“There’s no hope. She has handed away,” Kumakura, who had been crouching down in entrance of Mori Reiko to verify her pulse, lifted his face and introduced with a sorrowful expression.

“I don’t suppose she’s been useless for lengthy.”

“Why? Why on earth did this occur?” Motojima’s face went pale. Tears have been welling up in his eyes.

“I don’t know. There don’t appear to be any seen accidents. She might have suffered a spontaneous assault of arrhythmia, or perhaps that is the supply of it.”

Kumakura gestured to a seemingly lacquered espresso cup mendacity on the ground. On the whitish carpet, there have been brown stains radiating from the espresso.

“Espresso? What do you imply?” Tokizane raised his eyebrows as if he was having a tough time comprehending.

“Reiko’s lips have been stained. She might have sought to spit out the espresso she had consumed, however to not the purpose of vomiting. If so, it’s conceivable that some type of poison was blended in.”

Kumakura rose to his toes and met Tokizane’s eyes squarely.

“Poison? Ah… that couldn’t be.”

Tokizane lowered his head and lined his mouth as if in disbelief.

“Do you might have any perception into what’s happening?” Kawai approached with a snapping voice.

“Sure. Really…” 

Tokizane’s phrases have been interrupted by Enomoto’s voice.

“Kumakura. This isn’t that poison, proper?”

Enomoto confirmed a vial on the desk. A white crystal-like substance may very well be noticed inside. It appeared to have a label connected.

When Kumakura tried to method and attain for it, he eliminated his white gloves to look at Mori Reiko’s pulse.

“You’ll be able to’t contact her along with your naked arms!” Hikijii sharply restrained him with a piercing voice.

“Till the police arrive, we have now to protect the scene… Although that being mentioned, it most likely gained’t have any fingerprints on it.” Kumakura introduced his face near the label and squinted, studying the small letters on the label.

“A, c, o, n… Aconitine.”

“What’s aconitine?” Junko questioned, and Kumakura rotated. His face was flushed as if he’d simply gotten out of a sizzling tub, or maybe it was owing to his rage.

“It’s an alkaloid-based lethal poison. It’s contained in aconite.”

“However why is such a factor right here?”

Kawai, a tall man, stood within the middle of the room and forged his look round. Junko was below the impression that they have been in a stage efficiency.

Tokizane coughed and mentioned, “Let me clarify. Reiko typically employs poisoning in her novels. Recently, when she writes, it has develop into a behavior for her to maintain actual poison readily available and examine it.”

“Does that should be the precise poison? It doesn’t strike me as having any distinctive traits,” Junko requested, obliquely relating to the contents of the aconitine vial. Even when it was aspirin or another substance, she felt that she wouldn’t be capable to distinguish the distinction.

“No, you’re fallacious. After assembly Tokizane, Mori typically asserted that except you see the true factor, you may’t get a way of authenticity. It was most likely the identical case with the poison. Watching it with the idea that it might actually kill folks created a way of pressure…” Motojima wiped his eyes as he answered.

“Does that imply there existed different poisons moreover aconitine?” Hikijii inquired intriguingly.

“Sure, it needs to be within the drawer there.”

Tokizane pointed to the drawer, and Hikijii opened it by greedy the deal with along with his white-gloved hand.

“…There’s arsenic, paraquat, and even sodium cyanide! As a thriller author, you additionally would have identified that possessing such a factor for no legit goal can be a violation of the Toxic and Deleterious Substances Management Regulation, wouldn’t you?”

Tokizane silently gave a nod.

“Nonetheless, how can a poison that may kill folks be so simply obtained?” Kawai was not satisfied.

“She will need to have relied on varied sources. Reiko, as a well known novelist, ought to have been in a position to elicit cooperation from her followers. Cyanide is available at any variety of factories. The substances in paraquat weren’t pure, however moderately an previous rat poison, which might be discovered mendacity round in farmers’ warehouses.”

“However the place did the aconitine come from? If you happen to don’t have entry to a college laboratory, it shouldn’t be really easy to accumulate.”

After Kumakura pressed on, Tokizane nodded.

“I made that. If I had identified this was going to occur…” 

“You made it?”

“How did you do it?”

“Why did you do it?”

A number of folks posed questions without delay.

“When Reiko was strolling within the neighborhood, she found a colony of aconite with lovely blue-purple flowers. After researching, she found that it’s the second most poisonous species on the earth, second solely to Aconitum japonicum subsp. subcuneatum within the Tohoku area and Aconitum sachalinense in Hokkaido. I suppose she will need to have been crammed with inspiration by this data. Reiko requested me to strive producing aconitine any longer.”

“However doesn’t that demand quite a lot of experience?” Enomoto expressed everybody’s doubts on their behalf.

“I checked the Web and got here throughout an English web site that incorporates detailed data on the purification course of.”

The proliferation of perilous data on the Web appeared to don’t have any finish.

“I repeatedly suggested Reiko in opposition to doing this. It was written that selecting aconite itself is hazardous. But, when she pleaded with me for assist, I couldn’t say no. Being part of Reiko’s life was the that means of my existence━ my Ikigai[i],” mentioned Tokizane, his eyes downcast. “So, I used the basis with a excessive aconitine content material and adopted the process described within the article for crude purification with natural solvent acid and methanol. In all honesty, I used to be not sure if the ensuing product was aconitine or not. All I cared about was producing white crystals that resembled aconitine, and if solely Reiko might have been glad with that.”

“Nonetheless, both you have been too skillful otherwise you simply ended up producing a really excessive purity product by likelihood,” Kawai sarcastically replied.

“No, I wouldn’t be so positive,” Kumakura interjected, folding his arms. “Not solely does aconite include aconitine, nevertheless it additionally consists of a number of different extremely toxic alkaloids, together with mesaconitine, hypaconitine, and jessaconitine. This will not be a single crystallization of aconitine, but when the impurity can be a lethal poison, the hazard degree is just not a lot totally different from that of pure aconitine.”

“In any case, the police will confirm this after they conduct an investigation. Please report back to the police instantly,” Motojima resolutely remarked.

“I perceive. Let’s go downstairs and use the satellite tv for pc telephone. However first.”

Tokizane glanced on the box-shaped clock on the shelf, mulling over the state of affairs.

“…Now it’s 9:44, isn’t it? Time could also be of the essence.”

“What do you imply?”

Junko additionally noticed the clock. Beneath the silvery dial with a blue dotted line border, a particular design of three rotating rings of sky blue, inexperienced, and purple have been inscribed, which one way or the other managed to rotate.

“I wish to ask you all a query. Do you suppose Reiko dedicated suicide?”

Everybody fell silent for some time.

“I don’t imagine that.”

The stillness was shattered by Motojima.

“The Mori I knew would completely not have been the one to commit suicide like this.”

Kumakura sighed, “However prior to now, Reiko had a propensity to develop into depressed hastily.”

“Even when she was married to me, there have been instances when she would lock herself in her room, claiming that she was uninterested in all the pieces.”

“If my reminiscence serves me proper, after Bastet’s dying, she continued to remain in that state of temper,” Tokizane recalled, squinting his eyes.

At that second, Junko felt goosebumps throughout her physique for some motive.

It wasn’t a logical sensation, however moderately an instinctive one as if the dying of the cat was linked to the proprietor’s dying.

“B-Nevertheless it’s unusual that she dedicated suicide at a time like this. Though this was the night time she invited everybody over,” Natsumi appeared to have lastly regained her composure from the shock considerably. Though her voice was somewhat unsteady, she was nonetheless agency.

“Earlier you mentioned that Mori was spitting out the espresso. If that’s the case, doesn’t that show that she didn’t voluntarily swallow the poison?” Kumakura tilted his head in contemplation at Junko’s suggestion.

“You’ll be able to’t essentially be so positive of that. Aconitine ought to have a numbing impact on the tongue. Even when somebody is useless set on killing themself, they’re prone to spit it out or vomit it up reflexively.”

“…Is that this maybe a suicide notice?”

Kawai, who had been sporting white gloves the entire time, picked up a chunk of notepaper on the desk.

“Let’s take a look at it.” 

Everybody gathered across the desk, avoiding the physique, and skim the scribbled phrases on the notepad.

Thriller Clock. The Everlasting Boy. Neverland. I don’t wish to stay in a grimy world anymore.

“Certainly, the handwriting seems to be Mori’s however… If this can be a suicide notice, Mori would have written it extra concisely,” Motojima famous, cocking his eyebrow.

“Hmph! Have you ever not learn the well-known quick story ‘Mimetic Suicide Notice’? The protagonist left a suicide notice on the again of a leaflet with scribbles much like this one. The scribbled textual content is so ambiguous that it’s troublesome to inform at first look that it’s a suicide notice,” Hikijii mentioned reproachfully.

“No, I’m ashamed to confess that I’ve not learn it. I do not know that Mori had written such a piece.”

“What are you speaking about? That’s my masterpiece of quick tales,” Hikijii proudly proclaimed.

“Enomoto. What are your ideas on this?” Tokizane turned to Enomoto.

“I don’t imagine it’s suicide in any respect,” Enomoto responded promptly.

“Why do you say so?” 

“At the moment marks the primary time I’ve had the chance to satisfy Mori, however I can inform that she has a remarkably excessive sense of aesthetics. That a lot is obvious from the way in which she spoke and from her magnificent assortment. If she had dedicated suicide, I’m positive she would have thought-about the likelihood that her dying can be found by everybody.”

Enomoto took a look on the corpse. Junko was shocked. Why hadn’t she realized it till now?

“If you happen to have been Mori, you’ll have at the least taken the poison whereas mendacity on the couch there. Judging from her look, I can solely assume that she was poisoned.”

Tokizane nodded profoundly.

“I completely agree with you. In different phrases, this can be a murder case.”

Tokizane’s voice immediately adopted an unsettling timbre. After strolling in broad strides to the vertical locker within the nook of the room, Tokizane punched within the code on the keypad.

As quickly because the unlocking sounded, he opened the metallic door and withdrew a searching rifle from inside. All people stood there in a daze, unable to understand the abrupt change of occasions.

“In that case, meaning there’s a assassin inside. Everybody, please don’t transfer. Must you make even the slightest suspicious motion, I’ll shoot you useless on the spot with out hesitation.”

Tokizane readied a horizontal double-barreled searching rifle and slowly waved it in a clockwise course, maybe to let everybody catch a sight of the muzzle.

“Tokizane, please relax. There is no such thing as a want so that you can do something. As soon as the police present up, all the pieces can be cleared up.”

Motojima recovered from his shock and tried to steer Tokizane one way or the other.

“No, I don’t suppose so. Even when the perpetrator is recognized, there is no such thing as a assure that enough proof can be offered in court docket to convict them. Moreover, past that, there’s one thing else I can’t tolerate.”

Tokizane’s flat voice conveyed a way of horror as a substitute.

“Even when the perpetrator is recognized and convicted, the dying penalty most likely gained’t be imposed. How are you going to say justice has been served? Reiko, who was beloved by us right here and by a lot of her readers, won’t ever once more be capable to converse, write novels, share her love, or take pleasure in a glass of wine. However, what’s going to destiny maintain for the perpetrator? After just a bit greater than ten years of confinement, they are going to be out on the earth. There is no such thing as a steadiness between crime and punishment, regardless of the way you break it down.”

Maybe in anticipation of a rebuttal, all eyes fell on Junko, who was a lawyer. However, Junko didn’t dare to touch upon the matter. The hole between retribution and the regulation was arduous to bridge with phrases or logic, and within the first place, she didn’t wish to say something which may upset the gun proprietor below this circumstance.

“Nonetheless, I feel it could be sophisticated to determine the perpetrator at this cut-off date. They know that if anybody finds out they did this, they are going to be shot and killed, which makes it not possible for them to admit. In the meantime, we have now neither the instruments nor the expertise for forensics. With out DNA or microbiological evaluation, it could be extraordinarily difficult to uncover any proof.”

As Enomoto persuaded him, Tokizane listened quietly, however then slowly shook his head.

“It’s true that we lack the benefits of forensic science, and we’re just like the ‘Okappiki’[ii] of the Edo interval. Nonetheless, we do possess two benefits. First, there is no such thing as a have to have sufficient proof to convict in court docket. I’ll execute the sentence as quickly as I’m optimistic who the perpetrator is.”

“Are you positive you perceive what you’re saying? When you do this, you’ll be a assassin, too.”

Kumakura was about to press the difficulty, however when Tokizane aimed his gun at him, he drew again in alarm.

“…It doesn’t matter. All I need is to complete avenging Reiko’s dying.”

“And? Tokizane. What’s the opposite benefit?” 

Kawai gave the impression to be considering that as an actor, he ought to reinforce his resolve below such a circumstance and queried within the tone of a well-known detective who can be depicted in a drama.

“Every of you’ll now give your testimony, however will probably be as much as all of you to guage the veracity of the testimonies. That is an interrogation methodology that’s not simple for the police to implement. If there may be any irregularity or discrepancy, I anticipate that somebody is prone to discover it.” 

Tokizane had a faint smile on his face.

“Furthermore, we occur to have members who’re effectively versed in crime and thriller. Irrespective of how devious the perpetrator could also be, will they be capable to deceive us all?”

T/N:

[i] Ikigai means the that means of residing, a really profound phrase. There’s no concrete time period for the definition. Everybody has their very own interpretation of what Ikigai is meant to be

[ii] Okappiki is a non-public detective throughout Edo period