Top of the Second Inning
"This is a vulgar video……"
Vulgar was putting it lightly. Being shown the brutal footage, Martinez openly grimaced. He replayed the video once again to make sure. It was a video uploaded on a video hosting website. One man appeared in the video. Naturally his face was not shown. The location must have been in the man"s house. He was in a narrow bathroom, so this had to be at an apartment somewhere. In the room was a small and dirty dog. It was probably a stray. The man stuffed the dog into a black bag and fastened it.
The next moment the man kicked the bag.
The dog yelped. The man continuously kicked the bag. Each time the dog would howl in pain. The man then took out a knife and stabbed the bag. He relentlessly cut up the bag over and over again. There was a high pitched shriek, which sounded more anguished than usual, and the dog lashed about inside the bag. Blood seeped through the bag and poured onto the bathroom tiles endlessly.
The dog was thrashing and withering inside the bag. But then its movements started to slow. And then the whining stopped at last. It had stopped moving, taking its last breath. The footage focused on the black bag. From the torn up openings in the bag, Martinez could see the dog"s bloodstained fur. And the video ended there.
It was a footage that would make anyone want to turn away. Even for a torturer like Martinez, the brutality unsettled him. Jiro was apparently busy making a costume, so Martinez ended up helping him with his avenger work since he was free. But he ended up being tasked with a heavy case.
The client was a middle aged woman a.s.sociated with the animal welfare group.
"Isn"t it awful?" The woman searched for an approval from him with a grievous expression. "There are many more of them like that. All were treated the exact same way."
There were three other videos uploaded like this. All of them were uploaded under the same account and were identical in footage. That meant there were at least four dogs that had become victims to this brutality. And they must have committed other crimes as well. "Just how many has he killed, dammit."
"It"s horrible……These puppies haven"t done anything wrong!"
Moved to tears, the woman took out a handkerchief and wiped the corners of her eyes.
"They"ve done something horrific." Martinez gave a low groan. He decided to overlook the fact that he had done more cruel acts than the culprit in this video. "I"ll make them pay."
The woman tightened her hold on the handkerchief and stated firmly. "I want you to punish the person who took this video."
Martinez had to find the person behind the brutal video and exact revenge on the individual. So he had to put the person into a bag, kick them around and cut them up. He had to put the culprit through the same pain they did to the dogs. That was his client"s request.
So the first course of action he had to take was to confirm the individual who uploaded the video.
"Ah, h.e.l.lo? It"s me." After the meet up with his client, Martinez had made a call. This man would definitely be able to find the culprit. After all, he was the best helper with connections to the internet Martinez had. "Enokida, I have something I need you to look into. Can you meet with me today?"
"Tda! It"s done!"
Jiro held out the costume he made in front of Misaki just as she got back home from school: a mushroom-shaped wig he had trimmed himself and a dress he re-made by adding frills to a one piece dress for a child. It was a work he had pride in. He was ecstatic to be able to make a costume for his child that could transform her into a beautiful princess in just one day.
"What do you think? Here, I got you a wig too. For a princess, I thought it just had to be blonde."
But unlike the elevated Jiro, Misaki was not smiling for some reason. Jiro had thought she would be more happy about it, though.
"Wh-what"s wrong, Mischan……?"
Did she not like it? Getting nervous, when he asked that fearfully Misaki said in a small voice. "……The play "the Bamboo Kingdom and the Mushroom Kingdom" got suspended."
"Eh?"
Suspended?
"Ririchan"s mom was apparently really mad. Saying, "why wasn"t my daughter the heroine?!""
"Oh dear."
So she was one of those rumored monster parents. He understood the feeling of thinking your own child was the best, but a parent should not b.u.t.t in here. Jiro was shocked to hear this.
"The teacher made all the girls in cla.s.s the heroine as princesses so no one would be unsatisfied."
Misaki explained the whole story with an annoyed look.
"The script got revised too. Takehiko became a flirtatious prince and had relations with all the princesses, and the princesses fought over Takehiko."
"That"s rather explicit." Jiro frowned. "What on earth is this now? An afternoon drama?"
"But the princ.i.p.al shut it down in the end, and we had to drop it."
"Oh I don"t doubt it."
"So we"re doing a recital instead."
And that"s why I don"t need the costume anymore, Misaki cast her eyes downward.
"Is that the case? That"s unfortunate."
"……I"m sorry. Even though you went through all the trouble to make this for me." Misaki muttered quietly and hung her head. "I"m sorry, Jiro-chan."
Oh shoot, Jiro grimaced. Because he got so carried away when he heard she would be the heroine, he ended up making her feel guilty for this.
Due to her upbringing, she had a non-child-like aspect to her. She was modest and always had an adult-like expression. Jiro thought it would be great if she lightened up a bit more though. "It"s fine. Don"t worry about it."
"But, you put time and effort into making that……"
"Misaki, you know," Jiro placed a hand on her tiny shoulder and looked closely at her face. He then admonished to her slowly while keeping his focus on her. "Parent"s can"t help but be excited to do something for their kid"s sake."
Although he said that, a child probably would not understand.
"It"s a shame I won"t see you as the heroine." Jiro then winked. "But I"ll be there for the recital. So you better sing."
"……Okay."
She finally seemed to feel better. Jiro grinned at her when she gave him a bashful smile.
It was nine at night when Lin left the Banba Detective Office. Lin got onto the bus heading from Hakata to Tenjin, and from there he walked to his destination, the Saeki Cosmetic Clinic. It was far past the time for medical examinations, and only the director was left inside.
"Please, come in."
Saeki invited Lin to come inside and showed him to the examination room. Lin was pressed to go in and take a seat. Sitting across from a man in white clothing like this made him feel like he was the one to be examined, but he did not come here because he was unhappy with his looks. Today he came here for work. The name of the client he received from Genzo the day before was Saeki.
"I never expected you of all people to have a job for us."
Saeki gave a small smile at Lin"s comment. "It"s a small favor I"m asking for though. I just want you to look into something."
Saeki took out a file as he said that and handed it to Lin. Taking it, Lin opened it up to find several photos inside. They were all photographs of corpses lying down.
Saeki explained the details of the case. "I"ve been having these inexplicable bodies brought to me as of late. Five in just this past half year. It looks like these were all done by the same person, since the method was the same."
"Uh-huh."
"Through a collector I"m somewhat acquainted with, they were referred to me and had sent over the bodies for me to take care of. ……However, the culprit behind these murders doesn"t seem to be an acquaintance of any of my clients." Saeki said, suspectful. "They either heard of me from somewhere or they are sending the bodies anonymously. They even threatened a courier, telling them, "if you don"t dispose of them, I"ll kill you.""
"That"s unsettling."
In this industry, irregular customers had a high possibility of causing trouble. There was room for concern.
"So you want me to find the culprit and kill them, right?" Lin asked.
"Precisely." Saeki nodded. "I have a bad feeling about this person……There"s something almost bizarre on how the bodies were handled."
Saeki"s job was primarily to dispose of bodies and resell them. For him to have seen as many of corpses as he did up until this point and still say that was significant.
"All the victims were homeless. They didn"t seem to have taken a bath in days. They had no personal items on them; maybe just some loose change. I did autopsies as I usually do, but I only found that the cause of death were all from hemorrhagic shock."
Lin turned his focus onto the photos again. He could definitely see cuts made on men all over their bodies. The markings looked like someone held a knife in either hand, got on top of them and struck them from above. "They were hacked to pieces."
"All of them were punched around too before they died. All the bruises were on the face and upper body."
"A torturer then?"
"I don"t believe so. There are no traces of bondage on the bodies."
Lin made another question. "Then these men were all free to move and were repeatedly beaten up to a pulp for a long period of time?"
"Yes."
Then when the men could no longer move, they were repeatedly stabbed with a sharp weapon. The victims" faces were closely shown in the photos. Lin saw their mouths and scowled. "They"re missing their front teeth."
All the bodies in the photos had their mouths wide open. And yet, Lin could not see their teeth.
"They seemed to have been pulled after death. Not even professionally. They were probably removed forcefully with pliers."
"Why would they do that……?"
It was incomprehensible. To prevent anyone from identifying the bodies, they should have removed all their teeth. Besides, for them to have requested for a specialist to dispose of the bodies, there was no need to hide his work. And since all of the victims were homeless, even if they were identified it would not be significant.
So the culprit"s objective was something different.
"Got another weird a.s.s job again." Lin groaned.
He would have to find a common thread among the victims to see if he could track down the culprit.
"First, we got to find out who these guys are."
Although they were homeless, there was no way they had this vagrant lifestyle since they were born. Some may have had their records around still, such as acquiring some kind of qualification like a criminal offense. Guess I could have that mushroom compare the corpses" faces to their registered photos. Just as Lin considered that, he realized it was impossible.
"Trying to match them up probably wouldn"t work since these guys are so beaten up."
All of their faces were so swelled up, they could not be distinguished on a computer. This seemed like it would be a troublesome job.
"……I took the wrong one."
He recalled the drawing he made yesterday. I wish I would"ve taken the other one. Lin shrugged his shoulders while feeling regret seep in.
The job Banba took was from a man who ran an Italian restaurant and an acquaintance of Genzo"s. He apparently used to be an underling for the yakuza, but he had left that life behind him a few years ago and started a modest job since then.
The chic restaurant stood desolately on a corner in Daimyou. When Banba visited the place after work hours, the owner of the restaurant greeted him with an exhausted smile. He brought Banba inside and began the discussion.
"Please take a look at this." The owner spread out a piece of paper onto the table. It was a sheet printed off of an internet page. According to him, a malicious customer set his eyes on his restaurant about a half year ago and started posting more than a hundred slandering comments about it on the internet. They even wrote vituperate reviews: "All of it was bad. It was sc.r.a.ps for a pig." "There were c.o.c.kroaches. Unsanitary. It smelled like a waste dump." "The shop attendees" att.i.tudes were awful. They were s.h.i.t." There were an abnormal amount of bad reviews. Banba had a feeling they had a grudge against the place.
When Banba asked the owner that, the man c.o.c.ked his head. "I"m not sure about why he would do this……I only know the culprit. He"s someone named Yusuke Aoyagi, an employee for a company."
It took him off guard for the man to already know the culprit. The owner explained the details when Banba gave a slightly shocked expression.
"His superior came to the restaurant. He told me, "I"m sorry for the trouble our employee caused you. I would not like this to be made public." Apparently the company found out those were written on a company computer."
"I see, so that was the case."
"They said they gave a strict warning to the person who did it……And yet he"s still going at it." The owner scowled. His pleasant and friendly demeanor had changed to the cold and harsh glare suited for his former occupation. "I can"t let him off."
It was obstruction of business. Because of the posts, there was a decrease in customers. At this rate it would be a matter of life or death. At least for his client, the restaurant was important to him like it was his own child. Perhaps it was due to the conviction made to use any means necessary to protect it or had the will to bear a grudge against anyone who spoke ill of his restaurant, the owner stated in a firm voice. "Please kill the man behind those posts – Aoyagi."
Regardless whether the professional baseball team he supported was in a slump at the moment, Banba could never withdraw from a job. After he put on his black suit and fastened his tie, Banba got into his beloved vehicle.
He headed to the employee Aoyagi"s home – except that he had already quit the company he worked for. Aoyagi"s room was on the first floor of an apartment building in Meinohama. Banba checked for any movement inside from the balcony before getting closer. The balcony window was unlatched. Peering through the eye holes in his Niwaka mask, Banba was speechless.
"Ah-"
What he saw was the body of a man suspended from the ceiling. Something similar to a rope was wrapped around his neck. The body wavered left to right slowly, pushed by the wind.
Banba leapt over the fence of the balcony and infiltrated inside from the window. He checked through the person"s belongings to confirm his ident.i.ty. He compared the body"s face to the one in the driver"s license he took out from his wallet. It definitely looked like the corpse was indeed Aoyagi.
"……What an unexpected development."
Banba whispered to himself unconsciously. He did not expect the man he was supposed to kill to already be dead. And he ended his own life. Banba looked around the room, but there was no indication he was attacked by someone. It was clean. In fact, it was almost too clean. He looked around closely again and spotted a piece of paper left on the table. It was a will. What was written on it was "I didn"t do it. I was set up." After that, the note continued at length proclaiming his innocence.
I didn"t do it – he must have been referring to slandering the restaurant. If what he said was true, then someone else was behind the posts. Who could have set Aoyagi up?
Banba felt like he was putting a foot into pitch blackness. This seemed like it would be a troublesome job.
"Guess last wasn"t the least."
Banba muttered to himself and headed back to his car.
Martinez met with Enokida at a cafe in the Gates Building. They sat across each other, and after Martinez explained the details of his case, Enokida began typing away on his laptop. After a few moments –
"I found out who the guy is."
Enokida then turned the screen towards him. Information on the man was displayed on the screen. Martinez managed to confirm the ident.i.ty of the person who uploaded the video due to the skilled hacker. The person responsible was someone named Taniyama – a young part-time worker residing in f.u.kuoka. Enokida was easily able to look into everything about the man from his name and birth date to his address as well.
"This is him, huh……" Martinez muttered as he looked closely at the man"s face in the photo.
The man was pale and looked weak-willed. He did not look like someone who would do atrocious acts like killing dogs, but then again it was not like he knew any mature person that would do that too.
"Still, he"s really doing something s.h.i.tty." Recalling the contents of the video, Martinez spat out in disgust.
"These sort of cases have been happening a lot more recently. Guys film these criminal acts and put them up on the internet." Enokida also nodded in agreement. "Since there are sites which give them ad money depending on view count, they can easily earn money this way without having to work."
"These guys are idiots. I wouldn"t want to do something that stands out just for money."
The man who shoplifted the month before and uploaded the video of driving without a license the previous week was then immediately arrested. Stupidity did not end.
Enokida smirked. "Well, make sure you give them a good punishment."
"Sorry I always depend on you, Enokida. You have my thanks." Martinez patted his shoulders with his large palms multiple times. "How much should I pay you this time?"
"I don"t need anything." Enokida replied, waving his hand in dismissal. "You can just treat me for a meal next time."
"Got it."
Just as he said that, however, Martinez remembered; he had one more thing for this man.
"That"s right, here." He told him and handed him out a paper bag. "A present for you. I got it from Jiro."
When Martinez visited Jiro"s place for an avenger job yesterday, he was told to "give it to Enokidchan."
"Eh? From Jiro-san? What is it?"
Enokida peeked into the bag and took out what was inside. It was a wig. It was a plain blond, mushroom-shaped hair. It was the exact same shape as Enokida"s hair.
"It would help to have a spare, right?"
"……My hair isn"t a hat."
Enokida pouted.
"Besides, why would Jiro-san have something like this?"
"He planned to use it for a play. A play Misaki"s cla.s.s was going to do."
"A play?"
"A tragic love story between the Mushroom Princess and the Bamboo Prince."
"What on earth is that? That sounds like c.r.a.p."
In the end, the play got cancelled, and they no longer needed the wig. But instead of throwing it away, Jiro decided to give it to Enokida. Jiro had said, "you could wear this when you can"t get rid of your bedhead."
"I was just given hand-me-downs instead of a present."
That was exactly it. Martinez simply smiled deceivingly, unable to deny it bluntly.
"……A play, huh."
Enokida suddenly muttered as he closely looked at the wig.
"That"s great. I wanted to try that too." He reclined back into his chair and shrugged. "I wanted to have a normal school life."
"Your household wasn"t normal though."
Martinez had heard about the discord between Enokida and his real family directly from Enokida himself. Except it was not Enokida who had opened up to him – it was Martinez who had forced him to talk about it.
Some sort of occurrence could happen for an informant and a torturer who makes someone give information to cross paths due to the dangerous nature of their occupations. Martinez first met Enokida seven years ago. Enokida was captured by a certain organization that Martinez belonged to at the time. He ordered to torture Enokida and make him give information on their enemy. But since it did not sit well with Martinez to torture a teenager, he decided to make Enokida talk by giving him a powerful truth serum, but it did not succeed. What Enokida talked about was not information on their enemy, but complaints about his parents and family. Martinez had only been told, "I was strictly raised by his parents to become their successor," and "I never got to play with other students my age and was under constant supervision at all times of the day under my caretaker." And then "my only time for relaxation was having piano lessons once a week" All were comments of simple unhelpful resentment.
Even as he was in a lethargic state, Enokida had kept his lips sealed on the important information in his head. What he did was a countermeasure to the drug in his system. He was able to protect his client"s information by talking about his own secrets. Martinez thought that was incredible mental fort.i.tude. Even though his limbs were bound, he did not seem to care. Martinez was blown away for how unusual of a kid he was.
"You"ve been fearless even back then. Normally a person would just cry when they"re going to be killed. You were just a minor."
"My life was full of vicissitudes. Even when I was young."
Such old memories. It had already been seven years since then, but Enokida still seemed to resent his family.
"You don"t keep contact with your family?"
"I can"t." Enokida snorted. "I was disowned."
"What was the cause of it?" Martinez questioned. From the conversations they had, he had the general picture.
Enokida spoke slowly. "When I said I wanted to become a programmer back in middle school, I got hit by that man."
That man – he meant his father.
""Just how much money do you think we"ve spent on you, my stupid son!" That"s what he said to me. So I got back at him. I made my own virus and infected that man"s personal computer with it."
"That"s a cute prank. So childish."
"Right?" Although Martinez intended to be ironic, Enokida had smirked in response.
"It was the first virus I made. It"s the one that lets me display characters I choose to appear on a person"s computer."
"It"s the virus you use often for Valentine’s, right?"
"Yes, that one."
Enokida had an annual custom prank for Valentine’s Day. After he would find guys who would be popular with the ladies, he would hack their computer and have the sentence "so you didn"t receive chocolate this year too, huh," on their screen. Enokida had meant to do a simple tease like that to his father, but the man did not take it well at all. He had only gotten even more angry than his usual grumpy mood.
"I got p.i.s.sed after being told I was a "stupid son," so I said "you"re the idiot" back. I got yelled at a lot after that."
That certainly seemed like this man would tell the other person that over a computer screen than in person.
"And that was when I got into hacking."
"You mean you didn’t want to stop."
"It may be an illness," Enokida smirked. "I heard that man say that before too. "He"s an illness. Nothing could cure him.""
Bottom of the Second Inning
They found their target unexpectedly easy. Everyone was essentially bare in front of Siva"s tracking skills. The hacker named macro-hard was apparently a man by the name Kuroiwa who lived in Yakuin.
It was work time. Chegar and his team changed into uniforms – they were regular blue work clothes movers would wear. They got into a truck and headed to macro-hard"s home. The three infiltrated the apartment building from the entrance, feigning to be movers. They stood outside of their target"s room and rang the intercom. Perhaps he was out; they pressed the b.u.t.ton once more, but there was no response.
On the third attempt, the door finally opened.
"……What"s your deal?"
The man showed his face through the crack in the door. He had an annoyed expression. There was no mistake this was macro-hard – or more accurately, Kuroiwa. The chain to the door was still latched.
"We"re from the Oak Moving Center."
Chegar gave a friendly reply to the man who was glaring at them suspiciously.
"We are helping with moving someone in next door to you, and we are making our greetings. We were worried we would be making noise and disturb you." He told him and held out a box of cakes. "This is our way of apologizing."
"Ah……well thank you." The other replied back nonchalantly. However, his weariness had lessened.
The door shut again, and Chegar heard the sound of the chain unlatching. Irasawa estimated the timing of when the door would open again and stuck his arm in when it did. He used his monstrous strength to force the door wide open. The Chegar and Siva followed inside right behind him.
"Wh" The man was backing up, wide-eyed. "Who the h.e.l.l are you-"
Irasawa grabbed their prey that was trying to flee by the nape of his neck and covered his mouth with a cloth, putting the man to sleep by having him inhale the fumes. Kuroiwa"s body collapsed onto the ground. Irasawa took out a bag and put the man in it head first. It was a huge bag to completely fit a person in. After he got him in all the way to his feet, Irasawa fastened the opening and carried it over his shoulder.
"I don"t want to stay too long. Let"s hurry." Chegar ordered in a small voice.
He received the order to erase all the information macro-hard had by the people above him. They dug through all the draws and searched every shelf to find any electronic device. This man owned two desktop computers and a laptop. They had to bring all those back with them and destroy them.
They managed to carry out macro-hard and his three computers out of the room in one go and stuffed them all into the truck. Since they looked like regular movers carrying objects out of the room, the residents did not bear any sense of suspicion. Inside the apartment building they were told by an old man with a smile, "thank you for your hard work." This was such a carefree country, with no weariness whatsoever.
They finished their work and got into the vehicle. They first dropped by Irasawa"s house. It was a one story house in Yoshizuka. When they arrived, Irasawa carried the sleeping macro-hard on his shoulder and disappeared into the garage. There was the set-up ring inside it. Irasawa would have a match with him until he felt satisfied.
"We take him in alive only for him to be tormented and killed." Siva smiled as they watched Irasawa go in. "Irasawsan has terrible tastes as always."
"You don"t fall short from him either." To Chegar, both of these men had terrible tastes.
"No way. I"m definitely not worse than Irasawsan."
"You think?"
Chegar shrugged before starting the car again. With only the computers left in the truck, they now headed to Siva"s place.
Translation Notes:Sanpaku Eyes (三白眼) is a term to refer to eyes with visible white between the iris and the lower eyelid.
Thanks to Voissane for editing!