Chapter 139 - Name and Reality 62 {90 Solo} (214–215 Takeshita Deciphers the Code 1)
When twenty minutes had passed and it was nearly the promised thirty minutes, the phone rang again from Takeshita.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. Since time is precious, I'll get straight to the point. As you thought, Nishida-san, looking at it, I think the suicide note is likely the hint, logically speaking."
Even if it was a fact that they needed to save time, Nishida was taken aback that he went straight to the point, but since there was no point in dampening his spirits, he tacitly allowed it.
"The important thing here is that Motohashi ultimately entrusted this letter to a man named Kuboyama, and furthermore, specifically timed it to arrive exactly after the statute of limitations had passed—five years after his death—on the premise that there would be no extension. He wrote it as if he didn't understand, but I think that's suspicious. And almost certainly, he overtly followed the same technique of reading horizontally that he used in his exchange with Shiino... Even if we can't conclude for certain that it's not a trap. Anyway, it's almost certain that while he's using a method to test us, he seems to want us to sense something, and he's sending it on the premise that we can decipher something from the text."
Takeshita said this and stopped speaking for a while, perhaps waiting for Nishida's reaction, but since Nishida said nothing, he resumed the story.
"On the other hand, as you read, Nishida-san, within the suicide note where the hint seems to be hidden, I have the impression that the death poem is a hint in a concrete sense. However, even assuming a zigzag read based on 'feels like rising waves' which seems to instruct the reading method, if you read normally from the first line, it doesn't make sense no matter where you start. Of course, regardless of the horizontal, even if you do a zigzag read vertically as is, or even vertically, not just in order from the top but even reading from the bottom, it doesn't make sense at all. In addition, even if reading in a zigzag, it's not clear whether the pattern of wave repetition is like a series of peaks (∧∧∧∧), or a shape like a valley that becomes deeper after a peak (∧∨∧∨), or a shape like a peak after a valley (∨∧∨∧). Of course, I've already tried all of those while taking them into consideration... Well, Motohashi might have intended for us to 'struggle' with that kind of uncertainty..."
From this talk, it was apparent that even Takeshita had struggled considerably. On top of that,
"Anyway, I think it's difficult to conclude at this point what Motohashi ultimately wants to convey, but I think it's likely something in a different direction from the text of this first letter. I don't think Motohashi is the type to go to this much trouble just to convey something provocative again, including the hidden meaning. Even though he has a quite unpleasant personality."
He pointed out, and Takeshita seemed to be thinking something similar to Nishida regarding the judgment on this point.
"In other words, Motohashi is aiming for the very limit of what we... no, probably what you can decipher?"
"Well, if it were limited to me, I don't think he would have used your name, Nishida-san, in the address."
Takeshita was being considerate of Nishida's correction, but that no longer mattered to Nishida; the important thing was whether it could be deciphered.
"That doesn't matter. Anyway, is that right?"
Nishida pressed.
"Well, looking at Motohashi's attitude toward us seven years ago, while he always had a testing attitude, there were parts where he intertwined his true intentions somewhere, so I think it's something like that this time too. At the same time, I feel more of an intent to 'make us understand' than back then. That's why I think we can probably manage..."
Takeshita was positive about Nishida's reasoning.
"By the way, aren't you busy now? I asked you one-sidedly."
Having finally found the leeway to consider the other party's situation, he confirmed again, and,
"I'm not idle, but I don't have any reporting to do today for now, so I can write articles anytime."
He spoke with quite a bit of leeway, so Nishida was relieved.
"Then, I can leave the deciphering of the code to you, right?"
"To be honest, I'm actually quite interested. It's a challenge sent by that Motohashi specifically after his death, so I'm rather inclined to take it on proactively!"
To Nishida, the response from his former subordinate was very grateful and reliable.
"That's a help! There are probably smart guys at HQ who are no match for you, Takeshita, but without knowledge of the case background, they clearly won't be able to handle it... It's best to ask you, who has the experience."
He conveyed honestly.
"I definitely want to live up to that expectation. I'll give it my best effort! However, I can't make any promises at this point about how long it will take... This kind of thing often depends on flashes of inspiration or intuition. In a sense, the logic can sometimes follow later."
Takeshita showed weakness for the first time here.
"That can't be helped. But I'm really counting on you! I don't have proof, but Motohashi might have left a huge souvenir. If so, it would be a 'souvenir from the afterlife.' If that's the case, it might become a major trump card in the investigation."
Nishida encouraged him with expectation.
"If it's as you think, Nishida-san, I might be able to finish the homework I left undone seven years ago now..."
As Takeshita said that, the conversation between the two suddenly cut off. Of course, Nishida also intended to fully understand Takeshita's complex feelings, having left his job while still having strong feelings for the investigation.
"...Anyway, I'll be waiting (for you to solve it)."
When he finally managed to say a word, Takeshita also declared to Nishida,
"Yeah. ...Well then, I'll do my best!"
After that, Nishida and Yoshimura went home as they were. He had dinner, watched the news, and confirmed that there was nothing particularly significant regarding Oshima. Then, just as he was thinking of taking a bath and going to bed, his mobile phone suddenly made a sound. When he checked the caller, it was Takeshita.
"Takeshita?"
"I did it!"
It was a short exchange, but they both fully understood what they wanted to say, so,
"Hey! You don't mean you've already solved it!?"
Nishida instinctively raised his voice in admiration. At that voice, his daughter Mika, who was watching TV, instinctively looked toward Nishida, but immediately returned her gaze to the screen. Since she knew it was about work, she probably instantly feigned indifference, thinking it better not to pry.
"Yes! I did it! And as for the result right away, it seems Motohashi wanted to convey important information regarding Sada's case, which was nearing the statute of limitations, to us!"
From his bouncy voice, words that could be highly expected gushed out.
"Is that true!? Then I'm looking forward to having you explain it now! But if it can be solved this quickly, it's a complete defeat for Motohashi!"
Even though it was late at night, Nishida's tension rose, and his voice naturally became louder. Since it was late at a condominium, Mika frowned and looked back at Nishida again. Seeing that, Nishida held up one hand that wasn't holding the phone in front of his face and apologized with a gesture saying "Sorry."
"Certainly, in the sense that I deciphered it in this short time, at first glance, I felt like it was my win, or rather, that I took on the challenge and repelled it. ...But you see, when I think about various things after deciphering it, I've concluded that in the end, I was just being played skillfully in the palm of Motohashi's hand, frustratingly enough... Well, I had speculated in advance that the other party had made it so I could decipher it to some extent, but even so... Well, I'm satisfied that I could decipher it for now, but the only regret is that I couldn't decipher it in a perfect sense."
Nishida wasn't without confusion at Takeshita's expression of a "mysterious" sentiment despite being happy about the deciphering, but anyway, the priority now was to have Takeshita explain what was written.
"Wait a minute! I'll look at the copy of the letter now."
Saying so, Nishida took out the copy he had brought home from his bag.
"Go ahead! Explain it to me."
Having received the green light, Takeshita began his explanation.
"First, just in case, since there's a person in charge who is knowledgeable about tanka at Doho's Sapporo Culture and Science Department, I faxed the tanka to that person to confirm if the outward meaning was correct. By the way, the reading of 'Yake no sue / fuminukamedomo / yomi no kata / mireba hon'i e / namidatsu kokochi' seems to be 'Yake no sue, fuminukamedomo / yomi no kata / mireba hon'i e / namidatsu kokochi,' and well, except for the part where the 'direction' (方) is read as 'kata,' it's something anyone would understand reading normally. Apparently, 'kata' can mean direction, companion, place, or location, and it's likely that 'Yomi no kata' equals the land of the dead. And the overall meaning is almost exactly as Motohashi says, with no problems. 'Accepting the hanging and resolving to step through the floor' is also expressed by the word 'fuminuku' up to 'me,' which is the conjugation of 'mu,' an auxiliary verb of will. By adding the conjunctive particle 'domo' meaning 'but' or 'although' to that, the rest means 'when the land of the dead came into view, I was shaken because that feeling of resolve seemed likely to change.' However, regarding the 'mireba' part, if archaic language is used throughout, 'miba' would be more correct considering making it seven syllables, and 'miru' doesn't have a direct meaning like 'flickering before one's eyes,' so that was a bit of a free translation. However, the meaning is sufficiently clear."
"I see, so even at the outward stage, there are almost no problems from an expert's point of view."
Nishida felt that Motohashi had seriously put effort into creating the death poem after hearing the explanation.
"Based on that, I thought about it on the premise that the death poem would be the hint, as per the initial view. Especially assuming that 'rising waves' was the hint for the reading method, I was thinking about where to read from. In Shiino's case, he used the title of a confession book that would never be published as a pretext, and from the word 'ima' (now) in the text of several letters, he had us cross diagonally with 'Jaywalk.' At that time, whether to go diagonally up or diagonally down was clear once I tried reading it, but well, if it's that much, you can tell by actually doing it."
Takeshita recalled that even that much had actually taken quite a bit of time back then while he spoke. Nishida, for his part, was remembering Takeshita's struggle at that time.
"So, for this time, it's about where to read from, but also what it would be like if read as if it were waving, using the tanka as a hint. As I said in the previous call, I still didn't know whether to perceive the waves as a mere series of peaks (∧∧∧∧), or to include deep parts like valleys between the peaks of the wave crests (∧∨∧∨ or ∨∧∨∧), or how the sentence he truly wanted to convey was flowing. In some cases, a zigzag flow in the normal vertical direction was also not out of the question, so I had to consider that too. Basically, even if the convention for codes used in the yakuza world is to have a fake vertical text read in a crossing direction, this time, words like 'CROSS' or 'JAYWALK' from last time were not found in the text. The fact that there seemed to be no other hints indicating a crossing element was also a reason I couldn't deny such a possibility. However, even so, I thought the most likely method was to read horizontally, and I decided to prioritize that first. Furthermore, I decided from the start that the hint for the starting point of where to begin reading, not just the reading method, would likely be in the suicide note, and it started to seem like that was also in the tanka."
Since he was explaining, it was unavoidable, but after repeating what he said in the previous conversation, it was a very roundabout way of speaking, but in conclusion, both where to read and the hint for the reading method were in the tanka, and regarding the reading method, depending on the interpretation of 'rising waves,' Takeshita probably wanted to say that several could be considered.
"So, first regarding the point of where the starting point for reading is, I first became interested in the word 'sue' (end) in 'Yake no sue' from the tanka. I wondered if this 'sue' corresponded to the 'sue' in 'honmatsu tentou' (putting the cart before the horse) when I read the text. In that case, I tried various things using 'sue' as the starting point, but for now, I became convinced that 'sue' was not the starting point for the horizontal reading. Then I thought maybe it was the end point instead and tried various things similarly, but I concluded that it was likely not the end point for the horizontal reading either. If that's the case, the thought occurred to me that perhaps this 'sue' meant the last line (末行) of the vertical writing. That said, when it comes to the last line, there are many characters lined up there, so it's very troublesome whether it's the starting point or the end point..."
Just hearing this much was enough to give Nishida a headache as well.
"While I was thinking about that, I thought there must be another word in the tanka that means either the starting point or the end point besides that 'sue.' That obvious idea finally occurred to me. Normally, it should start from one of the characters in the first vertical line, but you must have known that it didn't seem readable that way, Nishida-san, and I also had the conviction that it 'wasn't' there after trial and error... In the midst of all that, while I was thinking about what to do, the word 'yake' suddenly started to bother me!"
Certainly, as Takeshita said, Motohashi had specifically provided a note for the word "yake," making an excuse for not being able to write it in kanji.
"Think carefully here! The first long letter, where the cryptogram is thought to be hidden, was already prepared by Motohashi before he was executed. That means at that point, the 'reading method' of the code was already thought out and written. It's obvious, but that's only if the 'hypothesis' that some true intention is hidden in the first letter is correct; if that itself was wrong, this would have led nowhere."
Takeshita had a slightly playful tone.
"I see! Certainly, if the reading method was decided and the hint for it is in the tanka, then that must have also been completed before the day of the execution. However, in the second suicide note, there's a description as if the tanka was thought of on that day."
"That's exactly it! Because he made it that day, he didn't know the kanji, so the 'yake part' became hiragana, and according to Motohashi, 'despite having made a satisfying poem, that part alone made it lose its edge.' In the first place, in the suicide note, even a part like 'tama ni kizu' (a flaw in the jewel), which one might normally just write as 'kizu' (flaw/scratch), was properly written in kanji, so compared to that, there's something strangely transparent about it. I can convert it on a word processor, but if I were told to write 'kizu' (瑕) by hand, it would be a bit impossible for me."
Takeshita's point was that, especially considering the timeline, as long as they were assuming their reasoning, a major contradiction would definitely emerge. If this description were not strange, it would mean there was a possibility that this tanka was not a hint for the reading method at all, but it didn't seem that way. Nishida also understood Takeshita's explanation up to this point well.
"In that case, it started to seem like there was a specific meaning in intentionally writing 'yake' in hiragana, and I suddenly became curious about what kind of character the kanji for 'yake' that Motohashi should have originally written was. That said, while saying this, I actually didn't know at all how 'yake' was written in kanji, embarrassingly enough. So, I tried looking it up in the dictionary I had at home."
"And how was it?"
Nishida hurried him along, as if he couldn't wait.
"The kanji corresponding to 'yake' is apparently 'jiki' (自棄) as in 'jibou jiki' (self-abandonment/desperation). At first glance, it seems like a forced phonetic equivalent, but it was listed normally in the dictionary, so it doesn't seem to be the case."
"I see. Certainly, 'jibou jiki' is 'yake.' Yes, it's perfect."
Nishida was strangely convinced, but Takeshita didn't react much to that and began to talk about the core of the matter.