Chapter 2 chapter 2

When Shunsuke Kusanagi from the search department of the police station arrived at the scene of the accident in his car, the fire had already been extinguished, the fire brigade was about to call it a day, and even the spectators began to count. When he got out of the car and walked towards the scene of the crime, he saw a little girl in a red sweatshirt walking forward.Her body and face are very immature, and she looks like she has just entered elementary school. For some reason, she keeps walking forward with her head raised, as if she is looking for something. It's dangerous to walk like this!Just as he was about to shout, the girl seemed to have tripped over something, fell down, and burst into tears.

Kusanagi hurried forward to pick up the girl, but the girl's knee was bleeding. "Ah, I'm so sorry!" A woman who looked like the girl's mother ran over, "Didn't I tell you to go with me! I'm so sorry. Really, I wish I could just stay at home." Kusanagi originally wanted to say: Compared to scolding her daughter, wouldn't it be worse to go to the scene of the fire in the middle of the night to watch the excitement?In the end he refrained from saying anything, but silently handed the girl over to her mother. "I really saw a red line on it, is it really there?" the girl said while crying.

"Where is such a thing! Oh! The clothes are so dirty!" "I saw it! The red thread! It's a long, long thread, it really is!" What the hell is the red line?Kusanagi thought about it and left the mother and daughter. When they arrived at the scene of the accident, there were several men standing in the middle of the completely blackened road, one of whom was Kusanagi's superior, Police Officer Mamiya. "I'm late, sorry!" Kusanagi ran forward and said. "Thank you!" Jiangong nodded slightly. He is short and fat with a short neck. Although he looks quite honest and honest, his eyes are very sharp.However, compared with his identity as a policeman, he looks more like an office worker in an ordinary industry.

"Arson?" "No, I can't tell yet." "It smells like gasoline." Kusanagi twitched his nose. "It looks like something in the plastic bucket is on fire." "Plastic bucket? Why is there such a thing here?" "I don't know, look at that!" Jian Gong pointed to an object that rolled to the side of the road. The object looked like a plastic barrel used to hold oil, and most of the sides centered on it had been melted, making it impossible to recognize the original shape. "The victims have been asked about the cause of the accident, but they have no idea what happened," Mamiya said, shaking his head.

"Who were the victims?" "Five boys under the age of twenty." Gamiya added bluntly afterwards, "One of them died." Kusanagi, who was taking notes, recorded these contents with disgust.Although death is a common occurrence, dealing with death events will never bring people a good mood. "Can you visit this neighborhood? I think there are quite a few people awakened by the riots! From the outside, there are a few houses with lights on. You can go there and have a look." "Understood." Kusanagi replied while looking around, and immediately noticed that in an apartment on the corner next to it, some of the lights were indeed still on.

The apartment is an old-fashioned two-story building, and several doors face the east-west road side by side.The stairs are probably on the south side opposite to the road, so only the rooms on the side have windows, and the only room that can see the accident scene is the room in the northeast corner. When Kusanagi was approaching the apartment, he happened to meet a young man who was about to enter the room in the northeast corner of the first floor.He took the key out of his pocket and was about to insert it into the keyhole of the door. "Excuse me." Kusanagi greeted the young man from behind.

The lad turned around.He looked to be in his early twenties, tall, wearing gray overalls, as if he had just been to a convenience store, and was carrying a white bag in his hand. "Just now, there was a fire accident over there, did you know?" Kusanagi asked the young man, pointing in the direction of the T-shaped intersection, after taking out his ID. "Oh, I know, it's really scary!" "Were you in the house at that time?" Kusanagi saw the number 105 posted on the gate. "Yes." The boy replied. "Did anything change before the accident? Like hearing any strange noises, or seeing anything?"

"Well! How do you say it?" The young man tilted his head and said, "As for me, I was watching TV at the time, but I did know that there seemed to be some kind of commotion among those guys." "By those guys you mean those young men on motorcycles?" "Yes." The young man tilted his head slightly, "They always come here every weekend, and I don't know where they come from. Even at two or three o'clock in the morning, they are still noisy. This neighborhood was originally a quiet place. place." Having said that, he bit his lip lightly, as if his usual resentment was contained in it.

Those guys are really damned—Kusanagi swallowed the words and realized that the words were not careful enough. "Has anyone noticed this?" "Pay attention? Who would!" The young man shrugged his shoulders and smiled faintly. "In today's Japan, it seems that no one would bother with that!" Kusanagi nodded, thinking that this really made sense. "Can you see the scene from your room secretary?" "I can see...it should be, originally..." the young man replied vaguely. "What's going on?" Hearing Kusanagi's question, the young man opened the door: "Go in and have a look and you'll understand!"

So Kusanagi took a look inside the house, it was a one-bedroom room less than eight tatami mats, with only a small kitchen in the front.A bed, a bookshelf and a glass dining table, that's all the young man's furniture.There was a wireless phone on the table, but Kusanagi felt that we would seldom use it in this kind of place.The number of videotapes and other daily necessities stacked on the bookshelves far exceeds the number of books. "Then where are the windows?" "Inside." The young man pointed to the bookshelf and said, "There is no place to put the bookshelf, so we have no choice but to block the window."

"So that's how it is!" "Thanks to it, it happens to be able to block the noise outside to a certain extent." "You are so smart!" "Everyone who lives around here does that." "Oh?" Kusanagi's eyes fell on the earphones connected to the TV.Maybe he used it to watch TV because the noise was too loud, but that way, if there were any unusual noises, he was unlikely to be able to hear them. Kusanagi went on to say something like "Thank you so much" and "This is really valuable information".Although there is no actual gain, saying this is indeed a kind of binding for others to cooperate with my work. "That..." the young man said, "Are you going to investigate Room 205 too?" "The room 205 you mentioned is upstairs from you! Well, that's what I'm planning to do." "That's it!" It seemed that the young man wanted to say something. "What's wrong?" "Well, well, actually," the young man said after hesitating for a while, "there's a guy named Maejima living upstairs, and he can't speak." "Can't talk? What do you mean?" "Just can't speak, or he's dumb!" "what?!" Kusanagi was surprised.Fortunately, he told himself in advance, otherwise, if he went to investigate rashly, he would definitely be at a loss. "How about I go with you?" said the lad. "That fellow and I are quite close!" "Is this appropriate?" "It's okay." The young man who had already entered the room put on his sneakers again. This enthusiastic young man is named Tatsuo Kanemori.According to him, the person living in Room 205 is called Maejima One. Although he can't speak, his hearing is fine. "His hearing is much better than ours, so the noise made by those guys is driving him crazy." Kanemori said to Kusanagi while climbing the stairs with rusted handrails. I just knocked on the door of Room 205, and there was an immediate response from inside.A young and thin face can be seen through the open door.He looked younger than Kim Sen, with a sharp chin and pale face. Maejima found out that Kanemori was among the people who came to visit late at night, and he immediately seemed more relieved, but even so, he still looked wary at Kusanagi. "He's a criminal police officer, and he's here to investigate what happened just now." While Jinmori was introducing, Kusanagi took out his police ID and showed it to him.Maejima hesitated for a moment, then opened the door. The layout of the room is of course the same as Kanemori's, except that the windows on the east side are not blocked like Kanemori's room.The first thing that caught Kusanagi's eyes was the ultra-luxury stereo set that was out of proportion to this small room, as well as a large number of cassette tapes stacked on the bed.Kusanagi thought he must be a music enthusiast.There were quite a lot of pocket books piled up on the wall, and the number surprised Kusanagi.Not a single magazine, all fiction. A young man whose hobbies are reading and listening to music—this is the instant impression Maejima left on Kusanagi.He thought that such a young man might have hated those guys who made noise wantonly without consideration for other people's feelings. Kusanagi stood at the door and began to question Maejima: "Where were you when the fire broke out just now?" After Maeshima heard the question, he pointed to the bed expressionlessly, as if to say that he was in the room. "What are you doing?" Kusanagi asked.Maejima was wearing a polo shirt, and the bed in the room was not yet made, so he must have slept. Maejima turned around and pointed to the TV set by the window. "It looks like I'm watching TV." Kanemori explained what Kusanagi had already understood. "Didn't you hear anything or see what was going on outside the window before the accident?" Maeshima stuffed his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt and shook his head indifferently. "Oh, that's right. Can I go in? I want to see the situation outside the window." Hearing what Kusanagi said, Maejima nodded, and stretched out his hand in the direction of the window, as if to say "please". Kusanagi said "Excuse me", took off his shoes and entered the house. Directly below the window is a north-south road with very few vehicles, and there is no car passing by during this time period.Kusanagi suddenly recalled what Jin Mori said just now, this place was originally a good secluded place. At the lower left, you can see the T-shaped intersection where the accident happened. There are still several search personnel patrolling there, as if they are still looking for clues. Kusanagi walked away from the window, and his eyes casually fell on the speaker next to him. There was a book on it, which was Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles". "Is this your book?" Kusanagi asked Maeshima. Maejima nodded. "Yes, this book is difficult to understand." "Have you read it too?" Kimson asked. "I planned to read it a long time ago, but I was very frustrated. Maybe I'm not the kind of person who is suitable for reading." I thought it would attract ridicule, but Kanemori didn't mean to laugh, but just listened blankly, and Maejima just looked out of the window silently. Even if they came here to search, they couldn't find any clues - Kusanagi made this judgment immediately. "If you think of anything, I hope you can contact me." He said and left room 205.