The Eccentric, the Beauty, and the Detective: Kiriki Junka's Mystery Log Volume 1 Chapter 23

Pre-chapter Eccentricities:

Yokozuna: a sumo champion

“So a Takadkun unaffiliated with this school suddenly showed up and threw Koshi-kun from the third story window? Does he have some kind of grudge against Koshi-kun?”

Mashima replied bashfully, “Takada Satoshi doesn’t hate Koshi-kun. What he hates is bullying. That’s it, Takada Satoshi can’t forgive bullies.”

Junka couldn’t hide his bewilderment.

“So that means you were being bullied by Koshi-kun when the incident occured? That’s why Takada Satoshi appeared, and punished the bully, that is, Koshi-kun?”

“Yup.”

“Where did Takada Satoshi come from?”

“I don’t know. By the time we noticed him, he was already here.”

Junka made a face that said he couldn’t comprehend it, and gave a big sigh.

“I’ll change my line of questioning. How did Takada Satoshi defenestrate Koshi-kun? Koshi-kun is rather skilled with violence, so that shouldn’t have been a real possibility.”

“Takada Satoshi is overflowing with a sense of justice, but he’s not strong. So he grabbed him with eight limbs and just shoved him out the window.”

“Eight limbs?”

Junka only got more and more perplexed, as was I beside him. Was Takada Satoshi a monster?

Recovering himself, Junka pressed on, ” Is Takada Satoshi human?”

Kahara happily nodded, “Isn’t that obvious?”

“Were you and Mashimkun just watching the fight between Koshi-kun and Takadkun?”

“We couldn’t do anything else. It was a holy war, a battle between right and wrong. And he won. Takada Satoshi, our god, defeated the evil Koshi-kun.”

Kahara’s gaze had the fanaticism of the founder of a religious sect.

Junka did well to press on, “Where is Takada Satoshi now?”

Mashima responded, “He ran off. He isn’t in the school anymore.”

“What do you think, Rouji-kun?” asked Junka dejectedly on the way home, “I’ve got nothing when it comes to the case. Eight limbs only makes me think of monsters or maybe a yokozuna.”

Sumo wrestlers can’t do that.

I suddenly said the first thing that came to my mind, “Now that I think of it, the media and police suddenly stopped coming.”

“I wonder if Koshi-kun’s still testifying from his hospital bed that he fell by himself. If that’s the case, the police can’t do anything, and the case’ll grind to  a halt… That’s it, if he’s still lying about it, he must have been tossed out by the two he bullied, after all. He doesn’t want to admit it, so he’s covering for himself. But if that is the case, what becomes of Takadkun? It’s no good… It’s like I’ll never understand…”

Junka was busy impressively sorting out his thoughts. I patted him on the shoulder.

“Isn’t it fine, now? Why don’t you come to my place sometime? I recently bought an interesting game, so let’s play together.”

“My eyes will go bad, so I’ll pass.”

“Don’t say that. It’s an fps that feels great. I’m sure you’ll love it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

I patted the half-hearted Junka on the back, and brought him into my house.

Ten minutes later, Junka had his controler in a vice-grip, and had become fully immersed in the world of the game. He might have been the type that got unexpectedly in to things. What could only be called the last efforts of a setting sun angled in through the window. Junka’s smooth skin seemed to glisten.

Junka seemed to have some ability as a gamer, suited enough to the action genres. Junka’s character took enemy positions as he pleased with machine-guns and grenades, but…

“Ah, they got me…”

Still not used to it, Junka took a head on assault, and was sent to the game over screen. I burst into laughter.

“That’s what you get for sucking.”

“What was that?”

Junka took the remote and changed the input(screen, it says, but he clearly changed input) as revenge. The local TV station appeared on the screen. Junka blinked when he recognised the voice.

“Oh, I’ve seen this before. It’s from when we had our study party.”

I rifled through the drawers in my mind.

“Yeah, it’s the anti-bullying show ‘My Note’ right?”

The chairman Sekawa Shinichi’s swarthy face was smiling suspiciously as he went. This time was different from usual, however, as he wasn’t reading a viewer’s letter, but was conversing with another man who sat diagonally across from him: a man with fearless looks and gentle eyes in his 40s. Writ on his nameplate: Takada Satoshi.

Junka’s gaze had sharpened while I wasn’t paying attention. His eyes like liquid crystal, seemed to almost eat into the TV. He was passionate enough that he seemed thirsty for blood. I simply watched the TV without saying a word.

Sekawa diligently strained the corners of his mouth, “Takadsan, could you once more tell the story of how you were forced out of the programme some five years ago?”

Takada’s voice was pensive.

“All right, while I am sure many of our viewers already know from the news and such, I will take the opportunity to give some details myself. I had a dispute with one of the producers at that time. Not to boast, but I had seen this programme through its infancy and growth. I truly was both an encourager and encouraged by reading the worries and advice in the many letters from students all over the prefecture.”

“I was working as an assistant at the time. You had a wonderful attitude, I think.”

“I suppose so, I too think it was truly wonderful then. The producer working then, however, was a coward. Despite how I and the other staff didn’t want to do anything fake, he slipped in lies and false words for me to read on the programme,” Takada started to tear up, “That letter appealed to the damages of incest, and was a fabrication. I myself, and many viewers lost composure in indignation. Furthermore, that broadcast had some of our highest ever ratings. I contacted the sender of that letter, and pressed from all eight directions for the police to be contacted.”

“I still vividly remember it.”

“My actions likely caused much worry, and then the producer called me out to a bridge in the park. He told me there, ‘Takadchan, that was fake,’ and when I asked what was, he told me ‘I wrote that incest letter.” I was shaken at that point, but I was still able to realise what that producer said meant. It filled me with rage.”

Takada burst into tears, likely remembering all the rage and pain he felt back then.

“I don’t remember much of what happened after that. When I recovered myself, I had grabbed the producer by the collar and thrown him over the railing into the pond. Thankfully, it wasn’t deep, so it all ended with the producer merely cutting his forehead. Violence is still violence, though. I, a leader in a campaign to end bullying, had attacked another man. It is an unforgivable sin.”

Translator's Note:

My cat decided to hang out on my lap while I translated, so I petted her from time to time. I let her use her front paws to move my arm, thinking she wanted me to stop petting her, or just push me away a bit, but she was actually planning on using that arm as a part of her napping platform. As a result of this, some of the chapter was typed with one hand.

Editor’s Note:

I know you all get excited for my filler, as yet un-edited, placeholder, translator’s secondary notes. Don’t copy anything into wordpress from google chrome’s google docs. It’ll carry over all the formatting code, and the only way to make things act default is to manually delete all that useless code for every paragraph. There is no quick button to press to reset that stuff.

Isn’t this what my help is supposed to be doing? Dr. MIA, where are you? I’m joking of course, I know where he lives.

Chapter end