Ichijō's house is in Tokyo.
From the outside, it looks like an ordinary house, not a big one, not much more than a bit of dilapidation, the yard is overgrown with weeds, and it has the potential to be a haunted house.
It looks like no one has been inside for at least eight or nine years.
Ichijō Mirai opens the car door, gets out, pauses for a few seconds in front of the haunted house door, and fumbles with the key to open it.
The lock cylinder is a bit rusty and clogged, and it takes him some effort to open the door.
Onidzuka Hachizo, who had sent Ichijō Mirai to the car, listened to the trivial sound of unlocking, and, recognizing that there was something wrong with the lock, cleared his throat uncomfortably and said, "It's been a long time since anyone disturbed them, except for at the beginning."
"When you first came to the academy, some of the police wanted to re-examine the scene again, but..."
He paused, "There weren't many traces left,"
"Plus there were objections, and since you were so good in 'Disguised Criminal', there were no more requests for a re-examination."
Ichijō Mirai pushed the door open with his hand, and while idly surveying the house, he slightly tilted his head and pointed his ear in Onidzuka Hachizo's direction, signaling that he was listening.
It was a one-story house, the overall color was white, and some of the weeds were flowers, probably from the original greenery in the yard, so it was a reflection of the style of this place when it wasn't deserted.
There was an indistinct sense of familiarity that slowly rose up like sugar in boiling water.
But it didn't bother Ichijō Mirai, who didn't feel any melancholy or anything like that, just a light familiarity, like riding the streetcar to work, seeing the street outside in a flash, and realizing with a second thought that he'd been in the neighborhood before, and then nothing more.
He pulled out the key and casually said to Onidzuka Hachizo, "Is that so? I see."
Onidzuka Hachizo stopped talking and watched quietly as Ichijō Mirai stopped in the doorway to survey the villa, and after a moment said, "Go inside, I'll wait for you outside."
Ichijō Mirai pushed the door.
There was no path in the yard anymore, it was full of lush weeds, so he had to step on the plants and walk in a straight line to the door of the house, using the key to open the door again.
This time it was a little more difficult than opening the front door.
Not only the lock, but also the door was a little low on blood, and the moment he opened it, Ichijō Mirai only pushed it gently, and heard an inaudible 'creak', as if his fingernails were scraping against his ears against a blackboard.
The wind gushed out, bringing out the smell of the interior of the house with it.
Ichijō Mirai took a whiff, realized it wasn't too bad, and quickly found the reason: the windows were open.
The windows in the living room were wide open, and it looked like they had been left open for so many years that the area around them had been repeatedly soaked with snow and rain.
But the most obvious sign was the wind.
The wind blew into the house through the window and brought dust from the yard, so the whole living room was almost covered with dust, and some grasses grew in the corners.
When Onidzuka Hachizo says 'there were few traces of the scene,' he means literally few. The room was empty, and the living room had no furniture, not even a sofa or a coffee table, but only dust, as if it were an empty warehouse.
To the side of the living room was the kitchen, the sink, faucet and fixed closet remained, but everything else was gone.
The familiarity was gone.
Everything here was strange.
Ichijō Mirai looked around, closed the door, and stepped into the kitchen. Standing at the sink, he looked back at the doorway, and finally found the familiarity of the kitchen and living room from the CG.
He swept over the thick layer of dust on the ground, and his own footprints, some speechless: how than the player is also a player ah...
If the police had removed everything from the scene, it would have been more than a player, at least Ichijō Mirai didn't try to take the furniture and appliances with him when he first broke into the house to raid it.
It's like locusts.
I guess the police have their reasons...
Ichijō Mirai scanned his footprints again, recalling the CG footage, and swept the sole of his shoe across the floor, making a white line in the thick dust.
It was a human-shaped line used to mark the location of the body at the murder scene.
This was the place where 'Officer Ichijō' had died.
From the piece of white line that was exposed a bit, Ichijō Mirai roughly deduced what the white line looked like as a whole and what the body looked like. After looking at it for a few moments, he stepped out of the kitchen, re-entered the living room, and surveyed the layout of the room.
The house was a three-room, one-bath layout, but the later builders had changed it, one of the rooms had been converted into a study and a workshop, the bookshelves and desks inside had disappeared, and only the indentations on the floor under the dust showed that there had once been a heavy object standing there.
Near the door are two rows of scratches that look like they were made to measure a child's height, the same kind of scratches found in the living room.
Dust filled the scratches, restoring the wall as if it were an artifact, and it was only when Ichijō Mirai reached out and wiped them away that he saw the marks.
Just by looking at the marks, he was able to deduce without thinking that the adults in this family loved their children, and would have been concerned about their growth, keeping track of their heights, and drawing a line next to it that was slightly taller, with a difference of one centimeter or less in 'expected growth'.
By drawing this line, the joy of growth, which can only be enjoyed with every centimeter of height, becomes enjoyable with every half-centimeter of growth, or less.
If a child grows a little taller than his or her real height and reaches the expected height line, they may pick up the child with joy, or touch his or her head with a big smile on their face, praise him or her with all kinds of happy words, record his or her real height, and then draw the expected height line to wait for the next time they are happy.
After a few more moments, Ichijō Mirai exited the study, closing the door behind him and entering the second room.
The second room was the master bedroom of the family's owner, and it was large, with the same imprint on the floor, and above the large rectangular imprint, there was an imprint on the wall.
The wall imprint is square, and it appears that a painting or photograph may have been hung there at one time.
Ichijō Mirai assumed it was a wedding picture.
He looked at it for a few moments, but found no trace of the owner except dust and furniture, so he exited again.
The third room was the bedroom.
The traces of furniture on the floor of the bedroom included a rectangular bed, a desk and a bookshelf.
There are also traces of the owner's graffiti.
Starting from the right hand side of Ichijō Mirai's door to the window with the wide desk, there are traces of graffiti, large and small, almost halfway around the room.
The graffiti looks childish, but not so childish, because it's a variety of guns, knives, daggers, threads, corpses, and bits and pieces like fingerprints.
The owner of the graffiti was the child of a police officer.
The graffiti was lined up in two rows, halfway around the room.
The bottom line is a bit clumsy, ending well by the door, starting at the window, even the lines are jerky.
The top line is a clean line from start to finish.
Occasionally, the scribbler on the top row cheats for the scribbler on the bottom row by helping to draw the outlines of some of the more difficult patterns.
The graffiti is a little low.
Ichijō Mirai stood along the wall, his hand not raised but hanging at his side, and wiped his fingers across the wall, wiping the top two lines of graffiti out of the dust.
He stood by the window and muttered to himself, "I didn't realize that a police officer who looks so good and brilliant, admired by millions, and a man of honor, is actually an idiot at drawing."
The top line of graffiti is by Ichijō Mirai.
The bottom line of graffiti was drawn by 'Officer Ichijō'.