【008】Brutality

【Inoue Reina】

When I saw that corpse, I felt nauseous.

My first murder case since becoming the police officer I’d always dreamed of being.

“Hey, rookie, you okay?”

The one who called out to me was my senior, Police Sergeant Hayama. He made it to that rank at twenty-five—the ace of the Criminal Investigation Division. I’m his partner.

“I’m fine! And stop calling me ‘rookie’!”

I said while covering my mouth.

I don’t think I was very convincing.

Sergeant Hayama looked at the corpse and grimaced.

“This is brutal.”

“From what we’ve heard, this teacher was apparently engaging in compensated dating.”

That rumor seems to be dominating the school.

“Tanaka Akio, forty-two years old. Single. Math teacher. Apparently quite hated at the school. They called him ‘Netchy’ behind his back.”

“Netchy?”

“He’d single out students, make them try to solve impossible problems, and then relentlessly berate students who couldn’t do it. Teacher disqualification.”

On top of that, he was apparently doing compensated dating on the side. He targeted only high school girls and engaged in violent-adjacent play without hesitation. There were definitely serious character issues.

“The cause of death is almost certainly stabbing with something sharp like a knife, stabbed repeatedly. Estimated time of death is between 4 PM and midnight last night.”

“That’s a wide range, isn’t it?”

“Well, apparently Tanaka suddenly disappeared after school. So we don’t know where or when he was killed.”

Sergeant Hayama waved both hands as if to say “beats me.” I continued reading from my notes.

“After killing Tanaka, the culprit shoved him into the cleaning supply locker in Class 1-3 and fled.”

Why was there a need to shove him in the cleaning supply locker? Before I could think about that, Sergeant Hayama prompted me.

“Who was the first to discover him?”

“Um, a student from Class 1-3.”

“Kids these days clean in the morning…?”

Sergeant Hayama tilted his head.

I felt reluctant to share the next bit of information.

I beckoned Sergeant Hayama over. He brought just his face closer. I whispered in his ear.

“That class apparently has bullying going on. Garbage was put in his desk, and he found it when trying to clean that up.”

“Ugh, bullying—”

“S-Sergeant Hayama! You’re being too loud!”

“Aren’t you louder?”

The two of us left the scene.

We had to report back. We got in the car. I took the passenger seat. Sergeant Hayama sat in the driver’s seat and said quietly:

“So bullying really does exist, huh…”

He seemed somehow nostalgic.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve never been bullied in my life, and I’ve never seen anyone get bullied either. So it feels like something from another world.”

“Well, I haven’t had that experience either…”

“Oh, really?”

Sergeant Hayama looked surprised.

“Why are you making that face?”

“Well, you’re the type to face things head-on even when opinions clash, right? Isn’t women’s society harsh about that kind of thing?”

“That’s a prejudice. For your information, I used to be the easily-influenced type.”

“Huh.”

Sergeant Hayama started the engine and began driving. After a while of the car moving, Sergeant Hayama spoke.

“You know how people often say that the person being bullied is also at fault?”

“…? Yes…”

“When I hear that, I think, ‘What the hell are they talking about?!’ But when you really think about it, bullying doesn’t just happen for no reason, right? People have compatibility issues, and sometimes you instinctively think ‘I hate this person.’ That can become the cause of bullying.”

“I… see…”

“What I’m saying is this: Bullying is about the group, not the individual. That’s also the flip side of not being able to do anything alone. I feel genuinely sorry for people being bullied. But I feel even more sorry for the bullies. They can’t establish themselves as themselves any other way.”

Sergeant Hayama sometimes goes off on tangents like this.

Usually about difficult things I can’t understand at all. After he says them once, Sergeant Hayama laughs and says:

You don’t have to understand it. How someone interprets an individual’s opinion is up to them.

So if I interpret Sergeant Hayama’s words just now my own way, it’s this:

Bullying is a tragedy.

“I wonder if the school wasn’t aware of the bullying in Class 1-3?”

Sergeant Hayama said as if the thought just occurred to him.

“They probably are aware. From what I heard, Akigaoka Academy had a scandal in the past, and they don’t want any more trouble.”

“If that’s true, that’s a horrible story.”

But even as we said that, it was ultimately someone else’s problem. We can’t understand the feelings of victims actually experiencing bullying. We shouldn’t even try to understand.

“Come to think of it, what did they do in that scandal?”

“Um, that was… what was it? Hold on. I remember writing it in my notes…”

I pulled out my notebook and flipped through the pages. Lately I’ve been recording information one after another without organizing it, so it’s become a mess and hard to find things.

Finally, I found it.

“—A rape case, apparently.”