OVERVIEW OF THE KAGEYA INCIDENT

Official TMPD Report

Taitō Ward – Nihonzutsumi Police Box

By Chief Inspector Seiji Takeda– 18/04/200X

CHRONOLOGY OF THE EVENTS

On April 4, 200X, at 2-chōme-26-14 Kiyokawa, in Taitō City, Tokyo, a fire started between 11.10pm and 11.20 pm. The firefighters of Nihonzutsumi Fire Department were called at 11.23 pm by Yuki Ogawa, a retiree living with her husband Kenzō Ogawa at 2-chōme-27-11. Listening to the advice of Captain Kaito Atsuhi she proceeded to call Nihonzutsumi Police Box at 11.29 pm.

The police arrived at the scene at 11.31 pm. The firefighters had managed to stop the spread of the fire to the rest of block 26 but were still struggling with extinguishing the fire from house 14.

There was no sign of potential residents having escaped except for a young boy in the street claiming for it to be his house. The child was taken by some of our officers to the police station and the social services were called as no legal guardian of his could be contacted.

At 11.37 pm, once part of the flames had been dealt with, firefighters went into the house to look for the boy’s parents. They found a woman collapsed in the living room, and a man in the same state in a room upstairs. Both were still and unmoving and had to be carried outside of the house. They were soon revealed to be already dead.

The fire was efficiently put out around 2 am on April 5 and the investigation of the house started at 5 am on the same day.

INVESTIGATION OF 2-CHŌME-26-14

The house was solely registered as belonging to Hidemitsu Kageya, with no mention of other residents. It is the smallest house of the block and simply contains a kitchen and a living room on the first floor as well as two rooms on the second one with one bathroom.

Traces of gasoline were found all over the house, indicating that this fire was not an accident but an intentional arson.

The corpse of Kageya was found in one of the rooms where he appears to have been knocked unconscious using an empty vodka bottle. The autopsy revealed that he died of asphyxia caused by the fire, his breathing capacities already severely incapacitated by his drunken state (1g/L in his blood). Next to him was a can of gasoline.

The second corpse remains however unidentified. Her face had been violently beaten to a degree that rendered any facial recognition extremely difficult and uncertain. No document could be found with her potential identity and, from the neighbours to the landlord, no one had ever seen that woman or knew her name. However numerous feminine clothes have been found in the second room, all matching her body proportions, which leads us to believe the woman has been living in this house for a certain amount of time.

As for her actual death, it appears not to be a consequence of the fire but of internal hemorrhage following the hits she was subjected to. Taking into account Kageya’s bloody and bruised fists it appears clear that Kageya beat her to death.

Regarding the cause of the fire, the investigation can only rely on the testimony of the boy found at the scene, the only witness of whatever enfolded at 2-chōme-26-14.

…

In the darkness of his tiny office, Inspector Takeda passes a hand on his tired face, his bloodshot eyes reading the lines he’s just typed. He sighs heavily, fighting the desire to get back home and simply drown himself in the forgetfulness of sleep. This case had been a nasty one. Not difficult to solve, to say the least. Takeda had seen worse in his almost forty years in the force. Still, he felt empty and couldn’t wait for retirement.

One grows numb to the sight of misery. Of drunken fathers, of abusive parents, of the endless cycle of poverty, crime and violence. Takeda had naively thought he could make a difference, well, he had been wrong. He snickers cynically. His job certainly doesn’t help, he knows that now.

His eyes fall to the scattered papers on his messy desk. On top of it lies the Kageya boy’s profile and his testimony. The picture has been taken by one of his men during the investigation. Not a single photo of him had been found anywhere in his home. Or whatever is left of it. The more he stares at it, the more this kid gives him the creeps. His light green hair is dirty and messy and his cheekbones are visible under his pale and sickly skin. The doctors estimate his age to be around 10 years old but he somehow looks both 5 and 50. And his eyes … his eyes are the worst part. They are of a freezing green, focused, staring unabashedly straight ahead, outside of the confines of the picture and into Takeda himself. The thought makes him shiver. There is something frightening about him and his almost threatening aura.

And yet, Takeda can only focus on his oh so clear vulnerability. He is just a child, coming out of hell, with no one by his side. The Inspector knows too well what will happen if he follows his duty. If he writes the truth in his report.

Well, truth is a big word. Takeda prays he’s wrong. But he has a strong hunch. A simple, terrible one.

The fire had burned so bright. The entire neighbourhood saw it and went in the street to witness the destruction of this tiny house, not far from Tamahime Park.

The firefighters had come quickly, the police not far behind. Then he noticed him. A child standing there on the other side of the street, his eyes transfixed by the flames.

No one seemed to have spotted him. After a few words with the firefighters in action, he approached this strange boy, asking him what the hell he thought he was doing here.

“Go back home kiddo, this isn’t a show.”

The boy didn’t flinch in the slightest. There was no fear of authority or of the growing fire in his eyes. Only an endless and cold void. And even a strange sort of curiosity, observing intently the man in front of him.

“But Mr. Policeman, my home is burning right now,” he nonchalantly answered.

Takeda’s heart skipped a beat. That’s when he saw two things. First, something that he hadn’t noticed right away in the dark night, bruises. Violet stains on his young face and blood on the corner of his lips. A tooth or two seemed to be broken.

Second, a matchbox. Right there, settled between his two hands. He wasn’t even hiding it. The boy’s eyes stayed on him and he seemed unbothered to have this incriminating evidence discovered. He calmly spoke up.

“I took it from Dad but it was too late. He had already started the fire.”

Takeda has hated his job on multiple occasions. It started with the delusions in his youth, then it morphed into a resigned frustration as he grew older. He’s now faced with a choice. Logic or emotion.

The Inspector closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He already knows what he’s going to do.

…

INVESTIGATION OF THE KAGEYA HOUSEHOLD

Age 41, Kageya worked at the convenience store 11-Seven on 4-chōme-15, Senzoku in Taitō. His koseki registers him as unmarried and without any descendance. However, his papers have been found out to be fraudulent, meaning that his real identity probably isn’t that of Hidemitsu Kageya.

Besides, he bears an uncanny resemblance with Yuujin Morimoto, a native of Kabuki-chō who had strong ties to the criminal underworld in the 80s until he suddenly disappeared around 1993-1994.  The reasons behind him abandoning his former life are unknown.

No matter who Kageya secretly was or not, his current lifestyle did awaken the suspicion of his neighbours. He was a silent and antipathetic man, unwilling to talk to anyone who approached him. Kageya was thought to be living alone, something that the facts of the case clearly contradict.

As previously stated, we still do not know the identity of the woman found at 2-chōme-26-14 due to her extremely damaged face, the lack of official identification and the absence of her fingerprints in the TMPD’s database. DNA tests are still ongoing to find possible matches across Japan and try to get in contact with relatives that would know her identity.

The DNA tests conducted have confirmed that the boy central to this case is indeed the son of Kageya and the unnamed woman. However, no official documents could be found mentioning the boy in question and he appears to have no civil existence. It seems his parents never declared him and kept his existence a secret. According to him, he was never given a name. He will then be referred to as “Young Kageya”.

The following testimony, led by Inspector Takeda, gives us more details about this family’s life and the events of April 4.

YOUNG KAGEYA’S TESTIMONY

TAKEDA: Good morning, I hope you’re doing better.

YOUNG KAGEYA: Good morning Sir.

TAKEDA: I know last night was extremely intense for you, you must be very shaken. But I’m going to need you to answer some of my questions about the events of yesterday. It’s very important that the police understand what happened. Is that ok with you?

YOUNG KAGEYA: Yes Sir.

TAKEDA: Good. Could you start by giving me your name? The social workers taking care of you didn’t get a clear answer.

YOUNG KAGEYA: But I told them the truth Sir. I don’t have one.

TAKEDA: What do you mean you don’t have one? Everyone has a name.

YOUNG KAGEYA: I know most people do, but I don’t. If I have one no one has ever told me what it was.

TAKEDA: Not even your parents?

YOUNG KAGEYA: They’re the ones who don’t want me to have a name. Well, Dad doesn’t. I think Mom would have liked to call me by a real name. But Dad forbade it. He said if I had a name then it’d be easier to find me. And I’d be in danger. So he never gave me a name. Mom would call me “sunshine” and her “ray of light” but Dad got mad whenever that happened. And Mom doesn’t like it when he gets mad, so she only does it when it’s just the two of us.

TAKEDA: About your mother, could you tell us her name? We’ve been struggling to find out.

YOUNG KAGEYA: Mmh, I don’t know if Mom has a name. Maybe she used to have one but when I ask her she simply says: “It’s not important anymore”. Dad never calls her by any name. Or not any real one. When he’s in a good mood, he calls her “love”, “honey” or stuff like that. When he’s in a bad mood, he calls her mean stuff like “bitch” or “useless slut”.

TAKEDA: … Your father wasn’t a nice man, was he?

YOUNG KAGEYA: No. But I don’t know if nice people are better.

TAKEDA: What do you mean by that?

YOUNG KAGEYA: Because Mom is nice. And now she’s dead. Her being nice never helped anyone. She never fights back when Dad hits me or her. She just cries and apologizes. She never protected me. She was too weak for that. Too weak in the head. I tried to protect her. I tried to hit back but I’m too weak physically. That’s not my fault. But that’s her fault if she’s too nice to defend us.

TAKEDA: Did you ever seek out for help? What about school? Or people other than your parents?

YOUNG KAGEYA: I don’t go to the school and I don’t talk a lot to other people. Dad says going to school is like having a name: dangerous. It’d expose me to bad people. And if these bad people are worse than Dad … I’m not sure I wanna meet them.

TAKEDA: These bad people … who are they?

YOUNG KAGEYA: I don’t know. Dad doesn’t want to talk about them. But he’s scared. Oh, he’s terrified of them.

TAKEDA: Is that why your father never lets you out?

YOUNG KAGEYA: I think so.  But I do it anyway. Dad leaves during the day and sometimes at night to do I don’t know what. So I sneak out. I walk in Tokyo and I go as far as I can. But I never get lost! When I’m lucky, Dad isn’t back yet and I can just tell Mom everything I saw. I wish she would come with me. Maybe we could have left and never come back. But she’s too afraid of Dad. And afraid of the bad people that are out for us. She’s afraid of too many things. Sometimes I’m not so lucky and Dad sees me come back. Then he gets angry …

TAKEDA: … Is that what happened that night? Did he get very angry?

YOUNG KAGEYA: … Yes. He had come home drunk. He does that sometimes. When he does, Mom and I we just go hide in our room and we wait for him to pass out in his. But that night he reacted differently. That night he yelled that he wanted a family dinner. Mom was nervous. She broke a plate while preparing food and Dad snapped. He hit her. He often does but now he wouldn’t stop. And she wouldn’t do anything. “I’m sorry … I’m sorry… I’m sorry” and the sounds of his fists on her … I tried to stop him but it never works. … And it lasted … it lasted …

TAKEDA: Kageya …

YAOUNG KAGEYA: Don’t.

TAKEDA: Excuse me?

YOUNG KAGEYA: Don’t give me his name. Not having one is better than having his.

TAKEDA: … Alright. But you don’t have to continue right now if you don’t want to. I won’t force you.

YOUNG KAGEYA: … At some point Mom stopped moving and Dad stopped hitting. I understood right away. But I think he didn’t. He asked me to finish my plate and he got back to his. As if nothing had happened. I felt numb. There were no thoughts in my head. I just felt a cold nothing. I did what he asked without thinking. After dinner, he asked Mom to “get her shit together” and get up. She didn’t. And I saw fear on his face. Not the usual fear he had of the bad people. I don’t know the words. But it was as if he had realized he had made a mistake. A big mistake.

TAKEDA: What happened when he realized she was …

YOUNG KAGEYA: Dead. Say the words, Sir. My Mom was dead. My Dad killed her. She was weak and powerless and soft and kind and he killed her. And he cried. I’d never seen him cry but right now he did. He was the bad guy and he was the one crying like a baby, more than Mom ever did. It made me sick.

TAKEDA: So what did you do?

YOUNG KAGEYA: … Me? Nothing, Sir.

TAKEDA: Truly?

YOUNG KAGEYA: I would never lie, Sir. Dad went crazy. He took me and he locked me up in his room. Then he disappeared for some time. I don’t remember how long but I was banging on the door, asking him to let me out, for a while. Then finally the door unlocked. And here he was, smiling tenderly like he never had before, something like a can of gasoline in his right hand and a matchbox in his left. He said the pain was going to end. That we were going to go join Mom and that “they” will surely never find us there. He wanted to set us on fire.

TAKEDA: Had the fire already started?

YOUNG KAGEYA: Yes. I had to think fast. There were bottles all over his room so when he tried to hug me I hit him as hard as I could with one. He fell and I quickly took the matches from him, in case he woke up.

TAKEDA: So you didn’t touch the can? Or the gasoline at all?

YOUNG KAGEYA: No. I was too scared to touch that thing. I went down the stairs and that’s when I saw the fire he had lit in our entire living room. Mom … I couldn’t even see her in the flames. So I just ran out the door. You know what follows.

TAKEDA: I see … Thanks for your answers.

….

There had been a smell on the boy’s hands that night. A clear one and yet Takeda hadn’t paid attention to it at first. The next time he saw the child, it was obviously gone. The distinct smell of gasoline.

Well. It doesn’t matter anymore. His mind is made and he won’t waver.

…

CONCLUSION

Here are the results of our investigation:

- Hidemitsu Kageya is the one who started the fire at 2-chōme-26-14, in an attempted suicide and homicide, after having killed his partner.

- This same man has been living under a false identity for several years with false identification papers.

- It is very likely he repeatedly physically and verbally abused both his partner and own son for years.

The main perpetrator of these deeds being now deceased, there is no point in pursuing this investigation any further. If the TMPD Headquarters approve of this report, this case is now closed.

……………

The night has fallen on San’ya neighborhood and a young boy hums a song as he calmy wanders the silent streets. He can finally get some peace. The social workers just won’t leave him alone, he’s suffocating with them. They say they want what’s best for him and yet refuse to leave him on his own for too long. Something about his “psychological well-being” or some bullshit like that. But he wasn’t too preoccupied. Since he learned to pick locks a year ago, even his own asshole of a father could never confine him anywhere. So leaving the center for a few hours is no big deal. He’ll be back before the sun rises and before they even have the time to worry.

They’re all so soft and kind. It makes him think of her and he doesn’t want that. He has someone to meet anyway.

At the entrance of the “Bridge Of Tears” bar, a figure waits for him. The man is well-dressed, wearing an elegant suit and a long thin coat accentuating his height. An ebony top hat rests above his head. He embodies power and confidence.

The man smiles at him. “Ah, I’m glad to see you came. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

The boy puffs out his chest just a little. “Since the fire, yes.”

“Two weeks already? My my, time truly does fly. Oh, I have to congratulate you on your deed. You pulled it off flawlessly. I can see you did good use of my little gift.”

His ears were ringing but he couldn’t stop running. Running, running far from this place. She was gone. She was gone. She was gone. She was so fucking dumb. Pathetic. Useless. She let that man, that asshole, that bastard get her. They could have fled. Because he had friends now. He wasn’t alone. The Man would have helped them, he was sure of that. Maybe … maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe the Man would help him still. He had to try. And as he went to the usual bar and saw the Man waiting for him with open arms, he found some semblance of hope. Leaving with a bag and a can of deadly gasoline in it, the boy could finally imagine a future for himself.

“Thank you again for your help.”

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. You’re a promising boy, haven’t I told you that? It’s my pleasure to be of assistance to you. On that topic, I have another gift for you.”

“Really?”

“Yep. After all, now that your old house has gone in flames you need a new place to stay in, correct? Well, I have a place for you. You see my … group and I do many various interesting things. Running an orphanage is one of them. I’m quite proud of it! And that would allow us to stay in contact. Because I can sense it, you could accomplish great things under my guidance, kiddo. So. What do you say? Are you in?”