Metropolitan Police Department, fifth basement level, the Police History Compilation Office.
"Inspector Indou, what do you make of it? Does the Slit-Mouthed Woman really have a child?"
Unable to determine from mere talk whether the Slit-Mouthed Woman had a child, Amamiya Rin turned to look at the more experienced Indou Ranko.
"The answer doesn't matter anymore."
Indou Ranko sat with her body angled to one side, and the look on her face was less cold than simply inured to it all.
"It doesn't matter? Because the Slit-Mouthed Woman has already been destroyed?"
Kazumi Junya asked, lost in thought.
Indou Ranko shook her head and shifted into a more comfortable posture.
"Don't you find it all rather deliberate? The school she was wandering happened to have a teacher who knew of her; the grade that teacher was in charge of happened to contain a child the Slit-Mouthed Woman had attacked; that teacher happened, right after recounting the Slit-Mouthed Woman's story to a colleague, to discover the Slit-Mouthed Woman appearing at the doorway; she then followed the Slit-Mouthed Woman to the staff room and saw the student records the Slit-Mouthed Woman had dug out; and facing an enemy strong enough to kill her, she didn't flee, but instead declared that she had a child—yet wouldn't say anything about that child's characteristics... Apart from Teacher Sekiguchi, who was used as a hostage, there wasn't a single other victim."
As Indou Ranko teased the threads apart in her analysis, the shock and doubt on Amamiya Rin's face grew thicker and thicker.
Last night, he had been preoccupied solely with hiding his identity and destroying the Slit-Mouthed Woman, and had overlooked all the fine details that Indou Ranko was now pointing out.
"Could it be that... the Slit-Mouthed Woman really has no child at all, and she was manufacturing her own rumor?"
Kazumi Junya's expression changed—he, too, had caught on.
Such a deliberate series of actions didn't resemble someone searching for her own child; rather, it looked like someone trying to leave everyone with the impression that she had a child.
"A ghost story that's already taken form—can it actually change its own story?"
Amamiya Rin couldn't help murmuring under his breath, his tone brimming with a sense of absurdity.
Based on the cases he had encountered before, he had roughly deduced how a ghost story comes into being.
First, an obsessive will and extreme emotion.
Take the White-Clad Beautiful Boy as a reference—positive emotion and will can work too.
But most ghost stories are formed from twisted wills and negative emotions, and maintaining extreme negative emotion is far easier than maintaining extreme positive emotion.
After all, if positive emotion becomes too extreme, it can be far more terrifying than extreme negative emotion... see the concept of love for humanity in the Type-Moon universe.
A whole crowd of people racking their brains out of hatred for humanity is no match for a single flash of inspiration from someone who loves humanity.
Second, the collective subconscious.
If it's extreme enough, even one person is sufficient—but for a ghost story to endure rather than bloom and wither in a single day, many people must truly believe in it. The power of people's faith fills the inner core of the ghost story and bestows power upon it.
Just like the White-Clad Beautiful Boy: he brought hope to people, and the people who received hope from him passed hope on to others, destroying the ghost story of the Black-Clad Beautiful Boy.
Or like Weeping Woman Slope—the people who believed in the first-generation Weeping Woman, generation after generation, took up the identity of the Weeping Woman to weep for the dead and help them attain Buddhahood, and the profession of the Weeping Woman did indeed come to possess a special power, passed down ever since.
Lastly, the sacrifice of the self.
Whether it's the White-Clad Beautiful Boy, who after taking his own life used his soul to guide belief; or the Slit-Mouthed Woman, who brings people terror as she roams once night falls; or the Weeping Woman, who, in the guise of the living, weeps for the dead at every moment—
they have all already abandoned their normal bodies and undergone an irreversible transformation.
Yet the Slit-Mouthed Woman's maneuver overturned Amamiya Rin's understanding.
Already turned into a ghost story, and still able to add settings to herself?
Wasn't that just a little too outrageous?
"The Slit-Mouthed Woman has been gone for fifteen years. Over that long stretch of time, most people have already forgotten her, so she sought out someone who had once seen her and used that person to spread a new rumor—a new story bizarre enough, with enough talking points, something worth telling—in order to prolong her own life... That's my conjecture."
Indou Ranko didn't fully affirm Amamiya Rin and Kazumi Junya's conjecture, but she offered her own view all the same.
Was it really so or not?
Indou Ranko could be certain of part of it.
The part where the Slit-Mouthed Woman, realizing she was about to be forgotten, deliberately manufactured a rumor even at the risk of being hunted down.
As for whether the Slit-Mouthed Woman actually had a child—
that, in fact, was easy enough to confirm: investigate the sixth-grade students of Shimokitazawa Elementary School and see whether any of them had been adopted...
But Indou Ranko would not do that.
No matter what conclusion the investigation reached, the very act of investigating would add a measure of power to the Slit-Mouthed Woman's continued existence.
"I see... Inspector Indou, supposing the Slit-Mouthed Woman manufactured an even more exaggerated rumor—say, that she can fly, or teleport—would the Slit-Mouthed Woman, revived from the rumor, gain those abilities?"
Amamiya Rin suddenly understood, then immediately thought a layer deeper and pressed the question to Indou Ranko.
At these words, not only Amamiya Rin and Kazumi Junya, but even Kogure—still steeped in his grief—couldn't help turning to look at Indou Ranko, his eyes betraying an uneasy, alarmed shade of doubt.
An urban legend unable to actively change its own ghost story would be one thing.
But now that there was already an example of the Slit-Mouthed Woman creating her own story, no one could say for certain that the sort of thing Amamiya Rin described wouldn't actually come to pass.
Indou Ranko fell silent for a few seconds. She picked up the remote, first switched off the television, then rubbed her eyes before finally speaking.
"It's not impossible—but it also depends on how many people believe.
Let me give you an analogy. Why does the Slit-Mouthed Woman have the legend that she can cover a hundred meters in three seconds, two hundred meters in three seconds, running faster than a car?
To a great extent it's because of her behavioral pattern—she's active only at dusk and during the night; her targets are mostly children or women moving alone, panic-stricken, in clothing easy to conceal. After committing her act, she swiftly leaves the scene, melting into the night or a back alley, and by the time others rush over at the sound, she's long since vanished without a trace.
Under their terror, witnesses easily form the impression that she's as fast as a gust of wind, gone in the blink of an eye. These impressions are passed from mouth to mouth, growing ever more exaggerated, and when enough people truly believe the Slit-Mouthed Woman possesses inhuman speed—then, when she appears again, that collective belief might genuinely make her faster and faster."
Having given this example, Indou Ranko went on.
"Urban legends—ghost stories—may be prone to exaggeration, but the formation of the ghost story's actual body doesn't change so easily. It requires the majority to truly believe. No one is going to believe there exists in this world a monster that can soar through the skies and burrow through the earth."
She paused, and Indou Ranko seemed to give a wry smile.
"In ancient times, perhaps there were. But as the ages progressed and the people's minds were enlightened—once humans could summon wind and rain too, and accomplish feats even more exaggerated than the myths and legends—people found it hard to believe that gods and demons of boundless power existed in the world. Even the Archbishop of the Vatican wouldn't necessarily believe that an omniscient, omnipotent, all-merciful and all-good Lord truly exists."
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