by Vann Chow
Sin reeked from her. She reeked of sin.
Never did she speak of any of this to anyone, for fear that they would take her as mentally ill. It did occur to her that her denial likely signified that she was ill, theoretically speaking. Knowing about your own mental illness, having deduced it with your sick mind was about as senseless as a blind man reading out loud text he read on a printed book he could not read. A conundrum Misa assigned as trivial incongruence of a self-aware life.
Since then she irked out an existence that suited her true colors. The one that led her from one arm of a stranger to another. From one violent thrashing to another bodily torture. It suited her. She came alive in those moments. The thrills sent her off to seven heavens. Everything else was just distraction, putting up appearance, keeping her body healthy enough to do it again.
Recalling all these made her underwear damp. She squirmed.
52. Waterfall
Tanaka was meditating with his legs crossed on a bamboo mat he had placed on the floor of the empty flat.
Outside, the slow hum of the train passing filtered through the cracks of the dusty window. The flat had been unused now for a few years. It was the property of a now defunct adult movie production company. The flat was seized by the bank, but it had a lot of trouble selling it, given its history. Japanese is a superstitious nation after all. A place where a man had died was bad luck. Everyone with sense would avoid it.
Out of negligence or intentional abandonment, the place was still kept in the same state the day it stopped being used as a filming studio. Everything in this place was etched with invisible marks of its former cruelness.
In this studio, Sergey Ribery edited the last scene of his last remaining work with his favorite actress, Misa Hayami, who was only sixteen at the time.
The scene was simple. The naked girl stood in the middle of the shallow part of the river. Not too far behind her, a waterfall was splashing noisily behind. The camera swung to her muddled reflection on the slipping water gushing from the gap between a fallen tree trunk and the river bed.
Suddenly a man appeared beside her. It was the same man who had sexually abused her all along. The man hooked a loop of rope he had in his hand around her neck. She slipped motionlessly, without any resistance, into it, her hands grabbing the side of the rope as the man pulled the knot tighter, and tighter, and tighter until her facial expression was one of shock, which quickly warped into one of fear, of being betrayed.
A ritual murder scene laid out in superbly poetic surroundings. One that was designed so well the audience believed a hundred percent she was going to die. And die she did.
It was a mistake, the movie continued, showing the flustered male actor crying for help, pulling at the unyielding knot that had wrung the neck of his fellow actress. Panic rose inside him, he slipped on the wet, round stones and fell on his back, the power of the gushing river water was so strong he could not remain in his spot.
The girl had died, but he did not have to, he thought to himself.
He held the rope that was still tied to the girl's body as tight as he could, hoping that her weight of her body would impede the force of the gushing water. Thrashing helplessly in the shallow water, he dragged the lifeless body of Misa Hayami behind him down river until he was washed up the bank and rescued.
Her face was mangled unrecognizable.
Two days after the real Misa Hayami's death, Sergey sat at the table across the room from where Tanaka was now meditating, edited that part out without wincing. His steady hands had taken over the camera from the videographer when his knees buckled and captured the incident till the very end.
It was then someone had stabbed him from behind. His dead body was found without a single piece of his clothing, and all of his hair was shaved before he died. The murderer had wanted him to get a taste of his own medicine.
Tanaka let out a deep sigh.
Twenty minutes of total focus without interruption.
Not bad in a place so full of secrets.
He stretched out his legs and put his arms behind him. Clearing his mind helped him become more observant normally. Once again he scanned centimeter by centimeter around the room.
“What did I miss?” If he could find the clues he needed, he would know who Sergey was filming that day. He would know what was the name of the girl who was now called Misa Hayami.
End of Book I
BUT...
The Adventure of Misa Hayami and Carson Smith have only just begun. Read the rest of the trilogy to find out the truth that Ryuuji Tanaka was looking for!
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