Mion and the others, having to set up for the Watanagashi Festival or something, invited me along, but I refused.
...Of course I did.
How could they be taking it easy and setting up for a festival in this situation?
Mion had a lot of nerve.
The first thing I did when I got back was take a shower.
Not because I wanted to wash off sweat.
...It was because I wanted to be even calmer.
I already understood this, but killing that man would be so very easy.
...The really hard thing would be not getting arrested for it, so we could get our peaceful days back.
As I thought about it, I realized it wasn't easy.
...Japan's police force have the highest arrest rate in the world.
I would need to deceitfully pull off the perfect crime... and it couldn't be a half-hearted attempt.
...Still, it wasn't 100%.
Even the best police force in the world couldn't have a 100% arrest rate.
...I've read a lot of articles on trials with people brought up on false charges.
...At court they consider whether the charges are false or not, but figuring out the real criminal is entirely out of scope.
And that meant... perfect crimes did exist.
In fact, perfect crimes were sort of like works of art.
They could even be respected and revered.
You just had to look at the inundation of mystery novels everywhere throughout history.
They dealt with all sorts of difficult-to-solve incidents, involving secret rooms and alibis and stuff, but they all wanted to show one thing.
...They wanted to show the beauty of a perfect crime.
There was something divine... in the flawlessness of the word "perfect."
Yes.
Perfect crimes were skills of the gods.
...And in that sense... the serial freak deaths they were calling the curse of Oyashiro-sama...
I understood—they must have been the works of gods.
Each one appeared to have been resolved, but they couldn't stop it from happening every year.
...Yeah—skills belonging only to gods, those are perfect crimes.
And I would be setting up my own crime before Oyashiro-sama's series of perfect crimes four years in the running.
...If I were to put it boldly, I was challenging a god.
Foolhardiness would be needed to make the decision... but I needed to be calm, cool, colder than ice to put that plan together.
Kill him like a flame.
But as systematic as ice.
Starting now, I need to retain both of those ideas within me...
Modeling my crime after a mystery novel wasn't actually a bad thing to focus on.
Sometimes, kidnappings involving disturbing, original methods that made it into the newspaper were used as a basis for novels after the person was arrested... Stuff like that made it into the news.
Day and night, for a very long time, mystery novel authors polished and refined their most fantastic artistic crimes.
...Imitating that could be a shortcut to planning the perfect crime in a short period of time.
Of course, I haven't read enough mystery novels to act all high and mighty about them.
...The one who really liked mystery novels...
was my mom.
She'd read every well-known mystery novel from overseas, from past and present.
Every time she watched mystery shows, she would always criticize them as having cheap tricks or being poorly thought-out.
...I wonder... what the perfect crime would mean to her...
"What do I think the most well-done perfect crime in all the mystery novels I've read is?"
"...Yeah.
Well, you read quite a lot of them, right?
I figured you might know a lot about them."
"It's more fun to read them to find out.
If I told you all the tricks right off the bat, they'd be no fun anymore."
...It wasn't like I was asking for my own amusement.
...She was deflecting the question, so I would somehow butter her up first and draw out an answer...
"Of course... well done mystery novels... yeah...
They all have a unique charm to them so it's hard to say which is the most interesting, you'd really have to force me to pick one..."
"...I didn't want to know which novels you liked.
I wanted to know about the trick that made you the most surprised."
"If it was really a perfect trick, the detectives wouldn't be able to solve the case, though."
...That was true.
...Then there'd be no point.
"Mystery novels are enjoyable because of the process of the mysteries getting solved.
If it was unsolvable, it wouldn't make a very good topic for a novel..."
"...I get it.
...Yeah, you're right.
If the main character can't solve it... it wouldn't be much of a story, huh..."
Was I being too simplistic?
...A mystery novel was basically a game.
They were written so that you can get to the goal, so that you could solve them.
But I couldn't use something so optimistic.
...It needed to be the be-all end-all of tricks so that we could, without a doubt, return to our old lives.
"By the way, Keiichi.
...Do you understand that truly perfect crimes don't even become stories?"
Mom looked at me intellectually and grinned impishly.
...I'd never gotten to read it, but apparently one time a long time ago, Mom had written her own mystery novel and submitted it for some mystery novel award.
...Apparently she was really into it.
"Don't even become stories? What does that mean...?"
"Keiichi, what are the essential parts of a story?"
"A beginning, a middle, and an end?"
"Correct.
The beginning, of course, is especially important.
If there is no beginning, then the story never starts."
"Well, yeah.
...If nothing happened, nothing would begin."
"Right.
Nothing happened, so there wouldn't even be an incident.
Detectives wouldn't be called, so there wouldn't be any mystery.
There would be no mystery, so there would be no solution.
...In other words, it would be the ultimate perfect crime."
"......Wait...
...Wait a second.
...Could you explain that again...?!"
My mom... just told me something absurd.
...And she was saying it so smoothly, too, so I kind of tuned her out... but...
She said something extremely important just now.
"It's not really that difficult to understand.
...The incident just has to never come to light, that's all."
"...Just has to...
never come to light."
"For example... Hmm, how about this?
Say there's an old man living deep in a forest nobody goes into."
"Uh-huh..."
"And one day, the old man gets killed by an axe.
...And, hmm... Let's say the criminal was the old man's son.
He went to the old man's house and they were drinking together, but they got into a fight and he killed him."
...What an extremely cheap plot.
It was an impulsive crime, without a bit of planning.
It was pretty far from a perfect crime...
"But Keiichi.
The house was really, really deep in this forest.
So deep in the mountains that nobody would ever go out that far.
...Then his son would go back to town and say...
that the old man was doing fine."
"...What about that is a perfect crime?"
"Keiichi.
...This incident would only begin when it was found out that the old man was killed.
...If nobody ever visited the old man's house after that, that beginning would never occur."
...The beginning would never occur...
"So basically, the story wouldn't start.
The incident wouldn't come to light, and they wouldn't call in detectives.
And nobody would be suspicious in the first place, so there'd be no mystery.
...They'd think the old man was still living by himself deep in the forest...
And the old man's face would appear in the sky, and that would be it.
...Something like that, you know?"
"...That... That's amazing...!!
That's a pretty great trick!"
"But it wouldn't be a novel.
Mystery novels are for entertainment, after all.
They can't be instruction manuals for perfect crimes."
...I was trying hard to talk cheerfully to fool her... but inside I was excited.
Special tools, strange geography, mysterious drugs, traps involving huge sums of cash... None of them were needed for perfect crimes.
The important thing... was that there wasn't a beginning.
......As long as the incident didn't come to light... it would be fine.
Speaking broadly...
If I could kill him without anyone finding out...
And dispose of the corpse somewhere no one could find...
It would basically already be a perfect crime.
...Of course, if someone up and vanished one day all of a sudden, people would get suspicious.
...But that didn't apply to this man.
Last year, after their aunt died, he ran away from the village in fear of Oyashiro-sama.
When the night of Watanagashi came around again, everyone would have to think... that he ran away in fear again.
I mean, he had been living with a lover of his in town.
No matter what it felt like when he vanished, no one would be suspicious.
People hated him, after all.
...No one would care where he went if he disappeared...!!
When I thought about it like that, it got easier and easier to imagine killing him.
There was no point in thinking inside my house anymore.
I left, getting my bike out of the garage.
...For now... it didn't matter where I was going.
I just rode through the wind, trying to calm my excitement by feeling the cool air on my body.
...Where I'd kill him, how I'd do it,
what time,
and how to dispose of the corpse.
...If I just had those four things... I could get a good plan going.
I was so surprised at how little there was to decide that I shivered.
...I'd been completely prepared to build this humongous plan over a really long period of time...
...But if I could just get these little things in order... I could put it into motion.
Today was Saturday.
...I would have to kill him on the night of Watanagashi... so as long as I was standing in for Oyashiro-sama, I only had twenty-four hours remaining.
...Satoko.
...Just hang on... for twenty-four more hours.
I can't even imagine... having to suffer through even more... but please, hold out for a little longer.
I know you can't even last another second... I know that...
But please... just hold out...
...Your Nii-nii... will save you for sure...
Outside, it was still early enough for the cicadas to be crying.
...Early afternoon.
...Evening was still a long way off.
...I looked at the sky—at some point it had gotten cloudy.
Come to think of it, as I left the house, I heard on the TV that the weather forecast was calling for a chance of rain on Sunday...
The sky was the color of lead.
...If I heard a little bit of thunder, I'd definitely have expected a sudden evening shower.
...My first destination was school.
Before explaining why I was going there, I needed to explain what method for killing that man I had decided upon.
...I decided that the most suitable death, the one I needed to give him...
...was the same as last year's curse.
...The same as the punishment their aunt had received... being beaten to death.
Wouldn't beating him to death be somewhat unreliable...?
You may think that stabbing him with a blade... would be more reliable.
But this was something I had chosen after a lot of thought.
...You just needed to think realistically.
The law... It prohibited carrying any blades longer than 10 centimeters, I think.
...So the blades available to me, even the longest ones, were still limited to things shorter than a ruler.
...You can probably understand how tricky it would be with such a short reach to go up against an opponent that might fight back.
In that case, a weapon with more reach, like a staff, would be far more advantageous.
It might not be quite as inherently lethal, but since you could just keep hitting the guy until you killed him, the end result was the same.
So, what's a staff-like deadly weapon, terrifyingly powerful, and also eminently portable?
...By this point, you should immediately think of a metal baseball bat.
I don't need to explain... how terrifying a metal baseball bat can be as a weapon.
Of special note is the fact that you can carry one around in broad daylight and not be thought of as suspicious.
......Just those two points would have been enough to choose a metal bat for my weapon...
but there was one more reason...
for choosing a metal bat in particular.
I will speak about it later.
After school that Saturday, my classmates were still having fun, playing in the schoolyard.
I could show up there and it would be the same as always, so nobody will think I'm suspicious.
...Getting my hands on the weapon without looking suspicious was actually a factor I couldn't ignore.
...I didn't normally play baseball, so if I went to a sports store looking for a metal bat... it would definitely be suspicious.
...I can't let there be a beginning to the story... so I needed to be really careful even about that.
That left school.
...At a location at which my appearance wouldn't be suspicious... I would acquire the weapon.
I checked inside the classroom through the window... but of course, there was nobody there.
The only students who would stay in there were me and the others, when doing club activities.
...Without us, the classroom after school was just an empty, unused room.
...Without glancing around nervously... as if I'd just gone to get something I'd forgotten, I casually went in the entrance.
......It looked like the teacher was busy with paperwork in the teacher's lounge.
I didn't see her in the hallway.
...Naturally, yet quickly as a shadow... I entered the classroom.
The empty room was full of a strange, stagnant air that you couldn't feel normally.
...An empty classroom... with nobody here.
...Maybe while no one was around... the desks creep about of their own accord, licking the floors clean of dirt.
...If I suddenly stepped into a place like that...
Would the desks, in their surprise, fly at me, crush my bones, and eat me alive...?
"......That's ridiculous."
I felt regret at wasting valuable thinking time on stupid delusions.
...The students' lockers were lined up in the back of the classroom.
The one I was looking for... wasn't my own.
...It was...
a forbidden locker......
one I had accidentally discovered one day.
"...Here it is... Houjou...
...This has to be it."
...If one person has one locker, then why would only Satoko have two?
I'd made a fuss about it once.
...After that... I learned it was Satoshi's locker, and he had the same last name as her.
...But of course, even though it was a locker for a student no longer here... looking inside it was still a shameless act.
...But one time... I let my curiosity get the better of me and took a peek inside...
Inside, it was average and worthless... At the time, I hadn't been interested, so until now I'd forgotten what had been in it.
...But now that I had—dare I say it—awakened...
I remembered...
the thing...
that had been there.
Scrr...ape...
I opened the locker... and a stench of mold and sweat wafted out, like a gym storehouse that hadn't been cleaned in weeks.
...My face puckered up at the stench... but I looked for it.
Yes.
......Satoshi was on Coach's baseball team.
...Inside the locker was a Hinamizawa Fighters uniform......
and it.
...The one Satoshi used... the metal bat...
Yes.
...This was the reason I wanted to choose this bat.
...This murder would be carried out by me... but this wasn't originally my role... it was Satoshi's.
...But I would stand in for him and call myself Satoko's nii-nii.
...It was one of the rules... for standing in for him.
I reached for the metal bat... and grasped it firmly.
...It was light.
...And yet... its tip had enough heft in it... enough to easily imagine the horror if I brought it down with all my might.
...Satoshi.
...I'll give you one last chance to save your sister.
...Lend me your strength.
...You're a coward, but I will stand in for you.
...So if you still care even a little bit about her... you will... lend me your strength.
There is no more suitable weapon in the world for putting that man to death than your bat.
Now... I just needed to figure out where to hide it.
...Tomorrow, before the act, I would just stop by the school and grab it.
...Because I couldn't ignore the possibility someone would see me bringing it home and think it was strange.
But if I left it here, there wouldn't be a problem.
Plus, tomorrow was Sunday.
Not only that... it was the day of the biggest festival in the whole village.
...Nobody would be coming to school.
I left out the entrance... and went over to a construction vehicle parked nearby.
We'd been warned by our teacher not to touch it just for laughs, so none of the kids would come near the vehicle either.
...They wouldn't, because if she found out they touched it, they'd be in huge trouble.
I quietly hid it...
in the shadow... of the vehicle.
...The chances of someone operating the vehicle tomorrow were slim to none.
...Because tomorrow was Sunday.
Government workers had the day off.
...And... from what my classmates had said, the thing had been left here for years now.
...Machines that haven't been moved in years... You can't just suddenly start them up again.
...So I was almost definitively fine in this case.
...The sunlight was piercingly hot. My head grew faint for a moment.
Had the heat... been this harsh for the entire day...?
A moment of dulled thoughts like this... was a moment of carelessness.
...I gave myself a couple hits in the head, then looked around warily...
.....................
...Okay.
......Next... how to dispose of the corpse.