Chapter 44: Avici Hell

July 26, 1993, night.

Takamura Katsumi took a sip of coffee, but his eyes never left the magazine on the table.

Looking at the line "*ZOO*, Akiwara Yuto" on the magazine, he subconsciously frowned.

He is a book reviewer, mainly expressing opinions on mystery novels. But unlike Yashiro Toshihiro, the book reviews he writes are mainly published in magazines.

The magazine he contributes to is called *Mystery Literature*, which has a history of more than 80 years since its inception, and has always taken it as its duty to carry forward mystery literature.

Under this mission, Takamura Katsumi and other colleagues constantly dig up newcomers in the mystery literature world and criticize some impetuous phenomena in the industry.

And because of the funding from the government and private funds, they have no revenue pressure, and their views are more objective and fair compared to other book reviews.

Therefore, Takamura Katsumi often looks down on many book reviewers who can write good things if they take money, such as Yashiro Toshihiro, who is one of them.

Takamura Katsumi even suspected whether the other party had taken money from Mantanshe, which is why he had been strongly recommending Akiwara Yuto recently.

This possibility is quite large. After all, although the sales of *New Novel* are not high, it is also a member of Mantanshe. It is not ruled out that Mantanshe has ambitions and wants to further develop in the literary journal sector.

However, these have nothing to do with him. He is a real book reviewer and is only responsible to readers.

If the quality is really too poor, don't blame him for writing an article and scolding Akiwara Yuto bloody.

He doesn't know much about Akiwara Yuto. After all, the latter is a newcomer who has just debuted and hasn't even won a newcomer award. Also because of this reason, he doesn't like this person.

After all, since he hasn't won any honors, he should be low-key, instead of making trouble in the media all day. Thinking of some small newspapers recently calling the other party a "genius," Takamura Katsumi felt a bit funny.

A genius who hasn't even won a newcomer award, when did the "genius" in the literary world become so cheap?

He pondered for a while and decided to write a good book review. He wanted to scold this Akiwara Yuto awake from his "genius dream" and let him know that if he wants to continue walking in the literary world, he still has to write articles well.

He put down the coffee, straightened his body, and prepared to criticize.

But when he saw the first paragraph, he was involuntarily attracted...

It was written on it:

"Every morning, a photo of my girlfriend's corpse is placed in my inbox. Compared to the photo I saw in the mailbox yesterday, the decay is visibly worse today."

"However, this change is relatively small and not particularly obvious. There are very few differences visible at a glance; only the position of the maggots crawling on her is different between yesterday's photo and today's."

Takamura Katsumi was a bit surprised, even letting out an "Oh." He hadn't expected to see such an unexpected paragraph right at the beginning, and he even doubted whether his judgment of Akiwara Yuto was too one-sided.

He admitted that just from this opening, he was already deeply attracted.

Why would the protagonist receive photos of his girlfriend every day? Who killed his girlfriend? What is the murderer's purpose in mailing the photos?

Holding these doubts, he continued reading.

The author seemed to intentionally withhold the suspense, starting by describing the protagonist's careful observation of every scene after receiving the photos in clear detail—the protagonist first carefully observes the details of the corpse's decay, then plays all the photos in succession, followed by the protagonist recalling the sweetness with his girlfriend and his desire to take revenge on the murderer.

Takamura Katsumi nodded, thinking the writing style was passable.

But this protagonist seemed a bit perverted; not only did he not call the police, but he even carefully looked at the photos of the corpse. What was the intention behind this? Was it to catch the murderer and then use means beyond the law to take revenge on him?

However, what follows should be about how the protagonist finds out who killed his girlfriend, right?

Come to think of it, this kind of revenge trope is not often seen currently.

He pondered for a while, guessing several ways the protagonist might go step-by-step to catch the murderer using deductive methods.

After finishing his thoughts, he began to continue flipping through. When he saw that the girlfriend disappeared on the very day she had a conflict with the protagonist, he had a bad premonition in his heart. Until he saw the dialogue between the murderer and the gas station owner, he couldn't help but be shocked.

He had just been thinking about how the protagonist would catch the murderer, but it turned out the murderer was himself. What is going on?!

Could the murderer have schizophrenia? Or is it that everything was just his imagination?

How does this author's brain work?

By the time he finished reading the whole story, Takamura Katsumi was stunned for several seconds before he came back to his senses.

He discovered that because he was too nervous, he had crumpled the paper.

To be honest, he didn't expect it to be such a storyline.

Because of self-blame and unwillingness, the man who was the murderer fell into deep self-deception, cycling daily through the process of "looking for the murderer and discovering he is the murderer."

And in such pain, the only thing that accompanied him every day was the photo of his girlfriend's corpse.

Takamura Katsumi lowered his head and pondered other aspects.

As a work of honkaku detective fiction, Akiwara Yuto's "ZOO" fully meets the requirements; the content is gloomy, absurd, and the methods are exaggerated. At the very beginning, he uses unique methods to make readers surprised and unexpected.

In terms of the protagonist's psychological depiction, it portrays the protagonist's perverted psychology vividly, especially the complex idea of loving his girlfriend yet refusing to admit he is the murderer.

How should I put it, it is a good novel.

Takamura Katsumi put down the magazine and took a sip of coffee; due to the long time, the coffee had completely cooled down.

He didn't care, but continued to think about other aspects.

As a book reviewer, or rather a literary critic, he pays more attention to the core of the work, or in other words, what is the intention of the author in writing this work?

He was a bit suspicious that this author named Akiwara Yuto wanted to depict the Buddhist metaphor of the Avici Hell.

According to Buddhist teachings, falling into this level of hell means suffering and pain day and night, with no time to ever cease.

How similar this is to the man in the article.

Because he killed his girlfriend, he is restless and irritable every day, tormented by painful thoughts, and in the choice of whether to surrender or not, he is unable to control his anxiety.

If this is really the case, it seems this author named Akiwara cannot be underestimated.

He thought for a long time, preparing to find some flaws—but after looking around, he couldn't see any problems.

Is this the legendary genius? You have to know he has been debuted for less than a month!

He pondered for a while, spread out the manuscript paper, picked up his fountain pen, and wrote the title—"A Genius Writer's Humanistic Reflection on Death!"