It was the autumn of my first year in university. We were having a circle drinking party at a cheap, all-you-can-drink izakaya, with about ten of us chatting idly. Before long, two second-year upperclassmen who had gone to the same elementary and junior high schools started in on their usual mutual exposures. They would take turns ratting each other out about their past misdeeds and embarrassing youth, essentially doing self-damaging roasts. Even so, since they did this every time, they seemed to have run out of material, and the conversation was beginning to fizzle out and shift to something else. Just then, a senior named Kawamura suddenly got a cheerful look on his face, said, "I remember," and patted the other senior, Komatsu, on the shoulder. "You said you saw Lulu's ghost, didn't you?" Kawamura chuckled as he said this. "You came rolling into the classroom shouting, 'L-Lulu's—Lulu's ghost appeared!' That was a masterpiece." Embarrassed, Komatsu retorted with an annoyed look. "I really saw it, I'm telling you. And I wasn't the only one. Several other people saw it, too." "No way. Some people said they saw it, but they were all just scaredy-cats." "It's true. In the bushes right by the corner before the school. Without a doubt, it was Lulu, the one who was killed." At the word *killed*, everyone's interest was piqued. Abandoning the topic that had just started, they leaned in, asking, "What? What is it?" I, for one, wanted to hear the details as well. Though in my case, I was more drawn to the word right before it: *ghost*. "Lulu was a rabbit we kept at the school back in elementary," Komatsu began explaining. At the elementary school Komatsu and Kawamura attended, there was a wire-mesh breeding coop in the corner of the schoolyard, and at its peak, about seven rabbits were kept there. They were all white rabbits, and every single one of them was female. As part of their education, students took turns acting as caretakers, but because of how cute they were, children who weren't even caretakers would frequently press their faces against the wire mesh and make kissing noises at them. However, one day, one of those rabbits was found in a gruesome state with its head cut off. The shock the children received was considerable. The adults, like the teachers, felt the same way. The culprit was never found. A pervert was suspected, but no one could figure out why anyone would go to such violent lengths as to kill a rabbit and take its head away. Yet, that wasn't the end of it. A month later, another rabbit was found dead in the coop, headless. "In the end, was it three in total? It kept happening about once a month, right?" "If that happened today, the police would definitely be involved. No matter if they're just rabbits, a series of decapitations is abnormal. In the end, they never found the culprit, did they?" When Komatsu asked, Kawamura nodded. "Yeah, they never caught him. I mean, for the first one—back when Yuki, the very first one to get her head cut off, was killed—I was the caretaker at the time..." "Hold on. Speaking of how it started, before those decapitations, a rabbit named Marie was stolen, and that was actually the first thing. I was the caretaker at the time, and I remember coming in the morning and being deeply shocked to find one fewer rabbit inside the wire mesh." "Wasn't that one just escaped?" "No, no. There were no holes in the wire mesh anywhere, and just like the first decapitation, the drop latch on the door was properly put back in place. It was the work of a human." "Was it? Anyway, I was the caretaker for the first decapitation, and I was the one who found her. It's on a completely different level from just saying one went missing. Her head was gone, you know. I came in the morning, went into the wire mesh to feed them as usual, and there was one huddled up in the back not moving, right? When I got close and poked it, going, *'Wake up!'*, it didn't have a head. We were fifth graders. It was the stuff of trauma." "So that was a rabbit named Yuki?" When I chimed in, the two of them nodded. That definitely sounded like it would be traumatizing. Imagining the headless white body of the rabbit lying there in my mind gave me goosebumps. "They were all white rabbits, right? How can you tell which one was which?" Another second-year senior chimed in from the side. At that, both of them reacted in unison to object. "You've never been a rabbit caretaker, have you? Each one had slightly different faces. Some were a little fat, and some, like Lulu, had weirdly shaped ears." "I remembered all of them, too. I could match every rabbit's face to its name," Kawamura said, picking up where Komatsu left off. "Would you mind telling me a bit more in detail?" Curious about the decapitation incidents and Lulu's ghost, I urged them to continue. To summarize, it apparently went like this: ◆ The first decapitation incident happened in the autumn of the fifth grade. A rabbit named Yuki had its head cut off during the night by someone who lifted the drop latch and entered the breeding coop, and its corpse was discovered. The finder was Kawamura, who was the caretaker at the time. It caused a stir, but the corpse was quickly disposed of by the school custodian, and no serious investigation to find the culprit was carried out. The second incident occurred a month later. A rabbit named Lara was killed with its head hunted off during the night, just like the first incident. The finder was a female student named Tanabe, who was the caretaker. Realizing the gravity of the situation, the school introduced lessons teaching the value of life while casting suspicion on the students. To the PTA, they appealed that staff patrols to counter suspicious individuals in the surrounding area had been increased, and asked parents to strengthen their watch over students walking to and from school. The lock on the breeding coop was also changed from a drop latch that anyone could open to a combination lock. Just when it seemed the situation would calm down with nothing further happening, a third incident occurred a month later. On a day when a male student named Matsuno was assigned as the caretaker, he came to the breeding coop to feed them in the morning and discovered the headless corpse of a rabbit named Lulu inside the wire mesh. The combination lock had been opened and merely hooked onto the door's hardware. Because the combination lock had been opened, suspicion fell on the caretakers and related staff who knew the code, but it was discovered that a student's prank had written the opening combination in small letters on the back of the hardware, and that matter fizzled out into ambiguity. What all the incidents had in common was that the day's rotating caretaker was always the first discoverer, the culprit was never found, and the heads of the victimized rabbits—Yuki, Lara, and Lulu—were all taken away. In the end, the incidents seemed to have ended at three, and no more rabbits decreased after that. However, about two or three weeks after the third incident, several students appeared claiming they had seen the ghost of Lulu, who should have been dead, causing a mild panic among the children. They were all vague eyewitness accounts of catching a glimpse in the grass from a distance, but coming after such a succession of abnormal incidents, the children were terrified. Even when scolded by the teachers, these rumors continued to circulate with exaggerated details for a while, but by the time they advanced to the sixth grade, they had eventually been forgotten. ◆ "Did Lulu's ghost have a head, I wonder?" Just as Kawamura and Komatsu's nostalgic talk reached a lull, a graduate student senior who had been listening intently spoke up. "A head, you say?" Komatsu, the one who claimed to have seen the ghost, furrowed his brows but answered immediately. "It did. I knew it was Lulu because of the shape of her ears." "What kind of shape?" "Her right ear was, well, flared out and looked huge. Also, the tip of that right ear was slightly split, almost like it was forked." "Hmm." Nodding at that question, the senior picked up some edamame from the large platter on the table. I watched his facial expression. It was clearly the face of someone who had just thought of something. He was my mentor in the occult path. He loved these ghost-story-like tales and usually collected them with glee, but this time, his demeanor was slightly different. "It's strange that after an incident like that, it didn't become a rumor about a headless rabbit's ghost." His tone carried some implication. Sensing this, Komatsu asked, "What do you mean?" "Well, kids love those kinds of rumors, don't they? A ghost of a headless rabbit sounds like a textbook story." "That's why I'm saying it wasn't a rumor; I actually saw it." The mentor tapped the table and tried to placate Komatsu, who was arguing passionately. "Now, now. I'm not saying you're lying. A few other kids saw it, too, didn't they? Wasn't there anyone talking about a headless rabbit?" "There wasn't," Komatsu replied. Then Kawamura chimed in, "Actually, I heard rumors about a headless rabbit ghost, too." "That must've been after we became sixth-graders. People who hadn't even seen it were just getting carried away and saying things." After hearing Komatsu's objection, the mentor slowly nodded. "Considering how rumors spread, it seems the very first sighting was the truth. The fact that an appearance fitting the causality of the incident—being headless—only started appearing in rumors in the latter half suggests that the eyewitness accounts from the first half weren't a narrative of causality, but rather something matter-of-fact, like the result of observation." Everyone present listening to the mentor's words wore a bewildered look, as if bewitched. "Was that elementary school in the southern part of the city?" the mentor asked. "Yeah, it was." "At the time of the first decapitation incident, the person who first discovered the corpse of the rabbit named Yuki was Kawamura-kun, right?" "Yes. That's right." "Even though it didn't have a head, how did you know it was Yuki's corpse?" Prompted by the mentor, Kawamura made a thoughtful gesture. "That's... well, I could tell all the rabbits apart, so I noticed Yuki was missing..." "So you didn't know it was Yuki by looking at the corpse itself?" "Well, yeah. I'm pretty sure only one of them was fat, but the others had pretty similar builds." "In other words, you distinguished them by their faces?" "And their ears, too. A lot of them had slightly cut ears because they often fought with each other." "Hmph. You couldn't tell if it was Yuki right away because the head was gone, but since all the other rabbits were present, you figured out through process of elimination that the one killed was Yuki. I see. Then what about the second incident... what was it, Lara? How was it during Lara's time?" "Uhm, if I recall correctly, Tanabe, the caretaker for that day, was making a fuss from the morning that Lara had been killed, and when we went to the breeding coop, sure enough, every single rabbit except Lara was there." "Lara wasn't that one fat rabbit either, was she?" "The fat one was named Sunny or something. That one was safe until the very end." "Which means you figured out it was Lara that time by process of elimination, too." The mentor nodded to himself, looking satisfied. "And the third incident?" "It was the same. Matsuno, the caretaker for that day, came to feed them in the morning and found a headless corpse rolling around, and he was screaming half-crazed that Lulu had been killed." "Also by process of elimination?" "Yes," Komatsu nodded this time. "I rushed over from the morning too, but Lulu's ears were big and stood out, so the moment I couldn't see those ears inside the coop, I knew—*Ah, Lulu got hit.*" "Hmm." The mentor nodded heavily, flatly ignored the attention gathering on him, and bit into the fried chicken on the plate in front of him. Everyone watched him chew, but a strange atmosphere hung in the air. We had just heard a story we'd already been told, explained in greater detail, but nobody knew what the point of that exchange was. "Hey," I tugged at the mentor's sleeve from the seat next to him. "What?" "What do you mean, *what*? What's the deal with you? Process of elimination, this and that—what are you getting at?" When I pressed him in a low voice, the mentor wiped his mouth with an oshibori wet towel and said in a breezy tone: "I'm saying Lulu wasn't killed, obviously." "Huh?" Voices with a similar ring escaped from several mouths around the table. "It's a simple story. During the first decapitation incident, the culprit threw a headless rabbit carcass they had prepared beforehand into the breeding coop. Then they snatched Yuki. Kawamura-kun noticed Yuki was missing and made a fuss that Yuki had been killed. Then, in the second incident, they put the carcass of Yuki—whose head had been cut off right before—into the breeding coop and snatched Lara. Then Tanabe, the caretaker, made a fuss that Lara was killed. The third time was the same: they cut off the head of Lara, whom they had snatched previously, threw her into the breeding coop, and snatched Lulu instead." In front of us all, dumbfounded, the mentor spoke calmly, in a tone as if he had actually witnessed it. "The incidents stopped right after that, so Lulu never died, and what people made a fuss about as a ghost was just seeing the living Lulu." Saying this as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, the mentor popped an edamame into his mouth and tilted his beer mug. "Wait a minute. Something like that..." Komatsu and Kawamura were both left speechless. Out of the corner of our eyes, a few drunk people laughed, looking at each other and saying, "I don't get it." "Since there was no head, you guys had no choice but to figure out which rabbit was killed by process of elimination, right? That weakness was used against you." At that, Komatsu leaned forward as if realizing something. "Then—then, during the first Yuki incident, the headless rabbit carcass prepared beforehand was..." "Right. You said it yourself, didn't you? The whole thing started when Marie was stolen." "The first headless corpse was Marie's?!" The mentor nodded with a look of boredom and said, "Probably." "How can you tell something like a switcheroo happened?" Kawamura pressed on, still unconvinced. At that, the mentor suddenly patted the shoulder of a fellow student who had been slumped over the table across from him, fast asleep. "Wake up!" *Ngh?* The tapped man lifted his head, drooling. Staring at that idiotic face, the mentor continued his story. "During the first incident, when Kawamura-kun went into the breeding coop to feed the rabbits in the morning, you said you did the same thing, right? *'Wake up!'*" Looking suspicious, Kawamura said, "Yeah, but..." "The fact that you said something like that and didn't realize its head had been cut off until you got close and poked the huddled body..." The mentor said, pointing at the trail of drool left on the table. "There was no blood splattered everywhere, was there." *Ah.* That single murmur escaped from Kawamura's lips. "Even though its head was cut off, almost no blood came out. That means the crime scene of the decapitation wasn't that breeding coop, and probably not even inside the school. If the head was cut off somewhere else and that corpse was brought into the breeding coop, the one killed didn't have to be a rabbit from that breeding coop. For example, a rabbit named Marie, who was stolen from the coop a month before and secretly kept at home." Well, that's just in the realm of speculation, though. Grinning, the mentor turned his attention back to the dumbfounded Komatsu. "After that, they just repeated the process of killing the rabbit they had snatched and kept from the previous incident right before the next crime, and swapping it with the next rabbit. And then, during the third incident, the rabbit they snatched—Lulu—probably got away or something, was seen by the students, a rumor of a ghost started, and the culprit stopped right there." It must have been something like that. Everyone stared at the mentor, who wrapped it up with those words, as if they were looking at something creepy. ◆ After the drinking party broke up, I caught the mentor outside and asked him. "Midway through, you asked if it was an elementary school in the southern part of the city, didn't you?" "Ah. Yeah, I did." "Did you know about it?" I was suspicious. He had proudly laid out his deduction, but there was a possibility he had known the details of that incident from the very beginning. Did he know everything all along, only to explain it in a roundabout way and present the deduction as if it were his own achievement? That's what I thought. However, the mentor just gave an evasive laugh. "I didn't know." There was no way I could take those words at face value. In fact, there was even a chance he was the real culprit. When I boldly threw those words at him, the mentor scoffed through his nose. "I was still living out of the prefecture back then. I'm not from around here, you know." After mocking me with that, he suddenly lowered his voice. "Down in the south... I saw it once." His demeanor looked so serious that even I lowered my voice. "You saw what?" "How many years ago was it? I was wandering around that area, and I saw it by the side of the road. Let's see, appearance-wise, he was probably around forty. Dressed neatly, just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill middle-aged guy. But you know, trailing closely behind the guy as he walked were swarms of rabbit heads. Of course, they weren't of this world. I was probably the only one who could see them. A hundred, two hundred—that many rabbit heads, just the heads, were crawling and following right behind the man as he walked. And the guy didn't notice at all. Even now, thinking about it gives me the creeps." Hearing that, I imagined it and almost threw up the beer I'd crammed into my stomach. "When I heard about a rabbit ghost, I wondered if it was that." The mentor whispered in a low voice. "If that guy I saw was the culprit, then rumors of a headless rabbit ghost appearing must have been some kind of misidentification or something." "If the head's ghost is over there, and the body's ghost appears in a different place, I find that a lot scarier, honestly." With that, he grinned. (End)
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