Chapter 10 chapter 2

Seeing the four girls standing on the stage, Kusanagi, who was sitting in the auditorium, couldn't help but widen his eyes.No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't imagine that they were only thirteen or fourteen years old.Not only do they have rich makeup, but their expressions are also very adult, and they are quite feminine.They all dressed boldly, revealing more than it was funny.He thought, as a policeman, even if he saw these girls in the downtown area, he would never persuade them. The music with a strong rhythm sounded, and the four girls began to dance.Kusanagi was shocked again, for a moment, he even forgot that he was in the gymnasium.

"What do these teenagers do at school? Do they still learn to pick up customers?" Kusanagi whispered to his younger sister Lily Morishita who was sitting next to her. "This level, you're making a fuss!" Yuri Morishita stared at the stage, "I heard that some girls even seduced the teacher!" "Really?" "As Misa said, one of last year's graduates was pregnant with the teacher's child." Before Kusanagi had time to yell "Oops", his head started shaking non-stop. Today, my sister's daughter was performing on stage at the cultural festival, and my sister invited him to watch it together.The real reason is that she wanted to take pictures of her daughter, but she couldn't do it herself, so she asked Kusanagi to help.Although today is Sunday, my brother-in-law is on a temporary business trip.

Just like that, Kusanagi came with his sister with the camera. When he entered the gymnasium, he saw the poster and was very surprised. It said "Dance Trial Competition" and said he was performing on the stage.He had thought it was a theatrical performance. "Ah! It's Misa's turn to perform next." Yuri touched Kusanagi's knee, and Kusanagi quickly got the camera ready. After the host's introduction, five girls came on stage.Kusanagi looked at them through the camera, dumbfounded again. They all wore bright red cheongsams from the waist down.The cheongsam is broken.The venue was full of whistles.

"Girls are like that now." Lily said as she left the gymnasium. "My brother-in-law's distress can be imagined." "He's used to it now. He used to have a lot of fights with his daughter." "My sympathy!" The younger sister laughed.As a mother, she doesn't seem to resent her daughter becoming so adult. "I'll call Misa. Would you like to have dinner with us? Thanks for taking the photo, I'll treat you, but there are family restaurants around here." "It doesn't matter." "Then you wait here for me."

After watching his sister return to the gymnasium, Kusanagi's eyes stopped on the sword training ground nearby, where a poster of "Museum of Magical Items" was pasted. He thought maybe this would pass the time, and headed for the entrance. He passed the bored-looking front desk clerk and walked in. The exhibits are really weird.There are "bricks fired from the soil of Koshien (Japanese high school baseball league final stadium)", which have several small round holes, and a note is posted next to it: After losing in the testimonial game, tears of regret from the whole team dripped these holes.There is an old carpet that looks like it was picked up at random, and next to it is the description: Flying Magic Carpet (just retired after flying years).

What a waste of time, he thought as he walked.But when he reached a display hanging on the wall, he stopped. This is a human face made of plaster, and the annotation is "a dead man's mask that brings the dead back to life".It was the face of a man with his eyes closed, with a large, round, mole-like protrusion in the center of his forehead.The age cannot be judged, but it is certain that this is definitely not the face of a middle school student. Its shape is extremely lifelike, obviously not carved. Kusanagi speculates that this is made of rubber or some other material from a real person's face, and then poured plaster to solidify it.I heard that a rubber that can be set in a few minutes has recently appeared.

But even so——when he gazed at the plaster face, a strange feeling came over him, and he didn't know what the uneasiness that was sprouting in his heart was.After thinking for a while, he realized the reason. He is a criminal policeman who handles homicide cases in the No. 1 Search Division. He naturally has many opportunities to touch the corpses. The deceased has a strange expression on his face. This is the experience he has summed up so far.There is a fundamental difference between a dead person with eyes closed and a living person with their eyes closed—not a physical difference such as the radiance of the complexion, but a difference in the overall feeling of the face.

Hanging on the wall are masks made from molds of dead people's faces. "That's what happened." Kusanagi thought to himself but at the same time felt, "Could it be..." It is hard to imagine that middle school students would use the faces of real dead bodies to make molds. He looked uneasily at the other exhibits, then headed for the exit.He couldn't forget the dead man's mask in his heart. At this moment, two women walked in, both of whom seemed to be in their thirties.They didn't notice Kusanagi at all, and walked straight into the museum.It would be too urgent to say that the funny exhibits of the middle school students attracted them.

They rushed to the dead mask. The woman in the suit said, "This is it." The one in the dress didn't respond immediately, but stood blankly in front of the mask.This expression was absolutely unusual, because Kusanagi noticed that the woman in the suit next to her was getting paler and paler.Kusanagi noticed that the thin shoulders of the woman in the dress were trembling slightly. "Really, is this?" the woman in the suit asked. The woman in the dress bent down, choked up and said, "It's my brother, yes, he is my brother." The woman in the dress is named Ryoko Kakimoto, and it is said that she works for an insurance company in Tokyo, and the woman in the suit is Hiromi Onoda, the school's music teacher.She and Yoshiko Kakimoto have been good friends since middle school.

"Excuse me, Ms. Onoda Hiromi, after seeing this mask, you found that it is very similar to Kakimoto Susumu, isn't it?" Kusanagi confirmed while looking at the record. "Yes." Hiromi Onoda straightened her waist and nodded, "My husband and Mr. Kakimoto are old friends, and we often go to play golf together. We heard that Mr. Kakimoto disappeared a few days ago, and we were very worried... ..." "You must have been surprised when you saw this!" Kusanagi pointed to the plaster mask on the table with a ballpoint pen. "Yeah, originally," Hiromi Onoda's throat moved and swallowed, "I thought it was impossible at first, but it was so similar, even the location of the mole was exactly the same, so I had to tell her." Then She glanced at Yoshiko Kakimoto who was bowing her head beside her.

"Do you think he is your brother?" Kusanagi asked Kakimoto Ryoko. She answered "yes" in a low voice, and the circles of her eyes turned red again. At this moment, it is in the living room of this middle school.Just now, Kusanagi noticed that they reacted strangely when they saw the mask, so he went up to ask them.As expected, it was related to a case. The cause of the incident was that the face of the death mask resembled Kakimoto Shinichi, Kakimoto Ryoko's brother who disappeared this summer. A thin man is sitting on a steel pipe chair not far from them. He is Lin Tian, ​​the instructor of the science club who founded this "Museum of Miraculous Items". "Teacher, have you heard anything about this matter?" Kusanagi asked, pointing at the dead man's mask. Teacher Lintian straightened his back immediately. "Ah, this, um, I'm totally... well, this exhibition is completely left to the students themselves... Well, we should pay attention to the autonomy of the students." His tone was full of evasion, probably Worrying about responsibility. There was a knock on the door.Lin Tian stood up and opened the door. "Ah, I'm waiting for you, come in quickly." Two boys entered the room, one was wearing glasses, and the other had many pimples on his forehead.Like most boys these days, they were tall and slender. Their names are Akihiko Yamabe and Takao Fujimoto.The one wearing glasses is Shanbian, holding a square box in his hand. "You guys did this, right?" Kusanagi looked at them alternately and asked. The two middle school students looked at each other and nodded slightly.Kusanagi felt that, judging from their expressions, they didn't know what happened. "How did you come up with the shape of this face?" Kusanagi asked, "Did you pour plaster on the model?" Shanbian scratched his head and muttered timidly, "I picked it up." "Pick it up?" Shanbian opened the box he brought, took out something and handed it to Kusanagi. "This is?" Kusanagi opened his eyes wide. This is a metal mask.No, to be precise, it is a mask that is exactly the opposite of the bumps of the human face.The children filled it with plaster to make the mask. Kusanagi didn't quite know what kind of metal it was, but its thickness seemed to be about the same as that of an aluminum can for drinks. "Where did you find it?" Kusanagi asked. "At Gourd Pond," Shanbian said. "Gourd Pond?" "It's a pond in a natural park." Fujimoto said next to him. The two of them picked up this metal mask last Sunday. Shanbian immediately thought that it could be used to make a plaster cast, and the result was better than expected, so they took it proudly to participate in the exhibition. "Is there anything else you want to add?" Kusanagi asked. "It seems that there is nothing wrong." Shanbian asked Fujimoto for approval, and Fujimoto nodded silently. "Has anything changed in the pond?" "Variety?" "That is, is there anything different from usual? Did you find anything?" "But we don't go to that pond often." Yamabe pouted, and Fujimoto didn't seem to want to say anything. Yoshiko Kakimoto kept staring at the two middle school students with uneasy eyes.Kusanagi asked her, "Heard about the gourd pond, do you have any clues? Does your brother often go for a walk there?" "Never heard of it." She shook her head. Kusanagi rubbed his face, his eyes fell on his notebook. In what category the case should be classified, he was in no position to judge.Although it was not his responsibility to make judgments, he didn't know how to report this strange incident to his superiors. "Then, Mr. Criminal Police..." Mr. Lintian said politely, "If the prototype of this mask is indeed this lady's brother, is there any problem?" Just as the seemingly cowardly teacher said this, there was another knock on the door. "Here we come." Lin Tian opened the door and looked out. "Excuse me, is Miss Kakimoto here?" "It's my sister-in-law." Yoshiko Kakimoto called. "Please let her in." Kusanagi said to the man who opened the door. Before Lintian could react, the door was pushed open by someone outside.The woman who came in was about thirty-five years old, with her long hair pulled back in a mess, she ran over in a panic, without even putting on her makeup. "Sister-in-law, this..." Yoshiko Kakimoto pointed at the dead mask. The woman's bloodshot eyes widened at the sight of the mask. "Is it similar to your husband?" Kusanagi wanted to ask, but he found it unnecessary. The woman covered her mouth with her right hand and let out a whimper.