The Tokyo Zodiac Murders Read Online Free

dresses, winter coats and spring blouses. I wanted to ask the shopkeeper if I could buy her, but my shyness wouldn’t allow me to do such a thing.
    I called her Tokie, because she looked like an actress I adored who had that name. I grew obsessed with Tokie. I dedicated poems to her. Her face was always in my mind. And I drew portraits of her from memory. That was really the beginning of my life as a painter. I would stand just to the side of the shop window and pretend I was watching the unloading of raw silk at the wholesale store next door. Secretly, of course, I was staring at the doll. She had frizzy brown hair, delicate fingers, and slender legs that I could see below the hem of her skirt. Her face had a certain elegance. Even now, I can recall exactly what she looked like.
    One day, I happened to see Tokie naked while the shopkeeper was changing her clothes. My knees trembled and Ialmost fainted. No other woman has ever left me feeling that way. The experience had a tremendous effect on my sexuality. Female sex organs covered with pubic hair lost all their attraction. And I began to prefer women with coarse, curly hair. I also started taking an admittedly perverse interest in mute girls and female corpses.
    But my love affair with Tokie came to a sudden end. One warm spring morning, when I arrived at the boutique, she was gone from the window. My feelings could not be put into words. I was heartbroken. It was 21st March, and the cherry blossoms were about to bloom.
    I’m not so fond of noisy nightclubs filled with cigarette smoke, but recently I started going to a bar called “Kakinoki”—the Persimmon Tree. I enjoy talking to one of the regular customers; he is, in fact, the owner of a mannequin factory. One day, after a few drinks, I told him about my love affair with Tokie and he kindly invited me to visit his factory. But there was no doll like Tokie to be found there.
    Probably nobody could understand my feelings towards Tokie. She was very special, and no other doll could compare to her. She was like a precious pearl, whereas all the others were mere grains of sand.
    My first daughter was born on 21st March—the same date that Tokie disappeared. So I called her Tokiko. It had to be fate: Tokie had been reincarnated as a human being called Tokiko. I was convinced that Tokiko would look more and more like that doll as she grew up. However, she was not blessed with good health.
    As I write this, I am astonished to see where my ideas come from. Tokiko is my favourite child. I wanted her to have a perfect body, and so my subconscious must have suggested that I createAzoth. Perhaps my love for Tokiko is something more than a normal father’s love. People born under the sign of Aries tend to be cheerful and vigorous, but Tokiko’s birthday is close to the cusp of Aries and Pisces. I think that is what causes her mood swings. When I see her depressed, I think of her delicate heart condition and then my love for the poor child surges.
    I have often used my daughters as models, sketching them half-naked. Tokiko is rather skinny and has a birthmark on the right side of her belly. When I first saw how thin she was, I regretted she did not have a perfect body to match her very pretty face. I don’t mean that her body is inferior—in fact, come to think of it, I suppose Tomoko, Reiko and Nobuyo are all even thinner than she is. But since Tokiko—along with Yukiko—is my real daughter, I have always wanted her to be perfect.
    Several years ago, I visited Europe again. I didn’t find the Louvre very exciting, so I took a trip to Amsterdam to see an exhibition of the work of André Milhaud. I was so overpowered by his work that for a while I could not go back to my own. It could be titled The Art of Death . In a deserted building that once housed an aquarium, he had constructed several tableaux. Among them was the corpse of a man hanging from a pole, and the corpses of a mother and daughter abandoned on a street.