Chapter 7: An Earlier Customer

December 13, ten in the morning.

White fluorescent lights stretched along the ceiling. The walls on either side of the corridor were white too.

Every time Jingniao came this way, the glare hurt his eyes. He took the sunglasses he always carried from his jacket pocket, put them on, and continued down the corridor. The closer he came to the room at the end, the stronger the distinctive chemical smell and the barely masked stench of corpses grew.

In the morgue, Matsuo's body lay on the autopsy table. A trolley beside it was covered with bloody instruments, and a basin on the floor held an assortment of foul-smelling bodily fluids.

Jingniao saw no one when he entered, but he could hear water running in the adjoining washroom. He waited in the middle of the room for a while before Kuwabara pushed open the washroom door and came in.

“Ah, Mr. Jingniao. Come to collect the autopsy report yourself? Haha, everyone's been looking pretty frazzled lately.” Kuwabara Junichi was, to put it simply, a cheerful fellow. He always wore his hair in a crew cut and sported a pair of old-fashioned glasses with thick black frames. He greeted everyone with a happy smile, as if there were something to be pleased about every moment of the day. On first meeting him, you would never have guessed that he spent his working days dealing with the dead.

“You've been working hard too, Kuwabara-kun,” Jingniao replied.

“Well... I'm doing all right, really. Autopsies aren't actually all that stressful. I'd feel worse sitting around with nothing to do,” Kuwabara replied with a grin.

“So, what's the confirmed cause of death?” Jingniao dispensed with further pleasantries and got down to business.

Kuwabara replied, “Insufficient oxygen to the brain, an obstructed airway. Either one will kill you. When they happen together...” He didn't finish. The result was already lying before them.

Picking up a scalpel from the trolley, Kuwabara pointed at Matsuo's face. “This black cross is worth mentioning.”

Jingniao's expression shifted slightly. “What about it?”

“You haven't heard, Mr. Jingniao?” Kuwabara adjusted his glasses. “This isn't the only body with a cross on its face.”

“Oh?” Jingniao gave him a questioning look, though he already had a fairly good idea of the answer.

Kuwabara replied, “The one brought in yesterday evening...” He glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the mortuary drawers nearby. “The high school student who was cut into all those pieces. He had one on his face too.”

Jingniao said thoughtfully, “As I suspected... A teacher and his student murdered a day apart, both with that mark on their faces...”

Kuwabara added, “Actually, it's not just those two.”

This unexpected remark really did surprise Jingniao. “What?”

Kuwabara said, “The Third Precinct, next to ours, has found similar black crosses, also on the victims' faces. The horizontal stroke seals the mouth like a strip of tape, and the vertical one runs from the forehead to the chin.”

“How many more victims like that?” Jingniao asked quickly.

Kuwabara answered, “I only heard about it yesterday myself. They found the first body with a black cross on its face on December 7. As of yesterday morning, they had three in total.”

Jingniao turned and left, muttering, “Bastard... At least five already... So that's it. I can't wait any longer...”

“Mr. Jingniao, your autopsy report!” Kuwabara called after him, but Jingniao never came back.

Ever.

……

December 8, three fifteen in the afternoon.

“Damn it. Why live in some dump where only a few buses come through each day? Making me walk all this way.” Matsuo trudged through the cold wind in a ridiculously thick down coat.

“No, I can't take any more of this. I've got to find somewhere to rest first.” Matsuo looked around. Out here in the middle of nowhere, there wasn't even a decent shop by the road. Apart from houses, there were only vegetable stalls that didn't even have doors.

At last he spotted a bookshop and dashed inside as if fleeing for his life.

“Phew... At least this place has heating.” Matsuo shut the door and let out a long breath.

“What a chore, having to visit some poor student's home in this freezing weather.” Tian Yi lounged behind the desk, holding a book wrapped in a black cover. He didn't seem to have any intention of even looking up at Matsuo.

“Hm?” Matsuo paused in surprise. “Um... are you talking to me?”

Tian Yi ignored him and went on as if talking to himself. “Having a shabby little wretch like that in my class is such an eyesore.”

Matsuo suddenly realized something, and his expression changed.

“The girls in class really are getting prettier by the day. Heh heh heh...” Tian Yi gave a lecherous chuckle.

Matsuo didn't find it funny at all. He strode toward the desk. “You bastard! What are you saying over there?”

Tian Yi laid the book flat on the desk, opened it to the first page, turned it around, and pushed it toward Matsuo.

White paper, purple ink. Both the color and the handwriting were unsettling. Written there was a person's name—or rather, the title of the book: Matsuo Genki.

Matsuo glared at Tian Yi and demanded, “Hey! What's the meaning of this? Who are you? Who put you up to this?”

In a fraction of a second, Tian Yi's indifferent gaze turned cold and deadly. He held Matsuo's eyes for just one second, and Matsuo could no longer get a single word out.

“Mr. Matsuo, you can have a look through this book for free first.” Tian Yi sank back into his armchair, stretched, and yawned. “Then we'll discuss a deal.”

Ten minutes passed.

Matsuo stood there with a mixture of emotions on his face, reading the innermost thoughts of his forty-odd years.

Tian Yi decided that was enough. He abruptly reached out and took the book from Matsuo's hands. “All right, there's nothing here worth spending any more time on.”

At a loss, Matsuo asked nervously, “You... just what are you...”

Tian Yi had no time to listen to him laboriously squeeze out one word after another, so he cut him off. “As far as I'm concerned, this thing of yours is like a stack of toilet paper bound together, every sheet already used to wipe someone's ass. Reading it has deeply wounded my fingers, my eyes, and my soul. Therefore...” He stared at Matsuo. “I'd very much like to unload this book on you quickly, at a low price.”

Matsuo stared blankly for two seconds, then nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes! How much do you want? I'll buy it right now...” As he spoke, he actually reached for his wallet.

Tian Yi waved him to a stop. “No need. If I wanted something like money, I could simply rob a bank. Or tell someone else how to rob a bank and take a cut. Or tell someone else how to rob a bank, then rob them afterward... Hmm... I'm getting a little off track. Anyway, you don't have to buy this book with money. You just have to agree to do something for me.”

Matsuo immediately grew wary. He was the sort who weighed the gains and losses before doing anything. “What do you want me to do?”

But Tian Yi's answer soon put him at ease. “Put this package in the Miura family's mailbox for me.” As he spoke, he took a large envelope from a drawer and placed it on the desk.

From its outline, the package looked like a book inside an envelope. Matsuo thought for a moment, then asked, “Hey, this isn't anything dangerous, is it?”

Tian Yi said, “Don't worry, it's just a videotape. Don't open the envelope. Just put it straight into the Miura family's mailbox. You should know his address.” As he spoke, he picked up a pen and wrote a line on the envelope: To Miura Kazuya.

“Well? Have you decided? Play postman for me once, and I'll give you your book,” Tian Yi asked with a sneer.

Matsuo's response was entirely predictable. He tucked the package inside his coat. “You'd better keep your word.”

“That depends on how well you do.” Tian Yi's tone was mocking. “Don't get any ideas about taking it home for a look first. As for what you get up to...” He patted Matsuo's Book of the Heart on the desk. “I do know a thing or two.”

“Tch...” Matsuo turned and left.

He hadn't asked why the man wanted him to do this, nor had he considered why there was a book filled with his innermost thoughts. His reaction was exactly the same as Ikeda's two days later. Faced with an absurd reality, he neither questioned it nor ignored it. He chose to make a deal, chose to play by someone else's rules.

Watching Matsuo disappear through the doorway, Tian Yi couldn't help chuckling and shaking his head. He took a sip of coffee, picked up another black-covered book from the floor, and once again began reading with relish.