My last meeting with Ozawa was at that same café in Jinbocho.
We sat down and waited for our drinks. Once they’d arrived, he mixed liquid sweetener into his iced caffe latte and started talking.
“Will you listen to my theory?”
I decided to hear him out. The following is what he told me.
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Earlier, we both agreed that the mountain caller is obsessed with women and women only. We learned from The Truth Behind the Mass-Hysteria Incident at the School Camping Trip and New UMA Discovered! The White Man! that the mountain caller itself doesn’t leave the mountain. Instead, it gains control over men and uses them to lure women to the mountain. We don’t know if those men are still alive or if they’re all dead…
I’d suspected for some time that the purpose of inviting women—especially young women—was to make them “brides.” Though I’m not sure if this thing has the same concept of the word as we do.
Maybe the mountain caller influences both the men it uses and the women it lures to toss their “bodies” over the side of the dam.
That could explain why the dam is such an infamous suicide spot…
If that’s true, the girl from A True Story! New Developments Regarding a Missing Girl in Nara? might be somewhere at the bottom of the dam, her body still undiscovered.
But, as we saw in Cheating, a person can offer a doll in lieu of a woman, sparing her from becoming a bride. A few people even managed to survive without offering any sacrifices, like in New UMA Discovered! The White Man! and Waiting.
I assume the Masshiro-san and Mashiro-sama games the elementary schoolers talked about must have originated from kids living in the apartment complex within the mountain caller’s domain. Because it’s huge, white, and humanoid, they called it Masshiro-san or Mashiro-sama, which both mean Mister White. And the game seems to have involved offering some kind of sacrifice, just like in Cheating.
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Ozawa, having talked nonstop up to this point, paused to catch his breath. Then he continued.
“I’m close. I can feel it. There’s still a lot of unknowns, including the red woman and the sticker, but I feel like I can just about connect everything together. This special edition is going to be spectacular.”
He sounded excited.
“I’ve come this far. I think it’s time to visit for myself.”
That was what Ozawa told me.
Of course, I tried to stop him.
But he went anyway.
Two months later, he was dead.
They found him in .
Dear readers, I’m so sorry for deceiving you.
This is where About a Place in the Kinki Region ends.