Jorge Joestar (Light Novel)

Chapter 4: Morioh

To get from Nishiakatsuki to Morioh in the middle of the day took a good six hours, even using planes, trains, and buses in the most efficient combination available. By car, it was about 650 kilometers, which would take roughly the same amount of time. I was told of Tsukumojuku's death at 6:30 AM, so Tsukumojuku must have headed there shortly after I left him at the hospital. Either he'd been pretending not to be interested or he'd found some reason to care after I left. That, or someone else had taken him to Morioh to kill him, or after killing him. Although the corpse of a sixteen-year-old boy wasn't exactly easy to transport. How he got there wasn't the only problem. The body of a sixteen-year-old male wasn't small, and Tsukumojuku's body had remained largely intact. His throat had been slit so deep that only a single layer of skin kept his head attached. He was found naked, wrapped only in a red, diamond-shaped cloth. There was a broadaxe slung over his shoulder, and he was found mounted on a bear. Obviously, the scene was arranged to look like something out of the folk tale Kintaro. Ever since I left Fukui the lyrics to the Kintaro children's song had been on an endless loop in my head. This was completely inappropriate, of course. The killer didn't arrange the scene like this as a joke. I think.

I got off the train at Morioh Station shortly after 1 PM, and looked over the map of the town posted just outside the station gates. Deja vu. Had I been here before? I was sure I hadn't. Touhoku had the famous Namahage Detective, and he pretty much handled all the cases that required someone like him, so I'd never been called up here. In elementary school we went to Nara and Kyoto, and in Junior High we went to Tokyo, so this was my first trip up north.

There were no tall buildings anywhere around the station, but there was a lot of foot traffic, and rows of nicely turned out shops and cafes. It was both peaceful and lively. The city had been well-planned; there were no telephone poles in sight, and plenty of rooms for pedestrians and cars. There was a car stumping for the upcoming election in the roundabout by the station, but they kept the speaker volume to a respectable level.

"Kumotaku, Morioh's son. Kumotaku, star of the north. Kumoi Takumi asks for your vote." I was hungry, so I stopped a restaurant near the station and had the Miso Tongue Meal – a local delicacy, apparently. It was good. Beef Tongue is both thicker and softer than I'd imagined, Tsukumojuku. May you rest in peace. When I finished eating, I took stock of my emotional state. I'd only known Tsukumojuku a few hours, since I'd witnessed his entrance into our world, and was basically the only person alive he knew. There'd been nobody else to report his death to, and I was basically here to bury him. In light of this I decided not to try the sweet sesame dumplings the stall near station was hell bent on convincing tourists to buy. I hailed a taxi, and headed for the Arrow Cross House, where my strange visitor's body had been found. Morioh was in a gentle valley, and once we left the shopping area, we passed through a residential area and soon found ourselves in farmland. The road led through fields towards the sea. As we neared the water, round hills grew more common, and this topography continued into the water; there were a great number of tiny islands dotting the shallow sea. For a moment they looked like a group of umibozu peeking out of the water; it was quite striking. And tourism friendly, as the tour boats sailing in and out of the harbor demonstrated. There were a number of souvenir shops, inns, and restaurants lining the docks. The Arrow Cross House stood on top of a round hill – the biggest hill around, and the closest to the water — with a fantastic view of the sea and the harbor. White walls and a flat roof framed

against the blue sky, making it look like a dainty little museum. As my taxi reached the top of the hill, I saw the building's owner standing outside. He was a manga artist named Kishibe Rohan. He was supposedly in his thirties, but to my surprise, he looked barely out of his teens. I don't read a lot of manga, and had never read anything by him, but I knew the name. The Pink Dark Boy series had been running for twenty years, and had recently started part eight. I got out of the taxi, said hello, and apologized for not being familiar with his work.