Koji Suzuki - Edge

Maezono went on to propose a project spanning six months to a year, possibly longer. Saeko would explore various missing persons incidents, beginning with a detailed investigative report on the disappearance of the Fujimura family from their home near Takato.

Saeko went home that day without explicitly committing to the project, but she took the file home. It mainly contained clippings from previous articles about the incident. There were no new leads. Saeko would need to begin by acquiring accurate information on every aspect of the case.

She needed to know when, where, and how the Fujimura family had disappeared, who the members of the family were, their ages and occupations, what problems they did and didn’t have, and whether or not there was any discord within the family. When Saeko had an almost complete understanding of the circumstances, she came up with a few theories, which she tested through trial and error.

The number of missing persons cases in Japan each year was close to 100,000, but roughly one half to two thirds of those people eventually came home of their own accord. The remaining 30,000 or so remained missing, but the majority of these owed large sums of money and were probably fleeing their debtors. The number of cases in which the reason for the disappearance remained mysterious was approximately 10,000.

When a person ran away to wipe the ledger clean and make a fresh start, the disappearance could be categorized as voluntary. But when a person was abducted or coerced in some way, in the worst-case scenarios they often wound up murdered. Taking into account recent examples, there was even the possibility of involvement of religious cults or the intelligence agency of a despotic nation.

If Saeko were to write this article, she would focus on investigating the cause of the family’s disappearance. The police had determined that there was no sign of criminal activity. After searching the nearby mountains, rivers, lakes, and marshes, the investigation was dropped. The only further inquiries were conducted by various media outlets and freelance reporters. Despite detailed investigations by all of these parties, none of them had made any headway towards solving the case. The family had no debt, and none of its members had any serious problems. Their neighbors all testified that they couldn’t imagine anyone having any sort of grudge against the Fujimura family. Needless to say, none of the neighbors had any bad blood with the Fujimuras. As if to corroborate those statements, there was no sign of a struggle in the house, and Luminol tests revealed no traces of blood in the residence.

Based on these reports, Saeko didn’t have the slightest clue why the Fujimuras had disappeared. How could it be? she wondered. By the time Saeko had read through every page of the dossier, she was incredulous. I must be overlooking something , she concluded. There was no way a family of four could simply vanish overnight for no reason whatsoever.

Once, in elementary school, Saeko had read a book about the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries. One of the stories was about the Marie Celeste incident, a bizarre group disappearance that took place in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. The incident was presented as a true story reported by sailors aboard another vessel that had discovered the abandoned ship.

On December 4, 1872, on a voyage across the Atlantic, the Dei Gratia brigantine discovered the Marie Celeste seemingly adrift at sea. The seamen’s code of ethics required that they assist fellow seamen in peril, so they signaled the Marie Celeste but received no response. They drew alongside the vessel, and the captain of the Dei Gratia and several of his men boarded the Marie Celeste , only to find it abandoned. The ship was unmanned, its cargo intact but its crew missing.

Further investigation of the vessel only uncovered more mysteries as if to prove the Marie Celeste a true ghost ship.

The Marie Celeste had set sail from New York with a crew of nine on November 7th and was discovered adrift on the morning of December 4th. The description of its condition when discovered was as follows:

The captain’s breakfast was found on the table in his quarters, half eaten. There was bread and coffee, and even a baby’s milk pot on a corner of the table. The captain’s logbook was found abandoned nearby, with the words “December 4th, my wife, Marie” inscribed in a scrawling hand.

There was a pot over the fire in the kitchen, and in the crew’s quarters a roasted chicken stew had been left unfinished.

In the ship’s washroom, there was evidence that someone had been shaving, and in the next cabin over they found a knife with blood on it.

The ship’s cargo was found untouched, so there was no possibility of a pirate attack. The ship was undamaged, and there were no indications that the crew had deliberately fled the ship due to the outbreak of a contagious disease or similar reason. Food and water remained in abundance, and the lifeboat was still tethered securely to the deck.

What on earth had happened to the crew? To this day, that question remained unanswered.

The story had sent chills up Saeko’s spine when she’d read it as a child. It was the first incident that always came to mind whenever she heard of a group disappearance.

But at the age of thirty-five, Saeko no longer harbored a child’s innocent acceptance of the world’s mysteries. She was sure there was an explanation, and she was determined to figure it out through rational analysis. The cause of the crew’s disappearance could be surprisingly mundane.

For example, perhaps one of the sailors had fallen overboard during breakfast. The other members might have jumped in to save him, one after another, until none remained. Perhaps it was as simple as that. But with all of the relevant parties gone, the incident remained a mystery.

In investigating the Fujimura family’s disappearance, Saeko resolved to ignore outlandish possibilities and focus on the simplest possible scenarios. She took out a memo pad and drew a chart, dividing the page into two main categories, voluntary causes and coercive causes such as abduction. The former category included fleeing from debtors or group suicide. There was also the possibility that the entire family had fallen into a river or lake and drowned.

For the latter category to apply, there had to be some sort of impetus for the abduction. Compared to cases in the former category, this type of incident was likely to be fairly obvious. It would require meticulous planning and professional involvement to abduct a family of four without leaving any discernible traces.

It just doesn’t seem possible , she concluded.

Saeko decided to scratch abduction off her list for the time being. That left the possibility that the family had disappeared either by their collective will or by the will of one of the family members. Perhaps there had been an accident. To involve the entire family required it to be a car accident. But other investigators had already determined that the Fujimuras’ car was parked in their garage even now.

How else could all four of them disappear simultaneously? Back to the basics. The most important thing to consider was the Fujimuras’ personal affairs. Saeko would need to thoroughly investigate any and all of their relationships. A lot of reporters had already looked into the matter, but Saeko was sure they had missed something.

Having determined her general course of action, she discussed the matter in detail with Kikuchi, the editor assigned to the project. She made two week-long visits to the Fujimuras’ neighborhood and put together a thirty-page article.

But even after all of that, Saeko was unable to crack the case. She still didn’t know what had happened to the Fujimuras. If they had been the victims of a crime, there was no solid evidence as to who had committed it.