Shortly after this, Detective Hishida was transferred to another place. The new year has arrived, and around the first half of the first month when the New Year atmosphere has slowed down a bit, I received a letter from Detective Hishida after three months of non-compliance.
In the letter, after a brief greeting, he wrote:
——This first month, I went to see a performance by a touring artist from Tokyo. I am interested in this because the heroine in the play is named Ah Qi. You should also remember telling me that Suzue called one of her dolls by this name. As the play went on, I became more and more attracted. It's so similar to that case. You must know the story of "Fruit and Vegetable Girl Ah Qi". It is a story about real people and real events. It was written into storybooks and adapted into kabuki. I remember that Joruri had a play "Ita Musume Loves Hikako", which is also the same story. A little girl named Ah Qi escaped into the temple during a fire and fell in love with a boy in the temple. In order to see the boy again, she actually started a fire. There are various embellishments and changes in the play, but it remains the same. It is a little girl repeating the same accident in order to see her lover again. It is a very pitiful story to tell. Of course, I knew the story before watching this scene, but I never thought of it. This story about the fruit and vegetable girl Ah Qi actually turned into a murder case and unfolded before our eyes. It is really something that we never imagined.
I believe that Suzue also knows the story of the fruit and vegetable girl Qi, because Fukumura must have shown it to her using homemade puppets. Thinking about her own life experience, Suzue must also sympathize with Qi's experience. And although she and Ah Qi were in different times, they had been locked in the same street since childhood, and they didn't even know how to open the street door. She named the puppet Ah Qi, which she loved and loved, and that was why.
Even so, I think that until the Ichinson murder case happened, she never dreamed that a fate like Ah Qi would befall her.
At the end of September last year, a murder happened accidentally not far from Suzue. No, the incident itself should be said to be not accidental. Because it was an incident caused by a man named Fukumura who often came to her place to save her - but after the incident, another man came to visit her room, which can only be said to be an accident. They only spent two hours together, but Suzue actually fell in love with this man. If Suzue was in a freer situation, it would be impossible to feel anything more than ordinary kindness toward his appearance or gentle demeanor. However, Suzue only knows those men who are in the same room with her and only know how to use her as a tool to vent their lust, play with her, and ravage her. Therefore, small thoughtfulness and tenderness mean more to her than ordinary girls. The power that can be felt is hundreds of times greater. Also, this man was engaged in a job that was too far away from her situation, which must have aroused her love affair. On that first night, Suzue stopped him when they were breaking up and wanted to say "Come again" to him. But when I thought about my position, I couldn't express it, and then there were two months of waiting in vain. Just because it can't be seen, it burns more intensely. When she believed that she had completely lost the way to extinguish the flame of love, she adopted the most childish method to seek a reunion. In order to go to the temple again, Ah Qi needs another fire; in order to see him again, Suzue has to cause another murder case - and this is a simple matter. If you want to see a doctor, just get sick; if you want to see that person, just commit a crime - this is the motive for killing Fukumura. Of course, if Fukumura hadn't come back by chance, Suzue wouldn't have been able to do it. Moreover, if Fukumura hadn't often said that he wanted to die, in fact, when Suzue wrapped the rope around the sleeping Fukumura's neck, he might have woken up and helped Suzue's lack of strength. possible. From a certain perspective, this case is Fukumura's suicide. Even so, Suzue must be hesitant again and again. By coincidence, the fire broke out at this time. Looking at the flames that dyed the night sky red, she felt that she had become another Ah Qi. She might have thought that this was a God-given opportunity.
Suzue's purpose is to personally cause the same case as the first murder. Just for this reason, she made Fukumura's corpse hold the same platycodon flower that the first victim accidentally grabbed. Five hundred yuan was not what she wanted, but for the same reason, she had no choice but to grab it. I don’t know how you connect platycodon flowers with two cases, but for Suzue, she just wants to use flowers to connect the two cases together.
You must know the song "Caged Bird": "Even a caged bird is a wise bird, and will peek into other people's eyes and ears to meet each other." Maybe Suzue is smarter than the bird, and also smarter than Ah Qi. Because Suzue adopted the method of hiding in a cage and waiting to get people to come to the meeting. And that person never dreamed that Suzue was risking his own life and at the same time causing another person to die just because of it. Sure enough, he visited Suzue's room again. That night, he felt that Suzue's behavior was too strange. In fact, thinking of this, all the mysteries were solved. "I am just like a puppet" Suzue's words do not mean that she is just a puppet, but that she is the same as Qi. Also, she asked: Do you hear the bells ringing? In the play, Ah Qi goes to the drum tower to ring the bells and drums before the end. The sound that resounded throughout the village was nothing more than her call for love for that boy. Suzue also rang the bell to that man. Another incident involved Suzue burning her own hand. Ah Qi was burned at the stake in Lingzi Village. Suzue committed the same crime as Ah Qi, so she hoped that she would be punished in the same way. She committed the crime of burning oneself with fire and must use fire to punish herself. At last there was only one left. Why did Suzue throw platycodon flowers at that man? This is to arouse his curiosity and really draw him here. No, maybe that was just a strategy that a sixteen-year-old girl could think of. She just wanted to see his face.
That man had no confidence in his appearance at all. To say the least, he had no confidence in his other appearance under his thick lenses. That was the night Suzue committed suicide. He accidentally took off his glasses in front of me. The other face I saw, I thought it was another person. It was a handsome face that I couldn't help but want to look at more; or, at least, it was enough to look at a sixteen-year-old girl. Underneath, a hint of love will appear - but he himself is not aware of it at all. Moreover, he was also unaware that he actually took off his glasses to see her twice - of course, even if he didn't have such a face, as long as he had a tenderness and considerateness that other men didn't have, it would be enough to make that man... In hell only the heart of a desperate sixteen-year-old girl burned.
This may be the only love story allowed for a poor girl in the Showa era, unlike Ah Qi in the play. At the bottom of despair, his body and mind were about to decay. In the third year of the Showa era, Ah
Seven, in the flame that was ignited for the first time in my heart, and in the dim flame that was far away from the prosperity in the play, I burned myself. She used the last petal that was still pure white under the red light as a bet, and bet on a Joruri play.
The man on the other side didn't know anything. However, for Suzue, this is of no great importance.
Even though the flowers under the eaves were silent, they still did not let the last petal be stained, leaving its pure whiteness in the man's heart, and then ended a short life that seemed to only last a few days.
