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V12 Story I – Part 04

The windows of both buildings were dark and silent, like a mirror image.

The owner of the occupied building was our client. He rented out the second floor to a friend and was a distant relative of Mayuzumi. However, he wasn’t aware of the Mayuzumi clan’s actual condition. Encountering something supernatural, he fearlessly brought his case directly to Mayuzumi, who took it without a second thought.

There was nothing particularly suspicious about the case itself, but the buildings before us were too bizarre to dismiss the sudden commission as a coincidence. I squinted, studying the narrow gap between the two buildings. Between the gray structures was a dense mass of red petals.

It looked as if the fallen organs had been crushed and stuck together, forming a heap of red. There was no way these phantom petals could have naturally accumulated like this. Someone must have brought them here. But who could transport petals that humans couldn’t touch? I swallowed.

Mayuzumi walked toward the petals without fear. The organs had fallen a few days ago, and there was no longer any police tape. She stopped just before the pile of petals. A petal that had spilled from the alleyway brushed against the tip of her leather shoe.

Mayuzumi twirled her parasol. Then, something fell from the air. I looked up, then followed its descent with my eyes. The illusions Mayuzumi recreated were not real, yet the petals danced in the air.

Squash.

An illusory sound. Something fell among the petals. Beautiful red petals scattered into the air, lifted by the impact, then froze momentarily, before slowly falling back down.

At the center, on a white circle as if the petals had parted around it, lay an organ.

I leaned in to inspect the bloody red organ. The moment I recognized its distinctive shape, goosebumps covered my entire body.

Even I recognized this shape. It was something that should never be dropped, no matter what.

“To think something like this would fall.”

It was a heart. Its owner was undoubtedly dead.

Mayuzumi kept twirling her parasol. The heart vanished. I thought the recreation would stop there, but the scene continued to change. Another image overlaid the flowers—a memory of the place, a scene from the past.

There was a squelching sound as Uka devoured something. A pale hand fell onto the sea of flowers. The petals, like a soft bed, caught the slender arm.

I gasped. Someone was lying on the red flowers.

Unlike with the organs, the flowers didn’t move aside. They accepted her.

A woman in a white dress lay on the red petals. It looked as if she had fallen from the rooftop. She didn’t move.

My eyes widened. I recognized the woman. She was dead. The clean features, suited for white, belonged to Yamashita Yukiko. But something was fundamentally different.

Her dark, moist eyes looked up at me. Her lashes, perfectly aligned, fluttered slowly. Her pale pink lips twisted softly. What on earth was this?

Her facial features and overall appearance were the same, but this woman was fundamentally different from the Yamashita Yukiko I knew. The Yamashita Yukiko in my memory, in the photos, didn’t look like this.

The woman before me seemed like an edited photo, or a painting with altered details. She was overly beautified, almost deified. She wasn’t this beautiful or alluring.

Snap.

The parasol closed. All the visions on the flowers vanished. I instinctively looked up. During the previous incident, a dark figure had stood at the edge of the abandoned building’s rooftop.

After disappearing from the hospital, Yamashita Yukiko’s body, wandering in some other realm, had occasionally appeared in the real world. But now, there was no one there, only a stretch of light red sky.

“Yamashita Yukiko jumped, Odagiri,” Mayuzumi said. “This is a different place. No one is here.”

She was right. Yamashita Yukiko was no longer here.

Then what was that illusion earlier? Whose organs were those? This probably had nothing to do with the fox. Who was trying to jump, and why?

“Well then, Odagiri, let me ask you. What did you see?”

“What did I see? It was Yamashita Yukiko. But I’m not sure it was really her. She was more beautiful than I remember. But why? What about you? Did you see something different?”

Mayuzumi didn’t answer my question. She reopened the red parasol and placed it on her shoulder. Without twirling it, she turned on her heel, walking past me with her back to the building.

“Well, we didn’t find much. Let’s head back. There’s something I want to check.”

“Mayu-san, you’ve been dodging my questions for a while now. Don’t you plan on answering them?”

“I don’t get angry or annoyed by questions. But whether I answer depends on my mood. Just wait. You’ll find out eventually. It’s too much trouble to explain or give notice.”

I let out a deep sigh. It was the usual response, but because of it, I’d faced death and endured countless ordeals. As I turned to follow Mayuzumi, I pulled out a cigarette. She hated them, but I was determined to have at least one.

Just as I was about to light it, I heard a squelch. It wasn’t an illusion; it was unmistakably real.

Something had fallen behind us. Mayuzumi didn’t turn around, but she did stop walking. Her lips were likely curled in a smile.

I turned to look behind me. My neck creaked, and my stomach churned. I saw red. Petals twirled in the air.

Reacting to whatever had fallen, the illusory petals floated as if they were real.

I approached the narrow space between the buildings again. At the center of the petals was a white circle.

Blood slowly spread. It wasn’t an illusion; real organs had fallen right before my eyes. Fresh and wet, as if they had just spilled from a torn abdomen. I couldn’t tell what those two small pieces of flesh were.

Footsteps approached from behind. Mayuzumi looked at the organs beside me.

After several seconds, she spoke, sounding slightly uncertain. “Testicles. I see. Fairly straightforward. A perfect contrast to the uterus from before.”

Mayuzumi took a spherical chocolate from her pouch. She bit into it mercilessly. Yellowish cream oozed out.

My groin felt cold as I looked back at the organs. Since the heart fell, this building had been on the police’s patrol route. We had no useful information for them. Not exactly the behavior of model citizens, but we had to leave. Before doing that, we had to at least notify them.

I looked back at Mayuzumi. She already had her cell phone out, which was surprising. She rarely did that. She pressed the phone, the color of dried blood, to her ear.

Then, Mayuzumi Azaka spoke in a very familiar tone.

“Hey, sorry to call suddenly. It’s you, isn’t it?”

An unexpected name slipped from her lips. My eyes widened.

It was a familiar name, yet at the same time, someone I didn’t know.

---

Mayuzumi insisted we hurried, so we hopped on the subway without notifying the authorities. Even if we didn’t report it, the organs would be discovered eventually.

Whether the first person to stumble upon them would be a cop or just a regular Joe was anyone’s guess. The uterus incident from last summer still had a cult following in some circles. Word had it that news about this latest event was being kept under wraps, but if an ordinary citizen stumbled upon it, the scene could draw quite a crowd.

That would be a nightmare for our client. He was already struggling to find tenants for the building due to the fire next door.

If this incident escalated, he would be in a tight spot. But expecting a tidy resolution by hiring Mayuzumi was wishful thinking from the get-go. As she said, Mayuzumi Azaka does not offer salvation to anyone.

Lost in these thoughts, I rocked with the motion of the train. After passing six stations, we disembarked in the city center.

We headed straight for the plaza connected to the station. The plaza, anchored by a symbolic sculpture at its center, featured an event stage, several shops, and a bus terminal.

The fast-food joint where Mayuzumi and I had rendezvoused during the Shiramine case was teeming with people.

The spaceship-shaped sculpture was beginning to glow from within. A woman stood beside it.

She clutched a business bag close to her chest, almost like a shield. Her face appeared plain beneath her makeup. I closed my eyes, sifting through distant, hazy memories. A newspaper photograph flashed in my mind: the face of a man arrested for tossing a comatose patient from a hospital rooftop emerged from the darkness. The woman facing me now looked younger than when I’d last seen him in person.

Yamashita Kazue had killed her older sister, Yamashita Yukiko, out of twisted obsession. The man who pushed Kazue to her death was Sugita Tomoyuki.

And the woman standing before me, bearing a striking resemblance to him, was…

“Sugita Tomoka, right? Sorry to keep you waiting.”

I’d forgotten that perpetrators have families too. Tomoka looked up sharply, her gaze locking onto Mayuzumi. But for some reason, her expression gradually softened. Eventually, she nodded.

The look on her face, tinged with resignation, said she just didn’t care anymore.