His answer was all that she needed to shrug the issue off and continue forward with their work. She was well aware that her fame brought with it a certain amount of difficulty when working cases now, but generally it did not hinder them enough to cut into their success rate, of course. The only reason she had brought it up in the first place had been because the area they found themselves in for the case was far from the city. And while it still had a decent population and some tourism, it still lacked the amount of hustle and bustle of where they generally operated. Put simply: they stuck out a lot more.
But if Neuro wasn’t worried about it, then it was easy for Yako to let it drop as well. While she had never wanted any fame and had even loathed all of the attention put on her for a while ( well, maybe still did sometimes ), she had learned to adapt. The stares and whispers and occasional sounds of people using their phones to take a picture had quickly become nothing but white noise to her over the years. She was much more interested in what they would dig up from asking around about the victim.
And, as expected, it seemed that so far her partner’s thoughts were right on the money. They spoke to many people on the way to the police station, and very few seemed to have any sort of positive opinion of him. Certainly, not all of them were overwhelmingly negative, either; there were quite a lot of people that seemed very neutral about him. But when faced with emotions regarding him that weren’t neutral, they were almost always negative. He had very few, if any friends and a decent sized group that seemed to think very poorly of him. Just like both she and likely Neuro had been expecting.
Though, there were a few comments that stuck out in her mind for some reason that she couldn’t quite place. And no matter how she tried to save contemplating them for later, they continued to nag at her even as they entered the police station. “Such a poor reputation, it’s no wonder he committed suicide. I heard even when he tried to see a professional, they couldn’t do anything for him,” one woman they’d talked to had recounted. It easily could be chalked up to gossip running wild–it was very unlikely they’d know any details of the treatment a therapist gave their patient. Yet, despite that, it still struck her as odd, and tugged at her mind even as they made their way back out with the case files and address from the police.
Only when the demon at her side spoke did she manage to banish the nagging, and put her attention somewhere else. Unfortunately, it wasn’t at all a brighter topic for her to put her focus on.
❝–Well… yes,❞ Yako admitted with a sigh as she slipped a hand up to tuck some hair behind her ear. ❝It is. Japan’s suicide rate is fairly high compared to many other countries. And it’s been our leading cause of death for men in their twenties to early forties for some years now.❞ She paused for a moment, glancing up at him as they walked before looking straight ahead again to continue. ❝And Aokigahara… it’s one of the more “popular” places to go to do so. It’s become such a problem that they’ve started posting signs leading into the forest telling people to seek help rather than take their life.
❝There’s often search parties held by both police and volunteers to comb through the forest for victims who either succeeded for failed in their attempts. And the government even stopped publishing how many suicides take place in it each year in an attempt to stop the association between the forest and death. That’s probably why… no one even gave it a second thought.❞
The young “detective’s” steps fell in line with the demons as they walked, his arms folded behind his back as he contemplated her assertions. So, this particular forest was popular enough in terms of its association with suicide that one could simply walk into its copse and never emerge again with no questions asked. Admittedly, it would prove a rather convenient cover for a murder, given such a thing appeared to be true. What more efficient way to do away with someone than to swing them from a tree in the depths of a place whose very namesake was synonymous with suicide? It was a seamless method of covering one’s tracks, and rather clever if the demon had to say -- he would hardly be surprised if this was the first murder to take place in the forest and be written off as a suicide without a second thought.
❝ -- Hm. I have to admit, suicide is something that as a demon, I simply cannot comprehend. My kind are driven by the sole instinct to survive and persevere; to take one’s own life would go against the very nature of our being. It is difficult for me to understand how your puny human brains work sometimes. ❞
He admitted as the police station fell out of view behind them, their steps steadily closing the distance to the victim’s home in hopes of speaking with his widow. A local blew past them on a bicycle without sparing the odd pair a glance, the quiet whir of its wheels fading as it drew further away from them.
❝ -- but even if I could understand it, it wouldn’t change the fact that this case positively reeks of a mystery. I can assure you this was no simple suicide. All that remains is to determine the culprit, motive and method of the crime ...and for me to devour it whole. ❞
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