My Psychological Crime Thriller SNAFU
Chapter 1
Hikigaya Hachiman's MC power isn't as great as expected.
The Psychological Thriller Gods must've been high on meth when they decided to play matchmaker with a profiler and a serial killer. Our terrible lives became their horrific attempt at making a Romantic-Comedy that had their sick, twisted, depraved, humor.
This is our story, our written tragedy. My unholy comedy; the hell that has become my life.
I was a homicide detective first before anything else.
I studied outside of Japan to learn what Japanese universities couldn't teach me.
I even graduated from the premier law enforcement academy, the FBI Academy in Quantico, excelling at every involving Criminal Psychology and Profiling but failing almost every marksmanship test.
I got back to my island nation and wanted to do only one thing.
Solve murders.
And some had too.
Homicides are rare in Japan, that's what make them so gruesome.
To start, Japan hardly has any gun owners, and unlike most countries poverty and desperation aren't the leading cause of murder.
Which means most deaths involve melee weapons, small innocent things like kitchen knives become murder weapons. And the killer wanted more than just money as the reason for committing murder.
I've seen the insides of a home defiled more times that I'd care to admit. This one was unique, as police found that both husband and wife shot dead in a residential neighborhood.
It was graphic, bloody, and there were no witnesses.
They called me in.
Red and blue lights of sirens flash in my face on the haunted face of Hikigaya Hachiman.
He takes it all in, the location of the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Izumi, the blood splatter on the walls, the broken door, and most importantly…
…the security system on the wall next to the body of Mrs. Izumi, the same one covered in her blood.
Hachiman closes his eyes and begins.
I kick open the door. The noise draws in Mr. Izumi from the 2nd floor. As he walks down the stairs I shoot at him expertly through the neck. He dies the moment the bullet pierces through his spinal cord, he tumbles down the remaining steps, attracting Mrs. Izumi. "This is my design."
I point my handgun's sights at her. I pull the trigger hitting her in the abdomen, my shot pierces her spinal column, leaving her immobile but very much alive.
"This is my design."
Now she's fully bleeding out to death, but I won't let her die. For she is at my mercy, and I will savor her last moments and subject her to every torture I now envisioned for her.
"This is my design."
She crawls, away from me. She knows who I am. This is personal to us both. Her arm reaches for a panic button on the wall with it, she can call for help. I…let her. For I've already dismantled it. Dismantled her only hope.
Mrs. Izumi frantically pushes the buttons of the wall mounted security system but to no avail. I savor the hope draining out of her as she looks at me in horror. I lightly move her hand out of the way, I'm in no rush. Help won't come. Not in time, at least.
"This is my design."
Opening his eyes in realization, to his surprise, Hachiman finds himself where the killer had been standing; near the chalk outline on Mrs. Izumi's corpse. With a mind still heavy, he tells a police officer observing.
"Get the police records of the security system. The killer bypassed the security through the telephone poles."
Half an hour later, a technician discovered that the security systems were hacked via the telephone poles.
The culprit's fingerprints were lifted off the telephone pole. I solved the case.
I thought I'd solve more, but my time as a detective was cut short with the results from my psychological-evaluation saying I was too unstable to be allowed to work in high-profile cases, and an asocial monster of logic that can't work well with others.
Also, I made a habit of not carrying my firearm.
I hate guns. Not because I'm one of those "I hate guns because guns kill" type of idiot, and I'm certainly not a "Guns are for cowards" sword-wielding protagonists.
It's just that without a gun, it's easier for me to do my job. A job that, if I can do well enough, won't require the need for guns.
The higher-ups –may they stub their toes on coffee tables every morning- didn't think so and used it a further reason to fire me.
I was forced to resign from active duty.
With nowhere else to go I went to teaching.
Now I'm a university professor. Apparently, my training in the US in Criminal Profiling made me one of the only Japanese citizens that could teach an entire class on it.
The demand for Criminal Profilers were never that high in a country like Japan. But with the public wanting reforms in the Law Enforcement System, there would be a rise in the demand for courses involving Criminal Justice, including my field Forensic Psychology.
Many Japanese universities would meet this demand before they needed them.
Chiba University was one of them.
It wasn't so bad, better than being unemployed. Honestly it had some benefits. I even enjoyed being called Professor Hikigaya. Made me sound expensive and cultured.
I finish the slide show presentation of the Izumi Double Homicide Case. My students listen closely to what I say with morbid fascination attributed to most people who enter this line of study. After a graphic presentation like that, I'm sure I have their total attention.
"As a criminal profiler, you don't just have to know how crimes are done. You need to understand why it was done. Because as I'm sure you've learned in your Criminal Investigation class "The best way to know who committed the murder, is to figure out why." What was the reason? What was going on in the murder's mind. If you know what's inside his head, you know what's wrong with it. You'll see the profile. You can tell which screws are loose. You'll see the criminal. And eventually, you'll know him better than he knows himself." That's the core of my profiling methods, a secret art I'm more than willing to divulge for the sake of a more effective criminal profiler.
"By knowing the criminal, you can sort out the likely suspects from the ones who don't fit and know what can draw him out. Like the old saying "finding a needle in a haystack", well it gets easier when you remove the hay, and bring out a magnet."
I see some of them write down notes, one student of mine checks his watch. And smiles. Has it been an hour already? I need to wrap things up.
"This is an assignment for all you."
I point at them.
"You want to kill Mrs. Izumi. Tell me how."
Some students look confused, a few raise their hands. I quickly tell them to put their hands down. This isn't going to be an oral report.
"I want you all to write me a detailed essay on how you'd have killed Mrs. Izumi. Make it graphic and mostly importantly, I want to know how you felt."
At the word essay, a few spirits seem broken, being a student just a few years ago, I remember my teachers thinking they were our only teachers and kept giving us homework. But I know the best way to motivate people into writing this essay.
"Also, if you don't want to kill Mrs. Izumi, you can change the victim and setting. In short, kill anyone you'd like."
My students lit up at that, only just a little bit. Maybe because this just got easier for them. Everyone has thought about killing someone, it's natural. Whether by their own hands or the hand of God, it's human nature to want to take life. It might even be an almost therapeutic exercise for them to write a narrative about killing someone they didn't like.
"On paper." I reminded, earning me a chorus of laughs.
The last class I gave this assignment to had one student brave enough to write me as their victim, I made him read it out loud and he gave me and the class a detailed story of him strangling me by my lame tie.
I gave him a perfect score for the graphic detail, and making avoid wearing ties for the rest of my life.
As the class was about to end I hear the door open. My teacher instincts told me to call out my late student, call him out for being late fifty-five minutes late. My eyes see someone too old to be a student.
I saw her walking towards me, determined steps in perfect perspective, unshakable even in heels. I put on my glasses to make sure it was her.
She stops at my desk, students already flooding out to give us room. They recognize her too.
They'd be bad students to not know Commissioner Hiratsuka Shizuka.
"Professor Hikigaya." She says making her presence known, thinking I haven't noticed her yet. Woman, you're wearing a white lab coat, who wouldn't notice you?
"I'm Commissioner Hiratsuka Shizuka."
I adjust my glasses, strategically putting them on in a way that could block direct eye contact with her.
"We've met," I remind her. But met wouldn't be how I should describe that event three years ago.
She nods. She obviously didn't want to bring that up. I simply saved her the trouble.
"We disagreed on a threatening letter you wrote." She sounded like she didn't want to say it, clearly it was harder for her than for me.
"It was a report on a case." I reminded.
"It had words "The next time I kill someone, it should definitely be a member of the Chiba police" as a side note."
"At the time, the delusional killer was acting like a vigilante, with police officers disrupting his fantasy as hero, he might just think to go the anti-hero route."
Hiratsuka just gives me a stony expression.
"And it wasn't a letter. It was a written psychological analysis of the killer's thoughts during murders." I further explain.
She looks almost pleased at me as she did three years ago, I don't feel the need to reciprocate.
Hiratsuka takes the remote of the projector, and switches it back from one image of Mrs. Izumi to another image.
"And now you're teaching your students how to write threatening letters."
Is this what it's about, my assignments? Though my teaching methods are unorthodox, it's still within the boundaries of the academy's curriculum.
"They're effective at getting them used to the idea of profiling."
I see her smile, she expected me to answer. Usually I just get glared at. Now she's grinning. Oh, this is so much worse. I keep averting my gaze from hers, the last thing I want is to make eye contact with her.
"I understand it's not easy for you to be sociable."
"I'm just talking at them. I'm not listening to them. It's not social."
I look around the room, pretending to check if there are any students still around. Hiratsuka knows there aren't.
I'm looking back and forth, from one exit to another. My glasses' frames keeping her steady gaze from meeting mine.
Until she pulls them up and properly adjusts them back on. Forcing me to look at her in the eye.
I freeze at the contact.
"Where do you fall in the spectrum?" she asks, no doubt figuring out I was on the spectrum from my inability to look at her.
I don't keep eye contact long, I move my rotten eyes around, focusing on other things about her, like her suit's brown buttons, or her lab coat's seams
"I'm somewhere between social phobia and bipolar-disorders, but closer to autistics and Asperger's than I am to narcissists and sociopaths."
I tell her truthfully. It's nothing to be ashamed of. My disorders don't define me. In my opinion psychiatrist today put too many labels on such simple things. Over-diagnosing people who seem to have simple problems and finding only the edges and faults that they can use to shove them into a disorder.
"They also mentioned something about me being the furthers thing from a psychopath. Which is a lie."
If you wore a nice suit and didn't blink during a psych-eval, the psychiatrist would instantly think you were a psychopath. It's that easy for them to assume that charm and manipulation instantly equals psychopathic behavior.
"But you can empathize with narcissists and sociopaths, right?"
"I can empathize with anyone. It's less to do with a personality disorder and more to do with an over active imagination." That was the best way to describe what I have that didn't make me sound like a lunatic or a psychic. Imagination; I can imagine what it's like to be a killer up to the tinniest detail; from the sweetest feeling to where the sweat would pile up. It was almost like playing a VR game with all your sense hooked up, playing the character of the killer, doing nothing but riding the scenes of murder like a cutscene.
She smiles again, and leans in, only a millimeter away from invading my personal space. Woman have some decency!
"Can I borrow your imagination?"
Oh, so that's what's going on, the "I'm acting like a friend because I want something from you." routine. It's so cliché that it still works.
The only reason why anyone still talks to me is they want me to look into a case they can't solve on their own.
How pathetic. It's the Law Enforcement Equivalent of calling someone your friend so you'd pay for their lunch.
Disgusting.
Society, you have once again lost points. Bringing your total score to a whopping negative seven billion. May you all die.
"No."
"So fast!"
I walked out of the lecture room as fast as I could. Pushing my glasses up in between steps, parting groups of idly chatting students as I try to get away from Hiratsuka.
"Wait, Hikigaya!"
I stopped. I don't know why but I just did. I waited, wanting to know what Hiratsuka could say to convince me to help her.
Students glance our way. I catch a few whispering among themselves of the scene happening. This is not what it looks like kids, please don't…
"Eight girls, eight innocent high school girls. Taken from eight different campus around the Chiba prefecture."
"What's in it for me?" I say looking down at her.
I was barely even able to blink before a fist comes into my vision.
But not into my face.
"You shouldn't ask a woman that when you look at her with that kind of look in your eyes." She warns.
"…Understood." I gently adjust my glasses back to my face, they must've moved when I turned to face her.
She saw my eyes.
My rotten-eyes again, it's always my eyes. I ruined my eyesight years ago with night time reading to be able to hide my rotten pupils with a pair of glasses. Sadly, it only works half the time. And when the glasses fail, it looks like I'm intentionally shooting death-glares instead of my eyes just being at their default state.
"Sorry." I hear her say.
"Don't be."
I can tell from her expression that she knows I'm not used to hearing people apologize to me.
"I thought there were seven." I say in a way to change the subject. As far as I know, seven girls were kidnapped.
"There were."
After a quick drive to the Chiba Prefectural Police Headquarters, Hiratsuka takes me through swarms of investigators to where the investigation was taking place, I look out of place with my plaid button-ups compared to the black suit and ties of investigators and agents. A few police officers are here, so I'm not the only one not dressed as a member of WORLD ORDER.
I feel their eyes on me, only a few seem to know who I am, the rest just seem curious as to why someone who obviously isn't an agent is in here.
I walk a little faster, catching up with Hiratsuka.
"When did you tag the eight?" I asked, hoping that talking to their boss might make them think I'm not just a civilian trespassing.
"About three minutes before I walked into your lecture hall."
"You're calling them "abductions" because you have no bodies?"
"We have nothing. No bodies. No parts of bodies. Nothing that comes out of a body. We have lonely swabs in used evidence kits."
The answer was obvious. "Then those girls weren't taken from where you think they were taken."
"Where were they taken from?" Hiratsuka asks as if she fully believed I knew, she's in for a disappointment.
"I don't know." I'm not a psychic, I can't see the future. "Someplace else."
Hiratsuka takes me to their planning room, it's crawling with investigators and some police officers, all waiting for her but from the looks on their faces, they weren't expecting me.
I see a map in the middle of the board.
I know that area of land anywhere, it's the Chiba prefecture. Seven thumbtacks representing the seven girls dotting the map.
I see faces of girls around the map, the dots connected to a photograph with a line. A very organized visualization of who got taken where.
An agent gives Hiratsuka a file, I focus on listening to the briefing she's about to give me, the kind of information the media doesn't get to have.
The kind I wasn't allowed to have until I signed to this case.
"These girls were abducted on a Friday night so that the girls' parents would think they were out late or staying with a friend." I hear some frustration in Hiratsuka's voice, it's the careful ones that make the worst.
The abductor doesn't want to get caught, so he has the capacity to know right and wrong. He's also careful judging from the lack of evidence found in the scenes, a sign of psychopathy. He's patient as well, not impulsive like many psychopaths.
We're dealing with a psychopathic abductor, or at least it's another piece I can add to the abductor's profile.
Hiratsuka tacks an eight tack on the map, she hands me a photograph of teenage girl in a high school uniform. On top of it was a name written in red marker.
"Number eight?" If this wasn't so serious, I would think that the Psychological Thriller Gods were making a pun out of my first name.
"Her name's Kayo Takahashi. Sixteen years old, goes to Subo High School. Her parents were away on a trip for the weekend, she was supposed to stay home and watch the cat. Her parents came home and didn't find any trace of her. She never made it home."
It was at this moment that I felt it necessary to say what no one in the room had the guts to say, but knew all along what it meant when there was an eight victim in a kidnapping case.
"Girls one to seven are dead." I wave the picture of the Ms. Takahashi to their unimaginative faces. "He's got himself a new one, why keep the rejects."
It wasn't me who said that. It was the abductor because that's what went through his mind, I say it only to tell them the truth they keep denying and treat this not as a rescue kidnapping but a murder.
And it's also for my sake, to ease my way into understanding the monster capable of doing these things.
At my statement, many agents and police officers glare at me, some even look nauseous of the idea.
If it was awful for them to hear, it was even harder for me to say. Because I feel sick just even trying to make sense of what this sick bastard must be thinking of.
To give Hiratsuka credit she doesn't look at me completely with disgust. It almost looked like she was agreeing, and thankful that someone finally said.
Or more accurately, that she didn't have to say it.
"Then let's focus on finding Kayo."
I nod in agreement.
I take in the hopeful looks on the faces of these seven girls. Every single one of them looks like they would instantly reject high school aged me if I had confessed to either of them.
"He's got a type." Very few men do. And when a guy does, it's not as specific as black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and flat chest.
It's disturbing to think that every girl with those features could be the next victim.
"Same hair, same eye color, Roughly the same age, same height, same weight."
Don't forget cup size, most criminal profiles always forget the importance of cup size.
"What is it about these girls?" Hiratsuka asked me, at this point she's probably tried several theories already, no doubt starting with sexual implications.
We live in Japan after all, it was fair to speculate.
But this…this feels more than just a fetish taken too far.
"It's not about these girls. It's about one of them." I stick the photo of Kayo Takahashi on the board, lining it up to the 8th tack on the map.
"Or none of them. And it's about a special girl who hasn't been taken yet." I don't put emphasis on the word yet, the girl might be Kayo Takahashi.
Or is it a girl who can't be taken? No, I shouldn't guess. Guessing would make my brain lean to that idea and ignore all other possibilities.
Guessing is the worst enemy for characters in Crime genre after all, reserved for the incompetent cop who goes with his gut at every episode. I'll hypothesize using the evidence. That's how Holmes does it, that's how Conan Edogawa does it, and that's how I'll do it.
And most importantly, that's not how most police officers in Japan do it, they just pin the blame on the most suspicious person and extract confessions out of them under duress. Source: Me and several other credible media sources.
"So is he warming up for this special girl or reliving whatever it is the he did to her?" she asks, staring at the girls faces.
"She wouldn't be the first one taken or the last. He would hide how special she is. I know I would. Wouldn't you?" I take my bag and leave.
I've done enough, I've had my fill of madness. Hiratsuka can figure the rest out.
"I want you to get closer to this." Was the last thing I wanted to hear Hiratsuka say.
"You have dozens of more qualified people with PhDs and are actually allowed to do field work who do the exact same thing I do."
"That's not really true, is it? You have a specific way of thinking."
I've grown tired of this. "Has there been a lot of discussion about the specific way I think?"
My entire adult life has been a series of people wanting to look into my head and see what makes me different for academic purposes.
"You can make jumps you can't explain."
"The evidence explains it."
I'm not psychic, or a super genius. Anyone can do what I can with enough practice and the right education.
"Then help me find some." Hiratsuka asked in a way that you'd have to be the coldest person in the world to not accept.
I don't have a choice in this. I never did.
She knows exactly what I want, and that's to save Kayo Takahashi.
To save another girl from sharing the same fate as the other seven.
That's what I studied and trained for; to help people.
To help keep them safe from the monsters that look like people.
I might not like what I have, but the Crime Drama Gods gave me a neat enough party trick to be of some good use.
Because I'm not a selfless guy.
It's just my selfish desire to make sure no one should loses a loved one…
… to some psychopath with a fetish.
"That would require me to be social."
The Takahashi household was a quaint little home, so peaceful and loving, that I felt out of place defiling it with my rotten presence.
I can't even retain contact with Kayo Takahashi's parents; Mr. and Mrs. Takahashi looked tired, Mrs. Takahashi even looks resigned, looking like she just aged an entire decade in the last forty-eight hours. But what kind of mother wouldn't be a mess when her daughter was taken?
My childhood has an answer to that.
"She could have just run away, you know. Took a train. She never did like studying. The pressure of school was hard on her, and who knows…she might have…she might have." Mr. Takahashi speaks with some hope that his daughter might still be alive, assuring himself and his wife who was sitting beside him on the kitchen table.
Hiratsuka sat opposite to the couple, talking them in their dining room, I was on my feet surveying the place.
"She looks like the other girls?" asked Mrs. Takahashi.
"She fits the profile." Hiratsuka didn't want to divulge the profile exactly, as a case that is on-going it would be illegal to do so, but I know that in her mind, telling parents the reason why their daughter was taken was because of some genetic combination of Mr. Takahashi's blue eyes, and Mrs. Takahashi's long black hair, led to making their daughter an appealing target for an abductor would just crush them.
Make them blame themselves and hate their own DNA.
It was a feeling I got from Hiratsuka.
A feeling we both share.
"Could Kayo still be alive?" she asked, hope seeping through her voice.
"We simply have no way of knowing." Hiratsuka answers truthfully.
I feel like an intruder at the same time the bringer of bad news ordered to find clues to confirm their daughter was dead.
I search around, looking for any indication of forced entry, or possible locations for entry; I find cat hair instead.
"How's the cat?"
I admit, now that I hear it out loud, that may have sounded like it came out of nowhere. I'll probably lose an hour of sleep marring over this tonight. Replaying this awkward memory over and over again.
"Excuse me?"
"You said you weren't here all weekend, and Kayo was supposed to look after the cat. It didn't eat all weekend, must've been hungry when you came home."
"The cat's fine."
"I didn't even notice."
Were the answers I needed to hear.
Someone better call HQ, the tack on the map is wrong, she wasn't taken around her school.
I quickly move to Hiratsuka's ear. "She was taken here. She left school, came home, feed the cat. He took her here." Those were the sequence of events, now we finally have a definitive location of an abduction.
Hiratsuka calls someone. "I need teams, the Takashi House has just become a crime scene. Get Isshiki, Nishiyama, and Nijima." Her personal best by the sound of things.
The Takashi family look in horror, their home now a scene of a crime, their haven from the dangers of the outside world, the place their little girl grew up in now forever defiled by a someone taking their daughter.
I know what they must be going through. Literally. I feel it from just looking at them. It's not a good feeling, suddenly nothing is safe and nothing makes sense.
But I can't linger on that feeling, I can't put myself in their shoes. Not now. Not when I still need to look for their daughter.
"Can I see her room?" I ask permission first, they've had enough people coming in and out of their house. It was the polite thing to do.
"The police were there all morning."
The police were only looking for their daughter or clues of her running away, not evidence of an abduction.
I put on my surgical gloves as Mr. Takahashi leads me to his daughter's room. We make our way up the stairs, and I see the cat.
The odd black and brown fur-ball claws at the door of the last room on the left.
The same door Mr. Takahashi was leading me to.
I prepare for the worst.
The cat ignores Mr. Takahashi, who then reaches for the door knob.
"Don't" I say, stopping his hand from making contact the stainless-steel door knob.
"I'll get it." His worried look forces me to explain. "It's better if you let me do the touching." I make a gesture with my gloved hands and he understands.
"Would you put your hands in your pockets and avoid touching anything, please." He looks hesitant at the order.
I glance down at the feline; the fur ball was making a mess with its claws.
"If it makes you feel better you can hold the cat." I think as a good excuse. "Keep it from making a mess of any evidence."
He picks up the cat as instructed. Seeing that we were both ready, I open the door.
I made a mistake, I wasn't ready. Not for what was on the other side.
I noticed the opened window first, it screamed at me to investigate further. I flick the lights open and I see her.
Kayo Takahashi.
She lay coffin style on the bed, dressed in pajamas as if she had just gone to sleep.
But I can see her greyed skin, the puncture wounds that seep blood doting her light blue pajamas with red specks, and her unmoving chest.
She's dead.
Sadly, Mr. Takahashi isn't as observant as I am. He moves forward. Blinded by hope that his little girl was back home and alive.
"Kayo?"
I grab him by his shoulders before he could contaminate the crime scene.
"I need you to leave the room."
"No- she's…she's…"
My overactive imagination- my empathy leaks through. I feel his emotions and vividly as if it was my own daughter lying there.
Worried. Hopeful. Concern. But I also feel the impending torture of the loss approaching.
They say that having children is like was walking with your heart out of your chest.
Because of Mr. Takahashi I know exactly how that feels like, the feeling of constant, involuntary worry that consumes a father of a young girl.
Mr. Takahashi notices now, that Kayo wasn't just sleeping, with his daughter's death sinking in, he drops the cat.
And now I feel the agony of having your heart ripped out of you.
For a split second, I feel the torture like a punch to my heart.
I was lucky, I put up the walls the kept my imagination at bay, the pain only lasted for a split second in real-time.
For Mr. and Mrs. Takahashi however, that pain would never stop.
The cat, now free, scurries off to Kayo's body, contaminating her face with its fur and saliva.
This is why I hate cats.
The team arrives, the Takahashi house is once again full of police, men in white button ups and blue vests are forming a perimeter, some looking for evidence, a few officers were with the Takahashi couple, consoling them enough so they were fit for asking questions.
My guess is they want a time frame, the moments the killer could have a put Kayo back in her bedroom.
Finding out when was their job.
Finding out why would be mine.
"You're all hooked up." Hiratsuka tells me, the small recording device on my shirt feels heavier than it should. It bothers me that I need to be recorded as per regulations.
"If you want to talk you talk." She tells me in an assuring "Just do what's natural kind of way."
This isn't natural.
This isn't normal.
Or sane.
Nothing is sane about standing in a room of a deceased girl trying to find her killer by empathizing the monster's sick twisted mind.
But it's my job.
I grit my teeth for a second then stop, gritting your teeth is bad for you, just ask your dentist.
I give Hiratsuka a small nod.
She leaves the room. Nothing else said.
I needed to hear the door close first before I could begin, it shuts softer than I wanted it to, a slam would have been better.
I close my eyes, I take a breath, I keep in to account the evidence I've discovered; the bed's frame slightly ajar, the bruises on Kayo's body, the pajama's she's in, the wounds on her, and most importantly...
...the wide open window.
The same window I find myself looking through.
Staring at Kayo Takahashi's sleeping form.
She's alive.
She's sleeping peacefully.
She has no idea what's going to happen to her.
She's mine.
I look down on her, I'm at her side, she's unaware of the danger that's literally standing in front of her.
All evidence points that the puncture wounds weren't her cause of death, no signs of a struggle either, she was asleep when he took her so that only means…
I raise my foot and slam it down on her in a jump, bearing all my weight on her, I feel her ribs crack.
Kayo startles out of sleep, and tries to scream but my hands are around her throat.
I choke the life out of her.
All my weight, I push down on her form.
I see her face is in pure terror, her face swells against the pressure, tears flow down her face the whites in her eyes wrinkle and the veins burst.
The bed snaps, and Kayo dies.
"This… Is…My…-"
"You're Hikigaya Hachiman, aren't you?"
I'm suddenly back to where I was standing to see another person in the room with me. She's a police officer, one of Hiratsuka's best, or else she wouldn't be in here and wearing plain-clothes.
"You're not supposed to be here."
I feel like I'm sixteen and my parents caught me masturbating. Caught doing something disgusting and personal.
"You're the professor who graduated from the FBI academy in the US." She knows who I am, knows all about me apparently. She sounds like a fan, but I just want her to leave so I can catch my breath.
"I found antler velvet in two of the wounds." She gestures to the body with a small forensic bottle containing evidence.
With her eyes no longer trying to connect with mine I look at her, she's short, shorter than me by a foot, with brown hair that's shoulder length.
She looks like the girl who you talk to for one minute and you suddenly fantasize about dating, marrying and spending your lives together.
She looks to be my age, so it's understandable.
"You're, uh, not a real detective?"
Her cute looks finally break their hold on me. "A consultant detective is my official designation now. Less Sherlock Holmes, more Harry Dresden." Always did prefer the consulting wizard over the pompous sociopath.
"Who?"
She's definitely a woman my age. "Look it up." I tell her, hoping to cure at least one Japanese female of pop-culture deficiency.
"Are you hitting on me?"
…No! Woman, we are in a crime scene! And what part of me calling you unpop-cultured is me hitting on you?!
She looks away as if scandalized by me looking at her. "I'm sorry Professor but I'm not the kind of woman who does these sorts of things during an ongoing investigation…"
Neither am I!
"Isshiki!"
Hiratsuka comes rushing through the door, looking ready to scold her some more. "You know you're not supposed to be in here."
And just like that, Isshiki or something-whatever-her-name-is changes her attitude instantly, replacing her sly smile to a professional look.
"I found antler velvet in two of the wounds, like she was gored. I was looking for velvet in the other wounds but I was interrupted."
She explains like a competent police officer, instead of the schoolgirl persona I just got hit with.
This woman's a fox, not in the seductive secretive way that most women aren't, but the two-faced mischievous kind that eats your food and runs away.
I stare at her longer than I should.
Before more people come into the room.
A man who looks like he's dressed for an action cop movie with his leather jacket and neatly trimmed beard walks in the room. He's Nijima or Nishiyama, but the older man still at the door looks more like a Nishiyama.
Nijima's now standing next to me, leather jacket looking even cooler next to my field jacket in comparison. He starts talking, I've never been ignored at such a close distance before.
"Deer and elk pin their prey not stab them, pins them down using all their weight to suffocate them. That's how they'd kill a predator." He shares, enforcing the rule that all detectives should know about seemingly useless bits of trivia.
The room just felt congested, I better just sneak out of here.
"Kayo Takahashi was suffocated to death. Ribs were broken." Hiratsuka begins perceiving it the wrong way, leading the investigation in the wrong direction, piecing together the right information on the wrong way.
I had to stop, I needed to tell her that the killer isn't trying to copy a deer's method of killing or whatever deer-related ideas her and her team may have in this case.
"Antler velvet is actually known to promote healing." I share some trivia, in the hopes of stopping further derailment of productive trains of thought.
"They're rich in nutrients and sometimes used in traditional Japanese medicine."
Almost all horns are known to promote healing in traditional eastern medicine. That's why rhinos went extinct after all.
"He may have put it there on purpose."
The killer was meticulous, antler velvet is not a common thing to find unless he put it on her for a reason.
"You think he wanted to heal her?" Hiratsuka looks skeptical, I don't blame her.
The evidence tells us he killed this girl brutally but cared enough about her to do it quickly and as painless as he could.
"He tried to undo what he did to her, given that he already killed her."
Hiratsuka, looks at the body, and realizes the bed's significance. "He put her back where he found her."
I stare at Kayo Takashi's body and understand one tiny bit about the killer. "Whatever he did to the others, he couldn't do it to her."
He's picky.
Like a child with his dinner.
"Is this the special girl?" Strangely, Hiratsuka sounded hopeful.
As bad as Kayo's death was, I couldn't blame her for wanting this to be the last.
Once again, I'll have to shoot down that hope.
"No, this is just an apology."
He will kill again.
A dull pounding at the bone from the inside of my head makes me pinch the bridge of my nose, too much information. Felt like I was back in college in the middle of Finals Week.
"Does anyone have any aspirin?"
I take a few shots of aspirin from a drugstore near the station. The throbbing in the spaces between my ears finally becomes bearable enough for me to travel.
An uncomfortable train ride back to Chiba later I finally got in my car.
My Toyota pick-up truck was for off-road comfort. The kind of comfort you get when riding a big car in a city full of family sedans and sports cars.
My pick-up isn't a means to show off my above average manhood. I need a decent off-road vehicle for my rides home, so why not a beefy, vehicle of Japanese comfort and design.
I live pretty far from the big city, almost a two-hour drive in fact. Almost all the way to the mountains.
The housing in the big city is too expensive for my teacher's salary. It's also the only place I can get enough space.
I couldn't survive living in a cramped apartment, the depression alone would kill me, then I'd have nowhere to practice my bow.
I'm an archer, not a pro but a decent shot. I could hit a moving target.
And archers need wide open spaces to shoot arrows without fear of hitting someone that could sue them for attempted murder.
Besides, the long ride isn't so bad. It's actually one of the best things about it.
Ever since I learned how to drive, I've always loved driving in through longs roads. They're so relaxing, almost freeing. Unlike the big cities, not many cars go through save for the usually delivery truck, so there's never any traffic, and it just feels tranquil.
Gives me time to think and monologue.
I see something up a head, the closer I get to it, I recognize what it was.
It's another plus side to living so far away.
"Hello there."
You never know what you might find along the way home.
"Who knew this case would wound up wounding me up like a jack-in-the-box, a few cranks left and I pop, my nerves as tense as the springs coiled against the lid. This killer's something else, his head's holding a completely new type of Joker inside.
"The air is cold. Nothing new when in this time of year. The freeway was empty, the kind of empty that would leave you paranoid of what's hiding. But you seemed to take it, can't you?"
My passenger grunts.
"I admire that."
CRANK
The aspirin's wearing off, or maybe I've grown resistant. I'll just monologue the pain away.
"The murderer. He was apologizing. But not to Kayo. To the parents. He risked getting caught to put her where her mom and dad would have wanted to find her; safe and sleeping in her bed. He's gotten into their heads better than I could get into his."
CRANK
"Why though?" I rub my temple, careful not to shift my glasses that could impair my vision and cause an accident.
CRANK
"Why would he kill Kayo but try to fix her?"
CRANK
"What makes her different from the other girls?"
CRANK
"More importantly…why am I telling you this?"
My passenger lets out a bark as a response.
I don't know whether that's a Yes or No, or he simply wants more gas station chicken.
"I'll take that as a you wanting more gas station chicken." I give him another piece of deep fried chicken and it seems I was right.
My tiny house was as isolated as you could get in Chiba.
Used to be a farmer's house. Been living in it for almost a decade now. I don't plant crops though, but I use the fields for other things.
Mostly as an archery range.
The first thing I did when I got home was give the little guy a bath, the poor thing's fur was so dirty that it wasn't until the third washed that I found out its coat was honey-brown and not dark brown.
You should have seen him, trudging alone in the dark, dragging his leash on the streets. A leash, upon closer observation, he must've gnawed off.
I hate people like that. Why would you get a dog if you were just going to keep him leashed on a tree?
No wonder it was so easy for me to bribe him into my car with convenience store food.
The poor guy's been starving.
I toweled him off thoroughly so he wouldn't shake and get me wet. And just to be sure, I blow dry him.
Now if I could just think of a name, to give him. Should have thought of one along the way instead of monologuing.
"Ranpo." After the famed Japanese author who was secretly a fanboy for English literature.
"Everyone. Meet Ranpo." I tell my little pack of stray dogs I've found over the years. I took them all in. Japan has a cruel policy when it came to stray dogs, euthanizing them in gas chambers.
"Ranpo. Meet everyone."
By everyone I meant Ryu, my Kai Ken, a breed of dog that looks like a small husky black bear that just loves to run at me at full speed when I get home.
Inusuke, my old Akita breed, a loyal guard dog breed and demoted couch buddy. I named him after another author but it's a pun.
My tough looking Faito, a Tosa or Japanese Mastiff, a red tank of a dog. Found him after investigating about an illegal dog fighting den. I got him when he was still a puppy that was recently sold there, so he's a big softy.
And of course, my white Japanese spitz I call Aramu, the fluffy snowball just loves attention, always eager to have me around, never lets me sleep past seven; that's why I call her "Alarm" with a Japanese accent.
I introduce them to Rampo like a new member of the family. And I don't have to wait long for a reaction.
Inusuke was the first to greet the newest member of the family, barking happily as the others trailed along.
The eerie silence of my tiny house is replaced by a symphony of barking. Everyone accepting their newest friend.
This is why I love dogs.
Dogs befriend very easily and accept just about anyone. Show them respect and affection and they reward you with undying loyalty.
"Who wants dinner?"
I'll give them something meaty tonight to celebrate.
"Dogs should be rewarded for not being people. I hate people."
I turn the heater on for my dogs before I go to sleep, they flock around the orange glow. While I head to my bed that's too far away for the heat to reach.
I sleep better cold. Or at least, when I'm under a mountain of blankets.
But tonight, sleep seems to elude me, always there but not yet. I'm at the point in trying to sleep when your brain's being a jerk and starts replaying your most embarrassing moments, cringing you out of sleep.
I close my eyes tight and power through it, staying motionless and focusing on the hypnotic humming of the heater.
It almost works, I feel sleep's slow approach.
I hear a sound.
It wakes me right up.
I look to my side and see Kayo Takahashi's body. Her pale corpse lays beside my bed.
I'm frozen, blood drains from my face.
She's dead, but not the same way I saw her.
I reach out to her. I don't know why but my hand just does.
But Kayo floats, lifted by an invisible force.
I lose sight of her, she disappears, behind blackness.
She's upright, hanging like a doll on a wall, limp and unmoving. I have a feeling, somewhere in my goat something was going to happen.
I just know it. My heart beats frantically in my chest.
Antlers pierce her from behind, like branches growing out of her, drawing her blood and she hangs on them. Blood drips freely from her wounds.
I wake up before I could scream.
I was covered in sweat.
My breath ragged and my throat like sand paper.
I'm sick to the stomach and my head feels like it's been under a hydraulic press.
When I took in the killer's madness to understand him, I didn't get a chance to let it out.
So this is how my melody ends, what happens when there's been enough cranks; the image of Kayo Takahashi's defiled corpse pops out the lid.
The next day at work instead of going to Hiratsuka like I was supposed to, I hide in the bathroom.
Bathrooms are safe havens for loners, a place to escape when the cafeteria is too crowded or when there's an event taking place and you don't want to be part of it.
I also tend to remember – or more accurately, retain – my old middle school habits.
I keep my eyes closed as I turn off the sink.
Like washing my face more often than necessary. This is the sixth time, and for the sixth time I dry my face with a paper towel.
I'm not ashamed to admit I've been at this all morning, hiding in the sanctuary of the men's room and alternating between sitting in a bathroom stall and washing my face to avoid Hiratsuka.
It got old pretty quickly.
My fingers are wrinkly as prunes and water's been dripping down from my collar to inside my shirt long enough to cause hypothermia.
Eventually, I couldn't stay like this forever.
"What are you doing in here!?"
I turn and stare blankly at Hiratsuka, an unused paper towel still in my hand. Face dripping with water.
"I could say the exact same thing to you. This is the men's room."
Hiratsuka just looks crossed, but tries to stay calm, or tries to look like she's calm. "Let's talk."
"Gandhi always said, you should only talk when you contribute to silence." Or something like that, I was never good at quoting pacifists.
That only sets Hiratsuka off.
"What I want you to contribute to is this case!" her yell echo through the tiled room.
An officer with poor timing, walks in, hearing only the end of Hiratsuka's outburst.
The officer looks between me and Hiratsuka, as though he had just walked in on a couple's quarrel. Cautious but curious
"Use the ladies room!" she yells at the agent, taking her eyes of me for the first time.
He leaves us alone, scared of Hiratsuka.
Poor guy.
Take me with you.
I hear Hiratsuka let out a breath, and when she faces me again she looks calmer, letting her anger out on that officer must've calmed her down.
"Do you trust my judgement, Hikigaya?"
Against my better judgement. "Yes."
"Then trust me when I say we'd have a better chance of catching this guy with you in the lead and not bringing up the rear."
As far as I know, I'm the only lead Hiratsuka has, so she's not letting me go. What's in my head could catch this guy.
A life could be at stake.
I understand her. I really do.
But I'm just as- or even more than- confused as her.
"I don't this kind of psychopath. I've never read about him. He's not shallow. Or insensitive. I'm not even sure he's a psychopath."
"You know something about him; otherwise, you wouldn't have said "This was an apology". What's he apologizing for?"
Well to start, at least I know that much.
"He couldn't honor her." That's what I felt, what her body meant. "He feels guilty because he couldn't honor her. He feels remorse. He feels bad."
"Well feeling bad defeats, the purpose of being a psychopath, doesn't it?"
"YES, it does."
This is where we are, calling him a psychopath would be so much easier. I wanted to shove the image of the killer into a box labelled PYSCHOPATH and be done with this case but he doesn't fit.
Hiratsuka continues to treat me like a break room vending machine that doesn't drop the snack, she has to force it out of me.
"Then what kind of crazy is he!"
Stop yelling at me woman. This isn't something I can do on the spot. Or under duress. And I'm not a hapless idiot you can push into spilling.
"To him, he couldn't show her how much he loves her so he put her corpse back to where he found it." She's not a reject, she's a loss, to him personally. "Whatever crazy that is?" was my best, and only answer.
"You think he loves these girls."
"He loves one of them." I admit, I'll give him that much. "And by association, he has a form of love for the others." It's why they all look alike.
They look like the one girl he loves. His black haired, blue eyed, flat-chested, SPECIAL GIRL.
"There was no semen. No saliva. Kayo Takahashi died a virgin and she stayed that way." Hiratsuka has a different interpretation of love; the sexual kind.
But this killer isn't like that, whatever I felt in Kayo Takahashi's, sexual arousal was not one of them. No euphoric bliss after satisfying a need. No peak of arousal, just guilt.
"Even he has standards." I say blunter than my self-preservation would have liked. "He loves, wouldn't disrespect them. Not like that."
He treats them right. In his own twisted way, he cares about them.
"He doesn't want these girls to suffer. He wants them to die quickly! I…"
I'm defending him. Defending a killer. Why, I'll never know. I just feel the need to tell Hiratsuka.
I calm down, enough to change the tone of my voice back to a respectful one "…He's thinking with mercy."
Hiratsuka notices, realizes something. I watch her carefully, judging her reaction.
"A sensitive psychopath." she finally says. "Risked getting caught so he could tuck Kayo Takahashi back into bed." she says in quiet understanding.
I relieved we weren't yelling anymore, my head can't take anymore loud noises.
"He knows he's going to get caught. He'll take the next girl soon." I don't need to be…well me to know that.
Human nature is self-destructive. And in desperation, they will do the illogical. And Hiratsuka knows it.
"I know I would." I say putting on my glasses.
I'll ignore the look Hiratsuka gives me.
She knows what she signed up for coming to me for help.
I didn't want to deal with anymore of Hiratsuka's convincing, and neither could I face a classroom full of shiny, bright faces. I haven't been in an examination room for a long time, my eyes never could stand the white walls, white floors and ceilings, and cold metal body lockers and slabs.
The dead bodies you get used to, the eye pain just gets worse.
When I got to the team, Kayo's body was still in the body bag, they zipped her open when I put on my gloves. They offered to give me a lab coat so I could get a closer look, but I declined.
Honestly, I didn't want to be near Kayo's body.
Afraid it might float again and scary me. At least I'm sure this isn't another nightmare.
I'm sure.
Nijima lists down her injures, I listen to them talk but to join.
Too busy suppressing the nightmare that made ice crawl up my spine.
"I checked for prints, couldn't find any. But I got a hand spread off her neck."
From when he strangled her to death.
"Reports say anything about the nails?"
Isshiki asked.
Nijima shakes his head.
"Nothing, her fingernails were smudged when we took scrapings. The scrapings were where she cut her palms with them. She never scratched him." said Nishiyama, he's the doctor in the group from what I can tell. He's older than me, and probably Isshiki and Nijima too.
He's age shows when he furrows his brow, disappointment revealing his matured features.
The whole team looks defeated, this body wasn't the jackpot of clues we wanted.
The was sorry but he wasn't careless.
"This curly piece of metal is all we got."
Metal?
"I found metal clippings on her pajamas." Isshiki explains, then shoots me a flirty smile, tying to seduce me into inferring an inductive reasoning for it.
I might as well.
"We should be looking for plumbers, metalworkers, construction workers, steam fitters, tool workers."
Blue-collar not White. Great, another psychopathic trait to cross out of the list. I might as well burn my psychology books.
"Have that tested, see if it's the kind of metal used only by specific companies. Helps narrow the search."
They take my word for it, somehow. I feel like I'm back teaching in class. But they were all too busy thinking to make a sound.
The room just got quiet, quiet enough for me to try something.
I glance at Kayo's body.
Whether what happened last night was Kayo's ghost or my brain taking a shot at being a horror movie director, it didn't matter. What mattered was my dream showed me something.
Something that I must've caught when I was still at the Takashi house before I was interrupted.
It's a long shot but I'll try it.
I look at Kayo on the slab, force myself to really look, convince myself feel the madness of the killer. Let his evil in me and flood mind.
I try harder, looking within and use what's left of the madness I haven't yet expelled.
The nightmare comes back out of nowhere, it's the same darkness, it's the most vivid memory I've ever had of a dream.
Kayo's dead body floating. Limp. Lifeless. And suddenly, antlers pierce her flesh.
But it goes on.
Further than what I remembered when I woke up. My memory able to remember all the details of the dream, almost unlocking it from my subconscious.
I hear Nijima speaking, continuing their examination. "Her other injuries were post-mortem. So… not gored." That was addressed for Isshiki and her theory.
"She's got lots of piercings that look like they were caused by deer antlers, I didn't say a deer gored her." Isshiki rebukes.
They'd be at this banter forever if I don't say something.
"She was mounted on them." I say suddenly.
That stops they're playful rivalry. Isshiki and Nishiyama glance at me, Nijima was busy looking at Kayo's body, investigating the abdominal wound not caused by the antlers that he seems to have just noticed.
"Like hooks."
Just like in the dream. Kayo was mounted on the antlers, blood pouring down from her body, pooling around her suspended feet.
"She may have been bled."
Bled like a pig in a slaughter house…
My stomach acids rise, I feel my mouth fill with bitter saliva as an idea ricochets around my head hoping to hit a wall of logic that could disprove it.
"Her liver was removed." Nijima opens the wound to show Nishiyama. "See that? He took it out, and then…he put it back in."
Nijima removes the organ for closer inspection.
"Huh?" goes the oldest one of us here.
"Why would he cut it out if he was going to sew it back in again?" asked the confused doctor.
With that, my idea finds no such wall of logic to dismiss it as a morbid thought.
I have the answer.
Every muscle on my face slacks as I say it.
"There's something wrong with the meat."
Nijima looks at Kayo's liver and then back to me, he probably thinks I'm psychic or have x-ray vision.
"She has liver cancer."
I come to a sick realization, one that makes me feel like I'm about to throw up. These girls, he's not imprisoning and raping them, or selling them off to slavery like the police think.
They can't find their bodies because they're may not be any bodies left...
"He's um...He's eating them."
He shows his love for these girls by eating them, every part of them.
He couldn't honor Kayo because of her cancer.
He couldn't honor her so he put her back.
Too bad.
Human liver is a succulent meat. Like sweet pork.
In a dimly lit dining room, another cannibal doesn't share the same problem as the killer Hachiman was after.
To her, cooking the meat to perfection and presenting it, serving the dish with red wine ,and eating it with classical music was all the honoring the dish needed.
She enjoys her dish of human liver, simply because human meat tastes good.
And she holds no guilt in enjoying it.
She's beautiful, the ideal Japanese beauty, sophisticated and erudite.
Even though she was dining alone, she sat pointedly on the table with perfect table manners.
She gracefully carves up a bite sized piece of human liver, skewering it with her fork before applying a balance of garnishes with her knife.
She takes a bite.
And smiles.
Delicious.
Meet Dr. Yukinoshita Yukino.
End of Chapter 1
AN:
Disclaimer: I don't own Oregauiru or Hannibal.
First of all shout-out to a reviewer by the username Blakithleo for finding my hidden message in the word count. The first chapter had 666 words, the number of the beast and popularly associated with the devil, referencing Yukinoshita's role in the story.
You know, cuz she's evil.
I can't promise when the next chapter will come out.
The story won't be the same as Hannibal, and definitely not going to follow Oregauiru's story line for obvious reasons. The starts are relatively the same, but this story will differ immensely.
CHARACTERS:
Hikigaya Hachiman: Former Homicide Detective of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, forced to resign due to concerns over his mental health, currently a Professor at Chiba University and Consultant for Commissioner Hiratsuka Shizuka.
The Batman to Hiratsuka's Commissioner Gordon.
A gifted Criminal Profiler with an extensive knowledge of the Criminal Mind. Friendless and pragmatic, his intellect is rivaled only by his instability. Purposely ruined his eyesight to hide his "rotten-fish eyes" with high-grade glasses.
Hiratsuka Shizuka: The Commissioner Gordon to Hachiman's Batman. The commissioner of the Chiba Prefectural Police who holds everyone working under her to the same high standards she sets for herself. Although she respects the decision to relieve Hachiman from active duty, she still believes he could be the greatest weapon at their disposal to catch the most vicious killers.
Isshiki Iroha: Detective and Forensic Scientist. The youngest member of Hiratsuka's team. Though she acts playful and flirty, she's still every much a police officer that through talent and hard work, got her to the position she's in today.
Nijima Nagisa: A hard-boiled detective, former delinquent turned cop, almost as tough as he tries to look. Prefers to only be called "Nijima". Too smart to be called stupid, and acts too stupid to be called smart. Hiratsuka's most loyal man whom he respects deeply.
Dr. Nishiyama Souma: A doctor who works better with dead patients than living one's, the oldest member of Hiratsuka's team, been doing this job too long as as he never bats an eye to a dead body.
Dr. Yukinoshita Yukino: A world renowned psychiatrist, and a sociopathic serial killer who cooks and eats her victims, a famous figure to the upper-class citizens in Chiba for her astounding intellect and refined pursuits in classical music, opera, and of course...gourmet cuisine.
About ages, Hachiman and Yukinoshita's are similar to Hiratsuka's from the source material. Older than 25 but not yet 30. So 29 at most.
Isshiki is the youngest, Nijima being slightly older than Hachiman and Yukino, and Nishiyama older than all four of them but around the same age if not younger than Hiratsuka.
For the next chapter:
"What do you see me as, doctor?" Hachiman asked in mild curiosity, not expecting the doctor to answer.
Dr. Yukinoshita looks him in the eye. "The bat that flies in the night to devour the mosquitoes that carry disease."
