『蒼ざめた星』

A wild translation appears!

It has been over a year now since the last translation posted, and as I had some time anyway, why not. Actually: I was first working on a translation of another story, but that is moving a bit slow, so I chose to do this story first. And it is an interesting story to present, I think.

Last year, the anthology Zero Banme no Jikenbo ("The 0 Case Files") was released, containing stories of writers like Arisugawa Alice, Abiko Takemaru, Ayatsuji Yukito and Norizuki Rintarou that were written before they became professional writers. A lot of these stories were written during the writers' time in university mystery clubs and it is quite interesting to see how writers 'grew' from amateur to professional writers. In fact, I have quite a treasure mountain of unpublished stories of Ayatsuji, Abiko and Norizuki at home, which I copied from the club magazines from the Kyoto University Mystery Club when I was there.

Anyway, I chose Arisugawa Alice's The Pale Stars for a translation, because, well, it was short, but also because it is a Student Alice series story. In it, the first year student Arisugawa Alice (a male by the way) joins the university mystery club. Other members incude the twenty-eight year old Egami Jirou (club president, eternal student and series detective), Mochizuki Shuuhei (the resident Ellery Queen fanboy, nickname Mochi), and the hardboiled fan Oda Koujirou (nickname Nobunaga, after warlord Oda Nobunaga). Together, they talk about mystery fiction, and manage to get involved in murder cases (though it's always Egami who solves the case). In the proper Student Alice series, the students go to Eito University, with their club being called the Eito Mystery Club (EMC), but in this early version of them, their university is called Imadegawa University Mystery Club. Both of these universities are based on Kyoto's Doshisha University, which is Arisugawa Alice's alma mater, and they still have an active mystery club in Doshisha Mystery Seekers.

Oh, and there's a challenge to the reader!

And to quote myself regarding these translations:

"Why at times it seems like I don't proofread that much? Because I don't. But it is also part of a complex plot to discourage people from stealing these translations by purposely leaving mistakes in my texts. But it is mostly because I just do this as a hobby and as long as it's readable, well, meh."

Oh, and there is usage of Kansai-dialect in the original text, but I chose not to do anything with it in this translation, as it didn't seem to add anything crucial to the flavor of the text.


“He died here. Lying like this,” said Tone Akira and he drew the form of a body in the dry ground in the floor.
“On his back? Or was he facing the ground?” Mochizuki Shuuhei said with a conceited tone, pretending to be a great detective.
“On his back. Like he was looking up to the stars. The sky was starlit that night…”
 It was Tomikawa Haruo who had answered the question silently from the side. He spoke, and bent backwards and squinted his eyes, as he looked up the bright sky. What was above our hands wasn’t a starlit sky, but a summer afternoon’s sun. It was hot today too.
“And the wheels of Yuuji’s car were right there, next his face. The tire tracks of him being run over twice were still visible. What the hell had happened to him, I thought. To run over his face with a car after killing him…” Tomikawa shuddered.
“He was run over twice?” Michizuki asked, as he mimicked Tomikawa’s shudder.
“Yes. But with two times, we mean that the car first ran over his face, and then backed up over it again. So it left two sets of tracks. His nose is all disfigured now.” Tomikawa jumped up and turned around looking at Moritomo Yumi. She bit her lips and was looking at the ground.
“I might have worded it wrong. But anyway, the car was there right next to the body. Like this.”
He skipped along the ground and drew a large rectangle to represent the car.
“The car was a Bluebird. A three year old model. And the murder weapon, a camera, was lying around here. The murderer threw this at Yuuji, or swung it around with the strap and hit him between the eyes. It was an instant death. And the camera…”
“That’s okay. Signs of a fight?,” asked Mochizuki.
“Yeah. Yuuji’s T-shirt was torn a bit, and had wrinkles like it had been grabbed by someone. He was probably grabbed by the collar and swung around,” Tomikawa answered.
“Otsumiya Yuuji, I mean, Otsumiya, where had he parked his car first?”
“Besides that tree over there, facing the west. No, I hadn’t seen it parked it there myself. But there were tire tracks there. When I said that he died looking up to the stars, that was of course also me just giving it an imaginative description.”
Tomikawa’s sudden agitation was suspicious.
Next to me, Kitao Osamu laughed sardonically. He had crossed his arms and looked uncomfortable.Opposite him, Yahara Rumi also looked crouchy towards the Arashiyama mountains opposite us.

Let me introduce everyone on the scene. I, Arisugawa Alice (second year student, law faculty), Mochizuki Shuuhei and Oda Koujirou (both fourth year students, economics faculty) are the members of the Imedagawa University Mystery Club. There is one more member, the club president, the twenty-eight year old Egami Jirou (fourth year student, humanities), but he has been in his bed since yesterday because of he has a summer cold. Even though he loves murder scenes (?).

Anyway, the remaining five persons. Four of them, are members of the Imadegawa University UFO Research Club: club president Tomikawa Haruo (fourth year, economics), a small, gentle-looking man. Tone Akira (third year, economics), a bundle of muscles nurtured by bodybuilding. Kitao Osamu (third year, marketing), who looked uncomfortable and wore almost black dark-green sunglasses. Morikawa Yuumi (first year, humanities), whose boyfriend was the victim. And finally, Yahara Rumi (third year humanities), the ex-girlfriend who had been thrown away like a broken sandal by the murdered Otsumiya Yuuji (third year, economics).

This all happened on the east side of a three hundred meter high mountain in the north-west of Arashiyama. It was about 165 square meter. The boiling heat was taking its toll of both the mountains around us, and the town of Kyoto beneath us. There was an amazing sight here. You could say this was the perfect place to look for UFOs. As soon as the UFO Research Club had read the article ‘Visit of a UFO to Arashiyama? Two elementary school children witnessed it!’ in the Kyoto News, they went to interview the children and started their search for UFOs here, with a 8mm camera. They did this with all members, or whoever had times at their hands. The incident happened three nights ago. That night the victim Otsumiya had come here alone, but was found dead the following day by an old man taking a mountain walk. The crime had been committed the night before the body was discovered, around eleven in the night, it was thought, and the murder weapon had been the camera. From the fact the victim was run over with the car, one could surmise some kind of cruelness to the crime.

And if you’re wondering why we’re all here at this place, the UFO Research Club had heard about our club, which has come across, and brilliantly solved two real murder cases (actually, it was all the club president’s Egami Jirou’s work). We were, in a matter of speech, asked to investigate and were here now with the four members of the UFO club, and the important witness Yahara Rumi, to reconstruct the case. There was a reason the UFO Research Club came to us, an amateur club, with this request. It was obvious that the murderer was either one of the club, or Yahara Rumi, so they wanted to find out the murderer themselves, and then convince him or her to confess the crime to the police. That is why they wanted to borrow our brains. Why we knew the murderer was one of these five? The beer cans and food left at the crime scene, showed that the murdered Otsumiya had been having a bite with his murderer her, and only these five people knew Otsumiya would be here that night.

Besides that, there was also the issue of motive. Tomikawa, Tone and Kitao all had clear motives. They were fighting for the one girl in the club, Morimoto Yumi. The UFO Research Club had been set up three years ago by Tomikawa, and was of course a voluntary organization. The four of them did meticulous research on flying saucers, something even more juvenile than doing research on mystery novels, but with this year’s newly joined member Morimoto Yumi, a real UFO maniac with eyes as black as black holes, the iron bond between the four began to break. And Yumi was indeed very cute. Her two eyes floated mysteriously like two black crystals in her white face, and if you ever laid eyes on her, you’d never forget. After the twisting and turning battle for Yumi had finally ended, it was Otsumiya who had won Yumi, and because the remaining three felt they were robbed, a strange atmosphere took over the club. And you could say it was natural that Yahara Rumi would held a grudge against Otsumiya. As she was dumped, one could well imagine her throwing a camera at him in a rage. Yumi and Otsumiya had a big row the night before the murder because of Rumi, so she might have thrown the camera in a hysteric fit, but I thought it unlikely she would run him over with a car after killing him.

I heard a car driving up here. It was a police car of the Kyoto Police Department that caused the little sandstorm.
“Doing a bit of investigation?” Inspector Murasame stepped out of the car. He wiped the sweat of his short neck. We knew Inspector Murasame from another case.
“So, the kids of the Mystery Club here too? I had heard from Tomikawa. It’s alright. But where is your president, Mr. Egami?”
“He’s down with a cold. But, inspector, can I ask you something about the case?” Mochizuki asked, seeing this as the perfect opportunity. “Depends on the question, but up to an extent.”
“Well, first of all,” said Mochizuki and he walked to the car, “ how did the murder come here, and go away again? With a car?”
“That’s not clear yet. He probably didn’t walk up here, so we think he came either by car, or a motorcycle, but there were no such tire tracks here. The road’s paved until a little bit back, so he probably parked his ride there and walked here.”
Now it was Oda’s turn. “Any witnesses?”
“Still investigating. Nothing yet. But there are no houses around here, so we aren’t expecting anything.”
“Might he have been robbed by someone who just happened to be passing by?” It felt like I had to say something too, so I asked the inspector.
“His money, camera and portable radio were all there, and it seems the victim had been drinking a beer with the murderer, so that seems unlikely.”
“How bad were the wounds on the victim’s face? Was it hard to identify the victim?” The question only a true mystery fiction fanatic would ask, was asked by Mochizuki. A true Queen freak and the club member who held the record of most books read, and he seemed eager to try his hand at a real case himself. He’s always the most enthusiastic, but he never solves the case.
“Nothing like that. His nose was broken, and there were tire tracks on his face, but just about that.”
It seems like it was not the “headless corpse” trope of mystery fiction. There were big rocks lying around here if the murderer wanted to disfigure the victim’s face, so he wouldn’t have gone the trouble to ride over him with a car. “Have you developed the film in the murder weapon, I mean, the camera?”
 The inspector laughed at Mochizuki’s question.
“Yeah. But no picture of our murderer. Actually, there were no photo’s at all. It seems there was no UFO visit.”
“A bit strange to ask this in front of them, but did you check the alibis of these five people?”
 “We checked them, but we didn’t get satisfactory results. Tomikawa, Morimoto and Yahara say they were either at their lodging rooms or at home, but either the room was in a different section of the house, or they don’t live in a dormitory complex, but a normal apartment complex, meaning they have no witnesses. Kitao had been watching the late movies, and walked a bit around downton Kawaramachi until he got back to his dorm at midnight, but can’t probe his alibi for the crucial time, the hour before and after eleven. Tone had been making a car drive to lake Biwa and came back home at two in the morning.”
“And they all have a license for either a motorcycle or a car, right?” Mochizuki continued with his questions.
“Everyone, besides Morimoto and Tomokawa have a normal driver’s license. Morimoto and Tomikawa have a license for a motorcycle and they all have either their own car or motorcycle.”
That meant they all had opportunity.
“It’s hot. Can we leave it at this now?” Rumi said, while she was using her fold up handkerchief as a little fan. Her chestnut colored hair looked very nice on her already good looks, but her style of speech sounded harsh. She was not pleased, of course.
“Have just a little more patience.” Mochizuki tried to calm her. “Even if they all had a license, there is still a thing like a paper driver, right? People who have a license, but hardly ever drive. Can they all really ride a motorcycle or car?”
“Yeah,” Tone answered. “Yahara got her license just last month, but even she is a good driver. Right?”
Rumi nodded.
“Is Yahara also close with other people of the UFO Research Club besides the deceased Otsumiya?” I asked this question that just came to me.
“He had introduced her to everyone in the club, so we know here pretty well. I wouldn’t say we’re close though.”
 “I see--, by the way, a different question though, but do you really believe in the existence of UFOs?”
“No way, I’m different from them,” Rumi said almost bitterly to my question.
“The four of us believe, of course,” Tomigawa said with a sour face, as if he was hurt by Rumi’s words. “I have seen an UFO three times and Moritomo has experienced an encounter of the first kind. Tone has even taken photo’s of UFOs, ‘cause he loves cameras and walks around with them, you know. Kitao has the nickname ‘contact-maniac’ and is always hoping he can get into contact with aliens. But his nickname might also come from the fact he wears contact lenses.”
Kitao with his sunglasses laughed. He seemed the strangest of them all.
“Was the deceased Otsumiya also that into this?”
“Yeah. He came all the way up here alone just to spot UFOs, right? You don’t come here getting stung by bugs for fun.”
“And he was planning to stay here the whole night to try to spot an UFO?”
“I think so. He had spent the night before the incident here too.”
 “That means…” Mochizuki forced himself back into the conversation. “The murderer knew Otsumiya would come here that night, and came after him here.”
“Otsumiya might have come together with the murderer,” said Oda, but Mochizuki threw this back at him.
“No. Then the murderer would have needed to walked the way back. You can’t walk back to the city from here in the middle of the night.”
“I see… But why did the murderer follow Otsumiya all the way up here?”
“They had probably arranged something. The murderer probably said he wanted to discuss something with the victim, away from the other people here, and this quiet place beneath the stars would be ideal, or something like that.”
“’Cause it doesn’t seem like this was a planned murder, right?” I said.
Mochizuki nodded. “The discussion probably turned into a fight. By the way, inspector, it seems like there were signs of a fight. Grabbing someone by the neck and throwing around seems like something a man would do, right?”
Inspector Murasama shook his head. “Hard to tell. A woman might grab someone’s collar to grill him, if she’s in a hysteric fit. And if it was a woman the victim was up against, he might have underestimated her strength.”
“And you all drink beer?,” I asked, and they all answered yes.
“Could you tell me whether you have a motorcycle, a car, or both?”
Tone was the first to answer my question. “I have both. I go to university on my motor, and I drive around in my rundown Nissan Sunny in the night or when I’m off.”
Tomikawa was next. “I only have a motorcycle. I don’t have a driver’s license.”
Yahara. “I always use my brother’s car. I didn’t use his car on the night of the crime, but I can’t prove that.”
Kitao. “I am saving for a car right now, an only own a 50cc motorcycle. I have my driver’s license though.”
Hmmm. I snarled silently. I had no ideas left as to how to find the murderer.
“How was Otsumiya with his car? Did he like it?,” Oda asked, and Yumi answered for the first time on her own.
“He…. liked it, I think, but he wasn’t careful with his car. He didn’t mind his crooked bumper, and he left the emergency flashlight in his own room in case of a electricity failure. The floor of his car is full of cigarette stubs.” She had a surprisingly low, almost manly voice.
“He didn’t ride a motorcycle?”
“He was into motorcycles in high school, but lately…, “ said Tomikawa, and Tone nodded in agreement.
Maybe because of his dark sunglasses, but Kitao still looked like he was rejecting the others, keeping his arms crossed.

Rumi was also looking somewhere faraway. “Ah!” Rumi then suddenly cried out and pointed up the eastern sky. “What’s that? There’s something flying there.”
 We all looked up the sky in the direction she was pointing. Not sure where that was though.
“Over there. Where that thunderhead cloud is heading out to, beneath it and a bit to the right. Isn’t that something blue flying?”
“Where?”
“Don’t see it.”
The members of the UFO Research Club all raised their voices. Before I knew it, Tone had taken out a pocket camera and was standing ready for action.
“It’s floating upwards there. Don’t you see?”
“Ah, there, I see it, I see it.” Yumi cried out.
“Ah, I see it. I see it, but…” Oda shrugged, “that’s just a balloon. A kid just let it fly or something like that.”
“Oh, you mean that there.” I finally saw what they meant. There was indeed a blue balloon floating there.
“Ah, really? Just that?,” Tone said as he slipped the pocket camera back into his jeans. He clicked his tongue. “Don’t surprise me like that anymore. I really thought there was an UFO there.”
 Rumi stuck her tongue out as if to provoke him. “Sorry! It’s probably because I have in my head that an UFO is flying around here. Even though I don’t even believe in UFOs.”
“Well, well, where is the center of all this commotion?”
After everyone had identified the flying object, the inspector also squinted his eyes and looked up the sky. Rumi and Yumi kept firing ‘there, there’ at him and finally he said “Ah, I see it. Indeed, just a balloon.”
“Inspector, do you have bad eyes?”
 Being asked innocently by Rumi, the inspector scratched his head. “Farsighted. My age you know.”
“Well, I am a special case. Perfect eyesight in both my eyes,” Rumi said.
As if to counter her words, Yumi also pitched in. “I have perfect eyesight in my right eye too, you know. It’s just my left eye, well, it’s just half that eyesight.”
 I was surprised to hear the two having a lighthearted bicker. With the man who tied these two together with jealousy dead, I guess their emotions were also down.
“Where did the murderer park his car or motorcycle?”
“To the side of the paved road, about fifty meters back there. You can hide a car in the bamboo bush there and you wouldn’t even be able to see it if you were standing next to it on the road. But it’s all pebbles there, so no tire tracks remain."
It seems the investigation proved fruitless.
“It’s hot, so let’s stop for today,” Rumi said again. Her plead was easily accepted. The inspector remained alone here under the motto “visit the murder scene hundred times”, while we stopped our investigation.

We went to visit Mr. Egami, who had been sleeping in his four-and-a-half tatami room, which was as hot as a steam bath. “And, what happened? Figure something out?,” he asked eagerly about the case.
 “How’s your cold?,” I asked and he got out of his futon. “I’m alright, so talk, tell me what happened.”
A bit surprised, we made our reports of today’s investigation.
The eyes of detective Egami, who had been listening silently, sparkled at the end, and as he ran his fingers through his tangled, long hair, said: “The murderer, is probably…”


The five related parties were gathered at Tone’s room for the denouement. Little strands of water were running beneath his window, and a cool wind rocked the bamboo blinds. A big panel of an enlarged photo of an UFO was hanging on the wall. We sat down and Mr. Egami stood before us, with his back to the panel. He started his speech. “When I first heard the story, I thought it strange that the murderer run the car over the victim’s case after killing him. Why go the trouble? Instead of getting into the car to disfigure the victim’s face, he, or she, could have easily hit him with one of the rocks lying there. And if the murderer had thrown or swung the camera in a fit, wouldn’t he come to his senses after hitting and killing the victim? It seems contradictory that he would still be furious and wanted to disfigure the victim’s face.”
“So you mean it was a deliberate crime?,” I asked.
“No, it would be very badly prepared deliberate crime if it consisted of swinging around a camera to kill someone. This was definitely a crime committed on the spur of the moment. But, driving over the victims’ face, wasn’t because the murderer hated him. There were other circumstances.”
 “What kind of circumstances?” Rumi urged. Mr. Egami seemed to ignore her question.
“Well, a question for you all. One man steps inside his own parked car. What is he going to do? You try, Alice.”
“You’d expect him to drive somewhere. Or maybe drive back somewhere.”
“Other suggestions, Mochi?”
Mochizuki answered: “What about him hiding for the rain in the car?”
“Interesting answer. Nobunaga?”
Nobunaga, or as we also known him, Oda, thought for a while, and said: “He might have wanted to listen to a radio program. Maybe e wanted to use the car radio.”
“Not bad. But no other ideas?”
Tone raised his hand like he was still in elementary school. “What about looking in the mirror?”
“You said a man, right? What if his girlfriend was waiting for him in the car? A car is also a moving bed.” This was Kitao’s idea.
“He might have wanted to horn the claxon as a sign for something,” Tomikawa said.
“Well, that’s enough for now. You just presented seven different functions of the car. Besides the use of it as means of transportation, a roof, a radio, a mirror, a bed or chair and a claxon. And if I may add one, as a tool to kill people. Well, why did the murderer get in the car, and drive it this time? It doesn’t seem like he wanted to flee the crime scene, and he didn’t use it as the murder weapon. If he wanted to use it as a mirror or a radio, he wouldn’t have needed to move the car. So for what purpose? The murderer… needed to use the car’s headlights.”
“But why the headlights….?” Mochizuki tilted his head.
“The murderer had lost something during his fight with the victim. And it would be dangerous to leave it at the crime scene, so he needed to search for it with the help of the headlights. Those were the circumstances. There’s usually a flashlight in a car, but the victim had left in his own room for emergency situations, so nothing in the car. The murderer might have used the one in his own car, but he either didn’t come by car or he thought the time needed to walk the fifty meters to get it dangerous, so he thought that moving the victim’s car and using the headlight was the better plan. The murderer moved the car to the dead body, that is, the crime scene and lighted the ground there. Driving over the victim’s face was a mistake. Was he in a panic, or an inexperienced driver? Anyway, the murderer found what he had been looking for with the light. And what is the thing the murderer wore and couldn’t find without a light… right, his contact lenses.“
I turned surprised to Kitao. There was no expression on his face. He kept silent.
“The murderer made the driving error because he couldn’t see clearly anymore, as he had either lost both his lenses during the fight with the victim, or one lens, which made it hard for him to judge depth. He backed up the car because he was afraid he had gone too far and driven over the contact lenses. This sound logical?”
“But,” Tone said, trying to help Kitao,”It isn’t that easy to find fallen contact lenses, right? Especially in the night.”
“But they reflect light, so it was probably quite easy to find them. And he wasn’t in a great hurry either. I have to ask just to be sure, but the two women here don’t wear contact lenses, right? Because you said you have great eyesight.”
Then Kitao suddenly jumped up.
“It might have been luck, but you got me. So I have to confess to the police... I really didn’t to kill him. After some beers, he started to make fun of me, making me jealous… And I lost my temper.”
 It became silent in the room. He looked at Yumi. “Would you come with me... to the police?”
Yumi looked straight up his face, and shook her face sideways. I couldn’t bear to look at the sadness that was in her eyes, like stars turned pale.