Chapter 11 Section 3

The door of the research room has always been pasted with a direction indicator board, and the magnet attached to it shows that Mr. Yu Chuan is in the office.After Kusanagi confirmed it, he raised his hand and knocked on the door twice, and a voice of "Please come in" came from inside. As soon as he opened the door, there was a "bang" on the left, as if someone was tapping something lightly.Looking around, I saw a white smoke ring the size of a life buoy floating in the air, slowly drifting towards him. "Ah!" Kusanagi couldn't help taking a step back. There was another "bang", and another white smoke ring floated out from that direction, carrying a scent of mosquitoes.

After his eyes got used to the dim room, he saw a huge corrugated cardboard box in the corner, with a hole of more than ten centimeters in diameter on the front, and Tang Chuan stood beside him, with the sleeves of his white coat rolled up to his elbows superior. "This is a welcome firework!" Yu Chuan said while knocking on the back of the corrugated box. Immediately, white smoke rose from the hole in front of the box, and soon formed a circle, drifting towards Kusanagi. "What? What kind of trick are you playing?" Kusanagi asked while using his hand to disperse the smoke ring.

"It's not a gimmick, it's just a mosquito coil in the box. It is estimated that when the box is full of smoke, tapping the box lightly can produce smoke rings, which is the same as you smokers blowing smoke rings. Fluid It can show us many interesting things. I think there are many incredible things in the world, all of which are fluid pranks." Yu Chuan pressed the switch on the wall, and the dim room was immediately filled with the glow of fluorescent lights. "It seems that you will definitely help solve the incredible problem I brought this time." Kusanagi said.

Yukawa sat on the wire chair. "What unexpected problem did you bring again? Did a ghost appear?" "It feels so accurate." Kusanagi opened the sports backpack he brought and took out a transparent plastic container, "This is the mask of the dead!" Seeing the metal mask in the container, Yu Chuan raised his eyebrows. "Let me open my eyes too." He stretched out his right hand. "It's made of aluminum." Yu Chuan said as soon as he got the mask. "This, I know it at a glance." Kusanagi snorted. "Yeah, I'm afraid even elementary school students know about this kind of thing." Tang Chuan said lightly, "Then why do you say it's the mask of the dead?"

"It's a strange story." Kusanagi told him what happened in middle school. The associate professor of physics leaned back on the chair, put his hands on the back of his head, and listened intently with his eyes closed. "So, the prototype of this mask is the missing man?" "Yes," Kusanagi replied, "It's probably not wrong to think so." "Why can this be confirmed?" "Because the body was found." "Corpse?" Tang Chuan straightened up, "I found it, what's going on?" "Found it in the gourd pond." Kusanagi said.

It was three days ago that the body was salvaged.Kakimoto Shinichi's wife Masao and younger sister Yoshiko both confirmed that the prototype of the mask must be Kakimoto Shinichi, there could be no mistake, so the police searched the gourd pond, and a few hours later, Kakimoto Shinichi's body was found. The decay of the corpse was so serious that it was impossible to tell who the owner was from the clothes. However, according to the traces of dental treatment, it was quickly concluded that he was Kakimoto Shinichi. "Why did the face model of the corpse fall into the pond?" Tang Chuan frowned, "And it's made of metal."

"It's because I don't know, that's why I came to you." After hearing Kusanagi's words, Yukawa snorted and pushed his glasses with his middle finger. "I'm not a wizard! Of course, I'm not a time traveler who can go back in time." "But you can figure out the true face of this mask." Kusanagi picked up the metal mask, "There are two things I don't know about it: first, how was it made? Second, why did criminals make this thing ?” "Criminal?" Tang Chuan frowned again, then stared at the face of this old friend from the student days, and nodded slowly, "No wonder, if it wasn't for homicide, why would the criminal policeman of our first investigation department turn pale?"

"The sides of the cranium were collapsed, which we believe was the result of someone hitting me hard with a heavy blunt instrument." "The criminal is a man?" "Or a woman with a strong wrist." "You said the owner of this mask had a wife, right? Is that woman possible? The real criminal is around, and a woman, which is usually a common answer in mystery novels." "She's short in stature and looks helpless, so it's unlikely to be her. Of course, I don't intend to unconditionally exclude anyone from the list of suspects." "Is it reasonable to say that the wife killed her husband, made a mask as a souvenir, and then threw away the aluminum mold used to make the mask?"

Yukawa took the metal mask from Kusanagi and re-examined it.Although he said some wisecracks, there was a scientist in his eyes. "How did this come about? As long as you help me figure it out, I'll be grateful." Kusanagi looked at Yukawa and said. "Didn't the police conduct an identification?" "I've talked to the people who do the identification, I've tried a lot." "For example?" "The first thing I tried was to take a piece of the same thin aluminum skin and press it on my face." "It's so interesting!" Tang Chuan laughed, "How did it turn out?"

"Not at all." "That's what it is!" Tang Chuan couldn't help but chuckled, "If the model of the face can be made like that, the wax figure master will save trouble." "We took the aluminum skin and pressed it on the face. No matter how careful we were, the flesh on the face would be deformed. Sometimes we could only make a model like a face with high socks, but I thought, maybe it's alive. A human face is not easy to do, but a dead man's face is fine." "You mean, you will become stiff after death?" The smile on Yu Chuan's face disappeared.

"It's really disgusting to use dead bodies for experiments. We used facial reconstruction models from other cases to try. This time, we really made something very similar." "Something similar?" "It looks like a face... but it's impossible to make such a perfect model," Kusanagi pointed to the metal mask in Yukawa's hand, "It's impossible to reproduce every detail like this. If It's not impossible to use a material as thin as aluminum foil, but the realistic masks we see now are made of aluminum skin." "If it's made of aluminum foil, it won't be surprising if it can keep its shape until now." "Expert opinion is that a strong and perfectly equal force must be continuously applied to the aluminum skin to form such a masterpiece." "I feel the same way!" Tang Chuan put the metal mask on the table, "The question of its manufacturing method has become a major obstacle for you to solve the case?" "That's right." Kusanagi nodded, "How about it, Mr. Yukawa from the Physics Department is also helpless?" "If I fell into your aggressive method so easily, I would be too naive!" Tang Chuan stood up and walked towards the sink by the door, "Would you like some coffee?" "Thanks, no. Not instant coffee yet." Don't look down on this instant coffee, Yu Chuan poured cheap coffee powder into the cup that was still not cleaned, "About its production method, people have gone through repeated explorations and experiments, even to the point of being bored. Maybe no one knows , We Japanese were the first to develop commercialized instant coffee. At the beginning, it was the blast drying method. Later, after Maxwell Company developed the spray drying method, the quality of instant coffee was greatly improved, and the consumption also followed. After the 1970s, the vacuum freeze-drying method appeared and has become the most widely used method. How about it, a simple sip of instant coffee still hides a deep mystery.” "That being said, instant coffee is a bit..." "There are many seemingly simple things that are not easy to make. In this regard, the aluminum mask is the same as instant coffee." Tang Chuan poured the coffee into the cup and stirred it with a spoon, standing there and smelling the aroma of the coffee intoxicated , "It's really fragrant, this is the fragrance of scientific civilization." "Does that smell come from Dead Face County?" "Of course it exudes, and it's very rich." "Oh?" "I have two or three questions," Yu Chuan said, holding the cup. "What does that gourd pond you're talking about look like? Where is it?" "What kind of pond is it..." Kusanagi rubbed his chin, "It's just at the foot of the mountain, it's an ordinary small pond, surrounded by overgrown weeds and litter everywhere, there is a hiking route nearby, The only feature is that it is dirty, and that area has become a natural park." "Can you hunt there?" "hunt?" "Are there any hunters in the area with shotguns? They should not be carrying shotguns but rifles." "Rifle? Are you kidding me!" Kusanagi laughed, "On such a small mountain, there are no large animals that can only be hunted with a rifle, and I have never heard of a time when a lion escaped from the zoo, and hunting is prohibited there. .” "That's right, of course." Tang Chuan drank his coffee with a serious expression, and it seemed that he was not joking about the rifle. "How could it be a rifle? Didn't I just say that the head of the corpse was wounded by a blunt instrument?" "I know," Yukawa interrupted Kusanagi, shaking his other hand that was not holding the cup, "I'm not talking about the cause of death, but the method of making the mask. However, it seems that it has nothing to do with the rifle relation." Kusanagi looked helplessly at his monster-like old friend.There's really no way, Kusanagi always feels like a retarded person whenever he talks to this man, and he still is now.Why did he say the word about the rifle?Kusanagi couldn't figure it out at all. "Let's go and have a look sometime!" Tang Chuan said suddenly, "Go to that gourd pond." "Leading you at any time." Kusanagi replied immediately.