Chapter 44: First Diary Analysis (Part 3)

Kishida Masayoshi stared at his friend, completely blindsided. “Tanaka Erika was… in love with Kagehara Tetsuya? What on earth makes you say that? Where are you seeing that in the text?”

“You, my friend,” Suzuki Koji said, rolling his eyes with an almost theatrical sigh, a gesture of profound pity for Kishida’s emotional denseness, “are remarkably unobservant sometimes.” He pointed a sharp, clinical finger at the glowing screen. “Look at the text, Masayoshi. From Kagehara’s own detached, almost anthropological, account, Tanaka Erika’s attention towards him was constant, almost obsessive. And this wasn’t a recent development; it had been going on since they were very young. She was always at his house, always seeking him out, always trying to break through his shell.”

“And this part here,” he tapped the screen again, his voice firm, “‘I love watching Kagehara-kun when he’s thinking really hard!’ Isn’t that about as clear a confession as you can get, without actually using the word ‘love’? Masayoshi, if a girl your age said something like that to you, with that kind of intensity, what would you think?”

Hearing it laid out so starkly, so logically, Kishida had to admit, it started to make a twisted, tragic kind of sense. A girl saying she loves to watch you… anything… that was definitely not the language of a casual, platonic friendship. “If you put it that way…” he murmured, the pieces beginning to fall into a new, and deeply unsettling, configuration in his mind. “I suppose… it’s entirely possible.”

Suzuki Koji leaned back in his chair, a heavy, sorrowful sigh escaping his lips, his clinical detachment momentarily replaced by a profound, human sadness. “It’s actually quite… heartbreaking, when you think about it.”

“Tanaka Erika, filled with this genuine, youthful, and likely quite confusing affection, constantly orbiting Kagehara Tetsuya. Her intense focus, her attempts to get closer to him, her relentless curiosity about his true nature… it all stemmed from that simple, innocent affection. And the smarter she got, the more perceptive she was, the more she likely tried to express those feelings, in her own way. Like a moth, drawn irresistibly and fatally to a strange, cold, and incomprehensible flame.”

“She must have been so desperate, so hopeful for some kind of reciprocal response from him. Some sign that he saw her, that he understood.”

Kishida felt a cold knot form in the pit of his stomach as he followed the grim, inexorable logic. “But Kagehara Tetsuya, in his… condition… was completely blind to her feelings. He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t process it. And so, her acts of affection, her attempts to forge a genuine human connection with him, they became, in his twisted, alien mind, the very reasons he began to meticulously plot her murder.”

Suzuki Koji nodded grimly. “But from my professional perspective, the true tragedy here is not just Kagehara Tetsuya’s monstrous, psychopathic thoughts.”

“It’s the fact that those thoughts are almost certainly a direct, and unavoidable result of a profound physiological defect.”

“A brain that is, on a fundamental, structural level, wired differently from a normal person’s. A brain that, from the moment of his birth, has made it impossible for Kagehara Tetsuya to comprehend, let alone reciprocate, complex human emotions like love or affection.”

“So, while his meticulously detailed plan to murder Tanaka was undoubtedly a product of his own will, the very source of that will, the foundation of his being, was twisted, was broken, from the very beginning.”

“Viewed from that cold, clinical, and deeply unsettling angle, one could almost argue that Kagehara Tetsuya was, in a very real sense, compelled to kill Tanaka Erika.”

“He literally did not know what he was doing. Not in the way a normal human being would. He was, and is, a predator, operating on a completely different set of rules.”

Kishida Masayoshi fell silent, the weight of Suzuki’s words settling over him like a funeral shroud.

If Kagehara Tetsuya had been a normal person, he and Tanaka Erika might have become a happy, enviable couple. Was this a cruel, meaningless twist of fate? A cosmic injustice dealt to a girl whose only crime was to love the wrong person? Or perhaps… perhaps the most pitiable, most tragic figure in this entire, sordid affair… was Kagehara Tetsuya himself, a monster who never chose to be one.

After a long, heavy silence, Suzuki Koji seemed to shake himself back to his professional self, his voice once again crisp and analytical. “Alright. Let’s look at the next entry.”

Kishida took a sip of now-cold water, his throat dry. “The April 14th entry. The key points here are the planned locations for the murder and the subsequent body disposal. And when I compare this to my own investigation… both locations are a perfect, chilling match.”

“Tanaka Erika’s body was abandoned in that flood control warehouse in Mitsuba, as you know. What wasn’t released to the public, however, was the primary crime scene. I have long suspected, based on circumstantial evidence, that it was the abandoned chemical warehouse in the Takao Nichōme district.”

“When I first interviewed her parents, they gave me a list of places she frequented. The chemical warehouse was on that list. I checked out all the locations, and the warehouse was the only one that felt… wrong. There were strange, almost imperceptible traces there.”

Suzuki Koji’s eyebrow arched in interest. “Signs of a struggle?”

“No. Signs of a cleanup.” Kishida sighed, the familiar frustration of the cold case returning with a vengeance. “That’s all that was left. Because the warehouse is so old, parts of the floor are packed dirt, not concrete. And on that dirt floor, there were clear, unmistakable signs that someone had methodically tried to clean something up.”

“My working theory is that the killer dug up the blood-soaked soil and carefully replaced it with clean dirt from elsewhere. If you weren’t looking for it specifically, you’d never notice. But if you scraped away that top layer of clean dirt, you could see the fresh, sharp marks from a shovel underneath.”

“I collected samples of that topsoil and the earth beneath it, of course. Took them back to the lab. But it was a dead end. No traces of blood. Nothing.”

“So, the situation is this: based on the physical evidence at the scene, I can strongly, and with a high degree of confidence, theorize that this was Tanaka Erika’s murder scene. But I have absolutely no hard, forensic evidence to prove it.”

Suzuki frowned, his mind clearly working through the implications. “But if that’s the case, then doesn’t that point the finger directly at Kagehara Tetsuya as the killer? How could the Makeup Hunter have possibly known the details of Kagehara’s secret, meticulously laid-out plan?”

“Unless,” he added, a new, darker thought occurring to him, “the Makeup Hunter and Kagehara Tetsuya were somehow… intimately connected. For example, what if Kagehara Kenta, his father, is the Makeup Hunter? What if he saw his son’s diary, and decided to… help him out… by carrying out the murder himself, one step ahead of the boy, for his own twisted reasons.”

Based on Yomikawa Tsuko’s strange, confident behavior, Kishida was almost certain that Kagehara Tetsuya had been framed. But he couldn’t share his deeply unsettling suspicions about Yomikawa with Suzuki. Not yet. It was too fantastic, too unbelievable.

As for his theory about Kagehara Kenta, Kishida had already considered it, and dismissed it. “Impossible. Kagehara Kenta has an ironclad, verifiable alibi for the time of the murder. The coroner’s report puts the time of death squarely in the middle of a complex surgery he was performing at the hospital. And he can’t be the Makeup Hunter, either. I’ve checked. He has solid, unimpeachable alibis for two of the other eight Makeup Hunter killings as well.”

For a serial killer case like this, with its long, established timeline, a single, verifiable alibi was all it took to definitively rule someone out as the primary suspect.

Next, Suzuki Koji quickly read through the final two, shorter diary entries. “Well,” he said finally, leaning back in his chair, “there doesn’t seem to be much more of psychological value to discuss here. These later entries are more procedural, less concerned with his core worldview, so it’s difficult to say if they align with the classic profile of a psychopath. Speaking of which, why does the diary just… stop here? Is there something you’re not showing me? Something you’re holding back?”

Kishida let out a long, frustrated sigh. “I wish. This is all I was given. The rest, apparently, will have to wait.”

“Ah…” Suzuki leaned back, a look of profound, comical annoyance on his face. “That’s like… being cut off right at the climax, isn’t it? Being led right to the edge, only to be left with nothing. Damn it. That’s just cruel. Utterly sadistic.” He pouted. “Just when my professional interest was really, truly piqued, it’s all over. Next time, Masayoshi, if you only have one or two pages, don’t even bother bringing them to me. Wait until you have a decent, substantial chunk. I want to read the whole damn thing in one go, get the full, horrifying experience.”

“You think I don’t want that? Damn it, Koji, I’ve been having nightmares about what really happened on the day of that murder. I’d give anything to know the truth,” Kishida said, clapping his friend wearily on the shoulder.

They chatted for a few more minutes, the intense atmosphere in the small office slowly dissipating. Then, just as Kishida was about to leave, Suzuki suddenly said, “You know, if you really want to properly investigate Kagehara Tetsuya, to truly analyze his diary, his psychology, his behavior… there is someone I know who is far, far more qualified in these matters than I am.”

“Who?”

“A professor I knew when I was studying abroad. A Westerner. His research, his intuitive understanding of the psychopathic mind… it’s on a completely different level than mine. He’s also a world-renowned expert in criminal psychology. And, as a foreigner, he has no personal stake in our local affairs, no political biases. If we could get Kagehara Tetsuya’s diary in front of him, I am absolutely certain he would offer some… invaluable, and likely deeply unsettling insights.”

Kishida was taken aback. “A foreigner? How would we even contact him? And if he’s a professor, he must be incredibly busy. Why would he agree to help us with a local case?”

Suzuki Koji nodded, a faint, knowing smile on his lips. “This man… he has an obsessive interest in the minds of psychopaths. They are his life’s work. If we tell him the details of Kagehara Tetsuya’s case, I am certain he will be interested. He won’t be able to resist. And besides, summer vacation is almost here, isn’t it? I happened to hear that he’s coming to Japan for a holiday next month.”