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  The closets in both of the bedrooms on the second floor were sealed with thick layers of strong tape (although the tape in the master bedroom showed signs of having been peeled off). From the fingerprint analysis, it was determined that Takeo Saeki had sealed the doors with the tape. It was theorized that the tape was put there to keep someone in, but no one was found in either closet.

  Even as the investigation progressed, the mysteries were not solved. Rather, they became deeper. The fingerprints on the knife stuck in Takeo Saeki’s back were positively identified.

  All oi the detectives in charge of the case were puzzled.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  The fingerprints on the handle of the knife belonged to none other than Kayako Saeki, whose body had been found in the attic of her family home!

  CHAPTER THREE

  On June 22, 1893, at 3:34 p.m., the British flagship Victoria collided with another ship and sank in the Mediterranean Sea off Tripoli, on the northern coast of Africa. Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon, along with many members of his crew, perished in the accident.

  On the day of the accident, Vice Admiral Tryon s wife was at home in Eastern Square, hosting a splendid party with many guests.

  Just after 3:30 p.m., one of the female guests saw Vice Admiral Tryon passing through the living room, and exchanged greetings with him. Immediately after that, the guest found Mrs. Tryon in another room, and struck up a conversation.

  “I had no idea your husband was at home.”

  “No, hes not here,” the hostess said, shaking her head from side to side.

  “But … I just saw him in the living room.”

  “No, that’s not possible. He is out at sea on the Victoria.”

  But another woman, who was standing nearby, spoke up.

  “I just saw him a few moments ago as well. I bowed to him, and he smiled and bowed back at me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excuse me. I also just passed the Vice Admiral in the hallway and exchanged greetings,” said another guest, this time a man.

  Mrs. Try on was still only half convinced, but she and the other guests split up and searched the house. Of course, no one found any sign of Vice Admiral Tryon. Several hours later, the news that her husband was killed in an accident involving the Victoria reached the hostess.

  The cause of the accident of the Victoria was soon determined, but no one has been able to explain the mysterious appearance of Vice Admiral Tryon at his home at the exact moment of the accident.

  Kazumi

  “Don’t you think it’s really cheap?” asked Kazumi Tokunaga to her husband, as she lightly tapped the newly repaired wooden crosspiece of the window with her fist. “It’s close to the train station, pretty big, and the price just can’t be beat.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Don’t you think it’s a little too cheap?” said her husband, Katsuya Tokunaga, who was looking around the next room.

  In response, the sales woman from the real estate agent laughed and said, “Well, it is a rather old building.”

  That was clear. A long time had passed since this house was built. The interior was completely remodeled and the tatami mats had been replaced with new ones, but the paint on the outside was peeling, the rain troughs were bent out of shape, and part o{ the outside wall was chipped. But, it was also clear that the price was incredibly low, considering the location and the size of the house.

  “Yes, it is a bit too low, even for a used house. Why is that?” Kazumi asked the real estate lady. “Was there a murder here or something?”

  “What?” The woman, wearing a short, light-green skirt suit, arched her thin, crescent-shaped eyebrows in surprise, and then laughed, batting her mascara-laden eyelashes. “It is a very reasonable price, but I don’t think anything like that happened here.”

  “So, why is the price so low?” asked Katsuya.

  “That is a very good question,” she answered, clearly at a loss for words. She shrugged, the light reflecting off her large earrings. She had no idea of the terrible events that had happened in this house.

  Although a warm spring breeze was blowing outside, the house, which had been unoccupied for a long time, was cold, like a winter day. The three of them, Katsuya and Kazumi Tokunaga, and the woman from the real estate agency, took their time looking around the house, starting on the first floor and making their way upstairs. The steep stairs were situated right off the entrance, and above the entrance, on the stairwell, was a window to one of the second-floor rooms.

  As the three of them climbed the stairs, a woman’s shadow appeared in that window, a woman in white with long hair. But no one, not a single one of them, noticed the shadow pass.

  On the second floor, two rooms of the same size were situated side by side. One was a western-style room with wooden flooring, and the other was a Japanese-style room with tatami mats. The western room was likely originally a Japanese-style room, but had been remodeled with wooden flooring. In the corner of the room was a Japanese-style sliding door, presumably to a closet of sorts.

  “Hrmmm,” sighed Katsuya. “I’m still undecided …”

  Katsuya Tokunaga was thirty-four years old. His wife Kazumi was twenty-eight. They had married two years ago, in the spring.

  The paint manufacturer that Katsuya worked for was not a major player in the industry, and his salary was, honestly, not all that good. Owning their own house was something that they had only ever dreamed about, but this was a great deal. The mortgage payments would not be easy, but considering the fact that his mother, who

  was suffering from senile dementia, had moved in with them a few months before, and that they were expecting a baby at the end o{ the year, they would probably need this much space anyway.

  “Do we have to decide now?” Katsuya asked the sales woman, staring at her face and thinking she looked like she was all decked out to go to work in one of the high-class nightclubs in Roppongi.

  “As they say, the early bird gets the worm. A house like this, another buyer could show up at any moment,” smiled the sales lady, her face impeccably made up. Her earrings sparkled again.

  After checking out the second floor, they all descended to the first-floor entrance. It was then that Kazumi spotted a few pieces of mail on the shoe box at the entrance. She picked them up nonchalantly and checked the names. One of them was addressed to a Takeo Saeki, another to a Kayako Saeki, another to a Noriko Murakami, and yet another to a Hiroshi and Yoshimi Kitada.

  “What are these?” asked Kazumi.

  “They’re probably addressed to the previous occupants. Please just leave them there, I’ll take care of them later,” replied the real estate woman.

  Takeo Saeki, Kayako Saeki, Noriko Murakami, Hiroshi and Yoshimi Kitada … Not a single one of these people were still among the living. But, no one in the house now had any way of knowing this fact.

  The whole house was cold, but it seemed that here, at the bottom of the stairs, was the coldest point. Kazumi shivered. She thought it was probably due to the layout of the stairwell and the high ceiling.

  No, Kazumi may have actually noticed. She may have faintly noticed that there was something terribly wrong in the air in this house. But her desire to purchase the house dulled her natural instincts.

  “Come on, why don’t we buy it? I doubt we’d be able to find another house for the same price. Come on, let’s get it,” Kazumi said to her husband, who was looking up the stairs with a thoughtful expression on his face. Kazumi wanted to buy the house. No, actually she really just wanted to get out of that tiny apartment. She just knew she would go crazy if she had to spend any more time in that small, old apartment with her demented mother-in-law.

  “Yeah, why not. Let’s buy it,” answered Katsuya.

  “Thank you very much,” said the real estate sales lady, bowing. Her lustrous, chestnut-brown hair lightly brushed her slender shoulders.

  “Great,” Kazumi chimed cheerfully. And the woman in white, i
n the stairwell window, also smiled, just as happy as Kazumi.

  The Tokunaga family moved into their new house one Sunday at the end of March. It was a very hurried affair. The couple decided on the second-floor western-style room for their bedroom, and put their big, brass bed there. Katsuya’s mother, Sachie, was put in the Japanese-style room on the first floor, and they decided to use the Japanese-style room on the second floor for their baby, who was to be born at the end of the year.

  “Mom, this is our new house. We’re going to live here from today,” Kazumi said as she took her husband’s mother by the hand, and opened the front door.

  At that moment, Sachie’s hitherto emotionless face changed.

  She opened her eyes wide, her jowls shuddered, her entire body went stiff, and she stopped cold right in front of the door.

  “What’s wrong, Mother? Come on, let’s go in,” Kazumi said, trying to get Sachie in the door. But her mother-in-law stood fast, refusing to move another step.

  Kazumi sighed, looking at her mother-in-law.

  It’s started already, she thought. Although she was only sixty-seven, Katsuya’s mother looked much, much older.

  Two years ago, in the autumn, Katsuya’s bedridden father passed away. Sachie had spent a long time caring for her husband all by herself, and his death was probably the trigger that set Sachie’s symptoms in motion. Not even six months after her husband’s funeral, her dementia began to appear. For a while they relied on a social worker to care for her, but last autumn, it was decided that she would live with Kazumi and her husband in their apartment.

  Kazumi’s life, with the three of them in that small apartment, was much different from what she imagined it would be before she married Katsuya. Her demented mother-in-law probably didn’t know this, but Kazumi was unable to moan loudly when making love with her husband, knowing someone was in the next room, and she hadn’t had an orgasm in a long time. Lying in a naked embrace all morning with her husband on his day off was now but a far-off dream. Late one night, while she and Katsuya were making love, her mother-in-law suddenly opened the door to their room. At that time, she seriously considered getting a divorce and moving back in with her parents.

  Her sweet newlywed life had only lasted for a fleeting moment.

  There are some things in life that one just has to give up. She understood this. This is reality. But still… she was disappointed. She didn’t understand why she had to walk down this thorny path.

  Of course, she still loved Katsuya. She thought she did, anyway. But, if… if she had known it would turn out this way … she probably wouldn’t have married him. Yes, there were other part-ners out there, possibly better, richer men, men who could have made her very happy. But…

  “Mother, what’s wrong? This is your new home. Let’s go in,” Kazumi repeated softly, controlling the frustration in her voice. But her mother-in-law would not budge. She stood in front of the entrance, her eyes wide open and her face contorted in what looked like fear, staring at the door.

  “Mother, what’s wrong? Why don’t you like our new house?”

  Her mother-in-law’s mouth, missing several teeth, moved. She seemed to be saying something, but Kazumi couldn’t hear it.

  “What? What is it?” Kazumi’s voice betrayed her frustration.

  “No … something’s here … no … something’s here,” Kazumi’s mother-in-law repeated her nonsensical words over and over. Just like always.

  “What’s here?! Give me a break! Katsuya! Hey, Katsuya,” Kazumi was nearly hysterical, yelling out for her husband who was somewhere in the house. “Come here! Your mother refuses to step in the house! Hey!”

  Today was supposed to be a happy occasion, moving into their new house, so she didn’t want to make a fuss, but what else could she do?

  “Katsuya, what are you doing? Katsuya,” Kazumi kept calling her husband in her hysterical voice, while her mother-in-law looked up at the room above the stairwell.

  “No … something’s here,” Sachie repeated.

  Sachie noticed. She noticed the longhaired woman in white on the other side oi the clouded window on the second floor, silently

  looking down at them. She knew that the woman held very sinister intentions, an uncontrolled hatred toward Sachie’s family. She knew that an unspeakable horror and unhappiness would soon descend upon them. She picked up on these things instinctively. But neither Kazumi nor Katsuya noticed.

  Kazumi was awoken by a ruckus from downstairs.

  Yes, there was definitely a noise from the first floor, someone moving around. Doors swinging open and closed, someone walking in the hall, the refrigerator being opened, the shower tap being turned on, someone putting on and taking oii their shoes at the entrance, the toilet flushing. It had to be her senile mother-in-law.

  “Mother, what are you doing?” Kazumi said, loud enough for her husband, sleeping soundly beside her, to hear. “What’s she doing at this hour of the night?”

  She quietly looked over at Katsuya to gauge his reaction, but he was still sleeping like a baby, showing no signs of having heard her.

  That old hag, I wish shed hurry up and die.

  Kazumi shook her head, thinking she was a very bad person for even entertaining such thoughts.

  She thought that she had become a bad person over the past few months. She did not notice this side to herself until her mother-in-law had come to live with them. She had been a good person, fair and kind to anyone, liked by everyone she met. She wondered what happened to her.

  Bothered by her conscience, Kazumi lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling in the dark. But she did not rescind her earlier thoughts.

  Old witch, hurry up and die.

  The footsteps continued from downstairs. The footsteps sounded like they were on the stairs now. Apparently, she meant to come upstairs.

  Why don’t you just trip on the stairs, fall, and die, Kazumi thought, more than half-serious.

  The footsteps were now in the second-story hallway, and sounded as if someone was dragging their leg behind them. They slowly made their way to the master bedroom. SHHH SHHH SHHH. It sounded almost like someone was dragging a plastic bag on the hard floor. Then, all of a sudden—the footsteps stopped in front of the bedroom door. They stopped dead, and Kazumi could hear no more movement. Sachie must be pressing her ear to the bedroom door.

  What’s she trying to do? Is she trying to eavesdrop on our lovemaking?

  “I can’t stand it!” cried Kazumi, pulling the covers up over her head. She thought of their baby, due at the end of the year, to help her settle down.

  Will it be a boy, or perhaps a girl? She’d heard that the mother’s emotions were perceptible to the fetus in the womb, so she had to take care not to become upset.

  Finally, the footsteps slowly made their way away from the bedroom door.

  Kazumi was standing in the kitchen, preparing breakfast. She cut pickles on the cutting board, and dropped the soybean paste in the water boiling in the pan on the stove to make miso soup. She turned over the fish she was broiling, and mixed the freshly cooked rice, to keep it fluffy. She cut the dried seaweed, and dropped fresh eggs into the hot frying pan.

  Her head was cloudy from her lack of sleep over the past several days. That was understandable. Although it had been a month since they moved in, there was not a single night when her mother-in-law had not wandered around the house at night.

  “I swear … If this keeps up, I’ll probably go crazy,” she muttered to no one in particular.

  “‘Morning,” she heard from behind her. Katsuya, still dressed in his pajamas, came into the kitchen. “Ahhhh, man, am I tired,” he said, stifling his yawn.

  “Morning,” she said back. She tried to keep her voice cheerful, but she couldn’t hide the hysteria in her voice. Katsuya didn’t even notice. He quietly opened the sliding door to his mother’s room next to the kitchen, and checked in on her.

  “She’s sleeping a lot recently, isn’t she?” he said, as he shut the door
.

  “Well, what do you expect, what with her rampaging around the house all night, she would sleep in every morning. I mean, she’s not a nocturnal animal or something. I really wish she’d stop,” Kazumi snapped. Katsuya merely smiled. She used to find his smile charming, but now it irritated her.

  “Is she really all that bad?”

  “I keep telling you. You don’t believe me, do you? It’s been a month and she’s still at it, every night,” Kazumi noticed her voice getting tenser as she said this. But she couldn’t control it. “You’ve got it good, you can sleep though it. But, think about me for a change. If this keeps up, I’ll go crazy.”

  Katsuya stared at his wife’s tense face, mumbled a feeble apology, and left the room. The only thing left in his place was the heavy air.

  Kazumi sighed, yet again.

  She knew it was wrong to blame her husband. He was doing the best he could. But, she would explode if she couldn’t release her pent-up frustration on someone.

  Hurry up and die, you hag …

  Kazumi stared at the door to her mother-in-law’s room, and thought the same dark thoughts that she had the previous night.

  But—of course she had no way of knowing that she would get her wish, very soon.

  The new house was three times bigger than their old apartment, which meant cleaning it was a lot more work. After finishing the first floor, Kazumi lugged the heavy vacuum up the stairs. She decided to start in the master bedroom.

  As soon as she opened the door, she caught a faint whiff of her husband’s body odor and wrinkled her nose.

  Were probably finished, she thought as she stood in the doorway.

  The warm spring breeze caused the cotton curtains in the bedroom to flutter. The sun peeked out softly from the clouds, reflecting off the wooden floor.