３．Ｓａｔｕｒｄａｙ Ｍａｒｃｈ ２， ２０１９
文字数 5,946文字
Putting the tablet down for a moment, Maruta looked around the cafe. Kira has not yet arrived.
He sips the coffee still half-full in his mug and opens the mailbox displayed on his tablet. He quickly slid his index finger down the inbox screen to update it. But all that added was mail magazines with only advertisements that he was tired of seeing, and among them he did not find the expected new mail from Kira.
Kira was the only one he could rely on now. Maruta needed someone who knew 〈Silva〉. The summary of the case, shaped only by information on the Internet, was somewhat shallow and unsatisfactory.
There was no way that Kira would have posted his current location, but Maruta took a peek at his account on a short-text posting site [*3].
The latest post was about a month ago, "After school. Drinking with friends." is an innocent and largely meaningless one. Maruta knows that this has not been updated all this time.
Releasing a thin sigh through his nose, he tapped the browser icon with his knuckles and once again opened a screen lined with thumbnails of 〈Silva〉's videos.
When he scrolled down the screen to look for another video, a large number of comments on those appeared. Still existing, the 〈Silva〉's channel receives comments from viewers even now. Most of the contents were honest expressions of condolences, such as "Silva, I'm so sorry for your loss" or "Oh god, It's too soon." There are no words that are overtly derogatory to the deceased.
Some of the submissions were enthusiastic:"The man deserved to be a star," or "It's a shame, because he had plenty of talent." As Maruta read them, his eyes naturally welled up.
Exactly, 〈Silva〉 has been dead.
The sentimental mood reminded him of another accident that preceded the 〈Silva〉's incident. Touching the screen, Maruta then searched for 〈Milley〉.
Scrolling up through the vast number of thumbnails of makeup-related videos that appeared --- there it was. The title of the video is "NSFW! Facial Disruption of a Beautiful Video-Creator".
Usually, 〈Milley〉's videos begin with the standard greeting, "Hello everyone, or good evening, I'm Milley", then she moves on to introduce her specialty, 'Beloved Makeup' or performs a dance of her own creation, but this time things are different. Sitting in a chair, one woman with light brown curly hair in twin tails waves weakly at the screen. She is a beautiful woman whose beauty would not be comical if she were described as having 'large black eyes that seem to see through any false pretense with a hint of melancholy', 'a thin, high nose whose tip is accentuated by the curve it draws when turned slightly to the side' and 'small red lips that are tied tightly together at the sides', but now most of her face is hidden by an eye patch and mask.
After a few seconds of silence, 〈Milley〉 says a few words in a muffled voice.
"I fell down the stairs," Here, the eye patch and mask were removed at the same time. The mouth is slightly relaxed, but the eyes are not smiling.
The area around one eye, to which white gauze had been applied, was discolored blue-black, as if it had been injected with ink. The left edge of her lip is swollen, and a thin laceration runs across it, apparently after fresh blood was wiped away. The filming seems to have been done immediately after these wounds. The painfulness of the scene is instinctively palpable without the use of imagination.
The video ended abruptly there. The playback time was only 25 seconds.
This is the last video left by 〈Milley〉, one of the most popular female video-creators in Japan. After it was uploaded to 〈Milley〉's channel, it was immediately deleted, but its shocking content is still being spread all over the Internet.
In June 2017, one month after posting this video, 〈Milley〉 died prematurely due to an intra-abdominal organ injury. She was only 22 years old.
At the time, 〈Milley〉 was a member of UMORE[*4], a major firm specializing in video creators. She was noted as one of the country's leading star video-creators, with over a million channel subscribers.
News of her death reached the ears of Maruta, who at the time was hardly in the habit of watching videos. At the time, he only had the very mild impression that some famous video contributor had died.
However, after the 〈Silva〉's incident, by researching the Internet, he learned that they had been lovers. Then, of course, Maruta's attention also turned to the fact that 〈Milley〉 was dead.
And there's more.
"Excuse me," At the sound of a voice, Maruta looked up.
After looking, he didn't see anything unusual. Just a male waiter in a striped shirt coming to wipe down an empty adjacent table. Reflexively, Maruta compared him to the face of Kira remembered, but he bore no resemblance to him. The waiter was a very nice young man with an urban look, in contrast to Kira, who gave a rather languid impression.
Maruta kept his head turned to the side and looked blankly at the clerk's gestures, though he himself could not decide whether it was because he could not easily accept the fact that Kira had not yet arrived. Eventually, the clerk noticed his gaze and turned to face him, whereupon he turned forward again.
It was a strange feeling to wait so long for someone was not known so well. However, a renewed awareness of the tremendous abnormality that hazed the darkness of the case soon replaced it with a very active urge to pursue the viciousness of the case. He has so many questions he wants to ask Kira.
[*3]:Twitter(x as of 2024), a service that allows users to post messages of 280 one-byte characters, as well as images and videos, became popular among the public.
[*4]:In Japan, youtube-stars are sometimes affiliated with management companies. Those are similar to multi-channel networks (MCN).
He sips the coffee still half-full in his mug and opens the mailbox displayed on his tablet. He quickly slid his index finger down the inbox screen to update it. But all that added was mail magazines with only advertisements that he was tired of seeing, and among them he did not find the expected new mail from Kira.
Kira was the only one he could rely on now. Maruta needed someone who knew 〈Silva〉. The summary of the case, shaped only by information on the Internet, was somewhat shallow and unsatisfactory.
There was no way that Kira would have posted his current location, but Maruta took a peek at his account on a short-text posting site [*3].
The latest post was about a month ago, "After school. Drinking with friends." is an innocent and largely meaningless one. Maruta knows that this has not been updated all this time.
Releasing a thin sigh through his nose, he tapped the browser icon with his knuckles and once again opened a screen lined with thumbnails of 〈Silva〉's videos.
When he scrolled down the screen to look for another video, a large number of comments on those appeared. Still existing, the 〈Silva〉's channel receives comments from viewers even now. Most of the contents were honest expressions of condolences, such as "Silva, I'm so sorry for your loss" or "Oh god, It's too soon." There are no words that are overtly derogatory to the deceased.
Some of the submissions were enthusiastic:"The man deserved to be a star," or "It's a shame, because he had plenty of talent." As Maruta read them, his eyes naturally welled up.
Exactly, 〈Silva〉 has been dead.
The sentimental mood reminded him of another accident that preceded the 〈Silva〉's incident. Touching the screen, Maruta then searched for 〈Milley〉.
Scrolling up through the vast number of thumbnails of makeup-related videos that appeared --- there it was. The title of the video is "NSFW! Facial Disruption of a Beautiful Video-Creator".
Usually, 〈Milley〉's videos begin with the standard greeting, "Hello everyone, or good evening, I'm Milley", then she moves on to introduce her specialty, 'Beloved Makeup' or performs a dance of her own creation, but this time things are different. Sitting in a chair, one woman with light brown curly hair in twin tails waves weakly at the screen. She is a beautiful woman whose beauty would not be comical if she were described as having 'large black eyes that seem to see through any false pretense with a hint of melancholy', 'a thin, high nose whose tip is accentuated by the curve it draws when turned slightly to the side' and 'small red lips that are tied tightly together at the sides', but now most of her face is hidden by an eye patch and mask.
After a few seconds of silence, 〈Milley〉 says a few words in a muffled voice.
"I fell down the stairs," Here, the eye patch and mask were removed at the same time. The mouth is slightly relaxed, but the eyes are not smiling.
The area around one eye, to which white gauze had been applied, was discolored blue-black, as if it had been injected with ink. The left edge of her lip is swollen, and a thin laceration runs across it, apparently after fresh blood was wiped away. The filming seems to have been done immediately after these wounds. The painfulness of the scene is instinctively palpable without the use of imagination.
The video ended abruptly there. The playback time was only 25 seconds.
This is the last video left by 〈Milley〉, one of the most popular female video-creators in Japan. After it was uploaded to 〈Milley〉's channel, it was immediately deleted, but its shocking content is still being spread all over the Internet.
In June 2017, one month after posting this video, 〈Milley〉 died prematurely due to an intra-abdominal organ injury. She was only 22 years old.
At the time, 〈Milley〉 was a member of UMORE[*4], a major firm specializing in video creators. She was noted as one of the country's leading star video-creators, with over a million channel subscribers.
News of her death reached the ears of Maruta, who at the time was hardly in the habit of watching videos. At the time, he only had the very mild impression that some famous video contributor had died.
However, after the 〈Silva〉's incident, by researching the Internet, he learned that they had been lovers. Then, of course, Maruta's attention also turned to the fact that 〈Milley〉 was dead.
And there's more.
"Excuse me," At the sound of a voice, Maruta looked up.
After looking, he didn't see anything unusual. Just a male waiter in a striped shirt coming to wipe down an empty adjacent table. Reflexively, Maruta compared him to the face of Kira remembered, but he bore no resemblance to him. The waiter was a very nice young man with an urban look, in contrast to Kira, who gave a rather languid impression.
Maruta kept his head turned to the side and looked blankly at the clerk's gestures, though he himself could not decide whether it was because he could not easily accept the fact that Kira had not yet arrived. Eventually, the clerk noticed his gaze and turned to face him, whereupon he turned forward again.
It was a strange feeling to wait so long for someone was not known so well. However, a renewed awareness of the tremendous abnormality that hazed the darkness of the case soon replaced it with a very active urge to pursue the viciousness of the case. He has so many questions he wants to ask Kira.
[*3]:Twitter(x as of 2024), a service that allows users to post messages of 280 one-byte characters, as well as images and videos, became popular among the public.
[*4]:In Japan, youtube-stars are sometimes affiliated with management companies. Those are similar to multi-channel networks (MCN).
