This Japanese Monogatari Isn't Lame
Chapter 388 - 270: All Things Past (4000 words)

Chapter 388: Chapter 270: All Things Past (4000 words)

It was Saturday, and at Ochasaki Middle School, aside from some special club members and students who wanted to study on their own, there were hardly any people to be seen.

The playground was deserted, with basically no one around. On the right side of the playground, there were three athletic warehouses erected.

These three athletic warehouses... rather than calling them athletic warehouses, it would be more appropriate to say they seemed like preparations for a later reconstruction.

"This is the place," Nakano Youko said, leaning against the door of the athletic warehouse, "I hear two are to undergo sports-related renovations, and one is to be used for storing miscellaneous items. Since Beichuan has read the plan, you should be very clear about this."

"One is for use related to swimming, and another for a mixed badminton and tennis court," Beichuan Si replied candidly.

This was information that didn’t need to be kept secret.

After all, once these buildings were constructed, they were to be used by students and teachers alike.

"Mr. Temple, do you suspect this area could be where a body is hidden?" Shinkai Mirai scanned the athletic warehouse, her eyes flashing with a thoughtful radiance, as she suddenly spoke: "Based on all the information we’ve had so far... indeed, this area was once a small forest for campus greening, it definitely could have been where Hinakabe Haru’s body was concealed. However—"

Beichuan Si interjected: "However, with all the extensive construction that has taken place here, if there really was a body, it surely would have been excavated, isn’t that what you’re trying to say, Mirai?"

"Yes," Shinkai Mirai nodded.

The construction of the athletic warehouses began just as she entered junior high, and the case of Hinakabe Haru’s disappearance was the year before she started school at Ochasaki Middle School.

From that time on, Ochasaki Middle School had already begun planning to build the three athletic warehouses.

Originally, these three warehouses were intended to enrich the particularly desolate environment of the junior high section, but eventually, construction had to be moved here instead.

Principal Tomatsu had also mentioned the reason: the junior high section sat on collapsible soil, hence only a few small storerooms were built before all the construction materials were transferred here, leaving that area vacant.

"I don’t think this is where the body was hidden," Beichuan Si continued logically, "but we can’t rule out this suspicion just because of conjecture. It’s better to see and confirm the site in person."

The discussion between him and Shinkai Mirai perplexed Nakano Youko, who glanced at Beichuan Si and then at Shinkai Mirai, seemingly completely unable to comprehend their meaning.

Seeing her like this, Shinkai Mirai kindly explained: "Nakano, you should still remember the Faceless Woman... that is, the fingerprints left by Hinakabe Haru during her first attack on you, right?"

"Hinakabe Haru?"

...

Shinkai Mirai.

Nakano Youko’s apparent lack of intelligence left her shaking her head: "Let’s start from the beginning for you."

"The Faceless Woman, also known as Hinakabe Haru... the incident involving the disappearance of the female high school student for forty days, you should have some recollection of that, right?"

"That I do..." when Nakano Youko started school, she had heard about the forty-day disappearance of the high school girl. Allegedly, the main culprit was someone from Ochasaki Middle School—

"The culprit’s name was Tsuchiya Motomu. At that time, he was acting as the security guard at Ochasaki Middle School, and Hinakabe Haru was the name of the girl who disappeared that year," Shinkai Mirai said with an ineffable confidence on her face.

At least the names Tsuchiya Motomu and Hinakabe Haru were things Beichuan Si remembered he had not told Shinkai Mirai; she must have found out through her own means.

News, internet... these were channels through which one could find out what had happened back then, but compared to Beichuan Si’s straightforward inquiries to Gangye Yoshiko, Shinkai Mirai’s methods were certainly much more troublesome.

Shinkai Mirai placed her hopes in Beichuan Si, and at the same time, she was actively seeking to save herself.

She believed in Beichuan Si, but that didn’t mean she intended to place all the pressure on him.

As Shinkai Mirai spoke, she furtively watched Beichuan Si’s expression. Seeing that his face remained as usual, she let out a small sigh of relief.

Beichuan Si didn’t interrupt her, which meant she wasn’t saying anything wrong!

"Tsuchiya Motomu kidnapped Hinakabe Haru and confined her in his own home, where he subjected her to inhumane torture... and then killed her. That is how the Faceless Woman... Hinakabe Haru came to be. The reason I was discussing the athletic warehouses with Mr. Temple was because of the concrete dust mark left on your neck the first time the tired woman appeared."

Shinkai Mirai raised her fair index finger: "Concrete dust."

"So, what could cause concrete dust to form? My idea is—that it’s related to the manner of Hinakabe Haru’s death."

What followed were things Beichuan Si had previously told her.

Conditions for the formation of the tired woman.

Always close to death.

Harboring resentment towards the living.

Staying in a half-awake, half-asleep state, on the brink of death, for a long time—

"Death by suffocation can lead to such an occurrence."

’On the brink of death for a long time’ simply means in comparison to some instantaneous deaths.

Beheadings, falling from a height, car accidents.

Death is usually a rapid affair.

"Considering the concrete dust fingerprint the first tired woman left on your neck, I can boldly speculate that after being tortured by Tsuchiya Motomu, she was sealed in concrete and buried within Ochasaki Middle School. And the principal mentioned earlier that there were two bags of concrete mysteriously missing from the records—that’s probably because Tsuchiya Motomu covertly used the concrete and mixing equipment stored in the junior high storeroom. After all, at that time the new reconstruction plans were still being drafted, and the storeroom’s contents were only checked every two or three weeks. This gave Tsuchiya Motomu the opportunity."

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.