After successfully exorcising Yuki's spirit, the detectives returned to their hotel rooms and took a power nap of several hours. Waking up in the afternoon feeling much more refreshed, they decided that they would like to solve the final piece of the puzzle - understanding why the professor had broken the seal of Yuki's Hokoro and let her roam free. It was a Saturday, thus the university was closed. Nevertheless, Jeffrey managed to charm the professor's secretary into giving them his personal phone number.
"またお前か？What do you want? I've already told you everything I know!" shouted Professor Kiriyama angrily on the phone after picking up to realise that it was the detectives again.
"いいえ, professor, you didn't tell us everything you know," answered Shaun calmly. "You haven't told you why you released Yuki's spirit and what you were doing inside the school campus at night with a pickax!"
"なに？いい加減にしろよ！What are you talking about?" denied the professor.
"If you don't tell us what happened, we'll have no choice but to inform the police that you have been trespassing and damaging other people's property," replied Shaun gravely. "I'm sure there will still be your handprints on the Hokora, which can be used as evidence against you."
"くそ！How did you know about this?" cursed the professor. "Please don't inform the police. Come to my house and I'll explain it all to you."
Thus, the detectives visited the professor's house in Itabashi, who was waiting for them at the front door as promised.
The professor led them into his study room.
"I don't know how you found out about all this, but I'll tell you the whole truth, pure and simple," said Professor Kiriyama. "I was there looking for treasure."
"Do you mean to say that there were treasures buried underneath the grounds of the school campus?" enquired Shaun, bewildered.
"Well, at least I thought there were!" answered the professor sulkily. "Whilst doing research to write about the folklore of The Lover's Curse in my encyclopedia, I came across this version of the story that Yuki had actually discovered that Haru had been cursing her. Therefore, before she died, Yuki secretly buried all her jewellery in the back yard so that Haru would not be able to inherit them after she died. So, after doing more in-depth research, I discovered that the site of the school was no other than the house in which Yuki lived. So, I wrote to the headmaster of the school, Enomoto, who happened to be my university kōhai (junior). We agreed that if we find anything on the school ground, we'll share it fifty-fifty. But we didn't want anyone else to know about it, so we had to do our digging at night."
"Okay, fair enough! But why did you destroy the seal of Yuki's Hokoro?" questioned Shaun sternly.
"Believe me, I didn't do it on purpose!" responded the professor sincerely. "It was really dark that night and when I raised my pickax, I heard a large sound. Only after I shone my torch in that direction did I discover that I had accidentally broken the Hokoro. I didn't tell Enomoto lest he would blame me, so I pretended that it never happened. It was really a waste of time anyways. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't need money desperately. You don't understand how hard it is being a professor of folklores. Nowadays, people no longer care about culture and tradition. They only want to pursue technology, cause that's where all the funding is. I ran out of funding halfway through writing my encyclopedia, and I couldn't find any foundation willing to fund me. I have a mortgage to pay and my salary was nowhere near enough! God, I wished I hadn't done such a stupid thing. I didn't even find anything valuable! All I found was a baby's white kimono."
"A baby?" exclaimed Blythe with a sense of foreboding. "Are you sure it's for a baby?"
"What else could it have been for?" answered the professor. "It was tiny!"
Shaun and Blythe glanced at each other and immediately knew that they were thinking about the exact same thing. Only Jeffrey, who did not understand Japanese, had not the faintest idea what was going on.
No comments:
Post a Comment