The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume4 Chapter 2

Status: Incomplete

4/14 parts completed

   

Chapter 2: Hishigami Enbi // The Present Fluctuates Freely

Part 1

“Takenoko takenoko nyokiki!!”

“First nyoki!!”

“First nyoki!!”

“Nya ha ha! You were taken out right off the bat!”

“It’s a bit of an old game, so I forget how to play it☆”

A group of five men and five women on a group date was having the time of their lives at a table a short distance away. They must have been drinking a fair bit of alcohol because they were roaring with laughter at conversations that did not seem even remotely funny to me. Nevertheless, their laughter reached the table my sister and I were eating and drinking at.

Hmm.

For this twintailed middle school girl of the Hishigami family, a bar with only dim indirect lighting was a new experience. It made me wonder if I should really be there. Still, I hadn’t ordered any alcohol and my adult sister was across the table from me, so no one was going to warn me away or anything.

“There’s nothing on this menu but greasy meat. I don’t think this kind of food is right for a farming race with length to spare in their intestines.”

My sister was a large-breasted woman in her twenties who still wore a tank top and hot pants. She held a glass filled to the brim with spirytus (a harsh drink that could do just fine fueling an alcohol lamp) and frowned as she replied to me.

“They have salads down at the bottom.”

“What kind of salad has ‘plenty of beef tongue’!? The vegetables clearly aren’t the primary part of these dishes! A girl with lots of subcutaneous fat can’t carelessly eat this kind of thing.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. You’re in middle school, aren’t you? At your age, your metabolism won’t leave any fat behind. Did an instigator of some kind of health boom scare you on TV or something? And if you’re that worried, just take a run after eating.”

“That may work for you, but you’re a monster that chases after an Italian sports car to drag some villain out of it.”

“I only managed that because it was a winding road on a mountain ridge. I couldn’t do it on a straight city road.”

The fact that she thought that showed she was normal proved just how much of a monster she was. At any rate, she was someone I didn’t want involved in the schedule mysteries that were fun for their logic.

Meanwhile, excited voices were still coming from the other table.

“Huh? You’ve only been ordering oolong tea, haven’t you?”

“No, no. I’m fine. This has shochu in it.”

“You don’t have to say that. If you don’t drink, just say so. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I won’t force you to drink, so don’t worry. Nya ha ha ha ha!!”

While the voices sometimes jumped up in volume and stabbed into my ears, I reached for the large plate of beans.

Munch, munch.

“Ahh, edamame is delicious. I think these have to rank at #1.”

“No, that would be dadachamame. And do you insist on only eating vegetables!? What’s this!? Is my sister actually a girl or something!?”

“Of course I am!! And what’s with that fried beef!? Girls are supposed to think even chicken is too greasy!”

“Sorry, but it’s looking like I have a big job coming up. Once it begins, I don’t know when I’ll next get any proper human food, so I want to fill my head with as many memories of civilization as I can.”

“Oh, is that so? I’ve got a troublesome issue at hand too.”

My sister winked while downing the clear liquid with 90%+ alcohol content as if it were cool water.

“Let’s hope we don’t run into each other.”

“That’s for sure. If two Hishigami women ended up involved in a single incident, it would feel like the end of the world. I’d imagine everything would get resolved, but no one involved would be around to tell the tale.”

“I’ll be right back. I need to go to the bathroom!” said someone from the other table.

“Oh? Guys don’t use some kind of euphemism there?”

“Eh? Do you seriously say you’re off to pick flowers? I thought that was an urban legend.”

A young man in a business suit stood up from that table.

Due to the layout, he approached our table and so I spoke up.

“Detective, what are you doing here?”

The instant I did, the man in the cheap suit froze in place. That detective from Investigation Department 1 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department slowly turned toward me like a doll needing to be oiled. He was Detective Uchimaku Hayabusa and he was single. An unpleasant sweat covered the expression of a man who had just made the worst mistake of his life.

And he suddenly tried to cry his way out of it.

“Noooooooooooo!! I’m not asking why you two are here! I’m just not!! Let’s keep to ourselves here, okay? I really don’t get a chance like this often!! Pleeeeeeeease!!”

“Detective, your friend Enbi-chan here has the kind heart of the Virgin Mary, so I won’t count this as cheating on me. …But only if you kiss me right here and now.”

“Enough nonsense! Just promise me!! A police detective has a harder time meeting women than a uniformed police officer! Even people who haven’t done anything wrong shut me out because they say I look too scary! But this time is different. There’s a flight attendant who kindly reached out to me!! This is the only paid vacation left, but she went out of her way to schedule this on my day off! If I miss this chance, it’s all over! My days of youth will end and I’ll be a lonely middle-aged man instead!! So please!!”

You’re supposed to be a police detective, so what on earth are you talking about?

Of course, a normal love life was impossible for this man. Even on his day off, he wasn’t drinking. It was probably his way of making sure he was ready if something did happen.

Also…

“Detective, it pains me to say it, but I don’t have to do anything here. It’s already too late.”

“Don’t be so ominous!! Mai, stop your sister’s rampage here!!”

“(Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle.)”

“What’s with that glitter in your eyes!? You want to destroy this group date and cause a commotion just for fun, don’t you!? I won’t let you! I won’t! Defense!! Defense!!”

“Detective, look over here.”

I diverted my future darling’s eyes as he posed like a basketball player for no reason.

“Your cell phone is going to receive an emergency call soon. This fun love comedy part of the night will end without our interference. So let’s go dive headfirst into the serious and bloody suspense part of the night☆”

“Please wait!! Let me recover my energy! I’ll break otherwise. I really, really will!”

“Sure, sure. But the countdown has already begun. Three, two, one.”

Zero.

At that moment, his cell phone produced a normal ring tone.

He brought it to his ear in annoyance and a grim male voice came out.

It was the chief of Department 1.

“You have a case, Uchimaku. You’re back on duty, so get to the scene.”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Me no speak Japanese.”

“I already know you’re just about the biggest idiot out there, so you don’t have to remind me. I’ll send the details in an email.”

The detective then reached for the glass on our table.

More specifically, he grabbed the glass my sister had been using and gulped down the clear liquid inside.

“Ah! My spirytus!”

“Gwaaaaaahhh!? You got an indirect kiss with hiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmm!?”

He completely ignored our shouts.

“Bh!? Spiry-gwah!?” he choked.

He was immediately left unsteady on his feet as he spoke into the cell phone.

“I can’t, chief! I’m out drinking right now!! I’d love to make a dashing entry, but unfortunately, a police officer can’t exactly drink and drive.”

“Take a cab. And no, we won’t reimburse you for the fare.”

The call ended there and the detective remained motionless.

Completely motionless.

Part 2

There was only one kind of case an off-duty police detective would be called to.

Plenty of incidents both large and small occurred in Tokyo on a daily basis, but it was not often they were sent straight to the metropolitan police and had off-duty detectives called in. This clearly had some kind of dangerous circumstances that brought it behind a normal incident.

I lent my shoulder to the detective who was about to collapse from something other than the alcohol and I spoke my thoughts as we waited for a taxi to pass by the nighttime street.

“In Odaiba, the idol group Tarot Girls 22 was having a live broadcast event as guests on an internet radio show, but a man burned himself to death. It may be called net radio, but they tend to have videos these days, so the footage of the human pillar of fire’s death throes was sent all around the world.”

“Why do you know all this?

“I said it was a live broadcast, didn’t I? This isn’t classified police information. The broadcast station has apparently stopped transmitting the footage, but it’s everywhere on the video sharing sites. Every message board I’ve looked at is filled with dangerously titled threads.”

“Ugh…”

“But when I say this was net radio, I don’t mean it was a studio rented out by amateurs. It’s a division and subsidiary of Japan’s most well-known national broadcast station. The top levels of the station were afraid newspapers and TV wouldn’t be necessary in five years’ time, so they bought up a successful netventure to gain the knowhow. It was less a way of gaining actual profits and more preparations for dealing with the new age that would weed them out. Think of it like an investment to learn about the enemy.”

The combination of a drunk man in a suit and a middle school girl must have been a problem because we didn’t seem able to catch a taxi.

“The victim was a twenty-four year old man named Usuta Manabu. He was on the net radio’s sound staff, but he was a freelancer with a bottom-level position. It isn’t known if he left any kind of will behind. From what I’ve seen on the video sites, he dumped a plastic bottle of a flammable liquid over his head and set himself ablaze with a lighter. It might have been an organic solvent for paints that isn’t as flashy as gasoline. Art staff could easily bring some into even a heavily-guarded TV station, so there would probably have been some lying around for Usuta to grab.”

“That’s…hic…sad to hear. He probably regretted his decision as soon as he lit it.”

“Probably. The weak flames from a solvent take a while to kill you. Then again, there wasn’t much hope of saving him once he was entirely engulfed in the flames. If he was going to go that far, he should have prepared some gasoline and died a less painful death. That might have killed him instantly and wouldn’t have lasted longer than a few minutes.”

Incidentally, the detective’s Investigation Department 1 had a section dedicated to fires. It was a bit of a stretch to say a suicide qualified, but the special circumstances of this case kept anyone from immediately labelling it a “mere suicide”.

The spread of the flames to the broadcast station’s equipment and the interrupted live broadcast would likely be treated as more important than the man’s death.

In the worst case, it could be registered as arson against the station rather than suicide.

If that happened, Usuta Manabu would be treated as a perpetrator rather than a victim. Of course, it was a lot the same when a train hit someone. The focus was always more on the delayed schedule and cost of the damage than on the person killed.

It was said that the law prioritized public welfare over the circumstances of individuals, but it was important to remember that was harsher than it sounded.

“Then what are saying?” asked the detective with a suspicious look in his eyes. “Some grotesque footage that violates the broadcast code might bring social unrest, so the well-known Department 1 has to send all its forces out to quickly fix it? Hic.”

“Well, it was a net broadcast, so the codes don’t really apply and I’m not sure if the Broadcast Something-Or-Other Committee will do anything about the scandal. Then again, this was related to a subsidiary of a national broadcast station, so who knows.”

We finally caught a taxi.

I stuffed the detective into the back seat and then sat next to him.

The middle-aged female driver looked displeased when I told her we needed to get to the broadcast station in Odaiba.

“What’s this? Are you trying to get a peek at tonight’s hottest murder scene? Sorry, but I can’t let you do that. If you’re just interested in what doesn’t concern you, I’ll refuse to drive you.”

“He’s a detective from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and I’m a freelancer, so we need to get there ASAP to solve the case.”

“What’s this!? You mean the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department? And what do mean by a freelancer!? Sh-should I be getting your autographs or something!?”

God, how annoying!! You’re the one that’s too interested in what doesn’t concern you!!

The detective who reeked of alcohol was of little use.

“Hic. Anyway…can you get going?”

“Sure, sure. This is when you ask me to follow that car, right!? I’m on it!!”

The woman seemed to be on a high because she drove us quite recklessly from the Shinbashi drinking district to Odaiba.

“Hic. By the way, driver.”

“What is it!? Ask me anything! Do you want to know about any suspicious passengers I’ve had!?”

“You called it a murder scene just now, didn’t you? What do you mean?”

“That’s what everyone’s saying. They say there’s no way it was just a suicide.”

Yes, yes.

Let Enbi-chan handle that one.

“The social unrest you mentioned before might not be too far off. This is going to be more than just dealing with a suicide.”

“What?”

“Every message board out there has a flood of posts coming in, but there’s clear malice mixed in at a pretty good frequency. A lot of people are saying there was nothing wrong with the sound staff member and his suicide was caused by something else.”

“Something else? You mean like someone assisted or instigated the suicide?”

“I told you the guest was Tarot Girls 22, remember? They’re the most popular national idol group right now and it seems the blame is spreading to them. People are saying they’re cursed or that a woman’s cries are mixed in with their latest song.”

“Hee hee hee☆ The mystery voice on the CD, huh?” added the driver.

“Well, it’s a common urban legend.”

The TV industry had a way of gathering occult stories. Some would say everyone related to the production of a certain advertisement was meeting bizarre deaths one after another, some would say they caught a glimpse of a corpse floating in the pond behind the reporter in the instant they switched to the outside camera on the weather forecast, and some would say a porn video was playing after the station’s broadcast time had ended.

One genre of those was the mystery voice on a CD. Those rumors usually said a female screaming or crying was recorded along with the artist’s voice. There were a few famous songs with that rumor.

“So instead of Tarot Girls 22 being caught up in the sound staff member’s suicide, those people think the sound staff member was killed due to the problems surrounding Tarot Girls 22.”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

“It’s hard to say.”

If this was a fictional mystery novel, I would have laughed and said it was obviously some kind of clever trick made to look like the curse had done it, but unfortunately, this world was filled with irregular beings known as Youkai.

Not that this was any time to give a proud snort and say something as obvious as “truth is stranger than fiction”.

“Was it a suicide or something more? Was it done entirely by human hands or was an elusive Youkai involved? And if a Youkai was involved, was it an intentional act of the Youkai’s or was a human using its power via a Package? We have no choice but to investigate every possibility.”

However, I could only glean so much information from the excited message boards and video sharing sites. Without heading to the scene of the crime and investigating myself, I couldn’t even plan what to do next.

The taxi crossed a brightly lit bridge.

“Would it really be that hard to just seal off this bridge?”

“Try learning a thing or two about economics.”

“I bet I could get it immediately sealed off by attaching a kitchen timer to a cylindrical container, duct-taping it to the bottom of the bridge, and calling the police.”

“Hic. Do that and you’re on your own.”

Once we had crossed the bridge, we were on obviously reclaimed land.

There was a large-scale park and shopping mall, but it still looked like a kingdom ruled by a ridiculously huge national TV station. From one end of the rectangular area of reclaimed land to the other, it all looked like an unreal TV set.

I was pretty sure the area had lately had an Edo-style revival campaign. They had tried to raise the water quality of Tokyo Bay to properly bring back the old Edo-style sushi or something like that.

The word “ecological” tended to make people think of being less wasteful, but the introduction of new facilities for the environment had placed industrial complexes all along the bay’s coast. Madoka had likely been delighted with all the money and rights being traded around.

The woman driver then asked a question.

“Where should I stop? Will the shopping mall’s parking lot work?”

“We’ve got an actual police officer with us, so there’s no need to hold back. Pull right up to the front of the TV station like a VIP’s limo.”

“Heh heh. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

I don’t know where she learned how to do it, but the tires screeched as she brought the taxi around the front entrance circle.

Despite how late it was, the area was filled with people.

Irritated security guards were keeping normal people from entering, but they could not keep the media away. And a close glance showed one young man carrying a camera with the TV station’s own logo. I guessed they had been unable to stop the flood of people after the following scenario played out: Their own reporters made their way in → Why does that station get in and no one else? → This isn’t fair! It’s a violation of the freedom of the press!!

The showy arrival of the taxi was met by the bright stroboscopic flashing of the SLR cameras.

They took picture after picture hoping it was a famous celebrity, a station VIP, someone related to the incident, or just anyone they could sell to a sports newspaper later.

But it turned out to be none of those.

Okay!! It’s time for the arrival of the (future) most lovey-dovey couple in the world!!

As for Police Sergeant Uchimaku’s reaction upon getting out of the back seat…

“Yay!! Are you getting some good shots? Hello, everyone! Or should I say good evening? Department 1 is on the scene!! Ugh. Oh, no. Here it comes… Oehhhhhhhhh!?”

Oh, dear.

I hope this shocking footage isn’t released so soon after the suicide by burning.

Part 3

Tarot Girls 22 was the most popular idol group in Japan.

As their name suggested, their primary group was made up of 22 girls from the Fool to the World. They also had a second group of 56 girls that had 14 each of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Coins.

They could be seen as the first of the fusion of beautiful girls and occult mysteries that were common in idols these days. Some people had gained an odd popularity through fortune telling and spiritualism and this was the result of the already-popular idol industry taking that in for themselves.

The most distinguishing feature of Tarot Girls 22 was how they were divided between the Major Arcana group and the Minor Arcana group, but the members were always split up and rearranged for a new song release or a national tour.

Each member represented a tarot card and the optimal card arrangement for the day’s work determined the participating unit, so which group they were in made little difference. The way the idols were used without taking into account their individual popularity or sales helped increase their “credibility” from a spiritual standpoint.

The choreography of their dancing and their positions on stage during concerts all had tarot meanings included, so after any event, enthusiastic fans known as Arcana Readers would give their personal interpretations on video sites or message boards. Of course, sometimes intense “religious disputes” would break out.

“Well?”

We entered the TV station and the detective seemed to be feeling better after vomiting a spectacular amount, so he asked me a question.

“Hic. How did some suspicious mystery freak get into a heavily guarded national TV station that’s been designated a possible terrorist target?”

“Try actually reading the documents. I’m from Bug Breakers! Some young help was called in as an emergency worker to search for bugs set up in the station☆”

“You’re setting up your own bugs while pretending to look for them, aren’t you? Ugh…. And then you ‘find’ them so they trust you.”

“Bugs aren’t illegal if you just carry them around with you. I’m never even switching them on.”

In truth, I had to begin by using cold reading to make them believe their most important information was being leaked out, so it could be a lot of trouble.

The detective looked annoyed and doubt gradually appeared on his face.

“Wait a sec. Ugh. When did you begin preparing for this? It couldn’t have been after the suicide. Hic.”

“And that means this began before that.”

“Before that?”

“A part of it did anyway. Want to hear about it?”

I attached earphones to my smartphone and put one half in his ear.

Eh heh heh. I’ve always wanted to share a set of earphones like this!

“Ugh. What is this?”

“Tarot Girls 22’s latest song. It’s titled Summer Vacation, Again and Again. Shh. Listen carefully at 1:55.”

At that moment, he clearly frowned.

It sounded like silk being torn.

No, it sounded like a young woman had someone grab her by the legs and tear her entire body in two. That was how ghastly the scream mixed in with the song was.

“Let me ask again. Hic. What is this?”

“Who can say? The rumor online is that Tarot Girls 22 angered something best left undisturbed by using spiritualism for their business. For a while, strange phenomena have been occurring around them and this is just one of them.”

“Are you serious?”

“If a single person’s grudge would do things as obvious as this like on an insane spiritual TV special, no one would need people like us. Things are different with a collection of grudges that takes form as a Youkai, though.”

As we whispered to each other, a young female staff member walked over to us. Her name was Akashi Mitsu. Her job title was assistant director, but she was actually just a part time worker and it seemed she would be showing us around.

“You are from the police, aren’t you? The scene is this way. Oh, Enbi-chan. What are you doing here?”

“Bug Breakers needs to do our thing before the inspection can begin☆ If the murderer set up a device before leaving, they can listen in on what the police are saying. And if they know what the initial investigation turned up, they can come up with a countermeasure.”

Akashi Mitsu-chan’s face grew obviously pale at my made-up excuse. She rudely bit at her thumbnail and quickly showed us down the hallway as if something was bothering her.

“(Hey, mystery freak. Hic. Are you kidding me here?)”

“(About what?)”

“(That AD didn’t even question it when you mentioned a murderer. Hic. I thought this was supposed to be a suicide.)”

“(Then do your best to catch up to me☆)”

Whether as an anti-terrorism measure or a way of keeping stalkers out, we did not head down a straight hallway and take a single elevator. The hallways took turn after turn and we repeatedly switched between elevators before finally reaching our destination.

We passed by people famous from TV a few times, but the detective wasn’t familiar enough with them to get excited. Or perhaps he was just that much of a professional despite being drunk. Either way, it was cute.

“Oh, Enbi-san.”

A girl leaving a kitchenette spoke to me and the detective actually stopped this time.

The fourteen-year-old girl was the member of Tarot Girls 22 corresponding to the Empress of the Major Arcana. Her body was quite well-developed for her age, but there was a heavy look across her entire face. It was as if she walked around with a label saying “At school, I’m the inconspicuous library committee member.”

Her name was Anemura Kaede.

As far as the mysterious suicide case was concerned, she was not all that important.

However, I was a bit interested in the fact that she had left the kitchenette alone.

“Where’s your usual manager?”

“You mean Itano-san?”

Just as she finished asking that, a woman in a suit poked her head out from the stairwell.

She was the Itano Ryou we were just discussing. She looked to be in her late twenties and she had a nice enough body and a beautiful enough face to make some money if she changed into a swimsuit, but she was far too unsociable for that.

Currently, she spoke quietly.

“Is there a refrigerator in the kitchenette? If not, we’ll have to head out to buy ice.”

“Oh, there is one. Are the other girls really doing that badly?”

“Two or three of them are still in complete shock after seeing that corpse. Although that may be better than the ones that are getting far too excited about it all.”

Hm.

Would that be the military-obsessed Chariot or the brown-skinned Sun?

It seemed some people had made inappropriate threads using the frightening footage of the suicide to vote which idol had the best reaction. When seeing a man burn himself to death, it seemed some people lost their cool and others kept up the mask of an idol. The question was which was more unnatural.

Meanwhile, Kaede-chan the Empress crossed her arms restlessly and asked a question. The shy girl may not have realized it, but the pose pushed her breasts up with her arms.

“Um… How long do I have to stay here?”

“Oh, can you not relax at the scene of a suicide? There’s a futon in the dressing room, but you could probably relax more back at home.”

“Um, there is that, but it’s been several hours since it happened. Just staying in the station this late makes it hard to relax.”

“?”

Akashi-chan the AD opened her cell phone and let out a scream.

“Oh, crap! It’s this late!? I think I’m violating the Labor Standards Act!!”

“Come to think of it, should you be working this late, Enbi-san?”

“This doesn’t fall under the category of ‘labor’. If you’re a volunteer, you can slip through all sorts of loopholes. Help me out, detective.”

As I spoke, I pointed to the detective’s chest with my thumb.

The lovely young man in a suit responded halfheartedly to my demand for an explanation.

“Eh? If the police are keeping you here to help, hic, you won’t be punished even if you stay too long. Um… How far did I get? If you aren’t being paid, it doesn’t violate the Labor Standards Act. Hic.”

But something else surprised Kaede-chan the Empress.

“Eh? Um… He’s a police detective? But he looks like he’s drunk.”

“Yeah… If you’ve got a problem with it, I can always leave. In fact, I’d much rather leave. This was supposed to be my day off! Hic!!”

“You still haven’t gotten over that horrible group date? It clearly wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Hic hic!!”

“Um… Why is he crying?”

Either because this completely went against their image of a police officer or because a middle school girl like me was being so friendly with him, the AD and the Empress looked utterly shocked.

“I or one of the other officers should explain the situation to you later. Hic. If there’re no problems, please remain in the building. Ugh, I feel sick.”

“Oh, yes. Please make it quick if you can. I don’t want to miss school tomorrow too.”

Manager Itano Ryou glared at Kaede-chan the Empress before speaking.

“Anemura-san, as I said before, stay away from the dressing room for the moment. As the single calm girl, the panicked girls could easily snap at you.”

We left that show business pair and once more started toward the scene of the incident.

Just hearing the term internet radio made one think of a small recording studio and mixer room separated by soundproof glass, but this had been a live broadcast event with an audience. They seemed to have rented out an entire event studio used for song shows on television.

Having someone burn themselves to death during such a major performance had likely been a complete disaster for the producers.

The entire stage was sealed off with yellow tape, but the audience seating was not. What appeared to be a forensics team was already taking photos and checking for fingerprints and footprints with chemicals. I was apparently not the only one trying to get a look at it all because a girl with slender pants under her miniskirt tried to get some photos, had her cell phone confiscated by a uniformed police officer, and was now jumping up and down as he held it just out of her reach.

Isn’t that Judgment of the Major Arcana?

As I approached the scorched-smelling stage, I called out to the detective.

“The victim, Usuta Manabu, was a member of the sound staff.”

“You already told me that in the taxi. Hic.”

A blackened mass sat near the right wing of the stage. Right from the perspective of the audience, that is. It was curled up in the fetal position and was the Usuta Manabu I had mentioned. In life, he had been a chubby young man and the vestiges of that of that could still be seen in his corpse. Of course, that was nothing more than the yellow and half-cooked fat sticking out from his blackened skin.

The floor was burnt black for about three meters around the corpse.

“What do you think?”

“Hm? From the state of the body, the flames must not have been all that strong. A sprinkler probably could have put them out. Hic. The stage floor was waxed until it shined. That’s why the flames spread there.”

The detective went ahead and lifted up the yellow tape and stepped onto the stage.

I, on the other hand, sat in a front-row seat like an audience member.

“There was no room for any kind of trick in this case. The live worldwide broadcast proves that. He suddenly interrupted the event by running out from the right wing of the stage, dumped a plastic bottle full of liquid over his head, and ignited it with a cheap lighter.”

“We still can’t say that for sure. Burp. The flammable substance could have been dumped on him backstage and he ran out onto the stage to escape. Maybe the bottle only contained water.”

“That doesn’t explain the lighter.”

“It could’ve been a prank. Hic. He could have been pretending to kill himself to surprise everyone, but it ended up actually setting him alight. Hic. It’s possible the man didn’t know the bottle contained a flammable substance.”

“If that’s the case, we won’t find anything investigating the scene.”

I tried crossing my legs in the seat, but the detective refused to be seduced.

“But it might not a bad idea to look into.”

“?”

“Usuta Manabu had borrowed money from several different consumer moneylenders. In other words, he had a lot of debt.”

“You mean he had a motive for suicide? Hic. What about it?”

“There was suspicion surrounding him before this. People said he gathered and sold information on scandals concerning the station’s performers to pay back his ridiculous amount of debt.”

“And what does that have to do with the suicide?”

“This has created a scandal for the national idol group Tarot Girls 22.”

“…”

He seemed to reflexively turn toward me in the audience seating.

“Do you really mean that?”

“There were a few signs.”

With my legs still crossed, I shrugged my shoulders like a foreigner.

“For example, the voice on the CD mentioned in the taxi. Usuta Manabu was a freelance member of the sound staff, so he could have snuck the scream into the song and spread the rumor online. But it didn’t work. No matter how many times he scattered the sparks, the flames wouldn’t spread. And as his situation grew worse and worse, he finally-…”

“That doesn’t add up. Hic. If he was setting up the scandal to save himself, why would he kill himself to create the scandal? Hic. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Ih oh ai ah. Ih ih ee oh-ee ay oo ay ee.”

“What?”

“People have read his lips just before his world broadcast suicide scene. He was shouting something, but his voice couldn’t be heard. What I just said were the vowel sounds read from his lip movements, but if you run through all possible patterns with a program to find a text that actually means something in Japanese, you get…”

I had gone to some effort to get this info, so I made sure to put on a bit of a show.

“It’s not my fault. This is the only way to save me.”

“Was he afraid of something? But…”

“It doesn’t feel like a suicide anymore, does it? Maybe he was trying to burn the Tarot Girls 22 to death but his hand slipped and he covered himself in flames instead.”

“But this isn’t connecting back to a scandal for them anymore.”

“Oh, isn’t it? There are rumors about strange phenomena occurring around those idols. Like the voice on the CD. A lot of people online are calling Usuta Manabu a victim. They’re saying someone who wants to eliminate the Tarot Girls 22 possessed him in order to attack them. In that case, it’s like a forged email and he’s a victim being treated like the perpetrator.”

“Hic. It’s certainly a possibility, and it certainly seems like a popular theory at the moment.”

“Regardless, it’s almost certain that Usuta said ‘this is the only way to save me’. Whether suicide or attempted murder, it was brought on by extreme fear. …And that makes me interested in what that fear was.”

“If he had a lot of debt from consumer moneylenders, burp, I would assume shady thugs.”

“Perhaps, but there are some interesting rumors about Tarot Girls 22. To give credibility as a fusion of idols and spiritualism, they’ve filmed PVs in a few spiritual locations. The rumor is that the strange phenomena are following them because they angered some kind of dangerous Youkai.”

“Youkai? What kind?”

“A relatively new and deadly one that was first confirmed during the Meiji era. It dresses as a farmer, appears in villages of the Tohoku region, and kills children. Even though no one ever sees it abduct the children, rumors later appear that it was seen in different places a day or two before. It’s a type of pure fear that causes that sort of mass hysteria.”

“Just get to the answer.”

“It’s called the Aburatori. Have you ever heard of it, detective?”

Part 4

“Is Tarot Girls 22 really cursed?”

“They were filming PVs at spiritual locations to help sell their spiritual image. They were treading on famous suicide spots in swimsuits.”

“It’s called the Aburatori, right? I hear they couldn’t finish their pinup photo shoots because a strange blurry shadow appeared in the frame.”

“Oh, you mean the one that appeared to say hi from between Nabiki-chan the Hermit’s breasts of all places?”

“And now someone’s actually died because of it. But I’m sure they’ll keep doing it because they want those sales numbers. Is the stuff in convenience stores not enough for purification salt? Is there some special way to make that?”

After listening to that much, I shut down the audio app on my smart phone.

Those were the conversations I had recorded while sitting in the café at the shopping mall attached to the TV station. Day or night, the people of the station always needed caffeine, so you had a good chance of finding conversations of those involved at a nearby café.

“But there’s nothing useful in there.”

The involvement of a Youkai called an Aburatori could also be found in the many comments on internet message boards.

I heard a sparrow chirping outside the window.

Is it morning already?

Light gradually filled the room that contained nothing but case files. It had no refrigerator, no microwave, and no sink. Then again, the first floor of the building contained a convenience store and a 24-hour leisure spa was only a 100 meter walk away.

I had yet to find a real clue on the case and I wouldn’t be able to focus on my classes if I went to school like this.

I decided to skip school and focus on the case.

And that meant there was a possibility of running into the detective again. I hadn’t slept at all, but I needed to carefully groom myself.

Just to be clear, girls didn’t take such long baths because they soaked until they were boiled red.

In order to visit the leisure spa, I grabbed my usual bath set and also operated my smartphone.

I had to tell at least one classmate I was skipping.

But thirty seconds after that email, the phone rang.

“Hey, Tomoe. You clearly don’t know how to use a cell phone if you’re replying to an email with a phone call.”

“That’s because you sent me such a weird email. You’re skipping again? What are you up to?”

I wanted to tell her it was a problem as big as the incident she had been a part of, but I swallowed the words. I could be so kind.

“Oh, right. Despite how you look, you’re into the popular groups like Tarot Girls 22, right? Do you know anything fun about that?”

“What do you mean despite how I look? And the internet’s having a field day with that suicide. They’re all saying ‘it was like this before’, ‘it’s always been like this’, or ‘I knew this was happening from the beginning’ even though they only thought this stuff up five seconds ago.”

“Yeah. No one knows what’s accurate anymore.”

“And the Tarot Girls 22 aren’t all that bad. You never hear about them getting caught smoking or with boyfriends. But the internet is ganging up on them and saying that’s actually creepy.”

Heh.

That’s the thing, Tomoe. Just like there’s no such thing as a pure evil villain, doesn’t a completely pure idol seem kind of suspicious?

With 78 of them in all, there are going to be fights and I’m sure at least one of them would get into some kind of trouble. And yet there have been exactly zero incidents.

“I wonder if Mio likes that kind of thing,” continued Tomoe. “She looks quiet and she’s good at dancing.”

“What’s Tsumada Mio doing now?”

“She’s going to school like normal. I don’t know if it’s an aftereffect, but it seems people sometimes forget she exists. Still, she says she’s generally getting along well.”

After finishing the conversation, I hung up.

Now, then.

I had two things to look into: Tarot Girls 22 and the loan sharks that the suicide victim named Usuta Manabu had borrowed money from.

It was only a trivial connection, but due to the previous conversation, I decided to start with Tarot Girls 22.

Part 14

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