The victim's name was Midori Yanagimoto. The body was discovered by Midori Henmi, a friend of the deceased. Technically, Henmi was not the first person to find the body. After Sugioka fled from the scene, eleven persons passed by Yanagimoto, whose neck was foaming with blood, but all pretended not to notice her. And they had to have noticed her. The road where she was lying was barely wide enough to accommodate two passenger cars placed side by side.

     The middle-aged victim's frilly white dress was stained a deep red. The ocherous contents of a crushed curry-filled roll stuck to the pavement like so much excrement. Clams that had spilled from her shopping bag, baked by a blistering sun that shone during a lull in the early summer rain, had quickly begun to give off the unmistakable stench of something rotting.

     Indeed, all eleven passersby saw Yanagimoto, but they immediately averted their eyes and told themselves to forget what they had seen. One young couple even said, "Pretend like you didn't see anything" when their small child pointed at Yanagimoto and said, "A lady is on the ground." They added, "She's just playing by herself. Don't go near her." A cram school student saw Yanagimoto and instinctively thought about helping her or maybe calling the police, but since he was wearing a white shirt and had a date later, he decided to keep walking, only murmuring, "Sorry." He thought to himself, "My shirt will get dirty...and there was a turd or something right next to her." Yanagimoto's heart had stopped beating 50 seconds after Sugioka slashed her throat, so going to her rescue or calling the police was not going to save her life. Nevertheless, the fact that the body was not reported to the police sooner was a major blow to the deceased's dignity.

Copyright (C) 1998-2010 Jeffrey G. Stocker