"............"

I don't know what to say.

I want to say something, but I can't think of the right words. I can only sigh.

"Ah, Ooishi-san!

I've been looking for you!!

The section manager asked me about the wanted poster..."

"Be quiet!

This is a place of rest."

As Kumagai barged into the room, the old coroner quickly snapped back at him.

"S...

Sorry.

Umm, the section manager asked me about the wanted poster for the suspect."

"...Ah...

can you talk to Komiyama-kun about that?

I need to speak to the coroner here.

Could you tell him I'll be right over?"

"Eh...

o-okay!!"

Kumagai ran out of the autopsy room with the same haste he entered in.

"Lively, isn't he?"

"The old man would've slapped him for making such a fuss."

"You probably should go back too.

The air in here isn't for people who aren't used to it."

"You're right.

If I slack off too long, I might get slapped as well."

"...Ha ha ha ha.

Here in Shishibone, all the hoodlums crossed the street when you passed through, yet he's the only one, past or future, who's ever punched you for splitting your tsumo wrong..."

"He really was a merciless man...

I think he punched me more than my real father."

"Doesn't matter if he was your real one or not.

If you looked up to him in the same way, then he really was a father to you."

"............"

My real father passed away in Nagoya.

...He was unlucky.

If he wasn't given the order to move to a plant in Nagoya, he wouldn't have died in an air raid.

...If he could have rode it out another half a year or so, then the war would have been over.

I was sad, of course, but I was grown up enough by then that I didn't cry into the ground like my mother did.

But... people feel sadness in different ways.

For some people, it comes all at once as an overwhelming wave, but others feel sadness gradually, over a long period of time.

I think I was the latter.

When he was alive, I only thought of him as annoying. In my mind, I even cursed him with questions about why he avoided the draft.

And I thought my feelings towards him would always be the same.

Then the war ended.

As I saw families and friends being reunited with joy as they came home from the front,

it finally happened.

I grieved for my father's death.

Japan was filled with people who were sad and full of despair.

I knew I wasn't the only one whose life ended up that way.

But... I remember I was very, very heartbroken.

After the war, the nation completely changed. As a policeman, the environment I worked in went through sudden changes too.

In order to forget my sorrow, the only thing I could do was devote myself to my work.

"At the time, I was in charge of busting people for buying rice illegally.

I conducted spot checks on travelers at major train stations.

And boy, did I find a lot of them.

There was a fairly big black market in Gogura, and a lot of people came from as far as Osaka to buy it."

After the war, Japan faced a chronic shortage in food supply.

To those ends, the nation instituted a food rationing program by signing the Food Control Act.

But the rations the government provided weren't even close to being enough to feed families. Therefore, people had no choice other than buying food and supplies on the black market.

The government hardly had enough food for rations, but there were somehow plenty on the black market.

The dealers there sold it at outrageous prices, and some of them became quite wealthy.

...The Sonozaki family made their money through that black market, but that's another story.

The government didn't bother arresting these dealers.

For, with their money, they were able to buy off the top members of the police department.

...Instead, they decided to go after the people buying the goods, and even confiscated the rice they bought by selling everything they owned.

"Yeah, I remember that...

Wasn't there a prosecutor who starved himself to death?"

"Yeah, there was.

The prosecutor who vowed not to eat illegal rice starved to death... Wasn't it in 1947?

That was horrible.

He, a public prosecutor, proved it himself that people couldn't survive by adhering to the law."

That prosecutor had grown tired of the government charging people with doing whatever they could to survive.

And he proclaimed that he was never going to buy black market rice again.

In 1947, he starved to death when he was only in his mid-thirties.

The law prohibited people from buying black market rice.

But that was the only way to survive.

In that case, was the Food Control Act a bad law itself?

The death of the prosecutor was seen as a desperate message to the government about the unjustness of that law.

"...We rounded up people with bags of rice and lined them up at the temporary inspection point next to the station.

It was like a military tribunal.

We inspected their bags and confiscated everything that they bought at the black market.

The women all cried.

They sold everything they owned to buy the rice.

They pleaded that if we confiscated the rice,

how would they feed their starving children?"

"Doesn't make sense, huh?

Yet they forbade you from going after the sellers. So it was absolutely unfair from the view of the people."

"Everyone was on edge.

If they heard a police inspection was set up at the next station, they'd jump off the train and run.

We were aware of these people, so we set up several officers near jump-off spots in order to capture them.

I remember chasing after women carrying several kilos of rice on them."

That was when I first met the old man.

"Man... I was surprised.

...Remember my father?

He looked exactly like him!

I really thought that maybe my father had miraculously survived the air raid in Nagoya."

I was chasing a man who was running away from the inspection point.

There was no way for him to run with a heavy bag of rice on him.

So either he'd get arrested with the illegal rice, or escape by ditching the rice that he bought by selling all of his belongings.

...In other words, if a person is being chased by the police, that person can't provide his family any rice to eat.

Of course, I felt guilty about that.

I knew people had to buy the rice to survive.

...So we had a tacit agreement to let those who ditched the rice and ran get away.

So I always thought the same thing as I chased them.

Please throw it away.

I didn't want to catch him.

...Because I didn't want to hear him crying and pleading in distress.

It was then that the old man showed up.

He looked exactly like my dead father.

I was dumbfounded.

Then, all of a sudden, he punched me in the head.

If a father disciplines you, as a child, you lower your head in apology.

I was so happy to see my father alive that I couldn't hold my joy in.

The old man said,

"Let him go."

When I heard his voice, I realized he wasn't my father. So I thought I'd arrest him for assaulting a policeman.

But a young man, like me, who'd barely grown any hairs yet, was no match for an older man used to fighting.

"Yeah, he sure taught me a lesson.

He gave me a good scolding in the middle of the street after I was all beat up.

Na ha ha, who would even listen to him, right?

But something struck me then.

I kept seeing my father in him.

All I could do was listen."

"Yeah, he was a ruffian, but he showed his guts, like a real man. That's what made him such a great guy.

You don't see men like him nowadays. He was a true example of a man from the good old times."

Despite my age, I still needed a father.

I needed someone to look up to, and to show me what makes a man a man...

When I think about it...

I really did have two fathers.

The old man was a father, a brother,

and my best friend.

...But now, here he lies with his head, body, arms, and legs all dismembered...

and his right arm hasn't been found.

He taught me how to be a man, how to enjoy alcohol, how to play mahjong, and with that right arm, he gave me a good beating when I did something wrong...

But that right arm is still missing.

"Do you have any suspects?"

"Yeah, of course.

...I swear, I'll find the old man's right arm and pay them back for what they've done to him."

They're running Hinamizawa from the shadows, and inciting this collective crime they call the dam protests...

The Sonozaki family.

I declare war within myself.

I already know who my enemy is.