Satsuki blinked again in that exaggerated way. “No, I don’t,” she said curtly, shaking her head. Something about her attitude seemed odd. Then, awkwardly, she averted her eyes. “Actually, there’s something I should have mentioned earlier.”
“What is it?”
“I haven’t gotten one of those messages in the past four months.”
Frankly, that was a bit of an anticlimax.
From what Satsuki said, the emails had shown up at least once every three days, and then they’d just stopped coming.
Didn’t that mean the problem was solved? On the surface, it seemed like this case was all wrapped up.
“Yes, that was what I thought as well. And yet… I still have this sense of foreboding. Like I need to do something, or I’ll end up miserable. Like something irreparable will happen to me.” Satsuki’s face was taut and worried, but then she forced a smile, laughing at herself. “I sound strange, don’t I? Even I don’t think it makes sense. My first pregnancy may have made my emotions rather fragile.”
Shiroshi blinked as if she’d surprised him. “My, you’re expecting?”
“Yes, I’m in my fifth month. I was just on my way to visit my obstetrician.”
A soft smile formed on her lips. The hand she pressed to her belly seemed even gentler than a mother bird caring for an egg.
She looked happy.
Huh?
Just then, Seiji got a vague feeling that something was off. He couldn’t figure out what it was, though. Was it just his imagination?
“I’m sorry for telling you such an odd story. I just haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it.”
“Not even your husband?” Shiroshi asked.
Wincing, Satsuki lowered her eyes. “My husband has been acting strange,” she began, then hesitated, pausing for a moment. “He’s begun to smoke more heavily than normal lately. I’ve told him over and over that it’s bad for the baby, but he never really listens.”
“That must be frustrating.”
“He doesn’t seem to understand that he’s about to be a father. He is a man, so perhaps that’s inevitable to some extent, but sometimes I feel as if he’s distancing himself from this child.”
Her husband, Ryousuke Otose, was an up-and-coming graphic designer.
Due to the nature of his work, he regularly pulled all-nighters. So when they got married, they’d promised one another to spend his few days off eating out at restaurants or shopping together. Lately, though, her husband had just been going out on his own instead.
Her biggest concern was his careless attitude toward their child. When she tried to talk to him about things for the baby, he’d respond with a half-hearted “Yeah” or “Uh-huh,” and when it was really bad, he’d cut her off with an irritated growl.
It was almost like he thought his wife was pregnant with some sort of monster.
“Could he be—?” Seiji almost said cheating but hastily stopped himself. Extra stress during pregnancy wasn’t good. “Maybe it’s that ‘maternity blues’ stuff?”
“Um, I think it would be ‘paternity blues’ for men.”
This always happened when he tried using foreign terms he wasn’t used to.
“Well, I can see how you’d want to clear up as many worries as possible,” Seiji continued. “So, Satsuki, you want Shiroshi to find the culprit?”
“No, thank you. On the contrary, I’d like to leave the matter of that email alone for now. I don’t want to risk disturbing anything.”
“Huh? But you said it was troubling you.”
“Yes, so I was wondering if there was any way to set my mind at ease.”
That didn’t make much sense.
Apparently Seiji wasn’t the only one who thought so. With a clink of porcelain on porcelain, Shiroshi returned his teacup to its saucer. “That’s quite odd,” he said. “All alone in the house, pregnant, your husband away. If you felt a sense of foreboding under those circumstances, wouldn’t you ordinarily assume your instincts were trying to alert you to something?”
“Huh? Uh…”
“In the end, you don’t know who sent those emails. The sender could be lying in wait for you at this very moment. Didn’t the thought ever cross your mind?”
“E-excuse me, I really must be going—”
Satsuki hastily rose from her chair, but Shiroshi caught her hand, stopping her. “You do know who the sender is, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You had your suspicions all along. Your behavior implies you’re aware of their current situation, and you’re certain they won’t be able to harm you.”
“How rude! I have no idea who’d send me threatening emails!” Temper flaring, Satsuki raised her voice.
As gently as if he were releasing a struggling butterfly, Shiroshi let go of her hand. “For starters, that sentence itself doesn’t quite constitute a threat,” he murmured, tilting his head to one side. “At first glance, the phrase ‘Want to hang yourself?’ does appear to be a threat—something akin to ‘Die’ or ‘I’ll kill you’; however, strictly speaking, it’s an invitation. The latter is an order or statement of intent, while the former lets the recipient decide whether to accept or refuse.”
Now that he mentioned it, he was right.
“One might even interpret it as an invitation to hang yourself with the sender. If, for example, the sender was male, it could be proposing a lovers’ suicide—”
Immediately, Satsuki stood up, her face pale. “This is offensive. I’m leaving!”
As she pulled her designer bag over her shoulder, its bottom connected with her teacup. By the time Seiji’s surprise had registered, a bright scarlet stain had spread across the table. Startled, Satsuki looked back momentarily, a shocked expression on her face, before turning and leaving the room.
“What the heck…?”
What was that all about? Shiroshi’s remarks had been pretty rude, but the woman’s anger had seemed like an overreaction. No, more importantly—
“What kind of yokai is an aobouzu?”
Asking the walking encyclopedia in front of him seemed faster than checking through the book.
“Hmm,” Shiroshi said, thinking for a moment. “That’s a good question; it’s rather difficult to describe in general terms. The legend varies from region to region, yet all variants describe it as a large monk in a blue robe.”
“Huh… Okay.”
“In the folklore of Kagawa Prefecture, however, we find the following anecdote…”
One day at noon, while a young childminder was alone in the house with her charge, a blue monk appeared who repeatedly asked her if she wanted to hang herself. Growing annoyed, the girl ignored him, but just like that, the monk caught her, knocked her out, and hanged her.
“He sounds like your basic phantom killer.”
In the end, some of the neighbors had heard the baby crying and rescued the girl, or so the story went. Still, any yokai that forcibly strung you up by the neck was pretty terrifying. That aside—
“That ‘Ya wanna hang yerself’ line sounds just like the email, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. The way she chose to ignore it and refuse to respond is the same as well.”
Did that mean someone was going to hang Satsuki? A chill shuddered down Seiji’s spine, but then something struck him as odd. “Wait… This seems weird. From what Satsuki said, it sounded like she was just a victim, but…”
Shiroshi’s working theory was that Seiji’s left eye revealed the hidden sins of whoever it looked at. If the aobouzu indicated a crime Satsuki had committed, it would mean that she was a criminal as well.
“I’m not certain of that. At the very least, I do think she’s hiding something. Part of that ‘something’ may be a sin of which we’re not yet aware.” Shiroshi chuckled. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “Now then, Seiji, I have a favor to ask you.”
No sooner had he spoken than Beniko reappeared with the tea wagon and set a laptop on the table. It was the very latest model, of course.
“I’d like you to locate Satsuki’s blog.”
“…Sure, but…”
The client had walked out on them. Did they even have the right to pry into this further?
“I can’t abide leaving anything unfinished. Naturally, I’ll pay you for your time. How does two thousand yen per hour sound?”
“! I’ll start looking right away!”
In the spirit of striking while the iron was hot, Seiji booted up the computer and started typing keywords into a search engine. It didn’t take him long to find it.