Taka sighed deeply. He turned his head and said into the tape recorder next to him, "0098 has gained a new persona. He calls himself Mr. F, the mystery novelist. Mr. F has the same surreal hallucination as Hirata Shuichi's main persona. He believes that he is a spiritual entity from a higher dimension and is currently possessing this body."
Feng Bujue waited for him to finish before he asked the question that he had been meaning to ask. "Doctor, since it is now 2005, then Hirata's case should have been closed a long time ago. How did the case end?"
"Two cases of premeditated murder, and one of them was a police officer. The circumstances were serious, but considering your motive and mental state, the final verdict was life imprisonment."
"Is this a mental hospital?" Feng Bujue asked.
"This is a prison for the mentally ill," Taka answered. "Every quarter, we conduct a new assessment on all the inmates." He paused. "That is why we are talking now."
"How has Hirata been in the past fifteen years?" Feng Bujue asked.
"More normal than you are now," Taka replied. "When Hirata-kun was conscious, he told me that whenever he was reminded of the past, he would enter a black and white world. No matter how many times he did it, all he saw was the memory of ghosts. Sometimes, the personas of Watanabe and Tachibana would appear, and then Hirata-kun would talk to himself. I have tried to communicate with these two personas, and the details that they described matched with the police records. I believe that these two personas did not really remember what happened at the time. They merely treated what the police told Hirata as their own memory. "His gaze moved away from the document to fall on Feng Bujue's face." What about you? Mr. F, you seem to be very interested in that case. That means that you have no idea what really happened, right? "
"Yes, I was about to ask you that. Fifteen years have passed, and since the verdict was two cases of premeditated murder, then … Officer Yamada's body should have been found by now, right?" Feng Bujue asked.
"Officer Yamada's body was only found seven years after the case," Taka replied. "It was around that time that I started to get in touch with you."
"What … Yamada's body couldn't even be found back then. How can you convict him of two murders?" Feng Bujue asked.
"Well …" Gao Cang said, "Based on the situation at that time, the case was very clear. Hirata-kun has lost his mind, and he has no one to rely on. There is no one who can stand up for him. The lawyer that the court assigned to him will plead guilty, so … basically, whatever the prosecutor says is the truth. All the evidence points to the same fact, which is that he killed the police, stole the gun, and then went on a rampage. "
"Ridiculous." Feng Bujue said, "Before we rule out all possibilities, how can we take it for granted? Perhaps Yamada killed Fukui and then hid the gun in Hirata's house. Then, he strangled Haruko Sato, who was in the longhouse at the time, and made it look like a suicide. Finally, he escaped … If that is the case, it would explain why Hirata went to work on the twenty-seventh as if nothing had happened. "
Gao Cang looked at him for two seconds. "Haha … Mr. F, if you appeared fifteen years ago and defended yourself as Hirata Shuichi, you might have been able to get away with it." He picked up a document from the table. "Unfortunately, today, there are at least two points that can overturn your hypothesis. First, Yamada has no connection with Fukui, Hirata, and Haruko Sato. The police have already investigated them. Regardless of whether they were relatives or friends, they had nothing to do with each other. Therefore, he had no motive to do these things. Second, the place where Yamada's body was found was under Hirata's old house that was destroyed by a typhoon. The plot of land was sold by the government seven years later, and the body was dug up when they were building the foundation for the building. The time of death is estimated to be seven years ago. Even though the body has been reduced to bones, there are obvious signs of death from external injuries. This is undoubtedly a case of murder and hiding the body. "
"Hmm …" Feng Bujue was silent for a few seconds before he replied, "Fine, actually, I was just dissatisfied with the trial process and came up with a random hypothesis that could be used as a defense."
"There is no doubt about Hirata's crime, Mr. F," Gao Cang said. "Now, since I have satisfied your curiosity, why don't you cooperate with me and answer some of my questions …"
"As I expected, you are not real." Feng Bujue interrupted Gao Cang and thought internally, 'I finally understand the meaning of this scenario.'
Gao Cang's face fell, and he suddenly stopped talking.
"You said that not long after Yamada's body was found, you started to interact with Hirata. When I heard that, I understood everything. " Feng Bujue said. "Seven years after the crime, when Hirata found out that Yamada's body had been found, he developed another persona … you."
"Hah … You mean to say that I am the same kind of existence as Tachibana and Watanabe?"
"No, you are on a higher level than them. From how I see it … there should be four layers to Hirata's mental world." Feng Bujue explained slowly. "In November 1990, after Hirata committed two murders and witnessed his wife commit suicide, he went insane. From then on, most of his time, his mind was trapped in the deepest layer, a world of terror and chaos.
One month later, the investigation of the case became clearer. Hirata was interrogated multiple times, and he gained some information from the court. Therefore, he developed two new personas — Doctor Watanabe and Officer Tachibana. These two personas could bring him out from the black and white chaos and into the second layer of the world, giving him some time to breathe. They also helped and urged him to deny the memory of ghosts and monsters and try to restore his real memory. "
Feng Bujue licked his dry lips. "The most a psychiatrist can do is to hypnotize the criminal to interrogate them; they would not go as far as recording them. I should have known that the space that Watanabe and Tachibana were in was also a mental world … That place is a subconscious that is deeper than this place. It is somewhere between rational thought and twisted memory. " He stared into Taka Kura's eyes. "And you, or rather, this cell that we are in now, is the third layer."
"Then, what do I represent?" Taka Kura asked.
"You are also a memory," Feng Bujue said. "You represent … the normal and trustworthy memory in Hirata's mind over the past eight years." He leaned back in his chair and raised his head. He wanted to rub the bridge of his nose out of habit, but he realized that his hands were still cuffed, so he had no choice but to continue. "Time has dulled some things. After seven years of psychiatric treatment, with the help of the other two personalities, and the fact that he found out about Yamada's death and the location of his death in prison, Hirata was sent to this third floor.
On this layer, he can converse with you and analyze things objectively and calmly, accepting and understanding the current situation. If Hirata can stay here with you and not return to the two deeper layers, even if he cannot recover his memory, at least he will be able to recover to a normal person. " Feng Bujue's eyes moved to the mini tape recorder. "The recorder is the conversation between you and him … or rather, it is the memory that he has personally organized. That is why I said that these memories are normal and trustworthy. He does not want to be mixed up with other memories. But the presence of this recorder proves that Hirata's time here is limited. "
Taka Kura's face was filled with helplessness. "Mr. F, you're basically right, but I regret to inform you that there are only three layers here." He sighed. "This place is the layer that is closest to the real world." He looked around. "This recorder … and the documents on the table, they are all part of Hirata's memory. This room is basically a projection of Hirata's cell in real life, but there is no table, chair, or lamp in the real cell. "
"There are only three layers?" Feng Bujue asked. "How is that possible?" Confusion appeared on his face, and he thought to himself, 'The memory that gave rise to Hirata's motivation has been recovered. The memory of him killing Fukui has been recovered but is distorted. Even though the memory of him witnessing Haruko Sato hang herself is also distorted, it has been recovered as well. These should have surfaced before and after he was arrested, but how come he has no memory of killing Yamada? Even seven years later, when he found out about Yamada's death, Taka Kura's persona only provided limited information. He knew nothing about the murder …
"Impossible. If there is no further layer, then it means that Hirata has nothing to do with Officer Yamada's death." Feng Bujue stated firmly. "That memory does not exist in his brain, so it cannot be found on any layer."
Taka Kura shook his head. "But the facts have pointed out …"
"Give me a mirror," Feng Bujue interrupted him.
"What do you want to do?" Taka Kura asked.
"I want to leave this place," Feng Bujue answered.
"At most, you will return to the real world, and when you return to the real world, it means that Hirata will return to me or fall down two layers deeper." Taka Kura appeared to be advising him.
"I'm not going up," Feng Bujue said. "I'm going next door."
"Next door? What do you mean? "Taka Kura asked.
"You won't understand." Feng Bujue finally adopted the posture of a higher dimensional lifeform. "Just give me a mirror."
In the blink of an eye, Doctor Taka Kura disappeared, and only Feng Bujue was left in the room. On the table before him, a small mirror with a frame appeared. Behind the frame was a plastic holder that supported the mirror and made it stand diagonally upward.
Feng Bujue dragged the chair forward until he was at an angle where he could look into the mirror. He saw that the man in the mirror was not himself. It was a man who looked to be in his forties, with an unshaven beard and a pale face.
"Hirata Shuichi, we finally meet." Feng Bujue said to the face in the mirror. He had seen Hirata's resume in the black and white world, and there was a picture on it. Even though the face before him had aged by more than ten years, he could still recognize it.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
