2
He had known that Nakamura Seiji was Chiori’s father even before she had told him. He had also heard that Seiji was living a somewhat peculiar life on a little island called Tsunojima off the coast of S—Town. More than six months had passed since losing Chiori, in which he spent his days as a half-invalid, filled with unrelenting sadness and anger. He was shocked when, one autumn day, he heard how Chiori’s parents living on Tsunojima had met their tragic death. He could not have imagined at the time that this case would help him release his own frustrated anger in the future.
Confronting the six men and women who had driven Chiori to her death was constantly on his mind. But he would not be content with just blaming them, shouting out that they had killed Chiori. He had been robbed of someone irreplaceable, someone he had needed in order to live. They had stolen her from him.
The only thing he wanted was revenge. But he was only able to channel his feeling into a concrete plan—for murder—when he learned that his uncle Tatsumi Masa’aki had purchased the island of Tsunojima.
The Blue Mansion on Tsunojima, where Chiori had been born. The tragedy with her parents. Six sinners who would go to the island just to satisfy their own curiosity. This mental image fuelled his urge to paint them with bright new colours and purge them.
He had first thought about killing all six of them on Tsunojima and then dying there as well. But that would have meant burying himself amongst those sinners, as though he were one of them.
He needed to pass judgment upon them. Revenge in the name of judgment.
After long contemplation, he settled on a plan.
A plan to kill all six of them on the island, but also a plan where he would stay safe and alive.
He fired the first shot in early March, certain his prey would walk into his trap.
‘My uncle just bought Tsunojima. If you’d like to visit there and stay in the Decagon House, I could ask him. How about it?’
Naturally, they swallowed the bait.
After it was all settled, he took responsibility for the preparations. He selected the days of their stay based on their schedules and the long-term weather forecast.
For his plans to succeed, he absolutely needed there to be days with clear weather and peaceful waves. Luckily, the forecast for late March didn’t show any bad weather. It was risky to bet on forecasts, but he could just cancel the trip on the day itself if circumstances turned out for the worst.
And so the trip was decided to be for one week, starting on March 26th.
He prepared bedding, food and other necessary supplies. He rented bedding for six persons. He was very careful to make the six think he was going to the island with them, while leaving the impression with everyone else that only six people were going and he wasn’t one of them.
He wrote nine letters under the name Nakamura Seiji. The letters had two purposes.
The first was naturally “an accusation.” He wanted to let someone, anyone, know that those people had murdered a girl called Nakamura Chiori. As for the letters’ second purpose, the “letters from the dead” were the perfect bait to get Kawaminami Taka’aki moving.
Sending one of those letters with Nakamura Seiji’s name to Nakamura Kōjirō had been a strategic move on his part, anticipating that Kawaminami would eventually arrive there. He knew Kawaminami very well. Receiving the letter, he would go sniffing around and finally turn to him, Morisu, for advice. He was expecting him. Even if it turned out he would have to contact Kawaminami himself, the strange letters going around would prove to be the perfect excuse.
He used a word processor which was available for student use in a laboratory at the university. He also made two sets of the murder announcement plates with materials he bought at a supermarket.
Tuesday, March 25th, the day before their departure, he posted the nine letters in O—City, went to S—Town and transported the supplies in a fisherman’s boat he had reserved in advance. He then returned to S—Town, lied to his uncle that he was going to Kunisaki and borrowed his uncle’s car. In the back trunk, he had prepared a rubber boat with an outboard motor, a cylinder with compressed air, cans of gasoline and other items.
His uncle used the boat for fishing. He had secretly taken it out of the storage in the back of the garage, but as his uncle only used it in season, between summer and autumn, there was no fear of him finding out.
Few people make their way to the other side of the J—Cape, even during the day. After hiding the boat and cylinder in some bushes near the shore, he returned the car after enough time had passed. He lied about his plans to his uncle, saying he was going back to O—City that night and would go to Kunisaki again tomorrow. In truth he only went to O—City to get his motorbike and return to J—Cape in the middle of the night.
It takes about ninety minutes for a car to travel from O—City to J—Cape in the afternoon. But you can make it in less than an hour if you hurry on a 250cc motorbike during the night. And if you make good use of an off-road bike, you can also travel through the empty fields and thickets next to the roads. He laid the bike down in the thickets near the shore and covered it with a brown sheet, so there was no need to fear someone would find it.
Next, he set up the boat he had hidden and changed into a wetsuit. And so it was that, with the aid of the moonlight and the light from the unmanned J—Cape lighthouse, a lone figure made its way across the sea towards Tsunojima.
The wind wasn’t strong, but it was terribly cold. The visibility, also, was bad at night. He had borrowed the boat several times in the past and was used to handling it, but because of his bad state of health, the trip proved to be much harder than he had expected.
As for why he was in a bad state of health, he had not drunk any water since yesterday. His plan called for him to abstain from consuming water.
It took about thirty minutes from J—Cape to Tsunojima.
He landed on the rocky area. He needed to hide the boat here. He folded it up and used a rope to tie it, together with the air cylinder and the outboard motor, which he had first wrapped in a waterproof cloth and then sealed inside a plastic bag. He then placed the package under water between the rocks, where it would not be under direct attack from the waves, and weighed it down with a rock. He also tied the package to a rock. He had hidden reserve gasoline cans both there and on the other side in the thickets of J—Cape.
With a large flashlight hanging from his shoulder he made his way beneath the moonlight to the Decagon House. He took the room to the left of the entrance—the room with water damage and no furniture—as his own. He slept in a sleeping bag he had brought there in the afternoon.
And so the trap to catch the sinners was set.