Strange Houses

Yuzuki shares that her family visited her grandparents’ house in August 2006, as they routinely did every summer. She shares a floor plan of the house, which she drew from memory. The symmetrical house was bisected by a hallway that extended down the length of the house. At the end of the hallway was a Buddhist altar. To the left of the altar were the tatami room of Yuzuki’s grandparents, Shigeharu and Fumino, and the living room. To the right of the altar were four proportionately sized tatami rooms, two of which Yuzuki’s family occupied during their visits. A third tatami room was occupied by Yuzuki’s Aunt Misaki and her son, Yoichi. The remaining tatami room was left vacant.

Yoichi’s father, Kimihiko, died in February 2006 of a heart attack. Kimihiko was the eldest son in his family and had elected to live in his elderly parents’ house to look after them. Shortly after Kimihiko’s death, his wife, Misaki, gave birth to a second child.

Kurihara observes that on the right side of the house, none of the tatami rooms had any windows looking outside. Yuzuki confirms this and shares that each of the four rooms had sliding doors that provided access to each other. The only exception was the sliding door between Yuzuki’s father’s tatami room and the vacant room, which wouldn’t open under any circumstances. The only way to reach the vacant room was through Misaki and Yoichi’s room, which was the only other adjacent room in the layout.

Yuzuki explains that the house was built in the 1920s as part of a larger estate. The Katabuchis were a prosperous family who maintained several businesses. Several generations after the estate was constructed, the head of the family suddenly resigned control over operations and became a recluse. He occupied an outhouse instead of the main manor, which was eventually demolished. Rumors spread that the family head was involved with a religious cult obsessed with symmetry. The outhouse may have been designed as a tribute to the family head’s wife, who died young. This would explain the altar at the end of the hallway, which made Yuzuki scared of her grandparents’ house. Although her grandfather, Shigeharu, experienced limited mobility in his old age, he maintained his devotions at the altar and cleaned it on a daily basis. Yuzuki only saw into the altar once, glimpsing ceremonial tools and a large painting.

Three days into their visit, the family was awoken by Misaki screaming after discovering Yoichi’s body before the altar. The initial theory was that Yoichi attempted to climb the altar and died in an accidental fall, but Yuzuki didn’t believe that the altar was climbable in the first place. Moreover, Yoichi feared the altar, which made it unlikely that he climbed it. Cerebral contusion was listed as Yoichi’s cause of death. The adults dismissed Yuzuki’s skepticism and collectively declined to involve the police.

Probing the possibility of Yoichi’s murder, Kurihara asks Yuzuki to recall what happened the day before Yoichi died. She recounts that the entire family, with the exception of Shigeharu, visited Kimihiko’s grave. The rest of the day went by ordinarily. That evening, Yuzuki, Ayano, and Yoichi were playing games in the room that Yuzuki and Ayano shared with their mother. When Yoichi got tired, he retired to his room. This was around 9:00 pm. Half an hour later, Yuzuki’s mother ordered her and Ayano to go to sleep.

Kurihara elaborates on the layout of the four adjacent tatami rooms. It would have been impossible for Yoichi to leave his room without Yuzuki noticing because Yoichi would have needed to pass by her to access the altar. Yuzuki was awake until 4:00 am, which could mean that Yoichi died within the next hour since Misaki found his body at 5:00 am. This reveals an inconsistency, however, as Misaki reported that Yoichi’s corpse was cold when she found him. He would have needed to die earlier than 3:00 am for Misaki to observe this. Kurihara suspects that he died elsewhere and was placed near the altar afterward. This suggests that Yoichi was murdered in his room with a blow to the head.

However, Kurihara immediately doubts his own hypothesis, realizing that it would make Misaki the prime suspect. Her behavior after Yoichi’s death lessens the likelihood of her guilt. Moreover, if Yoichi were killed in his room, then someone would have heard it in the adjacent room. Kurihara modifies his theory to suggest that Yoichi was moved to another room, where he was then killed. This causes Yuzuki to remember that her grandmother, Fumino, reported hearing a strange thumping noise in the “next room” just after midnight. She passed through the corridor to investigate but found nothing wrong. Uketsu interprets “next room” to refer to Yuzuki’s father’s room. However, Yuzuki’s father never reported a visit from Fumino that night. This leads Kurihara to believe that there may be a hidden room missing from the floor plan. Because Yuzuki drew the floor plan from memory, it doesn’t include rooms she never knew existed.

Kurihara believes that there was a secret room hidden behind the north wall of Yuzuki’s grandparents’ room. Recalling the Saitama and Tokyo houses, Kurihara posits that this room was used to confine a child prisoner like X. Since Yuzuki asserts that she never saw any door to a hidden room in her grandparents’ room, Kurihara suspects that the door was hidden in the altar, possibly behind the painting Yuzuki saw inside. He adds that the motive for killing Yoichi was the same motive behind the murders at Saitama and Tokyo.

Kurihara reconsiders the vacant tatami room. He believes that because it was never converted into an extension of Misaki and Yoichi’s room, it was kept vacant for a specific purpose. He posits that the hidden door inside the altar led to a passage that extended to both sides of the house. The reason that Yuzuki’s father could never open the sliding doors to the vacant tatami room was that it actually obscured another secret passage, making it possible for the child prisoner to bypass Yuzuki’s father’s room, access the vacant room, and use it to transport Yoichi back to the confinement room behind Yuzuki’s grandparents’ room. There, the prisoner could kill Yoichi with maximum discretion. This is how they could replicate the modus operandi from the Saitama and Tokyo houses.

Kurihara poses a caveat, considering Fumino’s investigation of the noise that night. It is possible that someone uninvolved in the killings may have used the Katabuchis’ typical modus operandi to cover up their role in Yoichi’s murder. The murderer may have carried Yoichi’s corpse back to the vacant room to avoid Fumino’s detection. When Fumino returned to her room, the murderer left the corpse in front of the altar. This would minimize police suspicion, as it would lead everyone to assume that Yoichi died in an accident. It would also prevent the family from unwittingly revealing the existence of the child prisoner, which the murderer knew they could leverage against the family. Kurihara rules out family members as potential suspects before finally arriving at Yuzuki’s father as the possible killer.

Yuzuki accepts the possibility of this theory, citing her father’s alcohol addiction in the months after Yoichi’s death as a potential sign of his guilt. Uketsu wonders why Yuzuki’s father would have killed Yoichi. Kurihara suggests that it may have had to do with the family’s inheritance. By killing the only boy among the grandchildren, the right to inherit the family’s assets would transfer to Ayano. This would explain why her husband adopted her maiden name upon marriage. Uketsu is skeptical of the theory, though Kurihara reminds him that the Katabuchi family is far from ordinary. He ties Ayano’s disappearance to her grandparents’ attempt to indoctrinate her into the family’s ritualistic killing practices at an early age.

Before they part ways, Yuzuki reveals that she doesn’t know if her grandparents are still alive. Her discussion with Uketsu and Kurihara has inspired her to reconnect with her mother, obtain her grandparents’ address, and visit their house to find out what really happened to Ayano. When Uketsu gets home that night, Yuzuki calls him to tell him that her mother reached out to her, offering to tell her the truth about Ayano. Yuzuki asks Uketsu if he can accompany her to meet with her mother, worried about the possibility that her mother may have an ulterior motive.