In his office, under the Aeron chair, Higano had installed a trap door with a fingerprint lock. He opened the small door, through which a large person would barely fit, and descended a simple metal ladder. Motion-activated LED lights flashed on, and the cameras installed in the ceiling were activated. This setup recorded whenever someone entered the 30-feet wide basement space. The room was made from unfinished concrete. This was where Higano had killed many of his victims.
All the evidence of the things he used to kill were here: pharmaceuticals, various implements, knives. There was even a spare mask. Everything linked to Masquerade had been collected in this basement. If police searched the house and looked into this room, they’d immediately determine that Higano was Masquerade.
Higano had no compunctions about that. Indeed, he wanted to confess everything to whomever caught him.
He straightened his white sleeves.
Reina Myoko was passed out on the concrete floor, looking like Snow White. The birthmark near her collarbone was seductively exposed.
Higano removed the knife from her chest and, unsurprisingly, blood began to spurt out. Even with the gore, the expression on Higano’s face didn’t shift.
She was unconscious, but she was still lightly breathing. He hoped that the anesthesia was working properly and that she felt no pain.
As usual, Higano had his chainsaw at hand to cut off the victim’s most beautiful body part.
He took off her brand new pumps with the same care he made the coffee, and gently peeled off her stockings, as though he were handling a virgin. Higano didn’t forget the minimum standard of respect that should be given to his victims.
Reina’s left foot was so perfectly balanced that it almost seemed like a CG rendering, and now it was fully exposed. Without any sentimental fanfare, Higano turned on the chainsaw and cut off her left foot.
When he was finished with the work, he took the foot in his hands, still wearing the surgical gloves, and stared at it.
That’s when he noticed something. For a moment he was struck speechless.
“What’s this…!”
He’d missed something.
Something he’d never be able to fix.
He held a hand to his mouth in disbelief and examined the foot closely again. But it was unmistakable.
For the first time since he had been born, Higano looked upward and cursed the heavens.
Reina’s beautiful, perfect foot—
✦ ✦ ✦
—was blemished with blisters.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Miss Direction…You really kept me from seeing the most important thing until the very end!”
The serial killer Masquerade had rules.
His rules didn’t have any particular deeper meaning. They just were. When he killed he always wore a white coat. He always had a cup of coffee made from beans he ground himself an hour before the murder. He always cut off the face. The victims were always women who had body parts of unrivaled beauty. Etcetera, etcetera.
And the blisters on Reina’s foot meant that she would never have been one of his victims.
“I can’t…” Higano moaned. “I can’t make this one of Masquerade’s kills.”
It was inconsistent—
—with Seiren Higano’s personal aesthetic.
Objectively considered, his reasoning must’ve seemed insane. And Higano himself was well aware of this. He was the only one who knew of his strict rules. Furthermore, he’d been planning on disposing of her foot without anyone knowing.
He was the only one in the world who couldn’t come to terms with the blisters.
But though he fully recognized this, it didn’t matter. Breaking his own rules was too terrifying a proposition. He couldn’t count this as one of Masquerade’s kills. It would’ve been like loosening a small screw but not knowing exactly what purpose the screw had served. Loosening the screw might cause everything to descend into madness and result in his total breakdown.
No, Higano understood very well. He knew that was right, but at the same time, it was pure sophistry.
So in the end…
“I feel awful,” he said.
He was physiologically incapable of breaking the rules.
He leaned back against the concrete wall, still tightly gripping Reina’s foot. He held the foot against his chest and embraced it like a long-lost lover.
Internally, he was wracked with pain. He felt as though his body had been crushed by some lumbering beast. His head ached as though it had been hit with a lead pipe.
Higano derived no pleasure from killing, and being assaulted by any emotions in the middle of the act rendered him unable to kill. Because he hadn’t followed the rules, he was overcome with the guilt of his murder and could no longer think of it as a purely mechanical procedure.
Higano’s aesthetic, rigidly defined by the strict rules he’d set for himself, were what had enabled him to kill without hesitation.
This is why he could never violate his aesthetic.
So Higano decided his next step fairly naturally.
“I’ll…make it up.”
As easily as though he had done it before, Higano decided to frame someone.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Well then,” Higano said. “What am I going to do now?”
✦ ✦ ✦
He took off his white coat, speckled with blood. Underneath, a bespoke black Armani suit skimmed over the lines of his lean physique. He folded the white coat carefully so as to not stain his suit, and hung it over his arm. The refined gesture gave him the air of a capable butler swiftly clearing away his master’s tablecloth.
Higano glanced down at the dead body.
The muddy waters of Tokyo Bay washed in gentle waves against the concrete tetrapod blocks near the shore. On top of one block lay the body of a beautifully-proportioned woman. She was dead. A slender leg dipped into the water. It was easy to imagine that, when she’d been alive, she’d been captivating: her slender, seductive limbs stretched out from a flashy, well-tailored dress. She had a beauty mark on her collar bone that heightened her charm. Her long, well-manicured nails were blood red and even a little mysterious.
But this glamorous mystique was quickly punctured.
Her beautiful left leg was severed at the ankle. The foot was gone.
The corpse’s face had also been scraped off so the contours were ruined. Her once-elegant features were completely unrecognizable.
These signs all suggested the crime had been committed by Seiren Higano, also known as the serial killer Masquerade.
However, throughout his career Higano had removed many faces, and he judged the technique used on this corpse as extremely crude. The lips and everything on the face above the nose remained intact; conversely, the neck had been needlessly cut up. It wasn’t very attractive.
“This is unacceptable.”
Higano turned his head and averted his gaze, unable to look any longer.
He calmed down quickly once he could no longer see the body.