The print shop stood on a narrow street in the old commercial district, where the buildings leaned against one another like aged companions, their wooden facades darkened by decades of exhaust and sea salt. The sign above the entrance read "Kobayashi Printing" in faded kanji, the letters so worn that they seemed to dissolve into the grain of the wood. The police had cordoned off the entire block, and the officers on duty wore the strained expressions of men who had been working through the night.
Minami ducked under the yellow tape and stepped into the shop. The interior was cluttered with the tools of an obsolete trade—drawers of type, racks of plates, a Heidelberg press that dominated the back wall like a sleeping dinosaur. The air smelled of ink and dust and something else, something metallic that Minami recognized as the scent of drying blood.
Saeko was already inside, standing beside a workbench where a forensic technician was carefully photographing a set of objects laid out in neat rows. She looked up when Minami entered, and he saw in her eyes the fatigue that came from having witnessed something that would not easily be forgotten.
"The body is in the storeroom at the back," she said, her voice steady but subdued. "Same method as described in the novel's second chapter. The victim was pinned against a flatbed press—the kind used for letterpress work. The killer used the press's manual lever to compress her neck. It would have required considerable strength, or possibly a counterweight mechanism. The angle of the compression matches the fictional account: pressure applied from the right side, at a forty-five-degree incline."
Minami nodded slowly, suppressing the urge to close his eyes. He had seen many bodies in his career, but there was something particularly intimate about this one—a woman killed with the very tools of her livelihood, in the space where she had spent most of her waking hours.
"The page?" he asked.
Saeko gestured toward a polyethylene bag on the workbench. Inside was a single sheet of paper, yellowed and brittle, identical in texture and handwriting to the one found with Yoshida Takeshi. The ink had bled slightly, but the words were legible. They described a printer's wife who discovered a secret in the ledgers of her husband's clients—a discrepancy in the records of a paper mill's inventory—and who was silenced before she could speak.
But this time, there was an addition. At the bottom of the page, below the fictional text, a single line had been handwritten in a different ink, fresher, darker:
"Eleven signatures bought silence. One signature could have broken it."
Minami studied the words, feeling the weight of their implication. "Eleven people signed something," he said. "A confidentiality agreement? A non-disclosure? The fire in 2003—there were three dead workers, but there must have been witnesses. Other employees. First responders. Safety inspectors. If eleven people were paid to keep quiet, that's a conspiracy of considerable scale."
"Yoshida was one of them," Saeko said, pointing to the first body report she had compiled. "He signed the official incident report, which ruled the fire an accident. But he also signed something else—a supplementary document that went to the corporate headquarters in Tokyo. I found a reference to it in the company's archived tax filings. It's described as a 'settlement agreement' but there's no dollar amount listed, no details. Just a notation that eleven individuals were 'compensated for inconvenience.'"
Minami walked to the back of the shop, where the door to the storeroom stood ajar. He did not go inside—he had no need to see the victim's face to understand what had happened here. Instead, he looked at the shelves that lined the walls, filled with boxes of paper stock, ink cartridges, and old ledgers. He pulled down one of the ledgers at random, opening it to see columns of figures in neat script.
"Kobayashi Emi," he said, reading the label on the spine. "She kept meticulous records. This ledger covers the years 2000 to 2005. Look at the entries for the Nippon Pulp account."
Saeko took the ledger and flipped through the pages. Her eyes moved rapidly over the figures. "There's a sharp increase in printing orders starting in late 2003," she said. "Invoice after invoice for pamphlets, flyers, internal reports. All charged to the Nippon Pulp corporate office. But here—" She paused, tapping a line. "There's a discrepancy. The quantities printed don't match the billing. She was printing extra copies—more than she charged for. A separate batch."
"Where would those extra copies have gone?" Minami asked.
Saeko's face grew thoughtful. "If she was keeping a private record—a whistleblower's archive—she might have stored them somewhere. Not in the shop, too obvious. But maybe at her home, or with a trusted acquaintance."
Minami stepped out of the shop and looked up at the grey sky. The rain had stopped, but the clouds remained, low and oppressive, as if the city itself were holding its breath. He thought about the line at the bottom of the page: "Eleven signatures bought silence. One signature could have broken it." The killer was not just re-enacting a novel—they were cataloguing a list of conspirators, systematically eliminating those who had chosen silence over justice.
But the true target, Minami realized, was not the individuals. The target was the act of silencing itself.
By the time they reached the municipal library, the afternoon had settled into that peculiar stillness that precedes a storm. The library was a grand building from the Taisho era, with high arched windows and a facade of weathered granite that seemed to exude stability and permanence. It was the kind of place where time moved differently, where the accumulated weight of books absorbed sound and slowed the pace of human activity.
Minami had arranged for a discreet surveillance team to be stationed inside and around the perimeter. The plan was simple: watch the Japanese literature section, particularly the shelf where Kido Koji's works were catalogued, and note anyone who showed an unusual interest in the author or in the specific novel "The Wall of Eyes." There were plainclothes officers posing as readers, two women at the circulation desk who had been briefed, and a technician monitoring the security cameras from a van parked across the street.
But Minami had also asked for a different kind of intelligence. He had requested a list of all library staff members, past and present, with a cross-reference to any connection to the paper industry. And he had asked Saeko to interview the head librarian, a woman named Tanaka Fumiko, who had held the position for over thirty years.
Tanaka was a small, precise woman in her late sixties, with silver hair pinned back and glasses that caught the light in a way that made her eyes unreadable. She led Minami and Saeko into her office—a room lined with reference volumes and the faint scent of old cloth bindings—and offered them tea in cups that were probably older than either of them.
"The library has always been a neutral space," Tanaka said, her voice carrying the measured cadence of someone accustomed to quiet authority. "We do not take sides. We preserve materials, we facilitate learning, we do not judge."
"We're not asking you to judge," Minami replied. "We're asking if you have noticed anything unusual in recent weeks. Missing books, strange visitors, anything that might relate to the cases we're investigating."
Tanaka took a sip of her tea before answering. "There has been one unusual patron," she said slowly. "An elderly man, very thin, who comes in regularly to read in the literature section. He never checks out books, only reads them at the table by the window. About two weeks ago, he stopped coming. One of my staff mentioned that he seemed agitated the last time he was here—he was muttering to himself, something about 'the third chapter' and 'the final witness.'"
Minami leaned forward. "Do you have his name?"
"We don't ask for identification unless patrons are registering for borrowing privileges," Tanaka said. "But I recall that he once mentioned his name in passing. Matsuda—Matsuda Kenji. He said he used to work in the paper industry, many years ago. He came here to read old novels because, in his words, 'they remind me of what I chose to forget.'"
Minami exchanged a glance with Saeko. Matsuda Kenji—a name that had not appeared on any of their official lists. But the description matched the profile of a survivor, someone who had been present during the 2003 fire and had either signed the silence agreement or refused to do so. The fact that he had been "agitated" about the third chapter suggested that he knew what was coming—and that he might be a target, or a witness, or both.
"Where does he live?" Minami asked.
Tanaka consulted a handwritten log she kept on her desk. "He gave an address in the northern district, an old apartment building near the river. But I can't guarantee he's still there—he seemed to be in a state of distress when I last saw him."
Minami stood abruptly. "Saeko, get a unit to that address immediately. If Matsuda is still there, bring him in for protective custody. If he's not—" He stopped, not wanting to finish the thought.
Saeko was already on her phone, issuing orders in the clipped, efficient tone she used when time was of the essence. Minami turned back to Tanaka. "The third chapter of 'The Wall of Eyes'—does your library have a copy of that novel?"
Tanaka's expression flickered—a brief hesitation that Minami would have missed if he had not been watching closely. "We do have a copy," she said. "But it was removed from the shelf last week. I assumed it had been misplaced, but now—"
"Removed by whom?"
"I don't know. There's no record of a check-out. It simply disappeared."
Minami felt a cold certainty settle in his stomach. The killer had been here, in the library, reading the same novel, possibly preparing for the third murder. And if the third murder was to occur in a library—as the novel's fictional narrative dictated—then the library itself was the stage.
He walked through the reading room on his way out, scanning the faces of the patrons bent over their books. Most were students, elderly retirees, a few young mothers with children in tow. They all looked ordinary, innocent, utterly unaware that they were sitting in a potential crime scene. The shelves rose to the ceiling, thousands upon thousands of volumes, each one a container of stories, of secrets, of lives that had been lived and recorded and sometimes forgotten.
And somewhere among those shelves, Minami thought, there was a copy of "The Wall of Eyes" that had been read by at least two people—the author of the novel, and the killer who was following its script.
The northern district apartment building was a dilapidated structure of weathered concrete, its facade cracked and stained by years of industrial pollution. The unit belonging to Matsuda Kenji was on the third floor, its door painted a faded blue that had once been cheerful but now looked merely tired.
The police team had forced entry, and Minami arrived to find the apartment empty. It was a single room, sparsely furnished: a cot, a table, a chair, a bookshelf crammed with used paperbacks. The air smelled of stale tobacco and something else—a faint, medicinal odour that suggested chronic illness.
Saeko was already examining the bookshelf. "Mostly detective fiction," she said. "A lot of Kido's works—he has the full collection. But there's a gap here." She pointed to a space on the shelf where a book was missing. "The Wall of Eyes' is gone. He was reading it recently."
Minami walked to the table, where a notepad lay open. The handwriting was shaky, the letters uneven and cramped, but legible. It was a list of names—eleven names, written in ink. Four of them had been crossed out with a single, deliberate line. One of the crossed-out names was Yoshida Takeshi. Another was Kobayashi Emi. A third name was unfamiliar—a man named Taguchi Hiroshi, who Minami would later learn had been a union representative at the factory. The fourth crossed-out name belonged to someone whose surname was written as "Ono," with no given name.
That left seven names untouched.
"Look at the ink," Minami said, bending closer. "The crossed-out lines are fresher than the names themselves. He made this list recently—within the last few days."
Saeko's phone buzzed. She answered it, listened for a moment, then turned to Minami with a grim expression. "That was the forensics team. They've identified the third crossed-out name—Taguchi Hiroshi. He was found dead in his home three hours ago. Same method as the novel's second murder—strangulation with a printing press mechanism. But the victim was a retired union official, not a printer. The killer adapted the method to the victim's environment."
Minami stared at the list. The killer was not simply following the novel in a rigid sequence—they were using it as a template, a source of inspiration, while tailoring each death to the specific circumstances of the victim. That meant the third murder, the library death, would not necessarily match the novel's precise description. It would be a variation, a reinterpretation.
And Matsuda Kenji, who had written this list of names, had probably been compiling evidence against the eleven signatories. He was a witness who had not been silenced—or rather, who had been silenced but had refused to stay silent. He had come to the library, to the third chapter, to understand what was coming. And now he had disappeared.
"Where would Matsuda go?" Minami asked, more to himself than to anyone else. "If he knew someone was hunting the signatories, and he himself was a signatory—"
"He signed," Saeko interrupted, pointing to the notepad. "Look at the bottom—there's a small mark, a checkmark beside one of the uncrossed names. It's not a name—it's a symbol. A circle with a line through it. I think that's his own identifier. He signed the agreement, but he was also the one who kept the list. He was both part of the conspiracy and the potential leaker."
Minami closed his eyes, trying to piece together the timeline. Matsuda had been reading the novel at the library, had become agitated about the third chapter, had stopped coming—and had left behind a list of names that mirrored the killer's target selection. But if Matsuda had signed the agreement, why would he be targeted? Unless he had broken the silence, had tried to expose the truth, and the killer was not a vengeful outsider but someone who had been personally affected—someone who was punishing both the original conspirators and those who had stood by and watched.
"Get a description of Matsuda from the librarian," Minami said. "Age, height, distinguishing features. And check all hospitals and shelters in the city. If he's in distress, he might have sought help."
He looked at the list again, at the seven untouched names. They represented seven people who were still alive, still breathing, still walking the streets of Kamisaka. Some of them might not even know that a killer was using a decades-old novel as a guide to their deaths.
The fourth crossed-out name—"Ono"—bothered him. It had been crossed out, but the line was different from the others, thicker, more agitated, as if the person who made the mark had been angry or frightened. And there was no death reported for Ono. The killer had not reached them yet—or perhaps they had, and the body simply had not been found.
Minami pocketed the notepad and turned to leave. As he passed through the apartment's narrow hallway, he noticed a small piece of paper taped to the inside of the front door. It was a torn sheet from a book—a page from the second chapter of "The Wall of Eyes," describing a man who had been silenced by a printing press. But at the bottom of the page, someone had written a message in the same fresh ink that had appeared on the print shop page:
"Three down. The fourth will be the hardest, because he does not yet know he is guilty."
Minami read the words three times, letting them sink in. The fourth victim—"Ono"—was not yet aware of his guilt. That meant the killer was not simply punishing those who had actively participated in the cover-up, but also those who had possessed knowledge and had chosen not to act. And "Ono" might be someone who had been in a position to expose the truth but had remained passive—perhaps a safety inspector, a journalist, a politician.
He stepped out into the fading light of the afternoon, the paper still clutched in his hand. The library loomed in the distance, its stone walls catching the last slanting rays of the sun. Somewhere inside that building, a copy of the novel was missing. And somewhere in that city, the next death was already being planned, not as an act of random violence, but as a literary statement—a page that would be torn from the book of the living.
Minami's phone rang. It was the surveillance team from the library. The officer on the line spoke quickly, his voice urgent.
"Detective, we have a sighting. An elderly man matching Matsuda's description just entered the library through the side entrance. He's carrying a book under his arm. He appears distressed and is heading toward the Japanese literature section."
Minami felt his pulse quicken. "Do not approach him," he said. "Keep visual contact. I'm on my way."
He started running toward the library, the paper still crumpled in his fist. The fourth victim might not know he was guilty—but the third murder, Minami realized with a sudden, chilling clarity, was not going to be a death at all. It was going to be a confession.
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