A lighthearted smile sat on Nonomura Koutarou's face as he looked over the marriage registration form and folded it into the envelope. "Shibata is late again," he mused, and slipped the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket. His gaze moved out across the desk cluster, where Mayama and Taniguchi were silently absorbed in their respective reading material, Aya's tired head rested on the desktop, and Kondoh's was dwarfed by and hidden behind the computer monitor. Nonomura's contentment faded from his countenance when his eyes settled on the solitary white envelope resting on the space of desktop that had been reserved for Shibata Jun.

"Resignation?" he gasped, shooting up from his desk. The others rose from their seats.

"The confidence I once had to continue my whole life as a detective is no longer with me," read Shibata's handwritten letter, stamped with the seal that made it official.

"She had pretty shaky confidence," Mayama commented. Nonomura arched an eyebrow as he continued to read with a grim and humourless face. "These two months I spent with all of you have been the happiest and most thrilling period of my twenty-four years," the letter said.

"Thrilling period...?" Kondoh echoed with some disbelief.

"From Kusaba's shadow, I offer my blessings on all that you do."

"What the hell kinda language this kid uses," Aya giggled to Mayama, who echoed back a chuckling mockery of the heavy phrase "Kusaba's shadow."

"She's writing like she's dead," Kondoh guffawed.

"She's such an idiot," Aya snickered.

Somber Taniguchi spoke for the first time. "What if she really does plan to die?"

The others were silenced, and Nonomura looked over at Taniguchi with a hard look of horror as Taniguchi sank into his chair.

The spectral image of Yamada Naoko, placing the pill between her teeth to travel far down her throat into her stomach as she fell backward, played over and over relentlessly in Shibata's mind against a backdrop of her own helpless screams. Shibata lay on her back adjacent to Maiko's coffee table, casting a frozen stare toward the ceiling. "I wanna die," she mumbled flatly.

"Whatta you saying, is that supposed to be an omen or something?" Maiko chided as she carried a tray of breakfast from the kitchen counter. "Here," she said, placing the tray on the floor and crouching beside her cataleptic friend. "Once you get some food in you you'll feel a lot better."

Shibata made no effort to move any part of her body. "Sorry," she groaned softly. "I'm not going back to work."

"Fine," Maiko said, getting up and walking over to her kitchen table. "But it's a real surprise to have you show up her all of a sudden in the dead of night, it makes me wonder what in the world could've happened, that's all."

Shibata was silent and motionless. The only sound in Maiko's apartment the tiny clicking of her fingers on her laptop keyboard.

"Fine," Maiko said. "I won't ask you anything."

"Sorry," Shibata groaned.

Her cell phone rang. She raised her head suddenly and conked it on the underside of the table. Rubbing her head, she rotated her stiff body and managed to crawl to the source of the incessant ringing where her bag and overcoat were heaped on the floor.

"Check it out!" Maiko said, turning in her seat. "Someone else is worried about you, too."

Shibata rubbed her face and stared lifelessly at the little screen, where the characters spelled out Second Chapter of Criminal Investigations.

"Not getting through?" asked Maiko.

"Getting through," Shibata rasped.

"She ain't pickin' up," Aya drawled. Nonomura leaned over the desktop with the letter of resignation in his hand.

"It was too much of a shock for her, wasn't it," Kondoh was ruminating, "Seeing the culprit she tried to arrest commit suicide right in front of her."

"Yeah, but she didn't have to go and give up her career because of it," Mayama frowned.

"The suicide wasn't her fault," Kondoh agreed, slumping backward into his chair.

"Whether it was her mistake or not, she's decided to take the responsibility for it," said Taniguchi.

Nonomura rose from his chair and directed his gaze toward heaven as if hoping to find the answer there.

"Please bear witness to this," he penned in as he sat on the window ledge in the corridor. He pressed the red ink of his signature seal onto the page, and smoothed the corners of the flimsy sheet in his hands. "Well, I guess this'll be the start of a new life for her," he mused, folding it into small, neat sections. "Sorry about that, Miyabi..."

Shibata lay on her side on Maiko's bed, looking even more unwashed than usual. Her heavy, weak arms were draped over the pillow she held to her chest as she stared indifferently at the pixellated lights and patterns that tried to imitate life on the television screen. She made no movement other than to blink when the door opened and closed and Maiko announced that she had returned home.

"Shibata?" Maiko lay her purse on the kitchen table and held her shopping bag as she stepped over toward the coffee table and glanced at the television. She looked back at Shibata and picked up the remote control to switch the television off, then replaced the remote on the coffee table and addressed her apparently catatonic friend. "If you don't get up soon, you'll sprout mushrooms."

Shibata scrolled her eyeballs upward to get a visual of Maiko, then closed her lids over them and rolled her face into the bedding, uttering a barely audible murmur as she forced herself into a droopy sitting position and clutched the pillow with both arms.

"Ah?" Maiko stared at the side of Shibata's head with curious intent.

"Hm?" Shibata grunted.

"Don't move," Maiko said, coming around to the side. Shibata cringed and closed her eyes, whimpering in weak protest as Maiko's hand drew toward her ear. Her eyes followed Maiko's cupped, empty hand as she moved it away, and then looked expectantly at the upturned palm. Maiko passed her other hand over it like a magician, and suddenly there in her fingers sat an elegant cameo. Shibata's face brightened with wonder. She uttered a curious sigh and nearly laughed with delight when she looked up at Maiko.

"Like it?" Maiko smiled. "It's yours."

"Eh? Can I? But where's your half?"

Maiko held the cameo between her thumb and index finger mysteriously. "With this," she whispered, "I rub my elbow." She did so, and held the object up once more. "And this," she murmured, dropping two cameos into her palm, "Comes out!"

"Ahh?" Shibata smiled. "Cool!" She took her own cameo from Maiko's palm and smiled fondly at it while Maiko walked back to where she'd set down her shopping bag.

"I did all kinds of shopping for the off-party today," she said, lifting out a new dress wrapped in cellophane.

"Off-party?" echoed Shibata.

"Ah, wanna come, too, Shibata? You'll have a good time!" Maiko plugged her laptop computer into her cell phone and brought up Netscape 4.0 on the little screen. Shibata went over and knelt beside Maiko's chair at the kitchen table. "What kind of party?" she asked, looking at the screen.

"Hm?" said Maiko. "Everybody from this online forum gets together once a month."

"Worry Discussion Forum?" Shibata read from the welcome page in the browser.

Maiko opened the online bulletin board. "It's a forum where we post messages about whatever bothers us so that we can give each other advice," she explained, scrolling down the page. "But there are a lot of petty problems discussed here."

"Adultery?" Shibata read.

"Stuff like that. Lots of problems with love, I guess," said Maiko, popping an hors d'ouevure into her mouth with a tiny fork. "Khorosho seems to give really good advice."

"Khorosho?"

"Mm. That's his handle," said Maiko. "Online, we call each other by nicknames instead of using our real names."

"Lizard Man?" Shibata read.

"He's a regular. A goofy guy who likes dirty jokes."

"I want to die," Shibata read as the title of Lizard Man's entry.

"These three people put up messages before saying they wanted to die, but I don't think they were really serious about it," Maiko explained as she moved past the short message from a poster called Pierrot to the ones called Khorosho, Cameo and Lizard Man.

"Oh, really?" said Shibata.

"There's a lot of made-up stories on the net of people just pretending they have problems. But it's a lot of fun, though," Maiko said.

"It's fun," Shibata repeated slowly with a slight nod.

Maiko opened one of the messages. "Ah, check it out." She pointed to the screen. "Wanna go? The off-party's gonna be like a big group date," she smiled. "It's gonna be fun. Wanna go?"

Shibata met her eyes, then looked back down for a second. She looked up at Maiko and gave a nod and an affirmative grunt.

"Cool," Maiko smiled. Then the doorbell chimed, and both their faces turned.

Maiko opened the door to greet the caller, and found Aya peering forcefully into the apartment. Shibata quickly ducked out of the way when she saw her. Aya shoved Maiko's arm out of the way, kicked her shoes off in the genkan, and stormed into the apartment. "I know you're in here, Shibata, you don't even gimme a goddamn phone call!" She marched right over to where Shibata was trying to hide behind the kitchen table, gripping the back of the wooden chair like a shield. Aya smacked her head. "What the hell ya think you're doin' anyway? You got everybody all kinds of worried about you!" She squatted down sternly next to her.

"How did you find out I was here?" Shibata pouted.

Aya sighed curtly. "Look, don't underestimate the power of the police force. Think we can't even figure this out? What the hell's the idea, turnin' in your resignation!"

Shibata pressed her forehead into the back of the chair. "That is because my self-confidence is completely deceased."

"Self confidence?" Aya smirked. She pinched Shibata's cheeks together between her fingers. "Then what the hell was your self-confidence based on, anyway? Huh?"

Shibata mumbled something unintelligible through her pinched mouth.

"What would your father think if he was still alive to see you skip outta work during training like this!"

Shibata just looked at her.

Aya turned her head away. "Whatever, it's none of my business." Opening her eyes in that direction, she inadvertently caught sight of the text displayed on Maiko's screen. "Offline party? Whatsat."

"The two of us are going tonight," Shibata said.

"Some kinda drinking party?" Aya asked indifferently.

"Something like a group date."

"Group date!?" Aya erupted, nearly attacking Shibata. "Why, why didn't you invite me?! I invited you so many times, why didn't you even ask me! Man, you suck!" she cried almost tearfully.

"How would you like to come with us?" asked Maiko.

Aya stopped her hysterics and stood up to smile amiably and obsequiously at Maiko. "May I?" she entreated.

"Sure."

"Yeah, alright!" Aya clapped her hands and slipped out of her leather jacket, picking up Maiko's cellophane-wrapped dress and murmuring excitedly to herself. At last, she glanced down at Shibata on the floor. "Shibata, you plannin' to go all scuzzy-lookin' like that?"

"Can't I?"

"Hell, no!" Aya cried. "It's a group date. You gotta look like a killer bitch, dress to kill, let your boobs stick out, come on..."

"You done yet?" Aya called as she and Maiko stood outside the mall's dressing room waiting for Shibata to emerge. Shibata finally drew the curtain aside and revealed herself in a fancy blue dress that might have been more appropriate at a royal ball several centuries ago. "Is this it?" she chirped, holding her hands on her hips.

Aya and Maiko grunted noncommitally.

Shibata next emerged wearing a sequin-covered minidress and light cardigan. "Is this it?" she chirped.

Aya muttered a remark that she looked like an employee at a "pink salon," the kind of salon which normally offered things such as fellatio rather than haircuts.

When Shibata emerged again, she was wearing a frilly, heavy-looking pink dress with a thick, flower-decorated coat, which she held open to happily show the dress underneath. "Is this it?"

Aya groped for adequate phrasing. "Uh, ah, m-maybe we should just stop here for today..." She and Maiko were in agreement.

In the evening, they rode the elevator to the site of the party, and Maiko was the first to step attentitively into it. Aya postured and posed at the rear, scanning the room for prospects. Shibata, in the middle, was temporarily waylayed as she became transfixed by a kissing couple near the wall. She scrutinized them with childlike curiousity for a moment before stepping away to follow Maiko, who stood at the center of the room to make their presence known. Aya and Shibata were then both lingering at her shoulders and gazing out into the sea of dark faces and tables bedecked with drinks and laptop computers. At last, Maiko's gaze was met by a man named Hara, who put his drink on the counter and stepped out to raise his hand in greeting. "Hey."

"Hello," Maiko smiled, looking back at him. A few more male heads turned toward them from the distance, and she motioned to the awkward female at her left shoulder. "This is my good friend Shibata Jun," she said.

"Hello," said Shibata, giving a light bow.

"And this is--" Before Maiko could continue, Aya stepped out in front of her, toying with her hair flirtatiously as she made a sultry curtsy. "I'm Aya. Nice to meet you."

Nearly all the men on the other side of the room rose from their seats, but Hara was the only one who had the privilege of returning the greeting.

Three men sang passionately at the karaoke box; a group of others were intent on a sort of game in which they engaged with their laptops. Aya had made herself right at home, sitting right smack in the middle of a bunch of men, with a drink in her hand, egging them on toward some sort of stripping contest. Shibata was sitting with a bespectacled and uninterested young man, yelling her exposition at him over the din of conversation: "Therefore, in light of the previous attempts at setting fire, the independent combustion theory and the benefit-loss theory are applied--"

The man held up his cell phone to look at the screen. "Uh, I just got a message." He quickly got up and left. Shibata sat by herself then, and let her dispirited eyes flicker silently over the rowdy, gregarious crowd, finally blinking softly toward her own lap and the floor.

Maiko scooted cheerfully into the seat beside her. "What's up, why're you hanging out all by yourself?"

"I don't know what I'm supposed to talk about," Shibata admitted apologetically, touching Maiko's arm.

"That's okay, it'll be fine if you just sit quietly and smile," Maiko said with a good-natured pout. "Once they get a good look at you, they'll see how cute you are."

"Really?"

Maiko grunted affirmatively.

Shibata blinked, her face brightening into an innocent smile. She turned her happy face slowly toward the men at the karaoke box, who froze when they saw her staring.

Aya's stripping contest was in full swing, with the men around her sitting with bare chests as she sung out enthusiastically at the score at the next turn. "You hear me, dude? Go on, take 'em off, take 'em off!" she cried, extending her hands toward the only man left still wearing a shirt. He merrily slipped it over his head.

"Aya's really getting the attention," Shibata observed.

"That's because there aren't too many girls here," Maiko explained. "That's Miss Miyuki over there," she said, tapping Shibata's arm and pointing discreetly to a balding man sitting near the karaoke box and bobbing his head with the music as he stuffed his face with fried chicken.

"Eh? A man?!"

"It's his handle name," Maiko explained.

Aya called out the score again, throwing her hand up as she faced the man beside her, the one who had escaped Shibata a moment ago. Aya squealed with glee and covered her eyes playfully as the man stood, covering his front with his briefcase and slipping his jockey shorts down over his knees, screaming her name.

Hara and another man seated themselves with Maiko and Shibata, Hara opening his laptop next to Maiko, and the other man leaning past Shibata to take Maiko's hand. "Hey, it's been awhile," he said, giving her a firm handshake and continuing to hold her hand in his grip. "Things going any better with your old boyfriend?"

"We had a fight," she admitted lightheartedly, "But it's alright."

He studied the back of her hand as he pronounced, "Ah, the best way to cancel that frustration is through the skin, wouldn't you say?"

"Ah?" Shibata grunted, raising a finger at him. "You're Lizard Man, aren't you?"

"Huh, what?"

"I've heard the rumours about your sexual harassment," she asserted, staring him down.

He flashed a very short-lived smile of chagrin. "Harsh," he said.

"So, did you guys see any example of the present from this message?" asked Hara, changing the subject. The others scooted closer one by one as he turned the screen of his laptop to display the cryptic message from the poster named Pierrot advertising a present for Khorosho, Cameo and Lizard Man, something fun in response to their gloomy messages of wanting to die.

"Should be a blast," said Lizard Man. "Been awhile, hasn't it, Mr Hara? Did you get any clue in your email?"

"Nothing!" Hara exclaimed. He typed Lucky cha cha cha, in response to the cryptic message, and decorated his post with a smiley face made of parentheses, period, and tilde.

"Huh, what's that thing?" Lizard Man asked.

"Doesn't it look like a butterfly with a happy tear?" Hara said.

"Oh, I should use that, too," said Lizard Man.

Aya called out another round in the stripping game, which made Maiko and Lizard Man beam glow with interest and leave their seats, leaving Shibata and Hara by themselves at the table. Hara watched Shibata as she picked up her camera with dainty fingers and aimed it at herself, moving her small mouth into a smile as she snapped the shutter. "You're not enjoying yourself," he observed.

"I'm no good at this kind of thing," she confessed with a self-deprecating smile.

"Isn't that just because you're sober?" he said. "Want a drink?"

"Oh--I've never had any alcohol before," she protested, waving her hand.

Hara grunted thoughtfully and shifted closer to her on the seat. "I wonder what you'll be like if you drink."

Shibata cocked her head uneasily. "Don't know."

Hara lifted his glass warmly. "Cheers," he said, inviting her to do the same beneath the din of Aya's rowdy escapades. Shibata clinked her glass against his with uncertainty, but closed her eyes and easily drained a mouthful in a long, thirsty gulp.

She lowered the glass and let her eyes open slowly. A giddy smile spread over her face as the warmth consumed her body. She began to laugh, and was soon giggling uncontrollably as she watched Hara'a blurring, distorted face repeating "Miss Shibata? Miss Shibata?" as it faded into oblivion.

She awoke with her aching head on a pillow. Her eyes opened to artificial light and she grunted shortly, and raised herself painfully into a sitting position on the bed as she nursed her skull. She looked about, and the sparse, antiseptic decor of the pale green room came into focus, forcing the reality of her location upon her. "A love hotel," she murmured, her eyes scanning the room with trepidation and dismay. "Impossible..." She reached under the sheets, drew out her hand, and gazed with anguish at her bloodied fingers.

"I can never get married," she moaned. "I'll never have a husband..." She nearly began to cry, but then she stopped. "Huh?" She looked down at the buttons that fastened her dress together at her breast "I'm still dressed." Then she lifted the quilt to peek at her lap for confirmation. At last she swallowed and straightned her spine resolutely to prepare herself, shifting onto her knees and gathering the quilt. She pulled it from the bed with a single hard tug.

There on the other side of the mattress was Hara, dead in his bathrobe, bleeding onto the sheets. A heavy conical object rested on the pillow.

Shibata closed her eyes tightly and opened them again, then crawled toward Hara's body. "The murder weapon--is this?" She nearly picked up the big black cone, and slapped her own hand away just in time to keep from touching it. "Cause of death was bludgeoning with a blunt weapon," she noted, backing away on her hands. "The window," she said, sliding the panel to reveal the lock, "Is sealed from the inside. The door," she went on, leaping toward the front of the room, "Is locked with the door chain. In other words, this is a murder behind closed doors. The culprit is--me?"

She looked at her bare wrist in search of a watch, then scanned the room to locate her cell phone beside the room's phone, on the ledge at the head of the bed. She scrambled for it and read from its screen: 8.20 AM, 21 February. She thumbed a button and held it to her ear. "Sheee-bata, it's Maiko," chirped the peppy recording. "What happened to you? You just slipped out without a word. Are you with Mr Hara? Later." Shibata looked at the corpse and quickly dailed Maiko's cell phone. Two rings, then a click. "Hello, Maiko?"

"Shibata!? What's up, you had me all worried. Were you with Mr Hara all this time?"

"I'm, uh, still with him now..." Shibata hesitated.

"Wow, you're still together?" Maiko whispered.

"For the time being..." Shibata said with difficulty.

"Way to go, you did it, huh," her friend teased.

"Uh uh, I didn't do it!" Shibata cried, the urgency rising in her voice.

"Come on, don't try to cover it up."

"That's not it! Mr Hara is dead!"

"What are you talking about?"

"He's dead... hit over the head with a blunt weapon..."

"Stop it with the sick jokes, Shibata."

"I'm not joking! His blood is all over..."

"My God... Did you kill him?"

"I don't know if I did or not. I can't remember anything. I think I might have done it." She looked about at her surroundings. "This room is sealed."

"What'll you do?"

Shibata paused. "What should I do?" she asked at length.

"You're a detective, aren't you? Get ahold of yourself!"

"I'll have turn myself in," Shibata said.

"That's stupid! You couldn't have been the one who did it!"

"But, look, if the police make a full investigation, maybe they can find the culprit..." Her conviction was interrupted by an invasive visual of Nonomura, Kondoh, Taniguchi, Hayashida and Nagao standing in a suspect lineup, and her voice was reduced to a cracking murmur. "Or maybe they can't..."

"Okay, for now, your best bet would be to get out of that room. Isn't there a window?"

"There is, but..." She placed her hand on the ledge and looked toward the door. "I could also leave through the corridor."

"Don't do that!" Maiko warned. "If anyone at the reception desk sees you leaving alone, they'll phone the room and find out there's no one else there."

"You're right," Shibata brooded.

"Are you leaving?"

"Uhm, just a minute..." Shibata crawled on her knees to the window and slipped from the ledge as she unlocked it. She kept the phone on her ear and looked outside. "It's not impossible to get out... Ha?" She caught sight of a grinning man in a sushi maker's uniform staring up at her. "No good," she said, shutting the window. "There's a strange man down there."

"A man?"

Shibata crouched and hid on the ledge. "He's peeping into the hotel!"

"Which hotel is it?"

Shibata looked around the room and found a matchbook on the other end of the window ledge. "Um, uh, G7."

"G7? In Kabuki-cho?"

Maiko's hand slapped the shoulder of the sushi man. "What are you doing?" she demanded when he turned to face her.

"Uh, I'm, uh, not doing anything," the man stuttered.

"You were peeping into that hotel just now, weren't you! I'm calling the police."

"No, I didn't do anything," he insisted.

"Are you some kind of pervert?" Maiko turned away to scream at the street while Shibata made her furtive escape out the window. "Help!" Maiko screamed. "Somebody, come quick! This guy is a pervert!"

While the sushi man was occupied with his struggle to stifle Maiko's cries, Shibata dangled her feet toward the ledge and climbed down onto it, pulled her tote bag out after her, closed the shutters, and began to sidestep unsteadily onto the very narrow ridge. Her foot slipped and sent her plummeting to the asphalt with the audible crash of the contents of her tote bag.

Maiko and her opponent ceased their struggle. "Oh, Shibata," Maiko groaned, running over to where Shibata lay moaning in pain in front of the parking sign. "Hurry up, hurry up! Run!" Maiko cried, gathering a few of the fallen items and taking Shibata in her arms to lead her away as fast as they could manage. The sushi man watched them intently as they struggled to hurry down the street, and he bent over to pick up the things Shibata had left behind, including her police notebook.

The door was opened on its chain, and the beady eyes of Hayashida and Nagao peered in through the crack. "Goddamn it," Nagao hissed, then growled like a ferocious beast as he jerked the door open, demolishing the chain.

"No one called or set out at checkout time, so we entered on suspicion," Hayashida explained to the hotel employee who stood between him and Saotome as the cameras flashed over Hara's dead body. "However, the door chain was latched from the inside..."

Saotome examined the window, then turned around when another detective led in the sushi man. "We brought this man in on suspicion," he said.

"This man has been snooping outside the hotel all this time," Nagao explained.

"I wasn't doin' nothin' like snooping," said the insolent sushi man.

Saotome marched over to him, seized him by the lapels, and stared icily into his face with narrow, piercing eyes. "We would like your full cooperation in this investigation," he said quietly.

"Yessir," the man stammered, suddenly lapsing into stylized polite speech. "While I was snooping outside I saw one filthy woman leave by herself."

"That was the perpetrator!" Hayashida exclaimed. "Hey! Any distinguishing features?"

"Uh, that would be..." He produced Shibata's tiny fallen notebook bearing the police seal, and presented it to them with both sets of fingertips. "This."

"Shibata...?" Hayashida breathed in disbelief. "Shibata's the culprit? Hey!" he ordered Nagao. "Go get Shibata!"

Saotome's arm went up to impede the short man. "Wait!" he said. "We'll motion for a Sweep," he pronounced with a foreboding glow in his eyes.

Hayashida paused with trepidation. "The internal investigation division...?"

"What about it?" said Saotome.

"Nothing," said Hayashida.

"On with it!" Saotome ordered. His subordinates moved out, and he fixed his stern, narrow eyes into the distance. "Smearing the face of the First Investigation Department..."

"Eh?" Nonomura cried into the telephone. "Shibata, the love hotel killer?!" Kondoh and Taniguchi rose suddenly from their seats and Mayama looked up from his book. Nonomura sank into his chair. "But..."

"Good mo-orning," Aya drawled as she sauntered into the office. "Oh, my heart and loins are singing today..."

The men all looked at her dubiously, and said nothing.

"What's up? Why's everybody got that look on your faces?"

"Last night, Miss Shibata..." Kondoh began.

"Oh, yeah!" Aya grinned. "The group date yesterday?"

Mayama's jaw dropped and he walked right over to Aya. "Huh? Do you know something?"

"Did something happen?"

"Miss Shibata," Kondoh told her, "Has committed a murder."

Shibata and Maiko fled across the overpass, under the noses of the towering skyscrapers, finally stopping to catch their breath, and ducked into a public bicycle parking garage. Under the bare flourescent ceiling light, they panted and collected themselves. "How can Mr Hara be dead?" Maiko finally asked.

"I hardly remember anything except opening my eyes and finding Mr Hara's dead body next to me," said Shibata.

"Do you have any recollection of anything you did?"

"Not really."

"It'll be okay," Maiko assured her. "There's no way you could kill anyone."

"But I don't know how it could've happened. Maiko, I... I don't remember anything after the karaoke box."

"You were so drunk, you started to get really friendly with Mr Hara..." Maiko recalled the scene of Shibata hanging in Hara's embrace, drawling a slurred inquiry as to whether he understood the difference between Beauville and Baudelaire.

"The computer!" Shibata exclaimed, remembering the online bulletin board.

"Eh?"

Shibata dug Maiko's laptop out of her purse, connected it to her cell phone, and opened the forum. A present from Pierrot, she read, Has reached Mr Khorosho in the room of love. Cameo will be next.

"What do I do...?" Maiko whispered in terror.

"Cameo is you, Maiko?!"

Maiko gave a fearful nod.

"In other words, it's a present of death to the three people who made the entry about wanting to die."

"Why?" Maiko began to cry. "I don't wanna be murdered! I only posted that message, I didn't really mean it--"

"Do you know who Pierrot might be?" Shibata demanded. Maiko shook her head. "Did you do something to earn that kind of hatred from anyone?" Shibata asked her. Maiko shook her head again. "In that case, it's a degenerate who's making a game of murder. He turned the trick of using me in order to confuse the investigation. And we're the only ones who'll understand the warning about the next act he'll commit."

"What's this mean?" Maiko trembled, pointing at the screen.

In the flashing light, Shibata read.

"That means he'll kill me there?"

"It's got to."

"I'm scared," Maiko said. "I'm so scared. I don't wanna go outside. I gotta go home!" She backed away, but Shibata caught her by the arm. "Then I'll go with you," she said.

"You can't! If you go with me you'll be in danger, too!"

"I'm not leaving you alone!" Shibata cried, clutching Maiko's arm.

In the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, Aya was alone at the head of the conference room, facing the menacing figures of Hayashida and Nagao. "Look, we went to the group date together, but I don't know anything after that," Aya said, and folded her arms over her chest. "But what is this really about? You think Shibata could kill somebody."

"Ahh," said Hayashida. "You have no idea what happened."

"But she didn't even have a motive!"

"She was being raped, and not in her right mind," Saotome pronounced. He walked to Aya from the side of the room. "It has been communicated to us by the discerning investigation that Shibata's fingerprints appeared on the murder weapon. That's how it's decided."

Aya spoke softly as she looked into Saotome's glowering eyes. "The real killer's gotta be somewhere else out there."

"What?" he said.

"Look, there's no way in hell she coulda killed anybody!" she shouted.

Saotome grabbed Aya by the neck. "Kido!" he shouted back. "Not another word outta you, you got that! This incident is already in the Metropolitan Police case files!" Aya apologized through a constricted throat, and Saotome violently let her go. "There will be a Sweep to track down Shibata. If you know anything, you'll do as you're told and speak."

Nonomura sat alone at his desk, the only one in the office. The looming figure of Saotome materialized in the corridor. "Assitant Section Chief Nonomura," he said. "Where is everyone?"

"Ah, why, it's Administrator Saotome, what an honour to have you here!" Nonomura picked up his trusty glass jar and beckoned the steadfast man toward the sofa as he seated himself. "Ah, have some party mix or something. Please, come in, sit down!"

"I believe you have something for me," Saotome intoned flatly.

The aging assistant section chief slowly closed the lid on his jar of party mix, and placed the heavy jar on the coffee table. He rose, bowed his head, and walked toward Saotome while removing the envelope from inside his jacket. He held it out with an air of gravity. "Please take care of it," he said. The younger man quite unceremoniously stuck it into his own inside pocket, and mumbled a cursory phrase of acceptance while Nonomura watched the movement his hands. "Ah, see how young your hands look--"

"Mr Nonomura!" Saotome interrupted in his dour and stern manner. "This isn't something you can fix by risking your own neck. A Sweep has been enstated. I would like you to be aware of that."

Nonomura backed away. "Just a minute! Please wait!" He hurried over to his desk and removed Shibata's letter of resignation from the drawer, holding the envelope up to wave it at Saotome. "Shibata is no longer a detective. Look. She's only an ordinary citizen. Let's have it be an ordinary apprehension and investigation. Surely I think there's got to be a pretext..."

"I only came to report this information," Saotome intoned, "I didn't come to discuss it with you." He turned, and left the office where Nonomura stood powerless with the dangling envelope.

In the hallway, Saotome opened the envelope that was supposed to contain Nonomura's own resignation; instead, it contained Nonomura's marriage registration. Saotome looked up from the flimsy sheet and shook his head. He wadded up the page, tossed it into the wastebasket, and walked off down the hallway.

Meanwhile, the buzzer sounded at Asakura's door. After a moment, he let the door slightly ajar to peek out, and before he could close it, Mayama rammed his foot into the crack and cut the door chain with a wrench. He grabbed the young man by the collar and shoved a concealed weapon into his face. "What are you going to do?" Asakura asked under the twisted skin of his cheek.

"You fuckin' tell me," Mayama said.

"What are you getting at?"

"What'd you meet Shibata for?"

"What, you're treating me like a criminal again?" Asakura laughed. "I could sue you."

"I let your ass go the first time, so let's have it out right now."

"What are you talking about?"

Flashbacks of Mayama's young sister's dead body floating in the shallow water blinked before his twitching eyes, and the earphone radio sounded just in time to keep him from what might have been a psychotic episode.

Shibata and Maiko crouched in the shrubbery, watching the beige backs of the trenchcoats of the three detectives that lurked outside the apartment building where Maiko dwelled. "We'll go in from the back," Shibata said. Maiko nodded with a grunt. They tiptoed some distance behind where Hayashida, Nagao, and a third detective lingered at the side of the patrol car, imbibing their beverages and passing their time by amusing themselves with sundry objects that might have been evidence.

Maiko turned the key in the lock to her apartment and opened the door. A strobe flashed, and Maiko tackled Shibata, shoving her to the wall as a rigged crossbow discharged its arrow with a solid thock into the wall.

"Bow gun?" said Shibata.

"Shibata, you okay?" Maiko whispered, hugging her.

Shibata spent the next hour or more studying the rigging of the bow gun, inspecting the wire, the arrow, and the jerrybuilt mechanical contraption on which it was mounted. Maiko called her over to the kitchen table, where she sat with the laptop computer.

"There's a another new message," she said.

You've received the present I gave you? Shibata read.

"Received..." Maiko echoed.

"He thinks that you died by the bow gun just now, Maiko."

"Eh?"

Shibata rolled her eyes back and forth over the interior of Maiko's apartment. "Can the killer see this room? Is the window in his sight, I wonder?" She moved toward the light curtain that flowed over the picture window, and parted it slightly to set her gaze on the top of the tall building directly across from them. "From there, only from over there," she supposed. "The killer is on top of that building?"

"Shibata," Maiko called in her hushed voice.

Lizard Man will be the next to get the present in his dreams," Shibata read from the screen, leaning forward beside Maiko. "Lizard Man is Mr Shimamura, right?"

"I think Mr Shimamura is probably sleeping right now," said Maiko. "Day and night are reversed for him."

"The present in his dreams...?" Shibata repeated.

"If we don't do something fast..." Maiko murmured.

Shibata murmured Maiko's name and pointed out a new message that appeared on the forum, posted by Lizard Man. "That means--he's looking at the bulletin board right now," Shibata said urgently. Maiko clicked the keys as if preparing a message for him. Shibata stopped her. "Wait! The killer thinks you're dead. He put up the message about you receiving his present, so if he finds out you're still alive, he'll take another aim at you."

"But we can't leave him like this," Maiko protested.

"Do you know where he lives?"

The two women raced over the wide cobblestone sidewalk and under the highway overpass. In the shadows of the pedestrian stairwell, the Sweep chief stood in surveillance and vigilantly watched his fugitive. "The mouse is on the move to the giraffe," he breathed into the wireless radio concealed in his trenchcoat. "Proceed with Action F in five minutes." He stepped into the light to to take his leave, but Mayama seized him by the shoulder and collar and shoved him against the concrete wall.

"What's goin' on, Madarame?" Mayama sneered, a cigarette hanging from his lips.

"Mr Mayama..."

Mayama took a long drag on his cigarette, then pinched it between his thumb and middle finger to gesture at the young man. "Maybe you can skip it just for today," he said. Madarame just stared up at him, until he said, "Shibata didn't do it."

Madarame scoffed and tried to leave, but Mayama grabbed him again. "You owe me a favour from six years ago," he smiled as he reminded him. "Close your eyes just this one time."

Madarame lowered his eyes and became pensive. "Six hours," he conceded at length.

Mayama nodded and raised his eyebrows with a smile. "That's plenty," he said, and he stuck the cigarette back in his mouth and walked away.

Shibata and Maiko meandered through the hallway of the monolith apartment structure that held Shimamura's abode. "205, must be around here..." Shibata mused, searching in the dim corridor with the guidance of the business card in her hand. "Aha! 205!" She beat her fist on the door, but when she recieved no answer, she cautiously turned the door handle and peered into the pitch darkness. She breathed a little sigh of relief when no rigged crossbow greeted her, and opened the door all the way.

The two of them stepped tentatively into the shadows. The only light came in slivers through shaded windows, and scarcely a detail was visible in the apartment. "So dark," Shibata said. Maiko flipped a switch on one of the inside walls, and all of the dangling flourescent lamps clinked on and bathed the room in white light. Shibata's eyes widened and Maiko screamed, having found Shimamura's broken, prone body lying on the bloodstained sheets of his bed in a crimson shirt which matched the stain.

Shibata went to the body. "Er, the murder weapon was this dumbell," she noted, indicating the small, bloody handweight sitting on the sheets. "From the apparent condition of the blood it seems he was killed not long ago. The perpetrator came to the sleeping Mr Shimamura..." She looked around, and located a likely entrance. "From that door," she said. Then she went to the nearby wall, decorated with five different light switches and a calendar. She tried first one switch, then another, each of them affecting only one or two lights in the room.

Maiko sat on the sofa, opening her laptop. She called Shibata over once again.

Shibata leaned toward the screen, on which was displayed a message declaring in no uncertain terms that Lizard Man had received the blessing he'd desired, a gift of death in his dreams, the fate of those who'd written that they'd wanted to die. "Let me see it," Shibata said, and took the little computer to scroll down the list of messages to the end. There she found the most recent one from Lizard Man, in which he wondered what Pierrot had in store for him and expressed that he was quite looking forward to it. Shibata backed away from the screen and stood.

The puzzle pieces came to her in dreadful heartbeat flashes, the images of Hara's bloody head, the arrow flying through the air, Maiko's embrace, Shimamura's body, the light switches, and the final message on the screen, all coming together to tell her something she never wanted to know.

At last, the compact police car screeched to a halt in the street below. Maiko called Shibata to the window, and they looked down at Hayashida and his fellows disembarking. "Let's go?" Maiko said, looking back at their entrance. "There's gotta be another way out." She gathered her laptop and cell phone, and they hurried to escape into the alley through the discreet side door. But just outside, Hayashida's shout stopped them in their tracks.

"Hold it right there!" he yelled, jogging toward them and stopping a few metres away with his men behind him. "Shibata! We're here to make an arrest of the primary homicide suspect!" The men began to plow forward, but Maiko stepped out into their path.

"What!" Nagao demanded.

"The killer is a man by the internet handle name of Pierrot," Maiko asserted. "I can prove it to you that Shibata's not the killer!"

"Enough, Maiko!" Shibata cried.

Maiko turned to face her.

"It's already been decided," Shibata said.

"Eh?"

Shibata made a quiet, plaintive request to the men who had been her comrades. "May we have a second?" She took a few despondent steps and took Maiko gently by the arm, then put her arm around her and led her slowly back inside.

The three detectives stared with hard and cold faces. A moment went by. Hayashida blinked. Nagao looked over at him. "Mr Hayashida," he said at length, "They got away."

The two women dashed through the bright hallways and out the front door. Hayashida's shouts reverberated through the passages, warning them that they wouldn't escape. The fugitives raced over a pedestrian bridge and through the quiet suburban side street, pursued at some distance by the stronger and faster men. At last, Shibata, exhausted, staggered into an alley between two abandoned buildings, and she and Maiko took their refuge there. Hayashida and his men bounded past the entrance to that alley, uttered profane oaths, and split up to search different directions. When all was clear, the women snuck out of the alley and into the doorway of the most accessible building.

Shibata nearly collapsed on the dirty cement floor, panting and wheezing that it was no use anymore, while Maiko ran to the window and opened it slightly to catch a glimpse of the detective searching about on the sidewalk below. "What'll we do?" she cried. "They're bound to find us here sooner or later!" She panted and caught her breath. "Ohh, why are we running away? I know I can prove that it's not you who's the killer! We know the killer is Pierrot..."

"Stop it, Maiko, that's enough!" Shibata shouted.

"What do you mean, that's enough?"

"I mean I know who Pierrot is," Shibata said with regret.

"Eh?"

"You are Pierrot, aren't you?"

"Are you crazy, Shibata?"

Shibata got up and stormed toward Maiko. "If we're friends, don't hide things from me!" she cried. "When Mr Hara was first murdered in the love hotel... you gave me your help to escape out the window. But your real purpose wasn't to rescue me. It was you who made the room look as if it was sealed from the inside. The door chain was locked from the outside using a wire or something. That's how the room appeared to be sealed from the inside. You had me get out through the window, not the door. The testimony of the man peeping into the room would naturally incriminate me. That's what you'd calculated... You pretended to rescue me, and set me up as the culprit."

"What a horrible thing to say," Maiko said. "There was an attempt on my life, too! Didn't you see that?"

"But you didn't die!" Shibata cried. "It was your calculation that I would try to enter before you. You acted surprised and shoved me to the wall. And then the strobe flashed and the bow gun was discharged. Knowing about that, you were able to avoid it, but I would have died. Isn't that how you instantly saved me?"

"When we went together to Mr Shimamura's place, he was already dead," Maiko protested. "But you and I were together the whole time! Weren't we? How could I have killed him?!"

"Mr Shimamura was the very first to be killed. Pierrot's message was necessary to give me the illusion that the attempts on your lives would be in the order of Mr Hara, you, and then Mr Shimamura. But the reality is that you had killed Mr Shimamura before you came to help me get out of the love hotel. There was one more big merit to having the victim die that way. We naturally rushed to the scene when we got an advance notice of the next crime to be committed. You had a motive for getting there is such a hurry. It was to demonstrate to me that Mr Shimamura's murder was immediately following the other. That way you could strenghten the already convincing impression that Mr Shimamura was the very last to be killed."

Maiko began to laugh and walked past Shibata's shoulder. "How in the world could I do that, Shibata? Have you totally lost your mind? After what happened with the bow gun in my room, Mr Shimamura sent a message to the bulletin board from his own home! Don't you think he was alive when he did that?"

"Lizard Man isn't Mr Shimamura's handle name! You only led me to believe it was. Can you remember the off-party? That's when Mr Hara revealed that his handle name was Khorosho. So that left Mr Shimamura to be only either Cameo or Lizard Man. Afterwards, you confessed that you yourself were Cameo. As a matter of course that left Mr Shimamura to be considered as Lizard Man. But you weren't really Cameo. Your handle name was Pierrot. Cameo was Mr Shimamura. The identity of Lizard Man didn't matter. It's a total stranger who doesn't know your face or your real name. He was just someone on the net who read Pierrot's message, so it didn't matter, as long as someone out there replied in the usual manner. Look here," she said, having taken Maiko's laptop from her purse and showing her the bulletin board.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Lizard Man likes using pictographs. If Mr Shimamura was really Lizard Man, he would have had to put in new characters here. In other words, Lizard Man and the Mr Shimamura who attended the off-party are different people, aren't they? You used some stranger on the net, who doesn't know your face and isn't aware of you at all, as your accomplice. This is in its entirety the trick to this serial murder case."

Maiko turned her back on Shibata. "Since when?" she wondered. "When did you realize I was the killer? From the beginning?"

Shibata shook her head and turned aside. She made a wordless murmur of negation. "Until we went into Mr Shimamura's design room, I couldn't believe you could possibly be the killer. Then, at that time, you found the light switch at the first try. I couldn't find it at all. There were so many switches in that room, so how could you have known right away which was the right one? You knew because you'd been in that room before. In other words, when you murdered Mr Shimamura."

The black cloak of night hung over the street where Madarame and his two henchmen waited with upturned eyes staring toward the high windows of the abandoned building. Madarame looked at his watch and told them it was time. They exchanged a glance and leaped over the fence.

"When the police came, you helped me get away," Shibata continued. "I thought you were really concerned about me." She choked back her tears and forced herself to continue. "But it wasn't like that. You pretended you could prove my alibi, but you just wanted to prove your own alibi," she managed to say, before her voice and face began to break. She grabbed the stiff, vacant Maiko and shook her. "Why'd you have to do this!? If you had any kind of problem, if you came to me and told me honestly, I would've discussed it with you anytime you wanted! So why?! Why did you do this?!" she screamed. "Maiko!"

"Shut up!" Maiko finally screamed back, tore from Shibata's grip, and bolted through the door.

"Maiko!"

The blowtorch cut into the steel wall and cast flickers over Madarame's hard, grizzled face. The henchmen kicked down the door they'd made and announced the entrance. "Break in," Madarame told them. They drew their pistols and headed inside. Madarame would have followed but for Mayama getting in his way.

The two men traded a mutually challenging stare for a moment. "Our arrangement is up," Madarame said.

Mayama looked at his watch and flashed his open palm in front of Madarame's face. "There's five minutes left."

"Please step aside."

"Not likely."

Madarame stared at the stubborn man for another brief moment. "Excuse me," he said, and shot Mayama in the leg.

Mayama staggered to the ground, crippled. "Aagh! Madarame!"

"It's my job," Madarame said. "Excuse me." He entered the building.

On the other side of the building, Nagao ran to Hayashida and panted an unquestionable confirmation that it could only be this building. Mayama was struggling to his feet, cursing the plastic bullet that impaled his leg through the cloth, and grimacing as he tore it from his flesh.

Shibata ran to the rooftop and found Maiko standing under a structure made of metal pipes and gazing out at the sea of rolling headlights and asphalt below. Shibata took a few steps forward and screamed Maiko's name.

Maiko turned slightly to see her. "Don't come any closer," she warned.

The pistols of the Sweep henchmen, aimed at Shibata, were switched off safety the instant they arrived on the rooftop. Madarame stepped in between them and let Shibata meet his eyes with a face lit with cold palor. "Shibata, I think?" he said.

"Who are you?"

"The police," he said. "We've come to punish your series of homicides." He stood with his hands clasped in front of him as his men edged forward.

"Please stop!" Maiko screamed. "It's me who's guilty! Shibata is innocent!"

"Maiko!" Shibata screamed.

"Shibata..." Maiko wept. "I'm sorry..."

"Tell me, Maiko! We're friends, right?" Shibata blinked her glistening eyes. "When you gave me this to cheer me up," she said, holding the cameo she wore around her neck, "You really were concerned about me, right?

Maiko moved her weary face slowly away.

"So why did you do it?" Shibata sobbed. "Why did you have to do this!"

Maiko stared without expression at the speeding traffic. "Why," she repeated. "I don't even know. I don't even know..." The flashing cars were temporary flickers in the distant streets. "Help me," she whispered. "Help me. Help me..."

She stepped to the edge and looked at Shibata one last time, then jumped.

The scream tore Shibata's throat as Maiko's body plummetted downward and hit the asphalt, the fall breaking on her knees so that her torso fell forward, spreading a layer of blood over the pavement. Shibata clung to the rail, weeping silently and helplessly in the darkness. Hayashida ran with his men from the front of the building. "What was that sound?" he shouted, and they stopped there, finding the young woman lying with her cheek in the pool of blood.

Shibata reached the ground floor and ran outside to the place where Maiko fell. A light breeze blew over Shibata's wet face as she looked at her friend's broken body. She closed her eyes and let the tears spill down her cheeks. She sniffed and looked down at the cameo that lay at rest in the blood beside Maiko's face. "The culprit isn't Maiko," she sobbed. "There's someone else..."

Saotome marched through the hallway at Headquarters. "There will be an urgent recall of the Sweep," he ordered into his cell phone. "The case has been satisfactorily resolved."

Shibata walked through the familiar doorway of the basement office, her makeup and clothing fresh, and her eyes hollow and still.

"Ah--Shibata--" Nonomura began, he and Aya starting at the sight of her silent appearance.

"Please allow me to revoke my resignation," Shibata intoned.

Nonomura carried the envelope to her and held it in an outstretched arm. Her face was like stone as she clenched a trembling fist and let it hang heavy at her side, then turned away, with the other standing in silence behind her as she crushed the envelope in her hand.