A Confession in the Shadows

At ten o’clock on a rainy night during the plum rains, a man’s body is discovered beside the Kanda River. Kinoshita and I hurry to the scene. The victim is about thirty, dressed in a suit, with no external injuries. He died of asphyxiation, but strangely, a small amount of river water is found in his trachea, while his lungs show no signs of drowning. Stranger still, there are two completely different business cards in his pocket: one reads “Yuto Takahashi, Literary Editor,” and the other “Shunsuke Takahashi, Freelance Writer.” The cards have different phone numbers but the same address. An almost imperceptible expression of conflict lingers on the victim’s face, as if he saw something unbelievable before he died. Kato’s preliminary estimate places the time of death between seven and eight that evening. I begin my first-person account: “In twenty-three years on the police force, I’ve learned one thing: clues that seem contradictory often point to the simplest truth. But this time, I was wrong.”