that the criminal would not have noticed having dropped the notebook.

In the first place, where could he have carried the notebook? Ordinarily, it would be in a pocket, or inside a bag. To have been dropped, it was possibly a pocket. While washing his hands in the restroom, or taking a handkerchief from his pocket, the notebook might have been dropped.

And then, about when did he notice that? A few tens-of-minutes later, a few hours later......? Probably less than a day, without a doubt.


And then, he would think back to when he last read the notebook, perhaps. And he would deduce that he must have lost the notebook at around that time. That meant, in short, that he would check the areas he had moved about in during that day, and he would, to some extent, start doing activity specific to the place where the notebook was dropped.



And then -- this is an arbitrary guess, but I felt the criminal must have dropped the notebook in a somewhat confined location. It was because he wanted to look at the notebook often. Every time the dark thoughts in his head became jumbled, he would reread the notebook and calm himself down. With this, frequently holding the notebook in his hands, confirming its presence, the time period and area in which the notebook could have been lost in were both restricted to a narrow range.

And then the criminal probably searched for it, checking the ground to see whether he had dropped the notebook.

But it wasn't there.

And then the criminal must have stopped to think. Someone must have picked up the notebook.

He absolutely could not let anyone read the contents of that notebook. Perhaps the police would investigate the third victim, and find the body. If it was just that, he wouldn't be particularly bothered. The problem was the possibility of getting fingerprints from the notebook. And also, possibly even handwriting analysis.

Had I been in that situation, what would I have done?

Probably I wouldn't attack a fourth person.



After all, it's possible that the police might be investigating around this area. Because he had lost the notebook within the area of his normal everyday movements, and so the police might consider that the criminal was somewhere around this area.

It would be unwise to do anything.


However, even a while later, the body of the third victim, Miguchi Nanami had not been found. Because Morino and I had not turned the notebook over to the police.

The criminal probably was waiting for the news to break, of the discovery of her body. If it was me, I would hold back until I had confirmed it was safe enough to try a fourth person.

And yet, Morino had disappeared.


Considering that the potential that Morino being missing was just a girl's prank was unthinkable, I tried to figure out why there was this discrepancy.



Putting myself in the role of the criminal, in what situation would I kill a fourth person?

* If I could not help myself no matter what.
* If I became over-confident, having not been caught, underrating the risks; making light of the police.

* If I didn't care whether I got caught by the police.
* If I thought that the notebook hadn't been picked up and read.
* If I thought the person who had picked up the notebook hadn't taken it seriously.

Or else, after all, I hadn't realized that the notebook had been dropped, perhaps. For any of these, the potential was not zero. However, I had tried betting on one final possibility. Couldn't the criminal have considered it this way?

* Someone had picked up the notebook, but had not read its contents. As a result of that, the police would not have been alerted, and also, Miguchi Nanami's body would not have been found.

The coffee shop's owner listened to my talk while nodding with a look of great interest.

"And so then, how can you say I'm the criminal?"



I received the notebook back from his hand, and turned to a certain page. A word had been blurred by sweat, and had become unreadable.

"The ink being water soluble, the words would vanish if it got wet -- You knew this. The criminal, after not seeing the notebook inside the shop, wouldn't he have thought he had dropped it outside? -- This is what I guessed." Morino had explained to me how there had been a evening shower happening outside during the time the notebook had been dropped.


Surely the criminal as well must have considered that he had dropped the notebook during the time of the evening shower.

If the criminal was applying the usual way of thinking, he would expect that someone in the store had picked up the notebook, and that the police had probably been informed of it. However, news of the discovery of Miguchi Nanami's body did not come out on the news.

"And so, that day, couldn't it be that the criminal concluded that he dropped the notebook in the rain? That is what I guessed at. And if that was so, the notebook would have become wet from the fierce rain, and the contents would have become unreadable."

That day, the only person who went outside during the time it was raining, was the shop owner; so Morino's story had let me know.

I had assembled this explanation almost completely by my imagination only, like tightrope walking, and after I had finished, the shape of the shop owner's mouth became a wide grin.

"I thought for certain the notebook had been dropped in the rain."

Morino-san was inside. He told me that.

The coffee shop's 2nd, and 3rd floors were his home, it seemed.

And then he returned the notebook to his pocket carefully. He turned his back to me, faced towards the store's entrance, and opened the door.



The sky that had been so cloudy before appeared to have cleared. The world outside lit by the rays of the summer sun, appeared white to eyes used to the shop's gloomy illumination. He exited the shop and walked out towards the street, and disappeared into the light.


The woman customer, who had been called a regular customer, rose from the table and stood in front of the cash register in order to pay. After looking around the inside of the shop, she asked me "Where's the owner?", but I merely shook my head.

The stairs were outside the building; in order to get to the top floor, you had to go outside the shop once.

Morino was tied up on the third floor. Her clothes were like Miguchi Nanami's, her hands and feet were coiled about with rope, and she was tumbled over on the tatami mat.


She didn't seem to have been roughed up.

Upon seeing my face, she gently squinted her eyes. That was her smile. Because there was a towel jammed in her mouth, she couldn't speak.

When I pulled out the towel, she took a deep breath.

"That shop manager, he faked having a bone fracture, and he asked me to help him carry something. By the time I noticed... this happened!"



The rope coiled around her hands and feet looked difficult to untie. I left her in that state, and took a tour of the inside of the room. From the state of the inside of the dwelling, it appeared that the shop's owner lived alone.

On top of the desk, there was a piece of white paper, like from a memo pad. And on that piece of paper, countless tiny crosses were drawn.

On a shelf, there was a knife set stored. It was easy to guess that those were used for killing. In the descriptions in the notebook, the word "knife" had appeared often.

Still lying on the floor, Morino raised her voice, blaming me for not freeing her hands and feet.

I picked out a convenient knife from the knife set, and used it to cut the ropes.

"If we don't get away fast, the shop manager's going to find us!"


"He's not coming, I'm telling you!"

He would probably never come here again. I was almost certain of it. There was the potential that maybe he might come back to kill Morino and I, in order to keep us quiet, but for some reason, I knew he wouldn't.

Because during the conversation we had across the counter of the coffee shop, it felt like I and that abnormal person, in some ways, had been able to communicate with each other's hearts.

Maybe the reason he exited the shop quietly is because he intuitively knew I wouldn't tell anyone.

Morino looked at me as if in wonder, when I declared that the shop manager would never come back here. She stood up while straightening out her clothes.

"I could only send you a mail, and then I got found out......"

On top of the desk was Morino's cell phone, with the power turned off. Miguchi Nanami's bag, that Morino had likely been carrying at the time, was there also. Had the criminal not noticed that the bag the 3rd victim had, and the bag of what was likely to be the 4th victim, were the same thing? Or maybe, it was because it was the same bag that he had aimed for Morino?

It seems that Morino had been tied up and left there all day. Walking unsteadily, she headed towards the stairs.

When we left the room, I took with me the knife set, and the paper on the desk. I had decided they would be my souvenirs. When the police find out everything and search this room, they might be bothered by not being able to find the murder weapon, I suppose. Naturally, I wasn't worried.

Upon reaching the first floor, we looked inside the shop. Inside the uninhabited shop, peaceful music played. I turned over the sign that was hung on the door, from "OPEN" to "CLOSED." Morino stood behind me rubbing her wrists while viewing their condition. Marks from the rope still remained on her wrists.

"What a horrible experience."

She muttered.

"I've decided I'm never coming back to this place again."

"But aren't you glad? That you were able to meet that person."

Morino tilted her head.

"That person? In the first place, why did that shop manager put me through that, I wonder?"

She hadn't realized that the shop manager was the cold-blooded murderer.

I let my eyes drop down to the paper in my hand, and gazed at the countless tiny crosses.

GOTH:GOTH

2007-06-12T13:23:39Z

60.52.178.202: HC here again. You probably know why by now.

== '''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, having come to school, 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 a notebook I'd never seen before.


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 somehow had a 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 started talking with her; a short while later we walked to my car.

:Just like that, I take her to T mountain.

:She keeps staring outside the window, all the while telling me about a newspaper column her mother is interested in.

:I stop the car near the summit of T mountain.

:When I took out the bag containing the knife, nails, and other tools, from the trunk, she laughingly asked me what it was.

:............

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 slightly upwards, unable to move.



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


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


On one tree, in order from the top, the 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.

Inside the notebook Morino had brought: how Kusuda Mitsue was killed, which parts were attached to trees, what kind of nails were used; page after page of dry, detailed 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 bizarre 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 there's something written about the second victim too."

:June 21
:I talk with a female who was holding a shopping bag, waiting for the bus.

:She called herself Nakanishi Kasumi.

:I offer to take her home in my car.

:Upon realizing that I was heading towards H mountain and not her house, the girl begins 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. The walls and floor were wooden planking, and 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 arranged. 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 turned 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 bizarre 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.

People had been killed, and then separated into pieces. People who had that done to them, and people who did that, actually did exist.



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.

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, for example, 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 that had been standing up to leave, sit down again. They were likely thinking to wait a little for the rain to stop.

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 just watching the rainy scenery 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. Immediately after that, the rain started; which means the number of customers were fixed. When I went the second time, the notebook had been dropped there. The murderer was in that shop. The murderer lives in this neighborhood."


She made a fist in front of her.

Two corpses had been 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 rest of the notebook."



"Please, welcome." It was with that kind of feeling that Morino spoke.


:August 5th
:I gave a ride in my car to a female named Miguchi Nanami.

:I met her at a soba restaurant near S mountain.

:When we went to the forest on the south side of the mountain, we found 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, and so on, 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.

=== 2 ===

My first introduction to Morino was when we ended up in the same class upon graduating to the second year. I had felt from the beginning that there was someone else like me, living life unconcerned with others. Even during break time, even walking the halls, she would always shun others. In short, she didn't seem to like crowds.

In our class, I only noticed this particular trait in Morino and I. Even so, I didn't coldly regard our classmates' merry-making like Morino did. For me, if someone struck up a conversation, I would reply, and to smooth the mechanism of human relations, even joke. I did the minimum required to have a normal life.

However, the superficial socializing, and the smiles I gave to my classmates, were essentially lies.

From our first conversation, Morino had seen through to that part of me.

"Could you teach me how to make that same expression too?"

One day after school, Morino had stood in front of me, expressionless, and said that. Maybe she was scoffing at me inside. That was around the beginning of May.

After that, we would talk from time to time.

Morino only wore black. Everything, from her long, straight hair, to the tips of her shoes, was wrapped in darkness. In stark contrast, her skin was whiter than anyone's I had seen; her hands were as if made of porcelain. There was a small spot under her left eye, in a similar design to that of [[GOTH:Translator's Notes#Pierrot|Pierrot]], giving her an atmosphere of black magic.

It's not that her face was less expressive than that of normal people. For example, when happily reading a book about the horrific murder of 52 women and children in Russia. There was no trace of the deathly green face she had when in the midst of noisy classmates. Rather, her eyes sparkled.

Only when talking to Morino would I not fake my facial expressions. If I was talking to someone else, they would probably wonder why I had such a blank, unsmiling expression. When talking with her, there was no problem with that.

Perhaps she had similar reasons, because during idle times, she would choose to speak with me.

We both disliked standing out. In the classroom, we were hidden in the shadow of our boisterous classmates; we quietly lived our lives.

And then, summer vacation came, and then I came to read the notebook.

Following the school day, after we met at the station, we boarded a train headed for the base of S mountain.

Both for meeting outside of school, and seeing Morino in normal clothes instead of the school uniform, it was the first time. As usual, she had chosen dark colored clothes. I noticed from her glance, that she must have thought the same about me.

The inside of the train was quiet; it was free of crowding. Without talking, we both started reading. She read a book about child abuse; I read a book written by the family members of a famous juvenile delinquent.

Upon getting off at the station, we asked an old woman working at the tobacco shop in front of the station, how many soba restaurants there were near S mountain. We learned that there was only one, and that it wasn't far. Afterwards, Morino made a sharp observation.

"Tobacco kills many people, but tobacco vending machines snatch away and kill that old woman's livelihood."

An especially clever reply didn't seem to be necessary, so I ignored her remark.

We walked along the side of the road until we reached the soba restaurant. The road began to slope upwards; it was curving near the mountain side.

The soba restaurant was part of a row of restaurants at the base of the mountain. Business looked to be bad there; the atmosphere was lonely, without many people or cars. The soba restaurant's parking lot was completely empty, yet even though it might as well have been closed, there was still an "OPEN" sign. We went inside.

"Ah, so this is where the murderer met Miguchi Nanami."

Morino looked around the restaurant as if sightseeing some famous place.

"Excuse me. I'm just speculating; what you would call the hypothetical stage. Since whether it's true or not is what we came here to find out."

I ignored her and read the notebook.

It was written with a blue ballpoint pen.

Inside the notebook, there were more than just the accounts of the murders of the three women. In addition, the names of a few mountains were written. That was on the first page, so it seemed to have been written before any of the accounts of the women's murders.

In front of the names of the mountains, there were markings like ◎ and ○, △ and ×. For the three mountains where the bodies had been disposed of, ◎ had been marked, so I inferred that maybe this was a list of mountains that were convenient for disposing bodies.

There were no indications as to the owner of the notebook.

There had never been any thought of giving the notebook to the police. Even if we didn't do anything, he would be caught sooner or later.

If we sent the notebook to the police, perhaps the murderer would be caught sooner. And the number of victims in the end would probably be less. Obviously, there was an obligation to give this to the police.

Unfortunately, our consciences didn't bother us for acting as if we hadn't picked up any kind of notebook, and keeping silent; we were cruel, reptilian high school students.

"If there's a fourth victim, that would definitely be our fault."

"That's terrible."

Morino and I slurped at our soba while having that talk. She didn't have any "That's terrible" face; her voice was casual, as if only interested in the soba of a second-class restaurant.

We asked about the Shinto shrine at the soba restaurant.

While walking, Morino looked at the notebook. She traced the front cover many times with her fingertip, perhaps touching the same place that cold-blooded murderer had touched. From those actions, I could tell she felt a sense of awe for the murderer.

Inside, I felt a little like that too. I also knew it wasn't proper to feel that. Criminals, of course, must be punished. One should not think of them as revolutionaries or artists.

At the same time, I knew that famous murderers would be worshipped by some abnormal people. I knew that it was wrong to become like that.

However, we were in thrall to the horror of deeds of the notebook's owner. This criminal had, in the moments of everyday life, crossed over a line; crushing people's individuality and dignity, and completely destroying the bodies.

It had the irresistible charm of a nightmare.

In order to reach the Shinto shrine, from the soba restaurant, we had to walk even further towards the summit, up a long flight of stairs.

For both of us, the idea of moving our bodies stirred up an almost irrational anger.

So we had no love for the mountain slope and the stairs.

By the time we reached the shrine, we were exhausted. We sat for some time at a stone monument that had been constructed on the grounds, and took a break. On the trees that had been planted on the grounds, high branches spread out, and looking up, you could see the midsummer sun peep through the leaves.

We sat beside each other, unconcerned by the voices of the cicadas falling from above. Drops of sweat started to form bit by bit on Morino's brow.


Before long, she wiped the sweat away while standing up. The search for Miguchi Nanami's body had begun.

"Ah, so the murderer and Miguchi Nanami walked in this place together."

Morino walked beside me while humming.

Leaving the shrine, we headed towards the forest.

For what distance, and in what direction the murderer walked, I did not know. For that reason, the search was fumbling and uncertain.

While randomly searching, one hour passed.

"I think it might be over there."

So said Morino in parting; before long, from far off, she called my name.

I walked towards the voice, and then, at the bottom of a cliff, I saw her from behind. Her arms hung loosely by her sides. She turned to the side, so I looked there also.

And there was Miguchi Nanami.

In between the forest and the cliff, in the shadow of a large tree, in the middle of that faint summer gloom, she sat naked.

Her lower half was resting on the ground; her back was resting against the tree trunk. Her arms and legs, devoid of power, were sprawled carelessly.

From the neck up, there was nothing.

The head had been separated, and placed in her stomach.

Both eyeballs had been plucked out, and placed respectively, in the left and right hands.

Instead, the eye sockets, now just holes, had been packed with mud. Even the mouth; moldy leaves had been plastered inside.

Around the tree trunk that the back was leaning against, something had been wrapped. That something had once been the contents of Miguchi Nanami's abdomen.


Signs of blood remained black upon the ground.

Slightly further off, her clothes had been dumped.

We stood in front of her, unable to move, looking quietly.

Unable to say anything.

Only looking quietly at the corpse.

The next day, I got a text message on my cell phone from Morino.

"Give me back the notebook."

Her text messages were always concise and short. She never added anything unnecessary. Likewise, I knew that she held a kind of hatred for clattery and noisy keychains and straps.

I was the one who had taken the notebook home. When we had left the place where Miguchi Nanami was, I hadn't returned it to her. On the train home, Morino, not yet recovered from the shock, had only stared into the distance.

When we were leaving that place, Morino had picked up Miguchi Nanami's fallen clothes, and stuffed them into her bag. The clothes had been almost completely torn into pieces, but the hat and the bag, and its contents, were untouched.

Inside Miguchi Nanami's bag, there were things like makeup, a purse, and a handkerchief. On the train home, I looked through them.

According to the student card in her purse, I found out that Miguchi Nanami had been a high school student in a neighboring prefecture. Inside the bag, there was also a notebook for sticking photo booth pictures. From her student card, and the [[GOTH:Translator's Notes#photo booth pictures|photo booth pictures]], I could see what her face had been like when alive.

Miguchi Nanami's many friends were all smiling in the small photo booth picture.

The afternoon that I got the text message, Morino and I met at the McDonald's in front of the station.

Morino, unlike usual, was not wearing dark style clothes. Because of that, I didn't realize who she was at first. Since the hat she wore was the same as the kind she had picked up from beside Miguchi Nanami's corpse, I realized that the clothes she picked were meant to resemble hers as well.

Her hairstyle, makeup - everything resembled the Miguchi Nanami in the photo booth pictures. Since the original clothes were torn up, she must have searched for something similar.

She accepted the notebook, and seemed extremely happy.

I asked about that.

"Are you going to tell Miguchi Nanami's family about the corpse in the forest?"

She thought for a moment, and then announced her intention to stay uninvolved.



"I wonder when the police will find her."

Morino, while looking like Miguchi Nanami before her death, talked about her death.

I wonder what Miguchi Nanami's family is doing right now? Does she have a boyfriend? I wonder what her grades were like?

Morino was a little bit different from usual. During the conversation with her, her style of talking and gesturing had diverged from her usual manner. She paid attention to how her bangs fell, and created the atmosphere of a couple sitting in separate seats, with the topics she brought up. This was behavior that Morino had never displayed up to now.

Miguchi Nanami and I had not known each other. Still, looking at Morino, I had to wonder if Miguchi Nanami would have created the same impression.

Morino placed her elbows on the table, while acting cheerful. She had beside her what was once Miguchi Nanami's bag. Attached to the zipper pull was a [[GOTH:Translator's Notes#keychain mascot|keychain mascot]].

"So are you planning to stay dressed like that for awhile?"

"Of course, it's amusing, isn't it?"

This was Morino's make-believe play. But it was more than just a normal smiling manner, and looking into the mirror, checking her eyelashes type of imitation of a normal female high school student. It was more as if Miguchi Nanami had enroached upon Morino's basic nature.

When leaving McDonald's, Morino suddenly and spontaneously took my hand as we walked. She herself didn't notice this until I pointed it out.

I was almost certain that I was being embraced by the dead Miguchi Nanami.

After parting with Morino in front of the station and arriving home, I immediately turned on the TV. On the news, they covered the bizarre murder case.

There was a report about the first and second victims. Up until this point, they were still going over old news; nothing new was being said.

Miguchi Nanami's name didn't appear at all.

There was a slideshow about the two victims, pictures of grieving friends and family.

On the TV screen, a large picture appeared -- photographs of the two victims......

I thought of Morino, and a bad premonition came over me. Yet, the odds of something like that happening were extremely low. And so I dropped that thought from my mind.

The two victims, as they had appeared in the photographs, in their hairstyle, and their clothes, both resembled Miguchi Nanami.

So, in short, you could say that today, Morino was the same type that this cold-blooded murderer went for.


=== 3 ===

One evening, 3 days after having met at McDonald's, the ringtone sounded on my cell phone, indicating that I had received a text message from someone.

It was from Morino.

"Help"

A short message with only that, showed on my liquid crystal display.

My reply message was a question.

"What happened?"

I waited for awhile, but she didn't reply.

I tried calling her, but her cell phone wasn't connected. Did the power get cut off, or was it destroyed maybe?

That night, I called Morino's house. She had told me her home phone number previously. I hadn't been told it in case I wanted to call her home. She had told me previously that her home phone number, unexpectedly, using [[Talk:GOTH:GOTH#wordplay|wordplay]], worked out to a deranged sentence. And so I had remembered that.



Her mother answered the phone. She had a high voice, and a fast speaking style.

I said I was a classmate, and that there was a message from the teacher, so I would like to speak with her to pass it along.

She had not returned.

I started to wonder if maybe she had been attacked.

Because what was written in the notebook was truth, it could also be true that the murderer had been in the same coffee shop as she had. The potential that the criminal had unexpectedly happened to see Morino's current look somewhere downtown was not zero.


For the criminal, to see Morino in her current style, a girl dressed in exactly the same clothes as Miguchi Nanami, who he had killed a few days ago, must have seemed miraculous. And then it must have moved his heart, I think.

There was a low chance at best that this would cause the criminal to decide to aim for Morino. Probably it was a trend for girls to be dressed like that, so you would expect to see that kind wandering around town.

If we considered the only possible way Morino might have been attacked by the criminal, it was the potential that Morino and the criminal had some overlap in their normal routines. After all, they had been in the same coffee shop. Unless the criminal had made a special long-distance trip, and just happened to stop by that coffee shop, then in his normal activities, Morino would have walked into a place he would have noticed her. In other words, the chances of the two meeting were high.

I thought about it late into the night.

Probably, about right now, Morino had undoubtedly been killed. I suppose her body has been scattered at some mountain.

I imagined that kind of thing while I fell asleep.


The next day, I called her house one more time.

As expected, she still hadn't returned. From what her mother said, this was the first time she had stayed out for the night without calling. Her mother was worried.

"By the way, are you her boyfriend?"

From the other side of the receiver, Morino's mother asked that.

"No, definitely not, ma'am!"

"Now, now, you don't have to deny it that strongly! I can still figure it out."


Morino's mother had no doubt that I was her daughter's boyfriend. She explained that, for her daughter, without any friends who were truly friends, the house getting a telephone call from someone was something that hadn't happened since elementary school times.



"Lately that girl's clothes have gotten brighter, so I'm positive she must have found a boy."

I started worrying about the telephone bill.

"In her room, would there happen to be a small brown notebook?"

Her mother immediately went to check for me. She left the telephone receiver, and there was a moment of silence. Before long I could hear a voice again.

"There's a notebook like that on that girl's desk, but I wonder if this is the one?"

It seems that Morino had not been carrying the notebook. If that hadn't been so, I would have considered the possibility that Morino had opened the notebook somewhere outside, and had been accidentally seen by the criminal, who had then attacked her in order to keep her silent.

I am going over to get the notebook, so I would like to know the address, I asked Morino's mother.

After hanging up the phone, I headed to Morino's house. I already knew that she lived close to the station, but this was the first time I had visited her house.

Her home was on the third floor of an apartment building in front of the station.

When I rang the doorbell, the woman with the voice I had heard on the phone answered while she opened the door. This was unmistakably Morino's mother.

"My my my, welcome!"

Morino's mother wore an apron; a normal household-centered housewife. This was quite different from the atmosphere of the Morino I was used to seeing, so I started wondering how, with a mother like that, that Morino had turned out that way.

I was invited inside, but I declined. I intended to complete my business at the entranceway.

When I mentioned the notebook, she immediately brought it, as if already prepared. While receiving the notebook, I asked her if she had read the contents, to which she shook her head.

"Since it's hard to read small words."

It seemed she was far more interested in me than the notebook.

"That girl, ever since she became a second year, she's decided to be conscientious about going to school, so it must have been for that reason, right?"

When Morino had been a first year, she had said school was boring; she didn't seem to have attended very often either. This is the first time I'd learned of that. Her tastes were a little unique, and on top of that, she wasn't good at blending in with the people around her. So no matter what, it would have probably turned out like that.

I asked when Morino was last seen.

"Yesterday, sometime past noon maybe. I saw her leave, too!"

"Did you ask her where she was going?"

Morino's mother shook her head.

"So you'll look for my daughter?"

When I parted from the entranceway, Morino's mother requested that.

I replied with a nod.

However, it's possible she won't be alive, I added. Her mother thought it was a joke, and smiled.

While walking towards the station, I opened up the synthetic leather front cover, and turned to the page where the names of the mountains were lined up.

The criminal had made a list of mountains he was thinking about dumping bodies at. The ones with a ◎ mark were undoubtedly mountains that the criminal had judged were especially convenient for dumping bodies. Because there were four mountains marked with ◎, and three had already had bodies dumped there, meaning up until now, the mountains where bodies had been found had been chosen exclusively from those.

So then, from the four mountains marked with ◎, three had already had bodies dumped there. So that meant that you had to wonder if Morino had been taken to the last remaining mountain.

And that was N mountain.

I asked a station employee which train I should take to get to N mountain, and I bought a ticket.

I got off the train at the closest station to N mountain, and from there, had to ride a bus. At the base of N mountain, grapes were being grown; I saw many "grape picking" signs from the bus window.

Riding in his car to visit N mountain, where would the criminal leave the body? Probably the criminal would perform his ceremony somewhere remote where no one would hear the screams. I had no idea where that place might be.

The only ones on the bus were the driver and me. I looked at the route map attached to the inside of the car, talked with the driver; I decided to try a place I thought the criminal might have stopped.

From the area Morino and I lived, to N mountain, most cars likely went by the [[Talk:GOTH:GOTH#prefectural road|prefectural road]] that passed by N mountain's east side. Originally, there were not many roads that went to N mountain; aside from that prefectural road, there were no others in the area we lived in.

Whatever place the criminal was taking Morino to at N mountain, undoubtedly he must have taken that prefectural road. According to what the driver said, the road the bus was on currently was definitely that prefectural road.

I got off the bus at a bus stop. If I was headed by car to a place deep within N mountain, there was one wide road that went near the peak. The bus stop was very near to that road.

I walked on the road to the summit. The surface was asphalt, but a car would almost not be able to make it.

There were a few side roads that stretched towards the inside of the deep forest. I considered which one the criminal and Morino could have entered.

As I climbed the ascent, the altitude gradually increased. Looking from in between the trees, the town had grown small and hazy.

It was a struggle to get near the summit. There was a small parking lot, and building that appeared to be a viewing platform. A car would not go beyond that point. Since it had not been much time since I'd started walking, I wasn't tired.

I searched for Morino's corpse.

I walked down a road that went into the trees; on the way, I entered a side road I had noticed.

The sky was cloudy, and the forest was pushed into darkness. A dense stand of trees peeped from in between a tangle of leaves and branches.

There was no wind; only the voices of cicadas filled the surroundings.



N mountain was too vast to find a one human body that had been rendered into pieces. Perhaps it would be impossible in the end to find Morino, I judged.

On the way back to the bus station, my entire body was sweating, tired from walking.

On the prefectural road that the bus ran on, there were a few scattered private houses. Even near the road going towards the summit, there was one house, and in the garden, there was an elderly man, who I asked whether there had been a car on this road last night, headed into the mountains. He shook his head. Afterwards, he called some of his family regarding my question, but in the end, it didn't seem that a car had been seen.

What kind of situation was Morino in yesterday when she sent that text?

Was she kidnapped by the criminal using brute force, I wonder?



I didn't think she was that weak of a fool.

Or maybe, her having been caught by the criminal was just me over thinking things?

I sat near the bus stop and reread the notebook. From the descriptions of the three murders, I was not skilled enough to be able to understand the criminal's personality to the detail of a psychographic analysis.

Sweat fell onto the notebook, and the ink blurred; part of one sentence became unreadable. Apparently, the criminal had used water-soluble ink to write his descriptions.

In the first place, where did the criminal write into his notebook? Right after the crime, in his car, or after returning home, maybe? Probably he didn't write them in the middle of the crime, right? Without a doubt, he recalled the crime, and then while completely entranced in imagining, wrote.

Since the bus had come, I stood up. I looked at my watch; three hours had passed since noon.


I decided to come down from the mountain.

Just maybe, it was also possible that the criminal was keeping Morino locked in his house without killing her. The only way to determine whether or not that was really true would be to ask the criminal himself.

If she had already been killed, I needed to find out where her body had been dumped.

Because I wanted to look at it.

Either way, I had to descend N mountain, and meet with that criminal; there was no other way. Of course, I had every intention of doing so.



=== 4 ===

The coffee shop that Morino had become a regular customer of was located far back from the shopping district in front of the station. I had heard of it before, but this was my first time entering.

As I had been told, it was only lit moderately, and wrapped in a comfortable darkness. Peaceful music played, blending in with the unassuming atmosphere.

I took a place at a counter seat.

In the store's interior, there was an indication showing where the toilet was. I examined the floor in that vicinity. Morino had told me that that was where the notebook had been dropped.

There was one other customer in the store besides me. A young female customer, wearing a suit. She was sitting by the window drinking coffee while reading a magazine.

Since the store owner was coming by, bringing an order, I tried asking him.

"Is that person over there a regular customer?"

He nodded. And then he tilted his head in doubt as if to say "Is there something the matter with that?"



"Nevermind, I didn't mean anything by that. Anyway, won't you shake my hand?"

"Handshake? Why?"

The owner was an honest-faced looking man. He wasn't young, but he certainly wasn't middle aged yet. His skin was white, and he was wearing a black T-shirt like those sold anywhere.

His beard was neatly trimmed.

It seemed that from the beginning moment, he had considered me to be a strange customer. I stared too much.

The coffee I had requested was soon ready.

"I'm a friend of a girl named Morino. You know of her, I think?"

"She's a regular customer."

I tried asking him whether or not she was still alive.

The owner froze. He carefully put down the coffee cup he was holding, and faced me squarely.

His eyes lost their luster, like holes, they turned black, devoid of light.

I had felt before that, more than the potential of any of the customers in that shop during that evening rain shower, that the potential that this person was the criminal, was the highest. I learned that I had been correct.


"......I wonder, what do you mean?"

He made a pretense of not knowing.

I presented the notebook. When he saw that, the shape of his mouth twisted into a smile. Sharp white canine teeth peeked out.

"Morino-san picked this up the other day."

He took the notebook in his hands and turned the pages.

"So you knew clearly that I was the notebook's owner, I see."


"At least half of it was guessing."

I explained how I had gone to N mountain to look for Morino's corpse and how I had thought it would be there.

What does the criminal thinks of this, I wonder.

I had first, exercised my imagination concerning the criminal who had dropped the notebook.

For what reason had this notebook been written? In order to commemorate? In order not to forget? Undoubtedly, he must have read it repeatedly, many times, so that it soaked into his memory.

Therefore, it is unlikely that the criminal would not have noticed having dropped the notebook.

In the first place, where could he have carried the notebook? Ordinarily, it would be in a pocket, or inside a bag. To have been dropped, it was possibly a pocket. While washing his hands in the restroom, or taking a handkerchief from his pocket, the notebook might have been dropped.

And then, about when did he notice that? A few tens-of-minutes later, a few hours later......? Probably less than a day, without a doubt.


And then, he would think back to when he last read the notebook, perhaps. And he would deduce that he must have lost the notebook at around that time. That meant, in short, that he would check the areas he had moved about in during that day, and he would, to some extent, start doing activity specific to the place where the notebook was dropped.



And then -- this is an arbitrary guess, but I felt the criminal must have dropped the notebook in a somewhat confined location. It was because he wanted to look at the notebook often. Every time the dark thoughts in his head became jumbled, he would reread the notebook and calm himself down. With this, frequently holding the notebook in his hands, confirming its presence, the time period and area in which the notebook could have been lost in were both restricted to a narrow range.

And then the criminal probably searched for it, checking the ground to see whether he had dropped the notebook.

But it wasn't there.

And then the criminal must have stopped to think. Someone must have picked up the notebook.

He absolutely could not let anyone read the contents of that notebook. Perhaps the police would investigate the third victim, and find the body. If it was just that, he wouldn't be particularly bothered. The problem was the possibility of getting fingerprints from the notebook. And also, possibly even handwriting analysis.

Had I been in that situation, what would I have done?

Probably I wouldn't attack a fourth person.



After all, it's possible that the police might be investigating around this area. Because he had lost the notebook within the area of his normal everyday movements, and so the police might consider that the criminal was somewhere around this area.

It would be unwise to do anything.


However, even a while later, the body of the third victim, Miguchi Nanami had not been found. Because Morino and I had not turned the notebook over to the police.

The criminal probably was waiting for the news to break, of the discovery of her body. If it was me, I would hold back until I had confirmed it was safe enough to try a fourth person.

And yet, Morino had disappeared.


Considering that the potential that Morino being missing was just a girl's prank was unthinkable, I tried to figure out why there was this discrepancy.



Putting myself in the role of the criminal, in what situation would I kill a fourth person?

* If I could not help myself no matter what.
* If I became over-confident, having not been caught, underrating the risks; making light of the police.

* If I didn't care whether I got caught by the police.
* If I thought that the notebook hadn't been picked up and read.
* If I thought the person who had picked up the notebook hadn't taken it seriously.

Or else, after all, I hadn't realized that the notebook had been dropped, perhaps. For any of these, the potential was not zero. However, I had tried betting on one final possibility. Couldn't the criminal have considered it this way?

* Someone had picked up the notebook, but had not read its contents. As a result of that, the police would not have been alerted, and also, Miguchi Nanami's body would not have been found.

The coffee shop's owner listened to my talk while nodding with a look of great interest.

"And so then, how can you say I'm the criminal?"



I received the notebook back from his hand, and turned to a certain page. A word had been blurred by sweat, and had become unreadable.

"The ink being water soluble, the words would vanish if it got wet -- You knew this. The criminal, after not seeing the notebook inside the shop, wouldn't he have thought he had dropped it outside? -- This is what I guessed." Morino had explained to me how there had been a evening shower happening outside during the time the notebook had been dropped.


Surely the criminal as well must have considered that he had dropped the notebook during the time of the evening shower.

If the criminal was applying the usual way of thinking, he would expect that someone in the store had picked up the notebook, and that the police had probably been informed of it. However, news of the discovery of Miguchi Nanami's body did not come out on the news.

"And so, that day, couldn't it be that the criminal concluded that he dropped the notebook in the rain? That is what I guessed at. And if that was so, the notebook would have become wet from the fierce rain, and the contents would have become unreadable."

That day, the only person who went outside during the time it was raining, was the shop owner; so Morino's story had let me know.

I had assembled this explanation almost completely by my imagination only, like tightrope walking, and after I had finished, the shape of the shop owner's mouth became a wide grin.

"I thought for certain the notebook had been dropped in the rain."

Morino-san was inside. He told me that.

The coffee shop's 2nd, and 3rd floors were his home, it seemed.

And then he returned the notebook to his pocket carefully. He turned his back to me, faced towards the store's entrance, and opened the door.



The sky that had been so cloudy before appeared to have cleared. The world outside lit by the rays of the summer sun, appeared white to eyes used to the shop's gloomy illumination. He exited the shop and walked out towards the street, and disappeared into the light.


The woman customer, who had been called a regular customer, rose from the table and stood in front of the cash register in order to pay. After looking around the inside of the shop, she asked me "Where's the owner?", but I merely shook my head.

The stairs were outside the building; in order to get to the top floor, you had to go outside the shop once.

Morino was tied up on the third floor. Her clothes were like Miguchi Nanami's, her hands and feet were coiled about with rope, and she was tumbled over on the tatami mat.


She didn't seem to have been roughed up.

Upon seeing my face, she gently squinted her eyes. That was her smile. Because there was a towel jammed in her mouth, she couldn't speak.

When I pulled out the towel, she took a deep breath.

"That shop manager, he faked having a bone fracture, and he asked me to help him carry something. By the time I noticed... this happened!"



The rope coiled around her hands and feet looked difficult to untie. I left her in that state, and took a tour of the inside of the room. From the state of the inside of the dwelling, it appeared that the shop's owner lived alone.

On top of the desk, there was a piece of white paper, like from a memo pad. And on that piece of paper, countless tiny crosses were drawn.

On a shelf, there was a knife set stored. It was easy to guess that those were used for killing. In the descriptions in the notebook, the word "knife" had appeared often.

Still lying on the floor, Morino raised her voice, blaming me for not freeing her hands and feet.

I picked out a convenient knife from the knife set, and used it to cut the ropes.

"If we don't get away fast, the shop manager's going to find us!"


"He's not coming, I'm telling you!"

He would probably never come here again. I was almost certain of it. There was the potential that maybe he might come back to kill Morino and I, in order to keep us quiet, but for some reason, I knew he wouldn't.

Because during the conversation we had across the counter of the coffee shop, it felt like I and that abnormal person, in some ways, had been able to communicate with each other's hearts.

Maybe the reason he exited the shop quietly is because he intuitively knew I wouldn't tell anyone.

Morino looked at me as if in wonder, when I declared that the shop manager would never come back here. She stood up while straightening out her clothes.

"I could only send you a mail, and then I got found out......"

On top of the desk was Morino's cell phone, with the power turned off. Miguchi Nanami's bag, that Morino had likely been carrying at the time, was there also. Had the criminal not noticed that the bag the 3rd victim had, and the bag of what was likely to be the 4th victim, were the same thing? Or maybe, it was because it was the same bag that he had aimed for Morino?

It seems that Morino had been tied up and left there all day. Walking unsteadily, she headed towards the stairs.

When we left the room, I took with me the knife set, and the paper on the desk. I had decided they would be my souvenirs. When the police find out everything and search this room, they might be bothered by not being able to find the murder weapon, I suppose. Naturally, I wasn't worried.

Upon reaching the first floor, we looked inside the shop. Inside the uninhabited shop, peaceful music played. I turned over the sign that was hung on the door, from "OPEN" to "CLOSED." Morino stood behind me rubbing her wrists while viewing their condition. Marks from the rope still remained on her wrists.

"What a horrible experience."

She muttered.

"I've decided I'm never coming back to this place again."

"But aren't you glad? That you were able to meet that person."

Morino tilted her head.

"That person? In the first place, why did that shop manager put me through that, I wonder?"

She hadn't realized that the shop manager was the cold-blooded murderer.

I let my eyes drop down to the paper in my hand, and gazed at the countless tiny crosses.

GOTH:Translator's Notes

2007-06-12T13:19:43Z

60.52.178.202: /* Wristcut リストカット事件 */

<center>Translator's Notes and References for 
<big>GOTH リストカット事件</big> 
GOTH: Wristcut Incident</center>

== GOTH 暗黒系==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:GOTH|GOTH 暗黒系]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== Wristcut リストカット事件==

=== Death and Motive ===
'Death' (死亡) and 'Motive' (志望) share the same pronunciation (Shibou, しぼう) in Japanese.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:Wristcut|Wristcut リストカット事件]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== DOG 犬==

{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to DOG 犬
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== TWINS 記憶==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to [[GOTH:Twins|Twins 記憶]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== GRAVE 土==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to Grave 土
|-
|}
</noinclude>

== VOICE 声 ==

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[GOTH|Main Page]]
| Jump to Voice 声
|-
|}
</noinclude>

Kaze no Stigma

2007-06-12T07:58:55Z

60.52.178.202: /* Special Thanks */

Kaze no Stigma (風の聖痕, Kaze no Stigma lit. Stigma of the Wind)

== Story Synopsis ==

Four years ago, Kannagi Kazuma was defeated by his cousin Kannagi Ayano for the right to be the successor of Enraiha, a sword passed down in the Kannagi family. His defeat, along with his lack of talent for En-Jutsu, the fire jutsu, the Kannagis' specialty, resulted in his banishment from the family. Now, Kazuma returns as Yagami Kazuma, a skilled master of Fuu-Jutsu, the wind arts. At the same time, a number of murders at the Kannagi residence perpetrated by a powerful Fuujutsu-shi cast suspicion on him. (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaze_no_Stigma)

== Translation ==

=== Help Needed ===
'''If you are interested in this series and would like to help, feel free to join. We urgently need more Translators, Editors, and Staff. So please help.''' (Pop a message at the forums.)

=== Format Standards ===
'''Every Chapter (after editing) must conform to the agreed points highlighted in the below guidelines'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]

Some of these chapters are translations of the '''Chinese edition''' of the novels, which are known to have some minor mistakes compared to the original Japanese text. If you have access to the originals and you spot an error, '''please feel free to make the corrections yourself''' - this is a Wiki which means it's meant for anyone to fix things (and if you screw up, we can revert back your changes if all deem necessary). We can see the corrections you make, so just go ahead instead of hiding or waiting for permission.

== Updates ==

*May 28, 2007
**Just Started

== The ''Kaze no Stigma'' series, by [[Takahiro Yamato]] ==
These are the main story novels.

===''Kaze no Stigma'' / 風の聖痕 ===
::*[[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Chapter1|Chapter 1 - The disinherited son returns]]
::*[[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Chapter2|Chapter 2 - The sudden disaster]] (100% - Currently In Editing )
::*[[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Chapter3|Chapter 3 - Clash with the Past]] (0%)
::*[[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Chapter4|Chapter 4 - Returning to Visit, and Then— —]] (~10%)
::*Chapter 5 - Rescue
::*Chapter 6 - Decisive Battle
::*Epilogue
::*Author's Notes
::*[[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Translator's_Notes|Translator's Notes and References]]

===''Kaze no Stigma 2: The Price of a Soul'' / 風の聖痕2 -魂の値段 ===
::*Chapter 1
::*Chapter 2
::*Chapter 3
::*Chapter 4
::*Chapter 5
::*Chapter 6
::*Epilogue
::*Author's Notes

===''Kaze no Stigma 3: The Confession under the moon '' / 風の聖痕3 -月下の告白 ===
::*Chapter 1
::*Chapter 2
::*Chapter 3
::*Chapter 4
::*Chapter 5
::*Chapter 6
::*Epilogue
::*Author's Notes

===''Kaze no Stigma 4: '' / 風の聖痕4 -瑠璃色の残影 ===
::*Chapter 1
::*Chapter 2
::*Chapter 3
::*Chapter 4
::*Author's Notes

===''Kaze no Stigma 5: '' / 風の聖痕5 -緋色の誓約 ===
::*Chapter 1
::*Chapter 2
::*Chapter 3
::*Chapter 4
::*Chapter 5
::*Chapter 6
::*Epilogue
::*Author's Notes

===''Kaze no Stigma 6: '' / 風の聖痕6 -疾風の槍 ===
::*Chapter 1
::*Chapter 2
::*Chapter 3
::*Chapter 4
::*Chapter 5
::*Author's Notes

== ''Kaze no Stigma - Ignition '' ==
These are the side stories of the novel.

==='' Kaze no Stigma Ignition 1: Ayano-chan's disaster'' / 綾乃ちゃんの災難 ===

=== ''Kaze no Stigma Ignition 2: Just my Madonna'' / 僕だけのマドンナ ===

===''Kaze no Stigma Ignition 3: Ren-kun's Suffering'' / 煉くんの受難===

== Project Staff ==

*Project Administrator: [[user:The naming game|The naming game]]
*Project Supervisor: [[user:erehwon|erehwon]]

=== Translators ===
::*[[user:The naming game|The naming game]]
::*[[user:erehwon|erehwon]]

User who wish to contribute partially translated scripts but wish not to continue with the whole chapter i.e. become a fully fledged Project Translator therefore expected to contribute regularly.
Please inform [[user:onizuka-gto|onizuka-gto]] and the Project Administrator before submitting, this includes both Anonymous & Registered Users.

'''Translators are asked to [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they're working on''' (see [[Format_guideline#Translators|the Guideline page]] for usage rules).

=== Editors ===
This is the Project Editorial Team.

=== Special Thanks ===

This is for people who deserve special thanks and is currently not on the Staff.

::*[[user:Jumpyshoes|Jumpyshoes]]
::*[[user:Kwok|Kwok]]
::*[[user:Trigger-happy|Trigger-happy]]

Kaze no Stigma:Volume1 Chapter1

2007-06-12T07:57:13Z

60.52.178.202: HC here again. Can't edit while logged in.

== Chapter One - The Disinherited Son Returns ==

=== 1 ===

"What bad taste……"

That was the first impression he had of the client. Incidentally, it should also be noted, that this is an impression that did not change in the slightest all the way to the end.

In this hilly high-class residential area, the mansion was sitting arrogantly on display. With a design that completely disregarded the harmony of its surroundings, there were plenty of reasons to doubt the owner's true character.

If one were to disregard the bad taste thus far, one might have to say it was rather magnificent. Climbing up Governor's Hill, about as close by as the famous Catholic girl's school, was the mansion. When he saw it, he was honestly, completely stunned.

(Did Turkish harems have this feel?)

Yagami Kazuma didn't seem to be joking when he thought that. "Don't paint the walls of a Japanese house in such wild colors!" he wanted to preach, while grabbing that person's collar. It was that kind of house.

This could probably be considered the place of origin of Japan's Westernization movement. The first gaslight was lit here; ice cream was put on sale here first. One would have expected it to be a stylish, refined town with a distinguished history.

(Considering that, this is probably some kind of breach of contract……)

He saw a decorated [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Translator%27s_Notes#golden carp|golden carp]] on the roof and let out a sigh. The image that was held dear in Yokohama, had crumbled away completely, with a clattering sound.

When he had accepted the job at the agency, he was given not only an address, but also a detailed map. It had been completely unnecessary, however. By asking the neighborhood residents, "What's the house with the poorest taste around here?" probably even a monkey could manage to find his way here.

A structure that was painful to the eyes —— he didn't want to call that a house —— that upon viewing, made Kazuma look up to the sky, begging. The sky was empty and blue.

"Hey, at least it's work……"

He muttered to convince himself.

However, this is the same Kazuma whose look probably couldn't by any means be called appropriate for work.

Jeans and sneakers, a checkered shirt and a black jacket. His youth, at 22 years old, and his relaxed facial expression made him seem, no matter how you looked at it, no different from a student from the nearby university.

He was completely blind to his own faults. While continuing his observations, he noticed something strange.

The darkness covering the mansion was thicker than he had been told. Because of this, maybe even an ordinary person with no spirit sight could sense darkness in the mansion's surroundings.

(Maybe I'll just go back……)

Nagged by a horribly bad premonition, Kazuma was halfway seriously thinking about that.

The darkness that covered the mansion —— it was something more unearthly than he had expected, but it wasn't so much that he couldn't deal with it. For this reason, this premonition was a bad omen. There was something else up.

Judging from his experiences up to now, it was a credible and important premonition. However, he couldn't just throw away work on that alone.

This was his first assignment in Japan. If he broke off the arrangement with only a "For some reason or another," he probably wouldn't be able to get jobs in the future.

With heavy steps, he made his way toward the mansion. He stopped once more, in front of a nonsensically huge gate.

While standing in front of the doorbell, Kazuma was still unsure. Danger signals were bombarding his instincts. He couldn't help wanting to run away. However ——

"Yagami-sama, I presume."

Without any warning, a voice came from the intercom, and completely disrupted Kazuma's thinking. He jumped back with a start, and stood guarded. The voice continued from before, without concern for this.

"You have been expected. Kindly enter through the auxiliary entrance on the side."

Click.

Simultaneous with those words, a small door to the ride side of the gate unlocked. Apparently he was supposed to just go in.

(Compared with that "You have been expected," that's some rude treatment…)

He was feeling uncomfortable, but he was dealing with a customer. As instructed, he entered through the side door.

Inside the fence was awash with a large number of security cameras and sensors. They must live a very shadowy life.

Upon walking into the entranceway, multiple cameras followed him. With anger almost to the point of wanting to kill whoever was putting him under this rude surveillance, Kazuma somehow repressed himself.

"Eeek……"

That's what he'd intended, but apparently it had shown on his face. The face of the maid, who had come to greet him, was filled with a fear akin to having come across a man-eating bear. Kazuma hurriedly smoothed over his expression.

"Welcome, please come this way."

She went from a horrible face, as if she were being picked up and eaten, to an overly bright smile.

It didn't seem possible for someone to change their expression that dramatically, forgetting their suspicions, but the maid smiled as if nothing had happened. A pro.

As the maid walked ahead, Kazuma observed her gratifyingly swaying bottom, while going to the living room to wait.

(It would have been better if I'd left……)

As soon as he was guided into the living room, Kazuma felt deep regret at his choice. There inside, was a thin little man, self-importantly lying back, legs outstretched —— the master of the mansion, and client, Sakamoto Nanigashi —— but he wasn't alone. There was one [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Translator%27s_Notes#practitioner|practitioner]] in the room as well, a face he knew well.

That practitioner, upon recognizing Kazuma, showed fear on his face for a moment, and then immediately twisted his lips into a sneer, glaring at Kazuma with a face full of scorn.

"What, the other practitioner was you, Kazuma? You became a disinherited child of the Kannagi's because of your incompetence, and now you dare to call yourself a practitioner?"

Probably, those explanatory words were for Sakamoto to hear. Practitioner —— Kannagi. The youngest child of the branch family Yuuki, Shinji truly took great pleasure in abusing Kazuma.

Sakamoto showed the response Shinji had expected. His expression changed, and he approached Kazuma.

"So this is true, then? Isn't this different from what you said? You said you were a top class spiritual practitioner, so I hired you!"

Kazuma calmly —— while retreating the same distance as the other advanced —— answered.

"I don't know what the person at the agency said. If you're dissatisfied, perhaps I should leave?"

"Hmmph, that's right."

Sakamoto's eyes showed a faintly cunning light. Kazuma's, even at the best of times, scarce desire to work, quickly neared zero.

"Mmmm, how about this? Why don't you both try the exorcism, and only the successful one gets paid. Ahh, naturally I won't tell the loser to return the advance payment."

"Good idea, yeah."

They had been flippant words, but Shinji had immediately accepted them. And then, with the face of someone who has been completely made a fool of, he asked Kazuma.

"And what are you going to do?"

"I'm out."

Kazuma gave an immediate reply. In the scornful stares of the two, not even one muscle of an eyebrow moved.

"Hmmph, coward, sucking your finger like a baby! I'll show you a model example of [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Translator%27s_Notes#Enjutsu|Enjutsu]]."

"Model example, eh. Didn't you say that? Just like the youngest child of the branch family."

"Y-you!"

Having the one he looked down upon, in return look down upon him, Shinji was enraged. He completely forgot about being in front of a client, tightened a fist, and struck out.

It was a fist intent on crushing the skull, which Kazuma handled by opening his body to the left.

In the instant that Shinji's right thrust was dodged, he transferred the movement energy to his left leg, without stopping the rotation of his hips.

In reaction to the shift in center of gravity, his left leg flew up in a rotating kick from Kazuma's blind spot, aiming for his temple.

However, Kazuma, as if he had seen it, lightly bent his head back. The heel of Shinji's left leg passed by a few millimeters in front of his eyes.

Kazuma's movements were like the leaves of a tree swaying in the wind, without hesitation. Into the space the kicking foot had left, he entered, with complete spontaneity, and lightly swept Shinji's pivot leg. Shinji, his left leg still floating in the air, under the power of his own rotational power, violently slammed into the floor.

"Sh-shit!"

Shinji had just barely managed to do [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Translator%27s_Notes#Ukemi|ukemi]], and quickly got back up. Incorrigibly, he assumed a fighting posture.

"You — thinking you could beat me in [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Translator%27s_Notes#Taijutsu|Taijutsu]]? Even four years ago, you weren't a match for me. There's no way you could be an opponent for my current self."

"Sh-shut up!"

Kazuma showed not the least bit of triumph. He chided disinterestedly, as if facing a defiant child. Being looked down upon from such a securely elevated position, Shinji's reason made a sound and broke.

"Stop it right there, you two."

However, just then, a restraining voice spoke, and the two turned at the same time to the voice's owner. Sakamoto showed great satisfaction at having gotten their attention. Then, in a tone as if he were an extremely important person, he scolded them.

"I didn't call you here to have a fight. The furnishings in this room, no matter which one you look at, are each more expensive than what I'm paying you. Any kind of rough behavior would be troublesome, okay?"

Suddenly, around the vicinity of the money talk, there was a scumbag. The person in question was probably attempting to flaunt his assets, but for the ones made to listen, it was nothing but the stink of the nouveau riche pushed up their noses.

(Maybe I'll leave…… since I still get the advance payment.)

With the discomfort index continuing to rise, with no end in sight, Kazuma's desire to work had already dropped into minus territory. He couldn't help feeling that even being in this place was agony.

"Mm……?"

However, without warning, the unearthly presence began to converge, heralding a new development.

"——It's coming."

The unearthly presence that had been spread throughout the mansion, directed its focus to one point in the living room. Kazuma moved casually, putting Sakamoto and Shinji in between himself and that presence.

"What's that? What just……"

The unearthly presence had solidified into something black. Shinji, over 10 seconds slower than Kazuma, had finally noticed it as well.

"Mmmm, so it came out?"

"Wh-what? What's wrong?"

Hesitatingly breaking the suddenly tense atmosphere, Sakamoto shouted in a shrill voice.

Kazuma answered in place of Shinji, who was already beginning to focus his mind for the use of jutsu.

"It's work time. The 'evil spirit' or whatever you've been struggling with just came out."

While giving that offhand explanation, Kazuma felt a beyond-ordinary sense of unease.

(That's no evil spirit. What kind of thing is it?)

When Kazuma had first accepted the assignment, the person at the agency had said "Just a normal evil spirit exorcism."

—— Hey, your first job should be one of these, right? If you're as good as the rumors say, you should be able to take that evil spirit with one hand ——

A superficial seeming man, but with definite achievements, he had heard. Their kind of work was, in some sense, even more than for practitioners, something where confidence was life. Making a mistake this big was extremely unlikely. It wasn't an easy business, that that kind of irresponsible agency person could survive.

(Was I set up? Well, fine. Should I just observe his skill?)

Kazuma learned against the wall, crossed his arms, and looked about as if sightseeing.

Preparing himself for the appearance of the "evil spirit," Shinji was focusing his mind.

It seemed he was planning to burn it away as soon as it appeared. It was clear to see in his expression.

Suddenly, the space in front of Shinji turned dark and thick. Shinji faced both his palms towards each other, in order to set up a transparent ball in front of his chest. A small fire was held between those palms.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooon……

A voice full of resentment shook the air as the evil spirit showed itself. A melted-away face projected an infinite hatred to all living beings.


"Eeep!"

"HAAAA!!"

Paying no attention to the screaming Sakamoto, Shinji released a devastating flame, along with a sharp yell. The evil spirit became cleansed due to the fire; it had disappeared without a trace —— or so Shinji believed.

However——

"Idiot"

Gioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo……

While the evil spirit's cries of agony echoed and Shinji was snickering —

Flame exploded.

"Gahhhhhhhhhh!?"

Shinji screamed, wrapped in flame. The uselessly large living room, in a moment, became a sea of flame.

Kakakakakakakakakakakakakakakaka

Shinji's flame had been eclipsed by the evil spirit. The flame had been completely devoured. The youma began to laugh sneeringly.

=== 2 ===

The Kannagi family is, even among the "Enjutsu users" who can freely manipulate fire, the strongest and most famous family. It is not simply just because their power is great. There is a special ability in the family's blood; the reason surely lies there. The flame that they manipulate is not through the physical phenomenon of the simple acceleration of molecular motion. It possesses the power to burn away impurities and destroy evil.

Because of this "purifying flame," the Kannagi family practitioners hold absolute dominance over youma, evil spirits, and all beings that transgress the law. Even with the ability given by blood, to the extent that blood is diluted, it is inevitable that that power will deteriorate.

Already, the branch family practitioners had long lost the highest rank of "gold". If a youma with fire attributes were the opponent, the released flame would even be likely to be absorbed.

For example, like just now —— the living room had been turned into purgatory. The high-class furniture and the shag carpet were already carbonizing. The glass from the chandelier on the ceiling had melted, turning into some grotesque art object.

"Wonder if he's dead?"

Kazuma muttered with a refreshed-looking face. A cool breeze wrapped around Kazuma; the raging flame wasn't even allowed to get close to him. Even the heat was sealed off; not a drop of sweat was apparent.

"H-help……"

A frail voice stimulated his eardrums. Kazuma looked down at the blackish object at his feet.

What had rolled screaming into the [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Translator%27s_Notes#Kekkai|kekkai]], was the former client, Sakamoto. He was burned here and there, but he didn't seem to be dead.

"Aaaaaa, he-help me!"

Sakamoto screamed while clinging onto Kazuma's legs. However Kazuma heartlessly kicked away his former client.

Thud!

Sakamoto's face began writhing in a new kind of pain, as it was mercilessly trampled upon. Since he didn't want to touch with anything beyond slippers, instead of stepping on him, he brought down his heel. It seemed like you could the skull making a creaking sound, but that wasn't a big problem.

Kazuma, trampled, grinding on Sakamoto's head, and clearly stated:

"You're not a client and I don't have the habit of saving middle-aged men."

"If it's money, I'll pay. Twice as much, or so……"

"Twice? Your life's worth only one million?

Kazuma took a cigarette from his pocket. He gently stretched out his hand, only exposing the cigarette's tip to the outside of the kekkai. He filled his lungs with tobacco smoke, and slowly let it out.

Sakamoto didn't have the leisure to be that relaxed. Whether on purpose, or by chance, only around Sakamoto, were there holes in the kekkai. The tongues of flame were beginning to lick him.

"Hot-, Ee-eeee, Help! I'll pay 10 million!"

"Thanks for your business."

Upon tossing away his cigarette, Kazuma changed suddenly, smiling brightly. The smile of a demon that had made a profitable deal.

"Alright now. Then, won't you please stand back?"

Kazuma kicked Sakamoto in the rear, sending him rolling, and as if it were obvious, proclaimed:

"You're in the way."

He began muttering in a staccato voice, and waved his right hand sideways in a mowing motion. As if being squeezed out by the hand, the raging fire was taken care of, expelled out the window.

The fire didn't spread to the grass and trees in the garden, but scattered and vanished.

And then, inside the room, a distorted face attached to a fireball — only the youma's true body remained.

Hyuuoou-

In place of the extinguished fire, wind raged around the room. Kazuma stood quietly. With his hand still in his jacket pocket, he did not move a finger. And yet, the wind followed Kazuma's intentions and erased the flame.

Already, the fight was over. In front of Kazuma's overwhelming power, the youma wasn't even able to put up any resistance as it was torn to pieces. All that was left to do was wait for its annihilation.

"And with this…"

Kazuma slowly raised his right hand. For someone with the power to see spirits, the density of spirits crowding that hand would have been terrifying.

"…the end!"

Ten times faster than it came up, the hand swung down. In a straight-line extension from the right hand, an invisible blade that cut even air molecules, cleaved the youma precisely in two.

Without sound, without any spirit fragments remaining, Kazuma regarded the destroyed youma with a calm look.

"Finished."

Kazuma pronounced to Sakamoto, who was still lying on the floor, dumbfounded.

"Pay the money in 3 days. Otherwise, would you like to regret having ever been born?"

They were completely like a criminal's words. Even if that was a mistake, it wasn't the way you'd speak to a customer.

However, Sakamoto, realizing the horror of going against Kazuma, did not complain.

"Y-yes. Understood. But something terrible has happened to Yuuki-kun. I never thought something so serious would happen."

Kazuma wordlessly came closer to what appeared to be the ashes of Shinji's remains and despairingly trampled on them. As expected, Sakamoto also raised his voice.

"Wh-what are you doing!? I don't know whatever happened between you two, but you still shouldn't desecrate a corpse, right!?"

"He's not dead."

Kazuma spat the words out dryly, and then continued to kick him again and again.

Upon doing so, the ash covering the surface began to fall off, and almost unscalded skin appeared.

"Wh-wha……?"

Sakamoto doubted his eyes, with this unbelievable scene. Kazuma gave an offhand explanation.

"All of Kannagi's people receive the divine protection of fire spirits. Even people from the branch family wouldn't die in this degree of fire."

Kazuma curled his lips in self-derision, and added,

"I'm the exception though."

"Uu……Guu……"

Upon doing that, Shinji woke up. Upon looking out around him, he confirmed that the youma had already been destroyed.

"You did this?"

"It's just like you saw."

Who do you think you are, saying whatever you please? —— Kazuma answered with that kind of tone. He had already seen through, that Shinji had kept his consciousness. Shinji hurriedly attempted an explanation.

"So you noticed……? But I couldn't help. I honestly couldn't move."

"I don't want to hear your excuses."

Kazuma coldly spoke that over his shoulder, as he turned his back. Shinji called out to the unhesitating figure leaving. There was still something that had to be said.

"Why did you return?"

"Must have been for something, I guess."

At that play-dumb answer, thinking he was being evaded, Shinji's gaze became sharp.

"'For something' …. Do you think the elders are going to understand that?"

"I was only disinherited, I wasn't deported. Where I am is my business."

"What are you planning?"

"Nothing in particular."

Kazuma answered curtly, shrugging his shoulders.

"Are you returning to the Kannagi?"

"Idiotic talk. Not even if I die."

He answered as if spitting out the words, and then Kazuma, this time, without hesitating, walked off.

Shinji was driven by an unease he couldn't stop. He continued to stare at Kazuma.

(I have to tell this to the [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Translator%27s_Notes#soushu|soushu]] as soon as possible……)

Shinji's unease was, in a sense, on the mark. A war to push the Kannagi into an abyss of ruin, was currently, from this moment, beginning.

===3===

"Do you know, it seems Kazuma has returned to Japan. What's more he became a fuujutsu practitioner."

"What, that incompetent has? It must be dead simple, then, to be a fuujutsu practitioner.

"Nope, 'I am a dark magician' is what I heard. For him to become a practitioner, he'd have to sell his soul to the devil, right?"

"Ah, that's probably true."

"Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha……"

That day, rumors of Kazuma were the talk of the Kannagi main house. Of the elders — the general term for one retired from active service and now overseeing the management of the practitioners — having heard Shinji's report, only one wasn't jokingly spreading around nonsense.

For the offense of the aforesaid Shinji's failure in his duty, he was currently under probation. Tail fin, dorsal fin, belly fins, all being wildly added to the rumor, until it grew to maturity, and not one person tried to stop it.

The source of the rumors, the elders, appeared to be in complete delight. The kind of people called elders, if you excepted the extremely serious exceptions, were basically men of leisure. "Looking important is work," and so on, was the gossip that some attacked with.

When there was no work, all day, they would drink tea, and amuse themselves by talking about various topics. Obviously, they could not resist something interesting to talk about.

Upon hearing Shinji's news, they were dancing for joy on the inside. The elders, when they passed the verdict of probation on the dejected Shinji, had even something of a skipping type of light gait, while they drank tea and turned back to each other. They haphazardly began talking like this:

"Ohh, did you know……?"

The elders were, during this work time, like different people, in energetic activity.

Within the hour, there was almost nobody in the huge mansion that had not heard of Kazuma's return to the country. It certainly reached the servants, and then all kinds of people heard about it.

It was, in short, a situation where almost nobody knew the true facts, but it wasn't a big problem for the elders, since "If it's interesting, who cares what happens later!" was the elders' basic attitude.

And so, news of Kazuma spread — the exact opposite direction that Shinji was hoping for,

To wit——

"Kazuma returned as a dark magician."

"Kazuma was secretly murdered; he's buried in the back garden."

"Kazuma clashed with Shinji during work and killed him suddenly."

"Kazuma made a contract with the wind spirits. An evil demon."

The truth was subtly mixed in, but having come this far, nobody could really interpret it. Obviously, no one feared Kazuma's retribution.

The main family's failure had left all his talent in his mother's womb, like liquid skimmed off the top, had somewhat found a preferable power to take in, it seemed. Nobody laughed at that.

However, there were a small number of exceptions. One of those was the current suzerain, Kannagi Juugo. During supper, in the humorous talk that was being told, there was one item that Juugo was interested in.

"Ohhhh? Kazuma chose fuujutsu? Did you know that, Genma?"

Juugo spoke to his cousin sitting next to him. For some reason, as if harboring some ill will, he smiled a hating smile.

"……Oh"

Genma answered in brief. The rumor having apparently already reached his ears, and he didn't appear disturbed.

However, it was clear that he wasn't happy about the rumor either. The saying "like someone chewing up a bitter bug" perfectly described his frown, as he gripped a tight fist.

If Kazuma was in front of me, I'd want to strangle him to death. It was that kind of face.

"It's shameful."

"It's not especially shameful."

Juugo answered lightly, and then gave a command to a servant.

"I would like to hear a detailed account. Call Shinji."

"Certainly."

Shinji went as far as scraping down to the tatami in his prostration. His tension was great, sweat floated on his forehead, and his breathing was disordered.

Regarding the Kannagi family, it would be fitting to say that the difference between the main family and the branch family's status was absolute. To even dream of a revolution was foolish.

Tradition, social status —— it wasn't a system based on that kind of abstract idea. The thing separating the two was only, only the overwhelming difference in power.

If all the practitioners of the branch family were to fight, if it was with someone like Juugo or Genma, they could be smashed by the wiggle of a little finger. Because of that kind of hopeless power difference, no thoughts of rebellion were harbored.

You could say it was understandable that Shinji would be under such tension. In front of Juugo, who had something similar to a god's absolute superiority, and having to recount his clumsy failure. This was definitely worse than his original feelings.

"Raise your face. You don't have to humble yourself like that."
　　
Juugo spoke in a friendly manner, but to look into the suzerain's face and speak, was far too overwhelming for Shinji. In the end, he raised his face, but his eyes still stared towards the tatami, as he submitted his report.

"A-and, I now have the privilege of being allowed to give this report."

"……I see."

When Shinji had finished recounting everything, Juugo said that, and was silent for a while.

"……I see."

As if to confirm, he repeated it one more time. He closed his eyes lightly, and reminisced back to when his nephew — to be accurate, the relation was more separated than that, but he used that label since it was too much trouble — had left 4 years ago.

(——What a poor child he was.)

If he had been born to any but the Kannagi family, he would have been considered a superior child, probably. Excellent intellect, good reflexes too, and he also showed great promise in learning the jutsu. Except for one; only if you excepted the ability to manipulate fire.

However, that was certainly, for the Kannagi family, the most necessary ability.

Someone with no talent for manipulating fire, no matter what else he was proficient at, was treated as an incompetent. As a result of that, Kazuma was no longer part of the Kannagi.

Yet —— Juugo thought.

(Why didn't you ask me for help, Kazuma? There was no need to disown you from the family. If it was me, I would have made a place for you. Whatever Genma said, I wouldn't have cared about the Enjutsu, I would have made use of your talent, yet despite that…..)

Juugo looked down upon his right leg. That right leg was a thing made of metal and plastic. If that accident hadn't happened, and the "rule of inheritance" hadn't been rushed, maybe Kazuma would be here right now?

However, it was far too late. Kazuma had thrown away the family, the family name, all that was Kannagi, and had left Japan. This was reality. "The past," a thing that could never be changed.

"……Suzerain?"

That uncertain sounding voice brought Juugo back to reality. Upon looking around, he found everyone in an uncomfortable silence. It wasn't surprising. Among these, there were almost none who had not tormented Kazuma.

However, the one who had driven Kazuma out was calm. That person —— Genma, spoke out, without a single change in his expression.

"Suzerain. Kazuma is already someone without any connection to the Kannagi. There is no need to worry about him."

"Genma, you would, of your own son ——"

"I have only one son, Ren."

Genma spoke coolly, interrupting the suzerain's words. Juugo tried to say something else in reply, but disliking unproductive battles, he put other, safer words into his mouth.

"It's fine then. After all, Kazuma has become successful with fuujutsu. Maybe it was best that he left the Kannagi. Or maybe, Hyoue, if he had been entrusted to your place, he would have become skilled and powerful?"

"Perhaps."

Sitting at a lower seat, the head of the Fuuga clan answered sullenly. 

At that, Genma again cut in with an objection.

"We are afraid, yet Fuujutsu and such, are after all, lower arts. The most they are capable of is acting as assistants to Enjutsu. Even supposing 4 years ago, we knew of Kazuma's talent for Fuujutsu, for us to leave him to people like the Fuuga clan, clearly, we would still have to disinherit him."

Hearing his art publicly insulted, Hyoue twisted his face in humiliation. However, nobody paid any attention to Hyoue, nor to his face.

For the Kannagi family, who only noticed the value of fighting power, the Fuuga clan, having been given the reconnaissance and battle support duties, were limited to a lower status. Genma's words were not reckless. They weren't anything beyond the normal beliefs of the other Kannagi.

"……We will go no further with this talk. Dinner will become unpleasant."

At Juugo's words, everyone showed clearly relieved expressions on their faces. As if on cue, cheerful talk began, and they rolled around laughing at silly jokes.

Though awkwardly, the usual dining hall atmosphere returned.

And so, nobody noticed the dark light harbored in Hyoue's eyes. He suppressed the expression on his face, and murmured in a voice so small that it did not reach even his own ears.

"I will not forget this disgrace, Genma……"

=== 4 ===

"Kannagi……no, Yagami Kazuma……? You came back at a very good time!"

"Huo-huo-huo……"

In a darkness-filled single room, without even one streak of light in it, a hoarse laugh broke into the strained silence.

"And……?"

"Yes, it's better if everyone hears this. Finally the time has come. The time when we must dispel the disgrace that has lasted 300 years. Now is the time for us to regain the power we lost and return to our previous glorious position."

"Ohhhhhhhhh…………"

A stifled commotion filled the air. No one shouted. Afraid of being discovered, they kept their breaths in check, keeping their tension locked in themselves.

"Oh, when you finally realize it, you Kannagi. We will overthrow you and leave not a single one remaining……Kukuku……"

A low and gloomy voice echoed with a resentment darker than darkness.

"U-uwaaaaaaaaaaaa! Wha-what, what are you doing-!"

That same day, late at night, Shinji screamed out. Nearby were two freshly severed heads, and two headless corpses tumbled down. And then, standing before him, a —— human?

Shinji wasn't able to say for certain. By outward appearance, there was nothing different from a human, but that unearthliness was something a person could not possibly have.

The two who had been living up until 30 seconds ago, had been captured in a kekkai without even any chance to prepare themselves, and had been immediately decapitated.

The mysterious person had not moved a single finger. And yet, Shinji had clearly witnessed two heads being sliced off with incredible force, as if it was nothing. Or rather, had been forced to witness.

Shinji was the only person left living, even though the other two surpassed him in skill. It wasn't because of luck. Shinji realized this more than anyone else.

He was being toyed with. This demon in human shape was feeding on Shinji's fear and hopelessness. For a moment, it held off killing him, playing with him lazily, enjoying his empty resistance.

"What the hell! What did I do……?"

''That thing'' gave no answers. Without even footsteps, it came near, taking its time.

''That thing'' was completely silent. Not even the hint of a sound, as it drew closer. wielding an invisible sword.

Even when those heads had been severed, silence. The two blood-covered heads rolling on the ground seemed not to have noticed their own deaths, still with drunken, relaxed, slack smiles.

Shinji knew of only one person who could do what ''that thing'' could do. He had just met him yesterday. In addition, that man had a motive to kill them.

Shinji became frantic, begging ''that thing'' for forgiveness. His voice did a complete about-face.

"Ka-Kazuma? You're Kazuma, right? Forgive me, it was my fault, I'm regretting it, so please, forgive meeee"

The only reply was the flash of the wind-blade. It severed his right arm at the base. The blade formed of a high density of spirits, cut through meat and bone as if it were tofu.

"Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!"

While screaming, Shinji threw himself fully into starting Enjutsu. The intense concentration from being so close to death brought forth the greatest power of his 25 years of life.

''That thing'' was covered in golden flame. Destroying any and all demons, the highest level of purification. The flame burned through the darkness.

"Y-yeah! I think I——"

Suddenly, ''that thing'', now changed into a huge torch, began to move. Shinji's face, full of hope, froze.

''That thing'' stretched out a hand, easily taking hold of the golden flame, and in one movement, tore it from its body! 

''That thing'' had escaped from the flame's restraints, completely uninjured. To say nothing of its body, not even the clothes showed any sign of having been burned.

''That thing'' slowly turned to Shinji and began walking. Underneath the freezing moonlight, without a sound, it came closer, an ominous shadow.

This was in some ways, twisted. There was something there that the eye could not help being fascinated by. A scene filled with beauty that one had to admit was of the spirit world.

"Hee, heehee, heeheeeeheeheehee-, kyahahahaha, ahahahaha!"

Suddenly, Shinji began laughing in a strange voice.

From an overload of fear, apparently his mental equilibrium had snapped. Even when the wind blade soundlessly sliced through his body, splitting it, without even showing a reaction, he tumbled over laughing.

Perhaps ''that thing'' had tired of Shinji's lack of response. As if throwing away an unwanted toy, it casually sliced off his head.

There was a dull thunk. The third head rolled on the ground.

Even having finished killing everyone alive, ''that thing'' was still dissatisfied. It persistently continued slicing up the bodies. Though it was only a few minutes, the three bodies had been turned into many small pieces. To not even speak of the parents being able to recognize them, they wouldn't even be able to tell what kind of flesh it was.

The raw stink of blood and meat drifted through the kekkai. ''That thing'' laughed cruelly, and as if melting into the air, vanished.

Afterwards, three severed heads remained. In contrast to the bodies, there was not one injury on those heads.

Somehow, the three heads had ended up in a straight line to the gate; each had a strange smile, as if to say to anyone coming through that gate,

"Welcome to a nightmare world."

Words that appeared to be delivered smilingly.

And so the tragedy began——

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Return to [[Kaze_no_Stigma|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Kaze_no_Stigma:Volume1_Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>