Chapter 6: The Second Victim

December 12. The police had withdrawn from the school, and everything in the classroom building had returned to normal. How people felt would never be the same.

The staffroom seemed peaceful, and the teachers did their best to behave as usual, chatting, resting, scolding students. But every so often, one of them would glance at Matsuo's old seat, and in that moment, they couldn't quite have said what they felt.

Since it was their homeroom teacher who had died, and a replacement could not be found at such short notice, the school had temporarily assigned a substitute to Ikeda's class.

He was an elderly man with graying hair, probably a retired teacher brought in from outside. Seeing someone his age still cycling to school through the biting wind to make himself useful, you couldn't help feeling a little sorry for him.

Whether he truly cared about teaching or simply needed the money, he was still far better than someone like Matsuo. Even if the students didn't exactly respect him, at least they didn't loathe him the way they had Matsuo.

Half the day slipped quietly by. Some people did bring up Matsuo, but they were nowhere near as eager to talk about him as they had been yesterday. Perhaps that was the saddest thing about being human. We are far too easily forgotten by our own kind, because each of us remembers only ourselves.

"Miura." Ikeda walked up to him and called him by name.

Miura's expression changed at once. That Ikeda would dare approach him and speak first came as quite a surprise. Miura bullied him all the time; Ikeda hardly ever spoke to him of his own accord, and even when forced to exchange a few words, he always began with a respectful form of address. Today, though, he had simply said "Miura," his face serious.

"What is it?" Miura recovered quickly. He guessed this unusual behavior must have something to do with the night before last.

Could Soggy Mosquito Coil have seen me?

Miura's fear proved unfounded, but something even worse happened. Ikeda's next words struck him like a thunderbolt.

"September fourth."

With that, Ikeda calmly turned away and returned to his seat as though nothing had happened.

Miura did not call him back. He just sat there in shock, his eyes unfocused.

Halfway through the first afternoon lesson, Miura suddenly said he felt ill and left the classroom. He then went to the staffroom, asked permission to leave early, and headed home.

"Kill him... kill him... bastard... that bastard... I've got to kill him..." From the moment he left the classroom, Miura kept muttering through gritted teeth, the vicious look on his face enough to make anyone's skin crawl.

September fourth. Few people knew what those words meant, and Ikeda certainly wasn't one of them. He had said them to Miura only because it was the condition of his bargain with Tian Yi.

"Just say 'September fourth' to Miura at one tomorrow afternoon. Once you've done that, you can come to me to complete our deal."

Thinking back to what Tian Yi had said, Ikeda still couldn't make sense of it, but it no longer mattered. All he had to do was say something meaningless. What consequences could that possibly have?

That evening, a few stray cats knocked over a trash can while hunting for food, and Miura's head rolled out.

That was how his body came to be discovered in an alley. The alley was not on his route home, and his family later confirmed that he had never returned after leaving school early that day.

The police believed he had been killed elsewhere. Miura had been dismembered, his body chopped into more than ten pieces and packed into a very large garbage bag before being stuffed into the trash can.

Ikeda knew nothing of this when school ended. He could hardly wait to get to Tian Yi's bookshop. Pushing open the door, he stumbled over to Tian Yi's desk. "Quick! Tell me! Why did Matsuo sneak into the school at night? And why did Miura kill him?"

Tian Yi scratched his head and yawned. "Miura's dead."

Ikeda froze. "Wh... what... what did you say...?"

"I don't like repeating myself. It makes me look stupid. Like you."

"Impossible! He was at school today! I even said..."

"Yes, I know. Then he got permission to go home, and then he died."

"How could... how did he die?"

"Someone hacked him to death." Tian Yi took a sip of coffee, then glanced up at Ikeda. "Want to know who did it?"

"Who?"

"Want to know? Then make a trade. Give up all the information I owe you under our current deal, and I'll tell you who killed Miura." Tian Yi offered him another choice.

"Trying to trick me again?" Ikeda demanded.

"Trick you? Ridiculous. You've always been free to choose in our deals. Don't blame me for your stupidity." Tian Yi sneered.

This time, Ikeda thought it over long and hard before answering. "I want the original information. I'm sticking with my choice!"

Tian Yi kept up the mockery. "Oh, so you're being stubborn this time. Still stupid, though." He put both hands behind his head and began. "First, why Matsuo went to school. Very simple. Miura asked him to."

"Why?" Ikeda asked.

"I'll explain that once I've given you the general picture," said Tian Yi. "Miura had decided from the outset to silence him for good. That day, he deliberately stayed late before going home. Once the students on cleaning duty and the janitors had all left, he tampered with a sliding window on the ground floor. All it took was a strip of clear tape. From either side, the window looked closed, but there was actually a tiny gap keeping it from locking.

At ten that night, he phoned Matsuo, then headed to the school with the tools he'd prepared for the murder.

Matsuo arrived shortly afterward. He wasn't stupid either. Being asked to come to an empty school in the middle of the night struck him as very suspicious, but Miura had mentioned a large sum on the phone, and Matsuo couldn't control his greed.

The staffroom had a sliding door. Miura stretched a wire across the doorway just behind it, fifteen centimeters above the floor. Obviously, he couldn't turn on the lights, and in the dim light, all Matsuo could make out when he opened the door was the cash box on the desk. Sure enough, the fellow didn't disappoint. He stepped forward eagerly and immediately tripped. Miura sprang out from the shadows in the corner behind the door and pinned him down with his weight so he couldn't get up. Then he quickly pressed a knee against the back of Matsuo's neck, gripped the rope with both hands, and strangled him.

With this method, you pull upward to tighten the rope, and the reaction force pins the victim firmly to the floor. Even someone with average arm strength can strangle a much stronger person that way. Naturally, a big, burly student like Miura had no trouble strangling the scrawny Matsuo.

Once Matsuo stopped breathing, Miura hung him up. That wasn't much effort for him either. He gathered up the wire, checked for footprints he'd left while climbing onto things, and wiped them away. Then he put everything that might serve as evidence into the empty cash box he'd brought along. Miura had pulled off a fairly decent murder.

The problem came when he'd shut the door and was about to leave. He heard you coming upstairs."

The more Ikeda heard, the more frightened he became. Tian Yi had recounted a murder so casually. "Then Miura hid in the dark and watched me?"

"Exactly," Tian Yi said. "He actually considered killing you then, but in the end he didn't. You did us proud by not screaming or shitting yourself in the corridor. All you did was meddle a little where you didn't need to, and Miura didn't bother with you any further. He'd covered everything perfectly, after all." Tian Yi took another sip of coffee. "Of course, I think if he hadn't been so meticulous beforehand, he might have gone all the way and killed you too. It was precisely because he'd done such a good job making Matsuo's death look like suicide that he didn't want any extra complications."

Remembering all the terrifying things he'd seen the night before last, and now knowing that a pair of hands capable of killing him at any moment had been there in the darkness all along, Ikeda felt a belated surge of fear. His back was already drenched in cold sweat.

Tian Yi continued, "Now let's go back to the original question. Why did Miura ask Matsuo to come to school?

You should have been able to guess most of it from what I just said. Matsuo... was indeed trying to blackmail Miura. Miura was the son of the director of a large hospital, after all. His family had plenty of money.

Matsuo had got hold of something he could use against Miura, but a man like Matsuo didn't dare blackmail his father directly. So he told Miura things like, 'Steal the family bankbook, beg your father, whatever it takes.' And that led to this murder."

Ikeda asked, "What did he have on him? And how did Miura end up getting killed? Who wanted him dead?"

Tian Yi rubbed his chin and said indifferently, "What did he have on him? Hmm... what could it be? Perhaps something that happened on September fourth last year."