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April 13, 2035

EDIT: wow, I have gotten a LOT of followers from this one post, so if this is your introduction to my blog... Hello! My name's Hammie @oddlystranges and I'm a lover of the strange, an amateur investigative journalist, and a total true crime nerd! This blog is where I make a lot of informational posts on famous cases, talk a bit about my own theories, and hang out!

This post is definitely my most popular (and perhaps my best work) by a looooong shot, but if you like it you can check out my other forays into the world of investigation , or some of my masterposts gathering info about famous cases, or my where to start with true crime post. 

oh, and don't forget to follow if you wanna see more of me!

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Whew! I know it has been foreeeever since I last made one of these posts―so many of you have been asking me, hey, Hammie what happened? And now, my dear followers, I finally have an answer: this happened. 

You all know I'm a bit of a fiend when it comes to the really weird sorts of stories and cases, and you've probably seen me talk about the Cradle Case before― so I've been meaning to write a proper post about it for a whiiiile now. And I did! Like, three months ago. Sorry―I absolutely didn’t realize that the level of crazy to this case would make it WAY longer than any of my other writeups on cases. However! I believe that the insane clusterthing that this case is will make the length and the wait absolutely totally worth it. This case has it all―deep-reaching conspiracies, murder, fucked up experiments, deep-reaching conspiracies about experiments ending in murder, revenge, perjury...

Okay. Okay, I've rambled enough, I won't make you wait any longer. Without further ado, here it is: the story of murder, crazy experiments, the fall of a company, and maaaaybe something deeper and crazier than ANY of us could imagine.

The Beginning

Let me set the scene. On November 2nd, 2027, a group of about 5 people was found driving a stolen car through the Nevada desert. Pretty close to Area 51, actually. Crazy how this stuff happens! Anyways, Most accounts of this case start a lot later in the story, but I think this setup may offer us some insights that all the other stuff misses. So―in November 2027 this group of people drove through Pahrump, Nevada in an unassuming tan SUV. For most people, this happening was an absolute non-event, but I managed to find a news article written about it in the local paper, which I’ll show here!

Seven Mysterious Strangers Arrive In Town
November 2nd, 2027. Written by Rhonda Sparks

Yesterday, November 2nd, a group of seven people checked into The Sleepaway Inn & Motel. According to key witness R. Sparks, the group was driving a tan SUV in incredibly good shape. The license plate of the SUV read “KRSHK1”. It was very likely a vanity plate, but neither the witness, the reporter, nor the landlord Oliver Waites could figure out what it was supposed to say.

The mysterious strangers refused to offer any information regarding why they were in town, or why one of them seemed to be wearing handcuffs.

One girl, in her late teens, with bright pink hair in two pigtails, wearing some odd cross between a school uniform and a rave outfit said, “Get the hell out of our faces, sheesh!”

Another woman wearing a dress that looked like it would be very cold in this weather noted to the reporter that she should “leave us alone” and that “you have no legal jurisdiction to be questioning us at the moment.”

According to the landlord, the group consisted of ‘Some guy in his...twenty-somethings, I’d say? Wearing somethin’ you’d expect to see on goddamn Marty McFly, or Hanna Montanna. This girl, about yea high [Waites gestures about five feet off the ground] in one o’ those schoolgirl uniforms? Yeah. Bright pink hair, too. There’s also this woman, wearing, like...a belly dancer outfit, best I can say, hope she’s not too cold this time a’ year, and this guy, who’s just, absolutely enormous, like, if a guy was an elephant, that’d be him. I think he had on some overalls? I can't remember. Anyways, there’s also this real tallish woman in another pretty skimpy dress, and this guy who’s wearing a lab coat or somethin’, and I’d swear he was in handcuffs. Anyways, I’m startin’ to wonder where the hell they get these people when I see the last guy. Cause this guy, he looks kind of like one a’ those victorian ghosts from the movies? Sorta Tim Burton-looking type of guy, and get this, he’s wearing these robes: black with red symbols all over them, and nothin’ else. No shoes, nothin’.”

Waites claims his leading theory on the group of strangers is that they were “probably into that LARP [Live-Action Role Playing] **** my daughter keeps talkin’ about.”

Key witness R. Sparks believes differently, however. She believes that there may be something deeper and much more sinister surrounding these oddly-dressed strangers, particularly the man wearing robes that look like they came from a cult.

Wild, right? Now, if we check the dates, this match up with some recently filed missing person reports from Japan.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. You're going "But Hammie, Japan is across the world from Nevada!" (Or you're going, "Why illustrious detective Hamilton Hammerstein Oddlystranges, I may not see the connections yet, but I know that in your all-knowingness, you have found some excellent ones!" And if you are saying that, I love you very much and am sending you lots of hugs and kisses xox) And to that I say! Never fear:

There were three people reported missing in Japan around November 2nd, 2027: Light Field, age 24, Clover Field, age 18, and Hazuki Kashiwabara, age 42. Here's the pictures of them from their missing person reports:

[A picture of Light and Clover Field. They are on the front porch of a house, late at night. Next to them are two carved pumpkins, one with a simple face―triangles for eyes, mouth with teeth, and another with an elaborately carved skeleton face with deep pits for eyes and a wide mouth with many spindly teeth. Clover is crouching next to the skeleton pumpkin, holding up a peace sign, and Light is standing behind her. A woman in her 40s with curly ash-blonde hair is standing next to them, behind the normal-looking pumpkin. The woman is smiling widely, and Light and Clover wear identical expressions that look a bit bored, but still happy.] 

[A picture of Hazuki Kashiwabara. It's a selfie, taken from slightly below. Hazuki is wearing a belly dancer outfit, and holding thumbs up with one hand.]

And I managed to get a hold of the person who wrote that article (Rhonda Sparks, she was really helpful, and nice! Apparently she does her own true crime podcast―everyone go check out True and Terrible Tales on Spotify!), and she wasn't allowed to put it in the report, but she got this picture!

[A picture of Light, Clover, Junpei, Hazuki, Hongou, Seven, and Alice after the Nonary Game, in a motel lobby. Hazuki takes up most of the frame, looking extremely disapprovingly at the camera, and holding up her hand to try and cover it. From behind her and her hand, you cannot see Junpei or Hongou's faces very well, but Clover's is visible, along with Light in his Free the Soul robes. Clover, Light, and Hazuki's faces are circled with red.]

Those faces totally match up, right? I know I'm not just crazy, you can see it too. (You can also see those weird culty-looking clothes on who I'm absolutely sure is Light Field, no idea what's up with those.) 

If you're a long-time follower of this blog or just an absolute weirdo nerd like me, you'll recognize those names from a rather notorious murder case...

Ahahaha, what a beautiful segue! I know I've buried the lead just a liiitle bit, but I promise it'll all be explained in due time. Anyways, this is the part where we get to the actual details of the case most people know about. 

The Trial of Gentarou Hongou

A bit over six months after the strangers arrived in Pahrump, Nevada, the CEO of Cradle Pharmaceuticals, Gentarou Hongou, was sentenced to thirty years in prison after being found guilty of the murders of two of his coworkers―Nagisa Nijisaki, Cradle’s chief of staff, and Kagechika Musashidou, Cradle’s majority shareholder. A year is a pretty long time for a murder case to be brought to trial and come to a verdict, but as many of you know, Hongou’s case was quiiiite the strange one. 

You see, he was originally accused of THREE murders: the two I mentioned above, and that of Cradle’s research and development supervisor, Teruaki Kubota. The thing was, they couldn’t prove the third murder due to a lack of evidence. Now, that’s not really weird on its own, but once you realize the story behind WHY they lacked evidence, it’s...a bit crazy.

I’m honestly not even sure where to start with this. There’s so many things―the weird death game, the mysterious other culprit, the crime scene...usually, you need to look a bit deeper to find the weird unexplained mysteries in cases, but this stuff is just right there!

I’ll go somewhat chronologically. I couldn’t find any records of how exactly the murder got brought to court, given the circumstances (and you can look at other sources on the Cradle Case―no one else knows, either, save maybe some top secret government agency, or like, aliens) but the main point here is that it did get to court, which is where I’ll begin.

The biggest roadblock in the investigation and subsequent trial was the absolute lack of a crime scene. Hongou and the four witnesses could only ever identify a place they called ‘Building Q’ that was ‘somewhere in the Nevada Desert’. Pretty unhelpful, right? And since there was no crime scene, there were no bodies―there was no definitive way to tell that Musashidou, Nijisaki, and Kubota had even BEEN murdered, just circumstantial stuff. 

Like―the three supposed victims and Hongou all had missing person reports filed about them around the same time as Light Field, Clover Field, and Hazuki Kashiwabara. And unlike Hongou, the Fields, and Kashiwabara, none of them have been found. It’s a really weird way to start a murder trial. Basically unheard of, actually. Usually, the police find the body FIRST and then have to figure out who did it, and why. Hongou’s trial was a bit different―to the point where, if you don’t know everything already, you’re probably going ‘Well Hammie, then how the hell did he get sentenced?!’

And to that I say, dear readers, let me tell you! So, the case against Hongou was made on two main pieces of evidence:

Number one: a video. Well, four videos. They're all taken from security footage from inside this "Building Q". Three of them are long feeds that last about nine hours with no audio, and one of them is a much shorter clip that includes audio. I can't possibly fit that much video footage into this post, and I don't think you want to watch nine hours of soundless footage three times, so I'll run down the gist of each.

Video #1: This one shows a room that's really big, and full of beds. It looks a bit like it's on the inside of a ship (which has been somewhat confirmed, various investigators and historians managed to identify it as a replica of a room on the HMS Gigantic―but we’ll put a pin in that for later). On one side of this room are four huge sets of metal doors―three have the numbers 7, 8, and 3 written on them in red paint, one is blank. Each door has a little device next to it that looks like some sort of scanner. 

At about 3 hours into this video, a group of four arrives in the room. They can be identified as Clover Field, Light Field, Gentarou Hongou, and one of the key witnesses I'll mention later, [SEVEN]. They head over to the doors, examine the scanner things next to them, and leave. A few minutes later another group arrives in the room. In this group are Hazuki Kashiwabara, and three others. There's a guy in a blue puffer vest that other witnesses have referred to as "Junpei", no last name, and two unidentified people―a guy wearing all black and white with spiky white hair, and a girl in purple. For the purposes of this, I’ll call them emo guy and purple girl. 

The second group is doing about the same as the first when the other four people come into the room. They talk, search the room for something, and then all walk out of the room in groups. Purple girl stays behind a bit, fiddling with the scanners near the doors―it looks like she might pull something out of one of a pocket?―before leaving. 

About ten minutes later, Gentarou Hongou walks into the room and goes over to look at one of the scanners near the doors with numbers on them. A minute after that, another man walks in. He can be identified as Nagisa Nijisaki, and weirdly, he’s wearing the same clothes Light Field was a few minutes ago. Nijisaki is walking pretty slowly and unsteadily like he’s drunk or something. Hongou sees him, grabs his hand, and guides him over to the door with a ‘3’ on it. He puts Nijisaki’s hand on the scanner, then his own hand, and then pulls something out of his pocket and scans it. After pulling a lever on the scanner, the ‘3’ doors open. Once this happens, Hongou shoves Nijisaki inside, waits for the door to close, and leaves the room. 

About forty-five minutes later, everyone comes back into the room. They walk over to the scanners, examine them, and talk amongst themselves. Clover Field is hanging back from the group, seemingly unengaged in the conversation. This is because―as everyone else seems to realize a few minutes later―Light Field is missing from the group. There seems to be a bit of an argument before everyone leaves the room again.

A few more things happen that aren’t important...people go in and out, talk, you get the gist. The last relevant thing about this video is a few hours later when [SEVEN], Hongou, and Clover Field open the ‘3’ door and go in.

Video #2: Video 2 is a feed of a smaller room that looks to be filled with showers. About 3 hours into the video―only a few seconds after Hongou pushed Nijisaki through the door with the ‘3’ in Video #1, if we play them together―Nagisa Nijisaki runs in. He’s a lot more awake-looking than he was a few seconds ago, and he’s looking pretty frantic. He finds a scanner on the wall, similar to the ones near the doors in the hospital room, and puts his hand on it. Seemingly not getting what he wanted on that, he slams his hand on it a few more times before… I don’t know how to explain this better. But dear readers, he…blows up? Just, boom. Squelch, maybe. I’ll spare you the gory details, but according to the witnesses, there was a bomb in his stomach. That’s probably what went off right about then. 

Nijisaki’s absolutely destroyed body―nearly unrecognizable outside of the clothes he’s wearing―stays there for an hour or so until [SEVEN], Hongou, and Clover Field walk into the room and find it. They remain in the room a while after finding his body, messing around with things in it (they might be searching for something? It’s hard to tell) before leaving out the door opposite to the one they came through. 

A bit later, they and the rest of the group―Hazuki Kashiwabara, Emo Guy, Purple Girl and ‘Junpei’ come back through the door they left from, and gather around the body. They look at it for a few seconds before leaving.

Video #3: Video three is a feed of a room that looks like a security room. It’s got a lot of electronics on some desks, and a bunch of TVs with feeds showing other rooms in the building. In the middle of the room is a man sitting in a chair―he can be identified as Kagechika Musashidou. He’s wearing what looks to be a fancy ship captain’s uniform. On the floor in front of him is an axe. From the camera feed, we can see another recording camera mounted on one wall of the room. About 7 hours into the feed, Gentarou Hongou walks into the room. He stands there for a second, seemingly noticing the camera on the other wall. Then… He picks up the axe and kills Musashidou. Yup. Just kills him. No buts, no cuts, no coconuts. This video is some really solid evidence.

A few minutes after he walks out, Clover Field and the ‘Junpei’ guy walk in and search around the room for a bit before leaving. That’s all that happens in this video.

Video #4 : Okay, this one is a bit different from the other three. It still looks like security cam footage (well, security seems a bit of a stretch for whatever was going on in there, but whatever), but this time it’s just a few minutes of footage, and it has audio. The video has all the people from before―Gentarou Hongou, Light Field (now wearing some weird black and red robes), Clover Field, Hazuki Kashiwabara, [SEVEN], 'Junpei', Emo Guy. 

The room they’re in is made of metal, circular, and has a door with a ‘nine’ on it on one side, and a scanner next to that door―just like the other ones. Most people in the room are gathered around Hongou, who is lying on the floor. Emo Guy is also lying on the floor off to the side, curled up like he’s been punched. Purple Girl is nowhere to be seen. 

Here's a transcript of what they say:

[SEVEN]: Just one punch ain't enough for this piece'a shit. After what he did nine years ago, I oughta rip 'im to pieces. But if a suspect can't talk, they ain't much good. Once he's locked up in a cell, we're gonna have a little chat.

Hongou: Nine years ago? Ah, then you must be―

[SEVEN]: Yeah, you finally figure it out. Dumbass.

Junpei: Ace... You killed Kubota, Nijisaki, and Musashidou didn't you?

Hongou: Wait...Nijisaki?

Junpei: Oh, right... You don't know yet. All right. We'll just go through 'em in order then. Let's start off with Kubota. You talked to Kubota and managed to convince him to go into door five alone. You killed him without making it look like you killed him. The way I figure it, you had four motives.

Junpei: One: In the Nonary Game the number nine is dangerous. Whoever has the number nine bracelet can join whatever team they want. You can add nine to any number, and the digital root won't change. So, number nine can do whatever they want. You wanted to remove that threat as soon as possible.

Junpei: Two: You also wanted to have the number nine bracelet yourself, so that you could use its power. In fact, you later used it when you killed Nijisaki.

Junpei: Three: Even if his number had been different, Kubota presented a problem for you. He knew your past. He knew what happened nine years ago. Before he told anyone, you had to silence him.

Junpei: But last, and maybe worst, you used Kubota as a test. You wanted to know how serious this Nonary Game was. You convinced Kubota to break the rules so that you could see what happened.

Junpei: That was why you killed Kubota, but he was only the first. Next was Nijisaki. While everyone was off looking for the missing part for the red...you ran into Nijisaki near the big hospital room. However, because of your prosopagnosia, you didn't realize he was Nijisaki. Chiefly because, when you met him, he was dressed like Snake. That was why you thought Nijisaki was Snake.

Hongou: N-No... That's not... That was Nijisaki? Why... How did...

Junpei: I'll get to that. Anyway, you thought he was Snake. Snake was one of the kids in your experiment nine years ago. You remembered him because he was the blind kid. But his presence made you think...Snake was one of your subjects nine years ago. He probably hated you...but he wasn't saying anything. He could be keeping quiet because he couldn't see, but he could also be working with Zero to get revenge on you... Whatever reason, anyone who knew your past was a threat.

Junpei: That was when you decided you had to kill him. The murder weapon was Kubota's bracelet.

Junpei: You just waved it over the red...verified your own number, and then grabbed Nijisaki's arm and forced it over the scanner panel. Then when the door opened, you kicked him in. Nine seconds later, the door closed. And then 81 seconds passed...and poor Nijisaki was dead.

Hongou: Then you mean to say Snake is still alive...?

Light Field: Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm good as new. Thank you for killing the wrong man, but I can't say I like knowing that you wanted me dead. Although to be honest, even if you hadn't tried to kill me...I would still hate you very much.

Hongou: Heh. Well, I wouldn't blame you...

Junpei: Last but not least, let's talk about Musashidou's death. When Clover and I were investigating the chart room you came over to talk to me. Do you remember what you said? I handed you the pocket watch, and you left the room. Musashidou's murder is the only one I don't understand. You obviously did it, but...why?

Hongou: Because of this...

[Hongou pulls something out of his pocket and hands it to Junpei―we’ll come back to it later.]

Hongou: When I awoke in that room on D Deck, I found that in my pocket. That was why I chose door one when we voted. If I went through that door, I knew I could get to the captain's quarters. As you said, I knew how to enter the wheelhouse. My plan was to find the pocket watch before anyone else. If I could, then my alibi would be set. At least, that was the plan... Unfortunately for me, you got to it first. That sleight of hand was the best I could manage on short notice.

Junpei: You meant to kill him from the beginning, then?  Musashidou, I mean.

Hongou: I only knew Musashidou was the "witness" after I reached the captain's quarters. I asked him...and he answered. He seemed groggy. Perhaps he had only just awoken from sedation. I suppose Nijisaki was in much the same state. He seemed confused and disoriented when I encountered him. But yes, you are correct. I intended to kill him from the beginning, even though I didn't know who he was. I proceeded to the captain's quarters in order to remove this so-called witness.

Anyways: what does this all mean? I’ll spell it out for those of you struggling with all that text. Basically, there are a few answers in these videos, and a LOT more questions. 

I’ll start with the answers. These videos were combed over with some pretty solid tech, and they’ve been found to be absolutely unedited, so we can take anything in them as pretty solid proof. So we deeeefinitely know that Hongou killed Kagechika Musashidou. It’s right there, clear as day, and he admitted to it on tape. 

However, Teruaki Kubota and Nagisa Nijisaki’s murders are a bit harder to prove. This ‘Junpei’ guy accuses him of killing Kubota and Nijisaki and outlines how he would have done it, but Hongou doesn’t directly confirm or deny these allegations. He also seems to not know that the person he killed was Nijisaki―instead, he’s talking about someone named Snake? Nijisaki’s case is still easier than Kubota’s, though, because while it isn’t as cut and dry, it seems like Hongou pushed him through that door and he died about a minute and a half later. 

As for questions―all the people in the fourth video talk a lot about ‘bracelets’ and ‘digital roots’ and ‘numbered doors’. They seem to know what’s going on, why they’re on this...replica of the Titanic? But no one else at the time did. 

Which is another wonderful segue into me talking about the second bit of evidence that ended up getting Hongou convicted! Good ole’ witness testimony.

I mentioned them before, but I’ll tell it out straight this time. Out of the ten people we know who were in that ‘Building Q’ when the murders happened (eleven, if you count Kubota), four of them were able to testify in court―Light Field, Clover Field, [SEVEN], and Hazuki Kashiwabara. Two (or three) of them were murder victims, and therefore dead―Kagechika Musashidou, Nagisa Nijisaki, and maybe Teruaki Kubota. Three of them were unable to be located―the guy who’s called ‘Junpei’ and the emo clothes guy and the purple dress girl. 

All four of the witnesses agreed that the video feeds were real and what they had experienced, at least what they were there for.  Here’s some trial minutes to show you a bit of what else they got from the witnesses. 

Testimony of Hazuki Kashiwabara, regarding ‘The Nonary Game’

Hazuki Kashiwabara: Well... We all woke up in this ship―I mean, we thought it was a ship at the time, from the inside. This voice in the speakers told us he was ‘Zero’ and that we’d all been brought here to―I remember the exact wording. We’d been brought here to ‘play a game where we’d put our lives on the line’. He said it was called the ‘Nonary Game’.

Defense Consul: The nonary game?

Kashiwabara: Yeah, the Nonary Game. ‘Nonary’ is like nine, right? There were nine of us, and we all had these bracelets, one through nine―I was eight―and we had to use the bracelets to get through doors numbered one through nine. Once we got through the ninth door we escaped―or, well, that’s what Zero told us...

Defense: Did you not escape when you reached the ninth door?

Kashiwabara: Yeah, there was this tenth door―well, tenth, but it had a nine on it...or, we thought it was nine. Turned out it was a ‘lowercase q’ or something. A real load of bull―I mean, pretty stupid, if you ask me. 

Defense: What would have happened if you refused to play the game?

Kashiwabara: Death, just about. We only had nine hours, and we thought we were on a sinking ship. We all figured out as soon as we got out that we were actually in Nevada, but we didn’t know it at the time. Same thing with the bombs.

Defense: The bombs?

Kashiwabara: Zero told us he put bombs in our stomachs, and that if we didn’t play by the right rules with the bracelets and the doors…well, they’d go off. Turned out there were never any bombs. Well, at least for us. A few minutes in, this one guy―that was Kubota, I think―tried to go into a door alone, and…well, after him, none of us wanted to try and test whether or not Zero was bluffing. 

Defense: So, Teruaki Kubota was blown up for not following the rules. 

Kashiwabara: Yes.

Defense: Okay. And you said there were nine others with you? Can you identify them?

Kashiwabara: Eight others, actually. Nine including myself. There was Hongou, Light Field, ah...Clover Field, a guy named Junpei―I never got his surname, [SEVEN], me, and, the ninth man―Teruaki Kubota. 

Defense: You only listed seven people there. Were there any others?

Kashiwabara: Well, there were Musashidou and Nijisaki, I’d imagine, but I only ever saw Nijisaki’s body, and I was only ever told about Musashidou. Hm... Oh yeah, there were two other people.

Defense: Did you get their names?

Kashiwabara: Their names? ... No, I didn’t.

So yeah. If you’re familiar with this case, you’ve probably heard of the ‘Nonary Game’. Kashiwabara spells it out pretty clearly―all the players were dropped into a replica of a replica of the Titanic and told to play this twisted version of an escape room, and if they didn’t comply with the rules, the bombs in their stomachs went off. It was made pretty clear―from the videos, and a bit of testimony that I won’t bore you with―that Gentarou Hongou purposefully manipulated the rules of this game in an attempt to murder Nijisaki. According to a few testimonies, and Video #4, Kubota was specifically prompted to break the rules by Gentarou Hongou, but that wasn’t quite enough proof to call it a murder. 

In fact, a lot of the murders look like they can be pinned on this Zero guy who was ‘running’ the ‘game’.

If we look back at that thing Hongou had in Video #4―it was a note, supposedly from Zero. It was submitted to the court as evidence, since he still had it, and outlined a few of the rules of ‘the Nonary Game’ along with a message to Hongou specifically. Here’s what the message said:

Number (1).

There are 2 ways you might survive this ordeal. The 1st is to win the Nonary Game. The 2nd is for you to confess your sins of 9 years past. I have prepared a camera in the captain's quarters. The images captured by that camera will be streamed through a satellite and distributed across the world. Simply look into the camera and repent.

Once you have confessed everything, I will release you from this ship. To make your confession more credible, I have left you a witness in the captain's quarters. Perhaps he will confess with you. The decision is yours. Do as you please.

-----Zero-----

If you look back at the videos, you’ll remember that the ‘witness’ was Kagechika Musashidou. It’s unclear what this ‘Zero’ means by the camera streaming ‘through a satellite and distributed across the world,’ however.  Maybe they didn’t release the tape because Hongou didn’t confess to whatever they wanted him to, maybe something else. 

Anyways, here’s a testimony on this ‘Zero’ person. 

Testimony of Light Field, regarding ‘Zero’

Defense Consul: So, this Zero person. Would you say that they were responsible, in part, for the murders?

Light Field: I can’t offer any absolute proof, but...yes, most likely. 

Defense: Did you ever figure out who this 'Zero' person is?

L. Field: Well...

Defendant, Gentarou Hongou: It was Santa! That bastard, he set me up, he―

Judge: If the defendant would please refrain from speaking out of turn during witness testimony. 

Defense: Excuse me, Santa ?

L. Field: [laughing]

Defense: Mr. Field, are you aware of what the defendant means when he says "Santa"?

L. Field: [still laughing] ...Yes... Yes, I am.

Defense: Would you enlighten the court?

L. Field: Yes...of course... We had code names, you see. We were worried about giving Zero any information on us that we weren't already absolutely sure he had, given that it seemed he was watching our every move. Given that we all had bracelets numbered one through nine, we chose code names based on those numbers. Hongou was 'Ace', I was 'Snake', [SEVEN] was simply 'Seven', Hazuki was 'Lotus'...Junpei simply went by his name, since it was accidentally revealed before we thought to come up with codenames... Clover chose her codename to also be 'Clover', and there were two others with us, called 'June', and 'Santa'. In Japanese, the word for 'three' is 'san'. I believe Santa was wearing the number three bracelet.

Defense: So 'Santa' was the man with the white hair in the videos?

L. Field: I wouldn't very well know his hair color.

Defense: Ah. Apologies, Mr. Field. Would―

Defendant: 'Santa' was the man wearing entirely black and white. 

Defense: And that would mean the woman in purple was 'June'?

Defendant: Yes.

Defense: So you believe that this 'Santa' person was also 'Zero'?

L. Field: It's incredibly probable. He all but confessed to it. 

Defense: Hm. Do either of you have any identifying information on this 'Santa' other than his clothing?

Defendant: Well, now that I remember it, he did tell us his name.

Defense: His name?

Defendant: Yes. Aoi Kurashiki, it was.

Defense: Hm. Mr. Field, does the name Aoi Kurashiki ring any bells for you? 

L. Field: No, it does not. 

Defense: Are you sure?

L. Field: Positively. I remember every name I hear.

Defendant: What !? He told all of us his name! You were right there!

Defense: Mr. Field?

L. Field: I believe the defendant is lying, Mr. Harke, or at the very least misremembering the events he witnessed.

So, there's that. None of the other witnesses said they'd heard the name "Aoi Kurashiki" before, but we'll put a pin in that. He's gonna come back later.

There’s another thing that that note mentions― Hongou needing to ‘confess (his) sins of 9 years past’. What sins? 

(I know, I know, if you’re at all familiar with this case you know what I’m talking about, but bear with me. It’s for dramatic tension.) 

Here’s a testimony on the matter:

Testimony of Clover Field on ‘The First Nonary Game’

Consul for the Prosecution: So, this note, Ms. Field―it mentions ‘sins of nine years past’. Do you have any idea what that means?

Clover Field: Hmmmm... Yeah! Yeah I do. He’s talking about the first Nonary Game. 

Prosecution: The first Nonary Game?

C. Field: Well, yeah. Duh. This whole thing was like, a total copy of nine years ago when Cradle Pharmaceuticals ran this crazy experiment. Hmmm, how do I explain this... So they were trying to experiment on like, telepathy, or something? I know, it was crazy. But what they did was they took eighteen of us, nine sets of siblings, and put half of us on this sinking ship... I think it was called the Gigantic? Light could tell you. Anyways, the other half were in Building Q, and we had to like, solve the puzzles and ‘transmit’ the answers or whatever to our siblings, or we’d like...die. It was pretty ****** up, but Cradle pulled some legal strings or something, and we couldn’t talk about it. 

Prosecution: Okay...

C. Field: I’m telling the truth, I swear! You can ask Light, or like, anyone who was there! I think I can remember some of their names...

Prosecution: So, the 'sins of nine years past' in that note refer to...the first 'Nonary Game'?

C. Field: Yeah. We think Zero was doing this whole thing as like, revenge, or something. 

Prosecution: Revenge?

C. Field: I mean, it makes sense that Zero was one of the kids in that game... even if I didn't recognize anyone who was stuck in the second one with us, and neither did Light, cause, you know, he can't see? And it's been nine years, so all our voices have changed. 

Prosecution: The defendant claims that the man you refer to as 'Santa' was behind this 'Nonary Game'. Is that true?

C. Field: Hmm... Yeah. We thought that whoever was Zero was in the first Nonary Game, and we knew Santa had to have been in it 'cause he gave Junpei my clover.

Prosecution: Your clover? Can you expand on that?

C. Field: Yeah yeah, I was getting to it! So Junpei gave me this bookmark that had a clover on it and he said that Santa gave it to him and I know that nine years ago my brother gave a bunch of four-leaf clovers to the other kids on the Gigantic with him so that’s got to be where Santa got it. So Santa was in the first Nonary Game. 

Prosecution: Okay... The defendant claims that the man called Santa's real name is Aoi Kurashiki. Is this true?

C. Field: Huh? He never said that. 

Prosecution: ‘Santa’ never told you his name?

C. Field: Yeah, he didn’t.

Prosecution: So you’ve never heard the name ‘Aoi Kurashiki’ before?

C. Field: Nope! 

In the end, Gentarou Hongou was convicted of the murders of Nagisa Nijisaki and Kagechika Musashidou, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. All in all, his trial opened up a lot more mysteries than it closed. Who was this ‘Zero’?  What the heck is a ‘Nonary Game’? Where does the name ‘Aoi Kurashiki’ come from? What were the identities of the three other players in this ‘Nonary Game’?

Answers to at least some of these questions would come soon enough, though. 

The Truth Comes Out...

Not even a month after Hongou’s verdict, an interview was published in the Ranstead Magazine with three people that claimed to have participated in the ‘First Nonary Game’. I’ve pulled out the relevant parts here:

Ex-Participants Share About Experiences in ‘the Nonary Game’
Issac Wilson

On June 9th of this year, Gentarou Hongou was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being declared guilty of the murders of two of his coworkers, Nagisa Nijisaki and Kagechika Musashidou. More mysteries were discovered in Hongou’s trial than were solved, but today we might just be able to shed some light on one of them. 

Nona Kashiwabara, Shiori Akai, and Taichi Watanabe were all kidnapped in November 2018. They were forced to play what they were told was ‘the Nonary Game’, a game in which the price for losing was far greater than the loss of a shiny trophy. According to Kashiwabara, Akai, and Watanabe, losing the Nonary Game meant losing one’s life. They were lucky to escape. Others weren’t as lucky.

Kashiwabara: Looking back, it started when we moved and started going to a different hospital for yearly check-ups. The hospital was run by Cradle, though I didn’t know it at the time. They offered to give us super cheap healthcare if we signed up to be participants in some sort of ‘research project’. The details are kind of fuzzy... I was only about, what? Eleven? Twelve? When it happened. Anyways, I do remember that my mom thought it was pretty suspicious from the get-go, but I knew that we were running low on money, so me and Ennea―she’s my twin sister―told her it’d be fine. 

Watanabe: The ‘research project’ thing was very weird, honestly. I remember they took me into a room and showed me a picture. It was just...not a picture even, just a bunch of black and white splotches on a page. Something like one of those... the best thing I can compare it to is those Rorschach ink splotch tests? They asked me what I thought the picture was of, and I told them, ‘Well, it looks kind of like a Charizard’―you know, like the Pokemon. It’s this big fire-dragon-type thing. They were pretty surprised at that answer, but I was thinking to myself ‘these ink tests are about finding out what’s deep inside of you, right?’ So I showed them where I saw the wings, and the head. I was pretty excited at that age at the idea that what was deep inside of me might be a Charizard.

Akai: Oh, those tests were weird. They showed me this picture of a dog, and were just like ‘think about the dog’. It was boring as hell. I think I spent about half the time thinking about the dog, and the other half wondering why they wanted me to think of a dog. I knew there was no way they could tell if I was thinking of the dog or not. Maybe I ****ed up their research, or whatever, but honestly. What the hell were they researching? Telepathy?

According to Kashiwabara, Watanabe, and Akai, the ‘research project’ they were participating in quickly got strange―and even unethical. The researchers would ask them odd questions, show them things, and ask them to just think about them. They were harsh with the children and got angry when they apparently did something wrong―though none of the children had any idea what they were supposed to be doing. 

“At one point,” says Shiori Akai, “they just...shoved a spider in my face. Like, I can’t remember whether I told them if I was really ****ing scared of spiders, but they just shoved one in my goddamn face, and I yelled at them and told them to get it the hell off, but they just like, kept writing in their little ****ing notebooks. Like this was all just fascinating to them. I told my parents to get me the **** out of that ‘research project’ bull**** after that.”

The other interviewees attest to similar happenings, researchers putting them into uncomfortable situations, preying on their fears and anxieties. “I think,” says Nona Kashiwabara, “they were hoping to get better results from making us stressed.”

While all three interviewees dropped out of the project after things started getting weird, it seemed that Cradle Pharmaceuticals wasn’t done with them yet. 

On the night of November 1st, 2018, Shiori Akai, Nona Kashiwabara, and Taichi Watanabe were kidnapped with thirteen other children. Half of them were brought to the HMS Gigantic off the coast of Japan, and the other half were brought to a building in the Nevada desert only known as "Building Q".

Kashiwabara: The whole thing was like...a bigger version of those weird experiments. We got to the main part of the ship, and Gentarou Hongou was there over the intercom. He told us the rules of the game―go through the doors, complete the puzzles, the door with a nine is the way out. The ship had started sinking a few minutes after I woke up, so we all knew that if we didn't listen to him and play the game...if we didn't get out, we'd drown.

Watanabe: He told us that our siblings were in "Building Q", which was an exact replica of the Gigantic...except all the puzzles in the Gigantic were incomplete. The idea, I think, was for our siblings to 'transmit' the answers to the puzzles to us across the world. It was...crazy. They were absolutely insane, I think, to believe that would work.

Akai: I don't know how my brother and the others on the ship got out without all the answers but...I guess they did. Anyways, after the whole thing, we were brought to this hospital ran by Cradle, and they made us sign these forms. I'm sure now that it had to be totally ****ing illegal, but I was like ten, right? I didn't know, I was scared out of my mind. So I kept that contract for years. I thought nothing could be done, right? Anyways, I still don't know if that contract holds up...but what are they going to do, sue me? All the people in charge of that game are either dead or murderers.

As to how the original Nonary Game relates to the trial of Gentarou Hongou, the interviewees had a few theories to offer.

Watanabe: Hmm... I do remember someone there named Aoi. He was one of the older kids, mid-teens if I remember correctly. He and one of the other boys were the sort of leaders of our little group… they were honestly one of the big reasons I think we survived that whole thing. Light...? Was the other one's name, I think. Yeah, Light. He gave us all these four-leaf clovers―he had nine of them, and he was blind, I still have no idea how he found them all―and told us we had to stick together, for our siblings in the other building. Did you know each leaf of a four-leaf clover has a meaning? I think it's faith, hope, love, and…oh yeah, luck. We had to have a lot of that to survive that hellish excuse for a game.

Kashiwabara: Yeah, yeah, Aoi Kurashiki. Short white hair, cut really spiky. I think he was around fifteen or so, but he was barely taller than me at the time. Loud, too. I walked out of that game knowing more swears than I even thought existed when I was kidnapped, and I think half of them were from him. 

Akai: Huh. Never heard of him. He could have been on the ship? But... No, no. I was kind of...obsessed, I guess, with the whole thing for a while after it, and I read everything in the news about it over and over. There wasn't much, just this missing persons report for about sixteen kids―I think they brushed it off as a "runaway epidemic" or something stupid like that. Like, what ****ing bull****, right? Anyways, I know every kid on that list. I could tell you all of their names, and where they lived, and...there wasn't any Aoi on it. Though…all the bull**** surrounding that whole thing, I wouldn't be surprised if they missed an entire kid. 

According to the interviewees, the theory that ‘Aoi Kurashiki’ could be the name of the person who orchestrated the second ‘Nonary Game’ holds some water. The children kidnapped for the game reportedly witnessed some terrible things in it, on top of the constant threat of death. It’s not hard to imagine why someone might want to get retribution on the people who ran the game―Gentarou Hongou, Teruaki Kubota, Nagisa Nijisaki, and Kagechika Musashidou. 

Akai: I mean, I wasn’t even in the Gigantic, but I heard some things... God, I don’t even want to get into it. ****... I took this interview for a reason, right? So the whole place was like... It felt like a bigger version of the experiments, I guess. There were these rooms that were set up like they were doing **** on real human people, this dummy strapped to a huge electric machine...this room that looked like it was made for literal torture... No one was in them, but I...I don’t think the kids in the Gigantic were as lucky. 

The last room was this... Like, okay, it was a ****ing incinerator. It had these huge holes around the wall for, like, fire, I guess, and when we walked in this voice on the speakers said ‘eighteen minutes till incineration’, and we had eighteen minutes to figure out the way out, or we’d be burnt up, just like that. I mean, we all got out, thank ****, but imagine if―

Oh my god, wait. Oh, ****, no, I… One of the kids did die in there. I mean, I wasn’t there, my brother told me afterwards―it was one of the ship kids, but...oh god. ****.

Kashiwabara: Oh, god...yeah. I didn’t see it myself, but... There were about four of us left after we sent as many kids as we could through the ninth door in the incinerator, and the detective―sorry, that’d be [SEVEN]―came to get us. We were almost out when we noticed one of us was missing. The other two kids and [SEVEN] went back to find her and told me to go ahead. So, I did, and I waited for them to come back with her...but... They came back and she wasn’t with them. They never told me what happened, but I didn’t need to ask, you know? Maybe it was some of that telepathy bull**** that they were testing us on, or maybe it was just...you can feel those sort of things. I didn’t need to ask.

Watanabe: What? No, no one died. I remember all of that night―I could never forget it―and I remember getting out of that ship and thinking, oh man, at least we’re all okay. What the―sorry. No one on that ship died, at least none of the kids. I would have remembered if someone did. 

All in all, it’s not clear what happened on the HMS Gigantic and in ‘Building Q’ ten years ago. Memories age with time, and warp with trauma. Evidence is hidden through accident and active obstruction. However, the three interviewees can agree on one thing.

Kashiwabara: Whatever happens after this, I hope that the people who ran the game are brought to some sort of justice. I hope the people they’ve hurt don’t have to suffer in silence any longer.

Akai: You know, the only thing worse than being stuck in a game where you have to do puzzles or you get blown up is getting out of that game and realizing that you can’t do **** about it because the people who put you there were able to scare you into silence.

Watanabe: Whatever comes out of this information getting to the public, I hope that…the people stuck in that game feel better now that their story is out there. I know that I will. 

So…yeah! There's a lot of things in that interview if you take everything the interviewees say at face value. Personally? There's enough conflicting opinion between them that I'm hesitant to believe all of it, but either way, it's a faaaascinating story.

It's hard to say if this interview sparked the popularity around the Nonary Games, given how soon after Gentarou Hongou's trial it was, but it was definitely the first flicker in what would soon be a blazing fire.

There were a lot of articles, and think pieces, and YouTube videos and podcast episodes on it, and I'll link some of the good ones at the bottom of this post, but most are just telling you the same things I have so far with less information. 

The one thing I will highlight is the most popular piece of media released on the Nonary Games. Even if you don't know much about them, if you've read this far in this absolute monster of a post, you've probably heard of it. In about August of 2028, it was leaked that Netflix planned to make a documentary on the Nonary Games, and roughly a year later in August 2029, "Nine: the Strange but True Story of the Downfall of Cradle Pharmaceuticals" was dropped to Netflix. 

Nine: That One Netflix Documentary

Now, if you know me at all, you already know my feelings on this documentary, but I'll be covering it here for a few reasons.  "Nine" basically took the story of Cradle and the Nonary Games from something you only knew about if you were pretty into true crime to something that everyone knew about. It hit at just the right time to make waves―right when everyone was stuck inside and had nothing better to do than watch a terrible―ahem, low quality, Netflix documentary. Because of that, not only is it an important step in telling the story of the Cradle Case, it’s also most people’s only knowledge of said case. So, I gotta go through it and clear up any…duuuubious…information. 

So, here’s a few bits from the doc:

Ami Hashimoto, Research Consultant for Cradle Pharmaceuticals: Have you ever heard someone tell you that we're all made of stardust? 

Hashimoto: It's a bit of an oversimplification, but it's true. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. So...every single person is made of a bit of everything. Everything's a bit connected through that.

Hashimoto: The idea was...maybe you could utilize that connection. 

In the spring of 2016, Gentarou Hongou, then CEO of Cradle Pharmaceuticals, came to Ami Hashimoto with a large sum of money, and a lot of questions.

Hashimoto: Most people thought my research was a load of garbage. So I was really struggling with funds, hm? I think...that's about when he came to me. I really probably should have seen the red flags, but...what is it they say? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Hashimoto: They asked me a lot of questions...and I gave them answers. It was honestly quite a good deal. I should have realized...

Hashimoto: He wanted my knowledge on, ah, morphogenetic field theory. The ganzfeld experiment. 

The ganzfeld experiment: an experiment made to test invisible connections between people. One person sits in a room and is shown a picture. Another sits in a room, completely cut off from the first subject, and is asked what the picture is. It’s dismissed by most as pseudoscience, but Gentarou Hongou and Cradle Pharmaceuticals thought it had some merit...

Hashimoto: It was things like...hm, what sorts of people have the strongest connections to each other through the field? How do you strengthen those connections? And I answered him, because I thought it was all hypotheticals at that point. 

Hashimoto: It kept getting more and more...ah, specific. It was like, alright if danger opens people up to the field, and so does figuring things out, wouldn’t something like, hm, an escape room be perfect for getting people to connect? And I was said, well yes, if it was a life or death escape room. You couldn’t just go down to Quandary Escape Rooms down the street. 

Hashimoto: I didn’t think they’d actually do any of that, you know? That’d be crazy.

Yeah. The WHOLE thing is full of stuff like this. The original Nonary Game was supposedly an experiment to get people to do telepathy or something, so ‘Nine’ is just coooooonstantly talking about it, and taking everything the people they interview say about it at face value.

Like, this woman says right out the gate that she wasn’t getting funding for her research because everyone thought it was a load of hooey, but let me tell you, dear readers, she is CONSTANTLY in that documentary. All over it. I can’t believe they even interviewed her, or used anything she said. Like, who hears someone talking about death escape rooms and goes ‘oho! I bet he’s just talking about it hypothetically!’ bleaugh. 

Whew. Sorry, I had to watch this whole documentary again to write this. I’ll try to stay calm. Anyways: a lot of media surrounding the Nonary Games & the Cradle Case will tell you stuff like this. Telepathy isn’t real, kids. Nine times out of ten if something mentions it, they’re just using it as a cover for something deeper. Telepathy is one of those common Weird things that people see in enough tall tales that they look deeper if they see it. Kinda like time travel, ghosts, etc. 

Anyways, here’s another one. This is a few more of the kids who were supposedly in the first game.

Suzume Uehara, First Nonary Game Player, HMS Gigantic: Do you want my honest opinion? I can see why he did it. I’m not...like, I wouldn’t run a whole game for revenge.

Suzume: Like, I wouldn’t actually do it. That’d be pretty messed up. But saying that it's never crossed my mind, taking all those guys who put us in that ship and making them pay for it? I'd be lying. 

Taichi Watanabe, First Nonary Game Player, HMS Gigantic: Listen... No one died in that game. I remember every bit of it... clearly as if it was yesterday. 

Taichi: No one died.

Suzume: Aoi Kurashiki? Aoi Kurashiki... Yeah, I remember him. He was with his little sister...yeah, yeah. She wasn’t supposed to be there, obviously, ‘cause all the siblings were separated. There was a mixup or something, I guess. 

Taichi: Yes. There was a mixup or something. I imagine that Hongou thought they weren’t siblings because they don’t look too similar at first glance. 

Gentarou Hongou has Prosopagnosia. Better known as face blindness, prosopagnosia is a rare brain disorder where the afflicted induvidual cannot differentiate between human faces.

Taichi: Their faces were the same, if you paid attention, but Aoi had white hair, and Akane had brown hair. Easy to miss that they’re siblings if you weren’t looking. Or if you couldn’t tell. 

Suzume: Oh my god, wait. His sister―his sister! That was the girl who died... Oh my god... Why had I forgotten that part? I can’t believe I forgot! ...Anyways. Yeah, um, one of the kids...didn’t make it out.

Taichi: There was... I think it was a pretty close call. Aoi, Akane...one of the kids named Light, they almost didn’t make it out. It was...

Taichi: I don't know who the hell would want to recreate that. Even for revenge. I wouldn’t want to ever experience it again. I wouldn’t want to put anyone through something like that. 

Suzume: I... God, sorry. Give me a second... Okay. 

Suzume: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know anything about it... I haven’t seen that guy since I was ten...but if he did do that whole thing? To get revenge for his sister? Gosh...I wouldn’t blame him.

Suzume: I’m glad that Hongou got a taste of his own medicine.

The documentary goes really hard on the whole Aoi Kurashiki being the person who made the second Nonary Game theory, which I find pretty annoying. And like, I know it’s the most popular one! And I do see how plausible it is, but I think how hard this doc pushes it is a huge reason why people overlook other options.

There’s also that weird thing again―this ‘Taichi Watanabe’ guy is reeeeeeeally adamant that no one died on the Gigantic, when most other people who were interviewed agree that someone was. He’s in the original interview with some other first Nonary Game participants, so either he was consistently lying, or he was misremembering. It feels like something that someone wouldn’t misremember, but as someone who’s seen enough stories like this, it’s really crazy how much our memories aren’t as solid as we think they are. 

Either way, they really should have vetted information like this before putting it in a documentary that so many people would see. I mean, sheesh guys, this is true crime 101!

Okay, just two more of these. First: this interview bit, which is honestly just kind of weird?

One anonymous informant may have clues as to who was behind the second Nonary Game...

Anonymous ‘Informant’: I bought stocks this one time...Let me try and remember the name of the guy...It was somethin’ weird.

Anonymous: Something like...Car Keys? Stash Keys? Stash, Cash...Cash...Crash! Crash Keys...no other identification. No name, no nothin’. Shady as hell...but I made that money back. Big time. Best purchase I’ve ever made.

Crash Keys...Crash Keys...It sounds familiar, doesn't it? Say it five times fast― Crash Keys, Crash Keys, Crash Keys, Kurashikis. Kurashikis.

Anonymous: I talked to the guy, or maybe it was just one of their guys, over the phone. I knew it was a guy, though his voice was on the higher end. He had a little bit of an accent I couldn’t place. 

Anonymous: I was real suspicious of his whole deal, so he was like ‘alright’ and he gave me the name of a stock, told me it’d go big, give it a few weeks. It was dirt cheap at the time, not worth anything. I asked him, how the hell d’you know that, and he’d said, ‘maybe I’m psychic or somethin’.

Anonymous: I guess he must’ve been, or something like that, ‘cause a few weeks later, right when he said, it blew up. I cursed the fact that I didn’t buy it up when it was cheap. 

Anonymous: So I called these Crash Key people up, and the same guy talked to me and offered me one of their stocks. It was worth nothin’ at the time, and he offered it to me for a solid bit of money. Told me it’d be worth a lot, soon. And usually, I would have thought I was being scammed, but...yeah. I bought it. And he was right. Best purchase I ever made. 

Anonymous: I tried to find ‘em again, a while back, but nothin’. No Crash Keys. They were just gone. 

Anonymous: But...yeah. Crash Keys...Kurashiki...That’s Japanese, right? Yeah. Coulda been him. Sure. 

Yeah. It COULD be a lead, but that’s a lot of emphasis on ‘could’. What are we basing this on, similar sounding names, and the idea of being ‘psychic’? I tried to look up ‘Crash Keys’ online, even in the specific context of stock broking, but I got nothing, guys. I have no idea where they found this person, or why they decided their information was sound enough to just put in a documentary. 

Here’s the last bit I’ll transcribe for you. It supposedly gives a bit more information on one of the unidentified participants of the second Nonary Game, but I put it here simply for comedy, and as an example. It’s not actually all that helpful. 

Anonymous ‘Informant’ (Number Two): Oh yeah! I knew a guy named Junpei. Junpei [REDACTED]* was his whole name. He usually went by just the last one.  

[*Note from me, Hammie, transcribing this, they bleep out the Junpei guy’s last name whenever it’s said. I can’t tell if this is to protect his privacy, or what? Either way, it means we have no way of telling the credibility of the claim that he’s the same Junpei from the Nonary Game]

Anon #2: I, uh...hmm. I wouldn’t say we were friends, exactly. I knew him really well, but we didn’t always get along. We definitely didn’t always get along, whew, no sir. But, uh...we went through a lot together. So we’re kind of bonded, yeah?

Anon #2: A lot. I mean, a lot of like, hard classes and stuff. Getting your PhD is rough, am I right? Hah...

Anon #2: Yeah...lots of ups and downs...betrayals...allyships...In the end, I trust him, though. He was a solid guy, all said. Solid guy...

Anon #2: I think... I think like, the whole apoc―the, uh, Nonary Game thing? Must have been hard on him. He was pretty prickly. Drank a lot. I haven’t seen him in a while. He uh...he...dropped out...a while back. Hope he’s doing okay. I kinda miss that guy, you know?

Anon #2: He made the worst jokes, though. Like, people bother me about the puns, they should hear this guy, he was terrible. 

Anon #2: Like, what the hell? I didn’t technically break my promise because I said nine points and now I have eleven? That’s still a ****ing **** move, man!

Anon #2: Uh...yeah. [REDACTED]. Junpei [REDACTED]. I miss that guy. 

Yeah. I hope you had a good laugh there, because...whyyyyy did they put this guy in. He’s so clearly lying it loops from ‘not even funny’ to actually being funny again. Good for laughs, but hooo boyyyyy, the misinformation in this thing. It’s off the charts!

Okay. Okay, I’ve gotten that out of my system. I’m calm now. 

So, as you can see from these few bits, and if you’ve ever watched the documentary yourself, ‘Nine’ leans pretty heavily on the theory that the person behind the second Nonary Game was Aoi Kurashiki, and that he did it as revenge for the first Nonary game, which ended in the death of his sister.

This is... It makes a reasonable amount of sense, yes, and there’s a reason (outside of ‘Nine’s popularity) that it’s the most widespread theory...but...I think it’s missing a few things. I’ll get into a few things when I get into all the differing theories. Right now―let’s finish the story.

So, ‘Nine’ coming out was basically the nail in the coffin for Cradle Pharmaceuticals. It had been involved in at least one lawsuit in the year since allegations about the first Nonary Game came out, and the documentary was what they really needed to push things over the edge. In the end, with a total of sixteen former Nonary Game participants (all of them, minus Aoi and Akane Kurashiki), and multiple parents, police officers, and ex-Cradle Employees testifying against them, any Cradle execs who weren’t already dead or in jail were sentenced to time, and Gentarou Hongou and Cradle Pharmaceuticals was made to pay enough in reparations that the company tanked. Its reputation was also already bad enough that it probably wouldn’t have done very well anyways. 

So...yeah! That’s the story, basically, from start to end. Not a lot of new information has come out about the whole thing since then, and I wager that not much more will. Most of the participants seem to have said all they wanted to say, and the only big mysteries left are regarding people who are near impossible to find any information on. 

Theories & Conclusions

In that regard, it’s time to move on to some theories! I’ll get into a few common ones in the community, and then my own.

I’ve seen a lot of varying posts like this going around, sort of ‘I’ve found the girl in purple! I’ve found the Junpei Guy! I found Aoi Kurashiki!’ and every time it’s pretty much the same thing. Just because a public figure looks a bit like someone who we have a few hours of security cam footage of does noooooot mean they are the same person. And hey, I’m all for putting our heads together and figuring out things that the police can’t but...if these people WERE in the Nonary Game, we’d know. They’re public figures, it’s hard to just keep that big of a secret. 

I don't even need to try to disprove this one. Time travel? Seriously? This sounds like the plot of Back to the Future, honestly... Anyways, hope you guys got a bit of a laugh out of that one.

So, I see a lot of these around. It makes sense, it's the biggest unsolved mystery of the Cradle Case. And, this may shock you, but I actually think that...none of these are objectively wrong. 

I know right now you're probably thinking something like 'what the heck, Hammie?' but stay with me for a while longer. I want to present you with a few things we know about the nine players of the second Nonary Game.

1. Here are the players that we've identified: Light Field, Clover Field, Gentarou Hongou, Hazuki Kashiwabara, Teruaki Kubota, Kagechika Musashidou, Nagisa Nijisaki, and [SEVEN].
2. There were three players left unidentified. One is almost definitely named Aoi Kurashiki, the other two are an unidentified woman in her early 20s wearing a purple dress and a man of around the same age whose first name appears to be 'Junpei'.
3. Out of these players:
1. Gentarou Hongou was the CEO of Cradle Pharmaceuticals, cited by a few ex-participants as the man behind the first Nonary Game.
2. Teruaki Kubota, Kagechika Musashidou, and Nagisa Nijisaki all played an integral part in orchestrating the first Nonary Game, according to the players of the second, and some of the first.
3. Light Field, Clover Field, and Aoi Kurashiki were all participants in the first Nonary Game. For some weird reason, first Nonary Game participants can't remember whether or not a girl died in the game, but when they say one did, they say her name was Akane Kurashiki― Aoi's sister. 
4. Hazuki Kashiwabara is the single mother of two twins, Nona and Ennea, who were kidnapped for the first Nonary Game.
5. [SEVEN] was a Japanese detective who reportedly rescued the kids in the first Nonary Game from the HMS Gigantic. Nona Kashiwabara mentions in her interview that he was one of the three people that discovered Akane Kurashiki dead. 
4. Out of these players, Kubota, Musashidou and Nijisaki ended the game dead. Gentarou Hongou ended the game accused of murder. He claimed that "Zero" manipulated him into killing those people, but "Zero" was never found.
5. Out of the two unidentified players, one of them―Junpei, from the security video shown in court seemed to be the one who figured out most of what Hongou did to the other players. He outlines Hongou's motives, his actions... In fact, outside of the fact that he doesn't deny these accusations, Hongou only admits to one murder. 
6. During Gentarou Hongou's trial, the four witnesses all deny having ever heard the name Aoi Kurashiki, when Hongou claims that they ALL heard the name. Moreover, Light Field was one of the players of the first Nonary Game on the HMS Gigantic with Aoi Kurashiki. [SEVEN] wasn't a player, but he was there too. I find it unlikely that neither of them would have known even his first name, especially when every other first Nonary Game participant who's been interviewed does remember it. Which begs the question: were they lying? And if they were, who were they protecting?

I’m sure you’ve already figured it out yourselves, but I’ll spell it out for you. 

All these clues lead to one thing: they were lying to protect EACH OTHER. Think about it. Almost every player of that game that didn’t end up dead or in prison had huuuuuge reasons for wanting the people who ran the first Nonary Game dead or in jail. From what that Junpei guy says, it seems like ‘Zero’ was executing a pretty elaborate plan to get Hongou to kill his coworkers―one that wouldn’t work unless every piece of the puzzle fell into place. That’d be hard, but much easier if most of the pieces in your puzzle are also the puzzlemasters. 

The only person who I can’t really connect to this idea is the girl in purple, but that’s mostly because we have absolutely zero information on her. I’d say, she was probably in on it too, in some way that’d become clear if we had more info. Same with the Junpei guy. He’s the only one of the known players with no connection to the first Nonary Game, but we also don’t even know his last name, so. Yeah. 

It’s likely that this was all part of their plan―the trial, the specific incriminating evidence, the whole media frenzy that ended up taking down Cradle... It’s a pretty great way to get revenge, for putting those kids in that game years ago and for the girl who died in it. I think it makes a lot more sense than any ONE of them being the mastermind. And it really makes you think about Gentarou Hongou’s trial and the downfall of Cradle Pharmaceuticals... Do you think they deserved it?

But hey. That’s just my theory. What do you think?

―――――

As promised, here’s a few links for further reading on this case!

My friend red @thewrightplace ‘s write up on the Cradle lawsuit You should honestly check out all of Red’s stuff―she’s great, and she’s got a lot of knowledge on the legal side of things, unlike me, haha! I glossed over a lot of the court proceedings in this post partly because I know they aren’t the most exciting part of the case, and partly because I do not know much about criminal law! However: Red totally does! Go check her out!

Cat’s Cradle This is a book that gathers a lot of interviews, newspaper articles and other sorts of documents to weave together the story of Cradle Pharmaceuticals’ rise to fame and dramatic downfall. It’s really great!

Alanna Hayes’s video on the Nonary Games I don’t always agree with Alanna on the theories she presents in her videos, but this one is very solid and informational.

The Missing Nonary Players blog post on Kenzie Heckle’s Unsolved Mysteries blog. I just talked about how I think most theories on the unidentified Nonary Game players are totally unsubstantiated and probably wrong, but this blog is really well researched and speculates a lot without saying anything outright. 

And here’s some miscellaneous links to some firsthand accounts

Here’s some things for specific info on aspects of this case:
Gentarou Hongou
The other second Nonary Game players
The first Nonary Game
Hongou’s Trial
Cradle Pharmaceuticals

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