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Mushitaro gazed down, tears streaking his face. He wasn't quite sure when he had begun weeping, but he was pretty sure that it had been while his hands were strangling the body that was currently at his feet. A body of a man who had been alive mere minutes ago.
A man who had been Mushitaro’s friend.
Whatever, the raven thought, ignoring his crushing guilt, he asked me to do this. Asked . This is his fault.
His fault. Mushitaro clung to the thought like a dying man grasps for life.
Yokomizo was dead. Gone. Expelled from life. And at the hands of someone he trusted.
The gifted sighed, turning his back on the corpse.
"You always did want to go out in a dramatic way," he murmured to the body. It lay there, unnaturally still.
If Mushitaro hadn't done it, the cancer would have.
Hands round the curly haired mans throat. Yokomizo thanking him as Mushitaros tears drip-drip-dripped onto the manuscript.
This way was better. This way, the author got what he wanted.
Pulse fades to a stutter, gasps escape the author, blood bubbles up past his lips as he silently thanks his weeping friend.
The cursed book was complete, it was the ultimate murder story. It's only imperfection was the teardrops smudging the ink on the last page.
Could he even be called human after this?
No one had done anything like this before. It was a sacrifice only someone truly passionate would make for their art. Dying in a morbid parallel.
The books were worthless, Mushitaro had always thought. It made no sense to die for something as juvenile as a mystery book.
But, Mushitaro had strangled his lover friend for these books. He had killed him because of these books the dead man had been so obsessed with.
The only thing he had left to do was to cover his tracks.
With a murmur, the Perfect Crime sprung into action. Purple flame engulfed Mushitaro's body, and as he directed it, Yokomizo’s corpse as well.
The purple flame-creatures devoured the fingerprints, the DNA, the evidence, everything from the scene. There would be no clues left to trace the crime back to Mushitaro. No clues left to link the terrible act to the raven.
It’s what he wanted, Oguri, Mushitaro reminded himself, what he wanted.
All this, all this trouble, all for one author's stupid obsession with the ultimate mystery.
Yokomizo had only wanted one thing. Not money. Not fame. No, Yokomizo had wanted remembrance. And, Mushitaro thought with a bitter smile, he had gotten it. He would be remembered forevermore as the man who had been willing to be murdered for his goal.