†
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August 5
I gave a ride to a girl named Mizuguchi Nanami. I met her in a soba shop near S**** Mountain.
We went to the shrine in the woods on the south side of the mountain. She went into the woods with me.
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†
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In the woods, the notebook’s owner had stabbed Mizuguchi Nanami in the stomach with a knife.
In the notebook, the killer broke down her body. In cramped handwriting, he described how he had gouged out her eyes and what color the inside of her womb was.
He had left Mizuguchi Nanami in the woods.
“Have you heard the name Mizuguchi Nanami?” Morino asked.
I shook my head.
There had not yet been any reports of her corpse being discovered.
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ii
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I became aware of Morino when second year began and we found ourselves in the same class. At first, I thought she was like me, living her life without getting involved with anyone around her. Even during break periods or when she was walking through the halls, she always avoided other people, never joining the herd.
We were the only two people like that in our class. That is not to say that I gazed coldly at my classmates’ excitement the way she did, though. I would answer if someone spoke to me, and I joked around enough to keep things friendly. I did the bare minimum to lead a normal life. But these were surface relationships, and all the smiles I produced were lies.
The first time we spoke, Morino saw right through that part of me.
“Will you teach me how to smile like that?” she’d said, standing directly in front of me after school, no expression on her face at all. She must have scorned me for it privately.
That was at the end of May. Since then, we had begun to speak occasionally.
Morino only ever wore black clothes—dark colors, from her long, straight black hair to the tips of her shoes. In contrast to that, her skin was paler than anyone else’s I’d ever seen, her hands like ceramic. There was a small mole under her left eye, like the pattern on a clown’s face, and it gave her a slightly magical aura.
Her expression changed significantly less than that of most people, but it did change. For example, when she was reading a book about a killer who had murdered fifty-two women and children in Russia, Morino was clearly enjoying herself. It was not the same as the suicidally gloomy look she wore when she was in a crowd of our classmates; no, her eyes were glittering.
The only time I didn’t feign expressions was when talking to Morino. If I’d been speaking to anyone else, they would wonder why my face was so blank, why I never flashed a smile. But when I was speaking to her, none of that mattered. I imagine she chose to speak to me for much the same reason.
Neither of us liked to attract attention. We lived quiet lives in the shadow of our livelier classmates.
And then came summer vacation—and the notebook.
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†
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The day after she showed me the notebook, we met at the station and boarded the train for S**** Mountain.
We’d never met outside of school, so it was the first time I’d ever seen Morino out of uniform. She was still wearing dark colors, nevertheless. So was I—and from her expression, she noticed.
The train was quiet and deserted. We didn’t talk, keeping our noses in our books. She was reading a book about child abuse, and I was reading a book written by the family of a famous child criminal.
When we dismounted, we asked an old woman in a decrepit tobacco shop near the station how many soba shops there were near S**** Mountain. We learned that there was only one, and it was not far from where we were.
It was then that Morino said something very poignant. “Tobacco kills a lot of people, but cigarette vending machines are killing that woman by stealing her job.”
She didn’t particularly seem to be looking for a clever response, so I let it pass.
We walked along the side of the road toward the soba shop. The road led uphill, curving along the slope of the mountain.
The soba shop was at the base of S**** Mountain, in a row of bars and restaurants. It was not at all crowded, with few cars or people around. There were no cars at all in the soba shop’s parking lot, but apparently they weren’t closed; the sign said OPEN, so we went in.
“The killer met Mizuguchi Nanami here,” Morino said, looking around the shop as if we were in a popular tourist spot. “Pardon me—that’s still just a possibility. May have met her here. We are here to determine whether that’s true.”
I ignored her and read the notebook, which was written in with blue ballpoint pen. The story of the third woman’s death was not the only other thing in the book; there were a number of other mountain names as well. They were on the first page, before the accounts of the murders.
There were marks in front of the mountain names: ⌾,○, △, and X. The mountains where the three bodies had been left were all marked with ⌾, so this was probably a list of which mountains looked good for killing.
There was nothing that could identify who had written it. And neither of us ever considered giving it to the police. They would catch him eventually without our doing anything. If we gave them the notebook, they might arrest him faster, and there might be fewer victims—so it probably should have been our duty to turn it in. Sadly, though, neither of us had the kind of conscience that was bothered by keeping it to ourselves. We were cruel, reptilian high school kids.
“If a fourth victim were found, then it would be like we killed her.”
“How awful.”
That’s all we said while we slurped up our soba. Morino didn’t seem to think this was especially awful: her tone was disinterested, all her attention focused on the soba in front of her.
We asked the shop owner for directions to the shrine.
Morino kept her eyes on the notebook as we walked, stroking the cover with her fingers, touching it where the killer had touched it. Judging from that gesture, she had a fair amount of reverence for the killer.
I had a trace of that myself. I knew that was hardly appropriate. The killer was someone who deserved to be punished. He should not be looked at the way you would a revolutionary or an artist. At the same time, I knew that some unusual people worshipped famous murderers—and I knew that becoming like them was a bad thing.
We were captivated by the horror of what the notebook’s owner had done, though. The killer had stepped over the line of ordinary life to destroy people physically, trampling their identity and dignity. Like inside a nightmare, we could not look away.
To get to the shrine from the soba shop, we went up the hill some more and then up a long staircase.
Both of us felt an entirely irrational anger at the idea of any form of exercise. We enjoyed neither slope nor stairs. And by the time we reached the shrine, we were both exhausted.
We sat down on the statues in the shrine and rested for a while. There were trees all around, their branches stretched out above us—and when we looked up, we could see the summer sun peeking through the leaves.
We sat next to each other, listening to the cicadas all around us.
Beads of sweat accumulated on Morino’s forehead.
At last, she stood up, wiping the sweat away. She began looking for Mizuguchi Nanami’s body.
“The killer and Mizuguchi Nanami walked this way together,” she said, as we began walking side by side.
We entered the woods behind the shrine. We didn’t know how far or in which direction they had walked, so we could only search at random.
For the better part of an hour, we looked—with nothing to show for it.
“Maybe that way,” Morino said, moving away from me.
A few minutes later, I heard her call my name. I went in the direction of her voice and found her standing at the base of a cliff, her back to me, both hands dangling at her sides, her back stiff. I stood next to her and saw for myself what she had been gazing at: it was Mizuguchi Nanami.
Between the forest and the cliff, in the shadow of a very large tree, the girl sat naked in the dim summer light. Mizuguchi Nanami sat on the ground, her back leaning against the tree, her legs and arms flung out listlessly—nothing above her neck. Her head was inside her split-open belly.
Her eyes had been gouged out, and one was resting in each hand.
The empty eye sockets had been filled up again with mud, and rotting leaves had been stuffed into her mouth.
Something had been wound around the tree behind her … everything that had been inside Mizuguchi Nanami’s abdomen.
There were dark patches of dried blood on the ground, and her clothes lay nearby.
We stood facing her in silence. Neither of us able to say anything, we simply stared silently at the corpse.