The blog was updated every three days. There were health-conscious recipes, such as Refreshing Vegetable Sandwiches on Specialty Whole Wheat Bread and Fresh Pasta with Herbs and Tomatoes, with a few essay-style journal posts sprinkled here and there.
Satsuki and her husband lived in a luxury apartment in the heart of Tokyo. There were photos of them as an apparently happy couple, a collection of modern Scandinavian furniture, a long trip through Europe. It was the sort of affluent life the world envied.
The blog did appear to be quite popular. Each post had positive comments on it, such as You and your husband look so happy and I would love to live like this.
And yet…
“It’s a bit dull, isn’t it?” Young Shiroshi was unimpressed. “None of the posts give you a sense of her own values or aesthetics. It seems to be a curated collection of all the things society in general considers ‘happiness.’”
“Huh… Yeah, I guess it does feel a little like that.”
But wasn’t that normal these days?
“All right. I have one more request for you, Seiji. Find out if anything odd happened to Satsuki. It’s likely to have been about four months ago.”
“Why four months?”
“Because that is when the unpleasant emails stopped—and also when Satsuki fell pregnant.”
That answer was a bit cryptic. The two things seemed unconnected to Seiji, but like the old saying goes, It’s hard to tell a poor thinker from a sleeping one. All else aside, he was earning two thousand yen an hour.
“Oh, found something. What about this?”
According to the post, Satsuki had had her college reunion four months ago. Technically, the information wasn’t in the post itself but in one of the comments.
Looking forward to seeing you at the reunion tomorrow. Let’s all sing the school song together. It’s been too long since I really drank, so let’s go wild!
The comment seemed to have been left by a classmate, someone named Saori Toribeno. That sounded like it might be her actual name.
“Would you try running a search for that name?”
“On it. Oh, there she… Huh? A horror blog?”
The blog was called Horror Editor, Coming Through!
Apparently, Saori was a writer for an occult monthly magazine; she collected real-life scary stories through interviews, then compiled them into books. She’d put out a call for stories to readers of her blog as well, and she met with and interviewed people whose anecdotes she’d decided to include. She was a pretty enthusiastic worker.
“You ask me, it’s kind of a creepy blog.”
Even the design was ominous. Her interviews seemed to cover this area, too, and incredibly, the park where they served those free meals was showcased as “The Suicide Bathroom.”
According to the post, an elderly homeless woman had hanged herself in a public restroom in the park, and ever since, similar suicides kept happening there. Strangely, no notes were ever found. It was almost as if people had been possessed by the old woman’s ghost and had hanged themselves before they knew what was happening.
Yikes!
Shuddering, Seiji was about to quietly leave the page when—
“Hmm? Wait just a moment,” Shiroshi said, stopping him. His eyes were focused on the last blog entry, and his gaze was surprisingly serious.
“…The Detective Who Summons Death?”
It was less like a scary story than the summary of an urban legend that had been popular on social media at one point. Somewhere in Tokyo, it said, there was an extremely sharp private detective who occasionally went to murder scenes and solved incidents on request from the Metropolitan Police Department.
Always right on the money. Quick, ingenious solutions. He definitely qualified as a master detective.
However, after the incidents were solved, someone invariably died. That “someone” was nearly always the bad guy, the person who’d been identified as the criminal.
Huh? That’s weird.
Online stories were notoriously unreliable to begin with, and this one seemed like patently ridiculous gossip. Even so, Seiji felt something cold crawl up his spine. As he was puzzling over it, out of nowhere, Shiroshi spoke. “I’ve got a bad feeling about that.”
“Huh? You too? It is strangely creepy, isn’t it?”
“Not that; it just reminded me of a slightly troublesome acquaintance of mine.”
“…Don’t tell me you actually know this detective.”
“Heh-heh-heh. I really couldn’t say. Either way, he is someone it’s much better not to know.”
Mentally knocking on wood, Seiji closed the page. He was curious about the details on that, but it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Well, in any case: mission accomplished.
“Fine work—you did well. I believe I’ll ask Beniko to set up an appointment for me.”
Then wouldn’t it have been better to have Beniko do this in the first place?
Thinking it was one thing, but saying it aloud could cost him his wages, so he kept his mouth shut. Silent pheasants don’t get shot.
“Now then, it’s time we had dinner. Are you fond of cattle?”
“I’m crazy about them! As long as we slice them up into beef !”
“Why don’t we have sukiyaki, then?”
“I bet nothing could make the cow happier!”
The beef sukiyaki tasted like paradise, and that was putting it mildly. If it meant he’d be turned into something that tasty, he’d have no regrets about coming back as a cow in his next life.
After the feast, Seiji was given one of the guest rooms to stay in. As someone who’d had nowhere to go just a little while earlier, he couldn’t have been more grateful.
The house seemed to have been furnished in two styles: traditional Japanese to the left of the entrance hall and European to the right. The room Seiji had been assigned was a Western-style one on the far right side of the second floor, while the baths on the far left side of the first floor were purely Japanese. As he soaked in the sort of cypress wood tub he would have expected to find at a traditional inn, it felt so good that he found himself groaning like a squashed frog. It felt like his soul would be rinsed away along with the grime and dirt.
When he got out of the bath, the clothes he’d shucked off had been collected as if it should be expected in a place like this, and a new set was waiting for him.
His mood had been completely reset. And so, of course, he woke up feeling fantastic the next morning.
“Good morning, Seiji. You have some very memorable bed head again today.”
“…It just does what it wants.”
They ate in the study, as they had the day before. The table was covered with omelets, pancakes, and other Western-style dishes. As he was cheerfully putting away a piping-hot pancake, Shiroshi broke the silence.
“Were your accommodations comfortable? If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to mention it.”
If Seiji had been a three-year-old kid, he would have immediately started yelling, Adopt me! Sadly, he was a twenty-two-year-old kid, so he limited himself to asking if there were seconds on the pancakes.
Once they’d finished eating, Shiroshi started another conversation.
“By the way, Seiji. Regarding the matter of Satsuki…”
Apparently, he’d managed to get an appointment with the editor, Saori Toribeno. He said they’d arranged to meet at a café in front of the station in a little while, but—
“If possible, I’d like you to join us.”
“Huh? What should I do, specifically?”
“Well, let’s see. Do you think you could sit beside me and nod with a knowing look on your face?”
Right, that settled it: He’d bravely go full-on yes-man.
Three hours later, they were on their way to the café. Although Beniko ordinarily did the driving, she happened to be away on other business that day, so they called a taxi to take them instead.
The majority of the café’s customers were women, and as a pair of young men—one of whom was a beautiful kid in traditional clothing—they stood out whether they wanted to or not. Seiji could feel people sneaking glances at them from all directions.
“We’re here to meet someone. Ms. Toribeno.”
“Oh, yes, she’s sitting at a table in the back. Follow me, please.”