Novel 'To Hell with Reincarnation' Chapter 9: Re-visiting the Crime Scene

A side road branching off to the right, located just before the top of a steep hill. He and I were standing there side by side once again.

This place, where a road has been carved out as if to split the forest, is surrounded by nature, and the air is much clearer than in the city. However, for us, it felt as though the air was filled with a heaviness and stagnation that made even breathing feel hesitant.

"It's here."

Relying on my memory from two days ago, I carefully observed my surroundings, widened the opening that had begun to close up again, and pointed to the spot where Kasawa Yu's smartphone had been lying.

"It was lying here with the screen facing down."

He peered into the spot from behind me and nodded, saying, "I see."

"Then, I'll search the grass to see if anything else was dropped, so could you look around to see if there's anything that might be a clue to the culprit, Saya?"

As he gave me those instructions, he took a pair of work gloves out of his backpack. I replied with a simple "Understood" and began searching the area.

Even so, I had no idea what I was looking for or where I should be searching. I walked around the perimeter, but there was nothing particularly noteworthy.

After thinking for a moment, I remembered that 'I' must have been taken away by car at that time. Even though it was night, if a car had been parked on this narrow side road—which was barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other—wouldn't 'I' have noticed it?

Thinking this, I walked further into the side road and saw a 'For Sale' sign on my left. It was a plot of land covered in gravel, but tall grass grew sparsely through the gaps in the stones. The sign itself looked quite old, and the paint on the surface was peeling and faded, making it seem like it no longer functioned as an advertisement at all.

However, this might be a perfect place to temporarily park a car. The size of the land was just about enough to fit two cars, and since the sign, which was erected on the boundary between the road and the lot, stood to the right of the center and the area toward the hill was slightly wider, it didn't seem like the sign would obstruct a car's entry or exit.

I walked a little further ahead, confirmed that there were no other places where a car could be parked, and then turned back to the lot. Then, assuming the culprit had parked their car here, I searched the entire property from end to end, looking for anything the culprit might have left behind.

After a while, I noticed something. On the boundary line between the road and the property, closer to the hill than where the sign was currently standing, there was a patch of exposed soil. When I crouched down to look, there seemed to be a hole, located exactly at the midpoint of the boundary line between the road and the property. Although the surrounding soil had collapsed and the shape was distorted, the hole appeared to have been rectangular.

I stood up, walked over to the sign, and examined it closely. The sign was simple, just a board attached to a post, much like in an RPG, and the cross-section of the post was rectangular. Also, looking at the base of the post, there was a clear dirt stain up to about ten centimeters from the ground, as if it were a trace of the sign trying to crawl out of the hole on its own.

I felt as though I had caught a glimpse of part of the crime through the phenomena suggested by these markers, and I couldn't help but furrow my brow. For now, I searched the land thoroughly once more for any other clues, and when I realized there was nothing to be found, I took pictures of the sign, the hole, and the entire lot before returning to him.

When I returned, he was nowhere to be seen. His belongings were still there, so it didn't seem like he had gone anywhere else, but where on earth could he have gone? Just as I thought I might have to call out to him, I heard a rustling sound from deep within the grass.

"Oh, Saya. Did you find something?"

He popped his head out from a place four or five meters away that could be called a forest rather than just a patch of grass. Seeing that, I let out a voice of exasperation.

"Just how far do you intend to search...?"

The smartphone had fallen less than a meter from the road into the bushes. Searching that deep was bound to turn up nothing. However, that recklessness seemed to reflect his desperation.

“It’s better to search thoroughly, isn’t it?”

As he said that, he returned to the road. His short-sleeved dress shirt was beautifully stained with dirt and leaves, and I found myself worrying about why he had come in his school uniform. But when I looked, he was holding a white bag, and I couldn't help but ask about it.

“Did you find something?”
“Hm? Oh, this?”

He opened the bag to show me. Inside were nothing but things that were clearly trash: empty beer cans, cigarette butts, snack wrappers, and magazines that made me want to look away.

“Um... you didn't come here to do volunteer work, did you?”
“You want me to just leave it there? It’s just something I did while I was at it.”

For now, we decided that we would dispose of the trash he had picked up in a convenience store trash can on the way back. Also, since it didn't seem like we would get any more results, we decided to head down the hill.

When he went to put on his backpack, I could see that his back was also dirty. He seemed to have brushed off the front, but his back was still covered in leaves and grass from when he had come out of the woods. I was concerned, so I called out to him.

“Please stop for a second.”
“Hm? What?”

I told him to turn around again, and I brushed the dirt off his back with my hands. His back was damp with sweat, but that was proof of how hard he had been working while I wasn't looking, so it didn't bother me.

“There, it’s clean now.”
“Oh, right. Thanks.”

Seeing his awkward behavior, which I hadn't seen when he was Yu Isosawa, I wondered if he was like this in front of other girls. I felt like I had seen a slightly unexpected side of him.

While he was at the convenience store to throw away the trash, he did some shopping. Even though I had thoroughly declined, he came out of the store with two types of bottled drinks, held them in both hands, and asked, “Which one do you want?” It was a choice between orange juice and cider.

It wasn't very good manners, but we walked while drinking them. We arrived at a certain place just as he finished his cider. It was the park where “I” and he first met. We went into the gazebo and sat facing each other across the table.

“Well, for starters, why don't you tell me your side of the story, Saya?”

I nodded to him as he tried to get straight to the point as soon as he sat down, and for now, I sent him the photos I had taken today using social media.

“I’ll explain in the order of the images I just sent. First, the initial photo is of the land for sale that was further back than where Isosawa-san’s smartphone had fallen. As I already told you, Isosawa-san was attacked, restrained, and then taken away by car, so the car must have been parked somewhere. But, at least in ‘my’ memory, I don’t remember a car being parked on that side road. I think I would have noticed if a car was parked on that narrow road.”
“True. So, are you saying the culprit might have parked the car there?”
“Yes. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but there was enough space to park two cars.”

After looking at the photos intently, he raised his head and suggested another possibility to me.

“Along that road, it’s all old buildings, but it felt like there were people living here and there, right? I’ve seen cars coming and going a few times, too. So, for example, isn't there a possibility that they parked the car somewhere at one of those houses? Or maybe the resident there is the culprit. No, I don't think that's likely, though.”

As he said, if you went further back than the land for sale, there were old houses along the side road, and there were signs that people lived in some of them.

“I certainly don't think that possibility is zero. However, there is another reason why I think the culprit parked the car there—could you look at the second photo and onwards?”

I continue on, trying to explain that my theory is more likely than his.

“Is this... a sign?”
“Yes. The second photo is of the sign, and the third is a shot of the base of the sign's post.”
“What about this fourth one? A hole?”
“Yes. In terms of the first photo, it's the hole that was around here.”

I placed my smartphone, which was displaying a photo of the entire vacant lot, on the table and pointed to the spot where the hole had been. It was right in the middle of the boundary line between the lot and the road.

“If you look at the third photo, you can see that the post of the sign currently standing there is strangely dirty with soil up to about ten centimeters from the ground.”
“Indeed... Ah, I see. So that's it.”

He removed the hand he had been holding to his chin, as if he understood what I was trying to say.

“In other words, Saya, you think the culprit moved the sign because it was in the way of the car coming in and out?”
“Yes, that's right.”

Knowing that my interpretation matched his, I realized my deduction wasn't off the mark, and I felt a little relieved. And that relief gave me the push I needed to advance my reasoning further.

“Perhaps the culprit was afraid that a car they didn't usually see parked in a conspicuous place would leave an impression on someone? That's why they went as far as moving the sign to park the car in the lot.”

I thought it was a logical explanation. However, as I actually said it out loud, I realized there were some parts that bothered me.

The culprit is a meticulous person who uses a stun gun or a fast-acting injectable sleeping pill for their crimes. However, I couldn't help but feel that the method used to move the sign was quite sloppy. I felt that at the very least, they should have been careful enough to fill in the hole where the sign was originally stuck, or to insert the moved sign to the same depth as before.

“I see. Then let's think about what I found this time.”

As he said this, he took a palm-sized metal object out of his pocket and placed it on the table. It was covered in dirt, and at first glance, it had a shape that made it impossible to tell what it was used for.

“What... is this?”

I asked while examining it from every angle.

“It looks like a device for fixing a camera or something. I did an image search and found something with a similar shape.”

He said this and turned his smartphone toward me. The screen displayed a long list of product images from a major mail-order site, and the string 'ball joint' could be seen in most of the excessively long product names.

“There's no proof, but it doesn't look very rusty, so I don't think it was thrown away that long ago. Though that's just a guess that it hasn't been years.”

My prediction was roughly the same as his. When I touched it, the ball joint still seemed to move without much resistance, and it didn't look particularly rusty.

“However, as for whether this is related to the incident... honestly, it's probably unrelated. Someone probably just threw it away because they didn't need it anymore.”

He spread his hands in a 'what can you do' pose and slumped his shoulders as if disappointed. However, I couldn't immediately nod in agreement with his conclusion.

“But the fact that this kind of equipment is needed means that whoever threw this away must be using a fairly decent camera, right? But is there really anyone who would bring such a camera to a place like that? Nowadays, a smartphone is enough for most things...”

At my counter-argument, he also began to turn his abandoned thoughts over again. There, I presented him with a hypothesis I had come up with.

“I already mentioned that the culprit is likely a well-prepared person, right? If so, couldn't the culprit have also researched Mr. Isozawa well? For example, setting up a camera in that forest to study the behavioral patterns of their target, Mr. Isozawa—or something like that.”

It might be a stretch. As he said, I felt it was more likely that someone with no manners had just tossed it away somewhere. Perhaps the desire for this to be a clue was just leading me to that hypothesis. Even so, I didn't want to completely rule out the possibility that it could lead to the culprit.

“You're right... I hadn't thought of that possibility. Doesn't that make sense?”

He nodded at my hypothesis, looking a bit surprised. If my hypothesis was correct, the culprit's fingerprints might be left on this mount. Even the culprit probably wouldn't have thought that something like this would be found, and since it wasn't directly related to the crime, their guard must have been low.

“But, even if it was as Saya hypothesized, it still comes down to who on earth did it...”

To his voice, which contained a hint of irritation, I had no choice but to show my agreement with silence.

Even if fingerprint matching were possible, it would be completely useless if there were no suspects to match them against in the first place. Although we were able to deepen our reasoning about the details of the crime through this on-site investigation, we hadn't been able to grasp a single clue as to who the most important person—the culprit—was.

“Just to confirm...”

I asked him, feeling as if I were clutching at straws.

“You didn't see anyone else there on the day of the incident, did you?”

Whether the memories held by 'me' are correct or not cannot be known without the 'body' from that time. Therefore, I was pinning a glimmer of hope on the possibility that the memory that no one else was there besides us on the night of the incident was wrong.

However, heartlessly, he shook his head in response to my question. I thought that if he had seen someone else, we might have been able to at least figure out the culprit's characteristics from that as a starting point, but the reality ended in a result where we couldn't even find the end of the thread to pull on.

“Ah, crap. It's almost time for the bus.”

As a gloomy atmosphere began to drift between the two of us, at the signal of his languid words, we lifted our heavy bodies and left the arbor.

Initially, I thought there would be nothing to find by investigating the crime scene at this late stage. So, compared to that, this on-site investigation could be said to have achieved significant results. And yet, the reality that the clues we found halfway didn't lead to the culprit was actually defeating us. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but the size of the wall we actually hit was far more enormous than I had imagined, and because of that pressure, we couldn't exchange a single word on the bus.

We got off at the bus stop illuminated by the white light of a street lamp. The sky was already almost swallowed by the darkness of night, and only the edge of the horizon was dyed red.

“Saya, do you have any plans for tomorrow?”

After the bus drove away, he broke the long silence and opened his mouth.

"No, I usually spend my weekends at home, so I don't have any particular plans."
"Can you make it to the East Library at 10:00 AM?"
"The East Library? I think it's open since school and club activities are going on, but?"
"Ah, yeah. That's true, but I have an idea."
"Uh, okay. I understand."

I gave a vague reply, unable to grasp his intentions. But knowing him, he would surely make good use of the survey that was suddenly conducted. He must have something in mind. As I watched him leave after we exchanged farewells, that was what I thought.