Gion Without the Moon

Character Profiles

- Male Lead: Isana Kaito

21, a rookie with the Kyoto Prefectural Police who always carries a field notebook. Because of his age, he’s nicknamed “Trainee.” His true identity is with the American “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” investigating the psychological manipulation of high school students by transnational organizations.

- Second Male Lead: Aoba Ren

21, a clerk at the record shop next to Sakuraoka High School who often slips Kaito old-song tapes. In reality, he’s an FBI agent in Japan, code-named “Hoshimi,” investigating foreign forces infiltrating the country. He and Kaito have no idea who the other really is.

- Female Lead: Shiratori Otsu

17, the belle of Sakuraoka High School, who likes to write in a corner of a Gion secondhand bookstore. A witness to the third “jumping death,” she says the victim looked up at the night sky before falling and said, “The moon is chewing on the shadows.”

The Case

At the scene of the third case, Kaito finds a rolled-up sheet of washi paper behind a rooftop drainpipe. Unfolded, it reveals a child’s drawing: a crooked moon holding a little figure in a school uniform in its mouth. A cherry blossom seal is stamped in the corner, exactly like the seals tucked into the textbooks of the first two victims. When Shiratori Otsu is brought to the police station, a little gold powder is found on her uniform sleeve. It has the same composition as the pigment used for the moon in the drawing.

“They go to the basement of the secondhand bookstore every Wednesday.” She suddenly speaks, tracing a five-pointed star on the interrogation table with her fingertip. “They say they’re going to ‘feed shadows’ to the moon. If you don’t go, your shadow will be eaten.” When Kaito presses her for more, her eyes go blank and she repeats the victim’s words: “The moon has no face, so it has to steal people’s faces.”

Kaito goes to the record shop to ask Aoba for a floor plan of the bookstore. Hidden inside the cassette case Aoba hands him is a note: “Investigate the 1998 fire at Sakuraoka High School. An art teacher who painted moons died.” Kaito freezes, this is a mystery story, not a high-level martial arts novel.