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there was no traffic.
    There were several side roads branching off it into the woods on either side. I thought the killer and Morino might have taken any one of those.
    The farther I walked, the steeper the road became. I could see the village through the trees, but in miniature.
    I was close to the top soon enough. There was a small parking lot there and a building that appeared to be an observatory. Cars could go no farther. I hadn’t been walking long, so I wasn’t tired.
    I was looking for Morino’s body.
    I walked along the path between the trees, taking branching paths as I found them.
    It was cloudy, and the woods were dark. Between the interlocking branches, I observed trees stretching as far as I could see. There was no wind, and cicadas provided the only sound.
    N** Mountain was much too large to find a single dismembered corpse on. I eventually decided my search was futile. I returned to the bus stop, covered in sweat and exhausted.
    There weren’t a lot of homes along the road the bus took, but there were a few. There had been one on the road toward the top, and I had asked the old man in the garden if any cars had gone up that road the day before. But he shook his head. He even called his family and repeated my question, but none of them had seen a car.
    What had made Morino send that message? Had the killer forcibly taken her with him? She wasn’t stupid and wouldn’t be tricked easily.
    Was I overthinking things? Had she not been captured at all?
    I sat down next to the bus stop and read the notebook again. I was not skilled enough at profiling to glean anything about the killer from the descriptions of the murders.
    My sweat dripped onto the pages, and the ink smeared, making bits of it unreadable. Apparently, the killer had been using a water-based ink.
    Where had the killer written in this notebook? At home, after he returned from the killings? I doubted he’d written it during the crime. He had written it from his memory, colored by his imagination.
    The bus arrived, and I stood up. Looking at my watch, I saw that it was after three. I was leaving the mountain.
    iv
    The coffee shop Morino always went to was in the middle of the arcade near the station. She had given me directions earlier, but I had never actually been there.
    As she had said, the lighting was low, wrapping me in comfortable darkness. Quiet music was playing, melting into the air without drawing attention to itself.
    I sat down at the counter.
    There was a sign for the bathrooms in back. I glanced at the floor in front of them, where Morino had found the notebook.
    There was only one other customer: a young woman in a suit. She was by the windows, reading a magazine as she sipped her coffee.
    The shop master came to take my order, and I asked, “Does that woman come here a lot?”
    He nodded, and then he frowned, wondering what of it.
    “Not important. First, do you mind if I shake your hand?”
    “Shake my … ? Why?”
    “To mark the occasion.”
    The shop master had a very sincere face. He wasn’t young, nor was he old enough to be called middle-aged. He had pale skin and wore a plain black T-shirt, the kind sold anywhere. His hair was neatly buzzed.
    At first, he seemed to think I was just a strange customer—probably because I was staring too much.
    He brought my coffee quickly.
    “I’m friends with a girl named Morino. Do you know her?”
    “She’s a regular.”
    I asked if she was still alive.
    He stopped moving.
    He slowly put down the cup that had been in his hand, and then he turned to face me. His eyes were clouded, like two black holes bereft of light.
    I thought the odds of this man being the killer were significantly higher than those of the other customers from that evening—and now I knew I had been right.
    “What do you mean?” he asked, playing dumb.
    I held out the notebook. When he saw it, he smiled, flashing dull white canines.
    “Morino found this the other day.”
    He took the notebook and flipped