Summary
: Just as a warning, this update’s going to contain some pretty dark shit, including a description of a sexual assault.
: “The Yukimura mansion… now the explosions start. Maybe they’re trying to set it up like some kind of festival. Criminals sure do love blowin’ shit up real good. Why is that?”
: Tokio’s phone starts ringing.
: “Who the fuck…”
: “Oh hey, Kusabi, right?”
: “I heard from Morikawa.”
: “That’s good. There’s something regarding Mikumo 77 that I just have to talk to you about.”
: “OK. But wait… I can’t give out any info right now. Listen, Yukimura is fine. Other than that, I can’t say shit for now.”
: “Who was the bomber?”
: “We’re looking into it.”
: “There should be two men left who were originally from Mikumo. It may have been them.”
: “I see…”
: “Do you have some kind of lead?”
: “No… but…”
: “Try checking that place out. Mikumo…”
: “Listen up. People’s lives are at stake, so don’t say shit about this to anyone. We aren’t letting anyone from the media get anywhere near this.”
: “If anything got leaked to the bomber and it gets found out, everyone involved will be fucked.”
: Oh yeah, one thing I should’ve mentioned earlier when Erika said there was a press embargo on reporting on the Yukimura bombing - while this is unheard of in most Western democracies, it’s actually not uncommon in Japan.
: In 2016, when The Silver Case re-released, Reporters Without Borders ranked Japan 72nd out of 180 countries surveyed, which is really low when compared to a lot of Western countries.
: As an example, the Abe administration passed a national security law in 2013 that could potentially put reporters in jail for asking about national secrets, even if the reporter was not aware of it.
: When TV reporters protested this and started asking very pointed questions, Abe simply went and used his influence to get them fired.
: Things haven’t really improved since then, either. After 2016, Japan’s press freedom ranking went up to 67th place before falling back to 71st this year.
: In comparison, the United States ranked 42nd in 2022, though in the case of the US it’s more of a “people are fucking idiots” problem than government censorship.
: “Of course I won’t…”
: “That’s all for now. I’m hanging up.”
: “So Yukimura is OK… something is definitely going on. Shit, I’m all out of leads. What the hell do I do now…?”
: “You’re not just living in elegance, right? I mean… you can’t understand me anyway, but still…”
: Red’s thinking about his upcoming trip to Hawaii, and how he’s going to order a vegetarian poke bowl twice his size and spend an entire day eating it.
: “If I’m gonna proceed further, I’m gonna have to talk to the old survivor from Mikumo; he’d know who the two boys were. I need to move.”
: “I went to the address I got from Erika, and it ended up being a small, dingy apartment building. When I knocked on the door, an old man with the veins bulging out of his temples stuck his face through.”
: “He looked a bit clammy and sick. ‘I came to ask you about Mikumo,’ I told him. For some reason, he seemed to smirk at my statement. He invited me into his apartment with a smile.”
: “Pardon me, I’m not in the best of health…”
: “Go ahead and lie down, don’t mind me.”
: “So… what do you need?”
: “There were three kids in Mikumo, right?”
: “Oh, the kids.. yeah, they were there.”
: “I want to know what happened to those kids.”
: “Hm. You got any smokes?”
: “Huh? Oh, yeah… here you go.”
: “Please, tell me what you know.”
: “Hey!”
: “What is it?”
: “That’s good… these are some good smokes.”
: “That’s… wonderful.”
: “But yeah, that was some terrible stuff.”
: “You mean what happened 20 years ago?”
: “Those kids had grown up together… they were really close, always getting into mischief together…”
: “And?”
: “While I was sleeping, they shaved my beard off. Like, really cleanly and nicely. No, wait.. that was my grandkids.”
: I’m picturing Red going “But you uh, don’t have a beard” and the old guy going “Exactly.”
: “Come on, buddy.”
: “Oh yeah. Those three kids had a leader, born into a poor factory worker’s family… what was the name again? Really clever kid.”
: Here I imagine Red going “Wait, so was the factory poor and the family worked at the poor factory, or was the family poor, or what?”
: “Is that.. the princess?”
: “The right-hand man… oh yeah, it was a boy named Fuyuki. He didn’t talk much, but he was a smart kid.”
: Erika will clear this up a bit later, but Fuyuki was the guy who jumped into the incinerator.
: “So that’s the first guy…”
: “There was another selfish little boy named Kiseki, too.”
: “So that’s the second guy. And? What happened?”
: “What happened? Some really bad stuff. They ganged up on the kids, did some horrible stuff to them.”
: “What did they do?”
: To me, this feels kind of like the scenes in Metal Gear Solid 4 after you kill a member of the Beauty and Beast Unit, which are dumb shit like “She had her family murdered in front of her every day for five years”. That’s not an exact quote, but it might as well be.
: Oh, by the way, speaking of shit getting butchered, I found out today that Level-5 apparently sold the Ni no Kuni IP to a Korean crypto firm that just recently shit out a Ni no Kuni crypto-gacha game.
: “Seriously…? So that’s.. the…”
: “That’s what happened to them.”
: “So who is ‘see no evil’, who is ‘speak no evil’, and who is ‘hear no evil’ ?”
: “Hm… as far as who was which, that’s all lost in the fog of my memory…”
: “So then The Bat is…”
Twenty years ago, there were three friends, a girl and two boys. For some reason, the girl was horribly assaulted by the violent mob of people from Mikumo and was raped.
The two boys tried to save her, but they were captured by the violent mob. The three had their eyes, ears, and mouths shut. This is what that riddle from The Bat was talking about.
They were drenched in oil, or just attacked with it, stabbed, and were sewn up with a needle and thread. Who was eaten by their parents? That means their parents turned a blind eye to what was happening to them.
The Bat can write mails, so he either can’t speak or can’t hear. The one who had their eyes gouged out and sewn up was either the girl or the one who isn’t The Bat. The one who had oil poured into their mouth and had it sewn up was also either the girl or the other one who isn’t The Bat.
And now the two boys are attempting to get revenge for what happened 20 years ago. They’re after Yukimura, the one responsible for causing the pollution and everything else.
: “When I get home, I gotta restore my desktop PC. No, before that… I gotta clean out the turtle’s tank.”
: “Well, the hard disk is clean — I guess this’ll do just fine…”
: I get why Suda did it, but it’s weird that none of Tokio’s previous emails are in his inbox, unless he was running his own mail server I guess.
From: S. INOHANA
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Final Warning
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 13:28:41I’m warning you. If you don’t reply, your contract will be terminated. You’re almost out of time.
From: Tokio Morishima
To: S. INOHANA
Subject: Re: Final WarningMy computer got fucked up by a virus and I couldn’t send any mails. Sorry about that.
About The Bat:
He must be a Kamui believer. I heard his name among some rumors on the internet. He hasn’t mailed me back again yet. Apart from that, I have absolutely no info. So, conversely, if you’ve got any info, I’d like you to share it with me. I’m still investigating, and I’ll keep going.Just a quick note. That is all.
: “Way to kick the fucking hornet’s nest…”
I can’t tell the client about the time The Bat crashed into my chat. It would break my non-disclosure agreement, as I was chatting with Erika. I can’t explain that.
Why was the girl at Mikumo raped and beaten? There must be a reason she was sacrificed. If I know who she was, I could probably figure that out, too.
: Why would he need to do that? Inohana already knows that Tokio’s been in contact with The Bat via email.
: “I guess it has.”
: “By the way… whatever happened with those riddles you were talking about?”
: “Oh yeah, those. I finally worked them all out. Then I went on a little trip.”
: “I knew it! So you won a trip after all!”
: I mean, Big Dick won the trip and only invited Tokio because he wanted to invite Red.
: “Thanks to you.”
: “In that case, how about a drink…?”
: “I guess I have no choice. Fix yourself one of whatever you like.”
The perpetrators of the bombing of Yukimura Group Chairman Yukimura’s mansion on July 11th were found to have committed suicide. According to reports, there were two suspects, both of whom were unemployed with no known address. Currently, the location, time, and motive for the suicides have yet to be publicized, but the police are expected to make an announcement soon.
From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Follow-Up Report
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 13:39:00With the press embargo this is still top secret, but it looks like Chairman Yukimura was kidnapped. The kidnappers were two people from Mikumo 77. “Fuyuki” and “Hiseki”. But Hiseki died immediately after the Yukimura mansion bombing. So it looks like the main perperator was Fuyuki.
Although there was an embargo on Fuyuki and Hiseki’s suicides, too, it was broken. Hiseki was blind. And Fuyuki, the one who jumped into the smokestack and killed himself, was a deaf mute. Now don’t freak out, but both men had their eyes and mouths sewn shut.
So most of what The Bat said matches up. I never thought this whole thing would get this bad… but why did those two return Chairman Yukimura unharmed and then kill themselves? Maybe Hiseki dying messed up their plan, and so Fuyuki decided to die, too? Something is definitely not right here. This whole case is still full of mysteries.
From: junk@kipple.ne.jp
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: parade
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 10:00:00This email has been set to reach you on a specific date.
I’m not The Bat. My name is Hiseki. When I first received your mistaken mail, it was kind of fun. And so as thanks, no - actually, as a prank, I chose you to be a spectator for my little parade. You were apparently quite a good spectator. I’m happy about that. Do you like parade fireworks?
: I only just now realized I made a mistake when reading this email. The way I understood it was that The Bat was Sumio, and Hiseki was saying this because he’s not Sumio.
: But no, the idea is that whoever The Bat is had Hiseki’s email address and dropped it so Tokio would find it.
: “The Bat was Hiseki… no… I just thought he was ‘The Bat’, but it turned out that I happened to have been talking to Hiseki all along… but why was he able to write mails even though he was blind?”
: “It’s hot again today.”
: “By the way, do you have good eyesight?”
: “That’s actually ‘BA’, from ‘BATH’.”
: “It’s not a problem of ‘noticing’… What do you do when you watch TV and stuff?”
: “Turning the volume way up, that’s basically the same as ‘seeing’, right? Wait a second… ‘sound’…”
It turns out that blind internet users aren’t rare at all. There are all sorts of systems for the blind, like voice input, text-reading functions, all kinds of shit.
I feel like Hiseki is the kind of guy you just can’t hate. He was almost definitely the bomber, but apart from that, when I think about our back-and-forth via mail, he really had good sense for that sort of prank. I don’t know how good of a spectator I was, though.
I received my final mail from ‘The Bat’, or ‘Hiseki’, rather. I’ll forward it to you.
He likely died because of what they planned to do. I think the stuff these guys were doing was all part of the plan from the beginning.
The HC Unit is probably handling Yukimura’s kidnapping. Either way, since the guy is really well known, the embargo should be on for a while. It’ll be a while before I can get info from the HC Unit again. I wonder if Yukimura is really unharmed? Considering Hiseki and Fuyuki’s feelings, it’s pretty hard to think that Yukimura would come back totally unscathed..
I don’t care about the mystery anymore. Once the media gets hold of this, all the bullshit is gonna start flying again.
Whatever. Anyway, apparently while I was searching for The Bat, I ended up finding a different one instead. The bloodsucking type. A pretty fucked up dude. I wonder if they ever made it to the princess after all?
From: Erika Yukawa
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Favor
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 8:24:13It looks like something happened to the old survivor from Mikumo. I got a call from the old lady living next door to him this morning. She didn’t know who to call so she saw my business card and called me. At this point it looks like he’ll be OK, but he could take a turn for the worse at any time.
I want to go talk to him ASAP, but all sorts of stuff about the Yukimura news has been popping up and I can’t get away. Could you go and check on him for me? Please? Get hold of me later tonight and I should be able to drive out there.
: “I guess it’s best to talk to the old man before he dies off… that may end up not even being a joke.”
: “There’s some really fishy shit going down.. I guess I should hurry…”
: “Huh? Oh.”
: “Do you have any relatives close by?”
: “I’ve been living here on my own for years now… but the old lady next door takes good care of me… so I do OK…”
: “Really…?”
: “By the way, you’re… uh… oh, it’s you.”
: “Do you really remember me?”
: “Yeah… Fuyuki. Good to see you, boy.”
: “It’s Morishima. I’m Fuyuki’s… friend.”
: “I see…”
: Either this guy was having a really good day the first day Tokio met him (which, I remind you, was only two days ago) or he went very senile very quickly.
: I should mention that depending on how you take Flower, Sun and Rain, some or all of what the old guy says could be non-canon. We’ll talk a little about that at the end of the update.
: “Yeah. I know the name of one more, too. ‘Kiseki’ - no wait, ‘Hiseki’.”
: “Oh yeah…”
: “And the girl.”
: “Riru.”
: “Riru.. that’s her name?”
: “Yeah. A relative of the Yukimura family.”
: “The Yukimura family? I see. So this Riru girl was sacrificed by the crazy mob because of her ties to the Yukimura family…”
: "You didn’t know that?’
: “No… sorry, it’s the first time I’ve heard of it. The fourth poem.. ‘eaten by their parents’.. so that’s what that meant.”
: “And one more…”
: “Huh?”
: “The deaf one… I remembered.”
: “Huh? What are you talking about? The deaf one, that was Riru.. wasn’t it?”
: No, it was their leader, Suxxio Xodai. Suxxio is Sumio’s nobody… or is that heartless? I honestly don’t know and I’m too lazy to look it up for the sake of a dumb joke.
: I like to think that Kusabi has a nobody that is scared of guns and has never shot anyone.
: “Hiseki, have you forgotten…?”
: “What…?”
: “Your… your boss, right?”
: “Who is?”
: “…”
: “Come on, buddy. Old man… it’s still too early to die just yet.”
: “I can’t believe you’ve forgotten… I guess you must… you must’ve gone soft in the head… too…”
: “The fuck are you talking about? My ‘boss’… was there one more person?”
: “Oh.. oh yeah.”
: “What the fuck? This guy, man..”
: Welp, old guy’s dead.
: “This fairytale is gonna be over soon.”
: No important emails today.
: “It should be hotter. Shit, I totally forgot about whittling that wood. I should probably play with you, too. What should we do..?”
: Tokio’s phone rings again.
: “Sorry, Red. I’ll give you some shrimp later.”
: “It’s me.”
: “Erika? Did something happen?”
: “It looks like the embargo will be lifted anytime now.”
: “The embargo, huh…”
: I’m not sure if this line was in the original game or not, but if it was, it’d have a strange relevance both to the 1990s and today.
: Assuming this line was in the original game, Tokio is probably talking about the Arab League boycotts of Israel, which more or less ended in the mid-90s.
: Most of the English sources on those boycotts are from Israel and have their own agenda, but I did find one from Haaretz that’s relatively unbiased if you want to read a little about it.
: If it wasn’t in the original game, this is probably a reference to the “BDS” (short for “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions”) movement, which is essentially an attempt at reviving the Arab League boycotts.
: The BDS movement has been heavily legislated against in the United States, and was effectively dead before it ever got anywhere. Most of that happened around the time this re-release was being made.
: “Are you trying to be funny? Why do you always have to screw around like that?”
: First the Israel thing, now this. This feels like the kind of thing you’d see in No More Heroes.
: “Whatever…”
: “Listen. The weather hasn’t been this nice in a long time, right? The weather’s been pretty ugly recently, you know? Why don’t we go fishing?”
: “Are you.. asking me out?”
: “It was worth a try, I guess.”
: “I’m hanging up now.”
: “OK… bye.”
At approximately 11:00pm on July 31st, Snow Tower, which houses the Yukimura Group’s HQ, was blown up. The entire building was destroyed and eleven people were killed. Miraculously, there were fewer casualties than would normally be expected. The bombing is assumed to be related to the earlier Yukimura mansion bombing.
At this point, nobody has come forward to take credit for the bombing. Additionally, the victims killed in the explosion were Yukimura Group Chairman Yukimura and ten members of the board. Since it was a holiday, regular employees and security staff were away and therefore not injured.
: “I guess I’ll get going then.”
: “If you’re looking for Tetsu… he’s not here…”
: “Actually… today I’m here to see you.”
: “Me?”
: “I want you to tell me a fairytale.”
: “Go ask your mommy.”
: “My mommy isn’t here, and that blind kid is dead, so…”
: “It’s a long story… but if you don’t mind…”
: “A long story? Sounds nice.”
: “Don’t blame me if you fall asleep partway through.”
: “Hot again today…”
Today at noon, just 34 hours after the Snow Tower bombing, the Mikumo 77 area, once developed as an industrial area by the Yukimura Group, was suddenly bombed, causing an explosion covering a 4km radius.
Considering the previous bombings, it is thought that someone attempting to destroy the Yukimura Group is likely responsible. However the perpetrator is as of yet unknown, and no one has yet claimed responsibility. Additionally, there are currently no residents in Mikumo 77, and it is assumed that no one was killed or injured.
: “How about it? We should go fishing together… or maybe just sunbathing, I guess. OK.. I guess I’ll just write it all up at once.”
: Tokio’s blog post is a gigantic wall of text, so I’ll split it up a bit by talking about Flower, Sun and Rain.
Sumio answered almost all of the questions I had. All off the record, of course. I just showed him the four mails I received from Hiseki. Sumio checked them all.
I’ll call Sumio, Fuyuki, and Hiseki the “Mikumo Boys”. The Mikumo Boys were childhood friends. Sumio had been their leader for the entire 20 years.
Twenty years ago, there was a beautiful girl named Riru Yukimura, who was like the three boys’ idol. Riru was raised in a branch family of the Yukimura Group, and is a distant relative. Riru’s family was given some of the Mikumo 77 land. Some time later, the pollution problem at Mikumo 77 came to light.
Mikumo was surrounded by a photochemical smog, and the river was full of water polluted by that narcotic. Soon, anti-industrial protests would begin as wel, with demonstrations filling the streets every Sunday. Residents sarcastically referred to this as the “parade”.
The parade would get more and more lively each weekend, and then one day, the residents formed a violent mob and attacked the Yukimura house. The residents, all fucked up from the narcotic in the water, were terrified of the extremely beautiful and early-maturing Riru, and believed she was a witch.
: Flower Sun and Rain was originally released on the PS2, and then got a re-release.. on the DS. The re-release was… kinda terrible.. and came out before The Silver Case had been localized.
: There’s an LP of it on the archive, but the person who did it had never played The Silver Case. There’s talk about them re-releasing the PS2 version, so I won’t spoil it.. much.
Riru became a symbol of the Yukimura family who had caused them so much pain and suffering. That day, Riru’s parents, terrified of the encroaching mob, left their daughter at home on her own and ran away. The Mikumo Boys barely managed to save Riru from the mob, and brought her to the mountains to escape.
But while Sumio was looking away, Riru was taken away by the mob. Riru was sacrificed, and died. Because they tried to help her escape, an example was made of the three boys.
For “hearing Riru’s words and being enchanted”, Sumio had his ears stabbed out; for “seeing Riru’s cute disguise and being fooled”, Hiseki had his eyes sewn shut; and for “swearing allegiance to the demon Riru”, Fuyuki had his mouth sewn shut.
And — then… the Mikumo Boys spent the next 20 years silently plotting their revenge on everyone. Sumio joined the HC Unit. He became really good at lipreading, and learned to control his intonation when speaking. He faked all of his physical tests at the Central Police Academy, and bribed an examiner to pass him for the hearing tests.
He used special radios and cellphones created by Hiseki to avoid being found out. Hiseki developed software that would convert incoming transmissions into Braille. This software was installed into all communications devices used by Sumio.
The Mikumo Boys’ goal was simple: the complete and utter destruction of the Yukimura Concern. They put their plans into motion. For the Yukimura mansion bombing, while Sumio gathered security for his stakeout, Fuyuki kidnapped Chairman Yukimura and confirmed that there was nobody left at the house, and then Hiseki blew it up.
After that, Hiseki committed suicide as planned, to ensure that they couldn’t be traced. He had already set up the bomb at Snow Tower before killing himself. At the same time, Fuyuki had Chairman Yukimura on lockdown. Fuyuki sent two videos to investigation HQ to show them that Yukimura was still alive.
: So anyway, Flower Sun and Rain makes a number of changes to The Silver Case’s story that are contradictory to both Parade and Tsuki - to the point where it’s questionable if Mikumo 77 even happened.
: I’m inclined to believe that FSR isn’t really canon, especially given that the real sequel to The Silver Case (that being The 25th Ward) only kind of glosses over it existing at all.
Sumio met with the locked up chairman several times, and made a promise with him, to get him to destroy the Yukimura Group himself. Forced to make a painful choice, Yukimura finally agreed. Fuyuki demands the ransom. Once it’s received, he throws himself into the smokestack. Another suicide, just as planned.
Then Chairman Yukimura blows up Snow Tower by his own hand. The Yukimura Group has now been scattered to the wind. But the story doesn’t end here. The Mikumo Boys’ final target was Mikumo 77. They still had the purification of the cursed land on which Mikumo 77 stood and the release of Riru’s restless soul to take care of.
Sumio didn’t mention it, but there was no way the Mikumo Boys would let that dilapidated town remain. Anyone who’s seen the grotesque remains of Mikumo 77 would agree.
Does Sumio plan to die? Or does he plan to atone for his sins by continuing to live on? Where did Fuyuki and Hiseki’s hopes lie? Of course, I have no idea.
: Speaking of Sumio’s plans, there is one thing from Flower Sun and Rain that is definitely canon: Kusabi is either gay or bisexual, and he’s got a thing for Sumio. FSR outright confirms it.
: There are signs of it in The Silver Case that are more obvious if you’re playing in Japanese, apparently, but Kusabi was supposedly intended to be not straight even in the original 1999 release.
Princess Aurora slept the sleep of death at the top of the tower. Princess Aurora was reborn as beautiful as ever. But over the past 20 years, Riru would’ve been mummified, and her remains would be turning to dust by now. This parade must have begun from the feeling that the princess couldn’t be returned to such a filthy place.
: On a side note, Princess Aurora is apparently the “canon” name for Sleeping Beauty. I’m not sure if that’s something Disney came up with or not, and as I am not that one lady I used to work with, I do not care.
: “Two boys? That’s where I first fucked up.”
From: Tokio Morishima
To: Erika Yukawa
Subject: Final RiddleI worked out the final riddle we had overlooked. By the way, August 2nd, 1979 was the day Riru died.
As for “7:75:64”, when I showed it to Sumio, he laughed and answered. Apparently it was the secret code he told Yukimura to use to blow up Snow Tower.
Only the memories of the princess and the three boys. The clouds are dirtied black, and the village died out. Then, a nightmare-eating chimera disappears along with the wind. The wording was purposely confusing. This is just a simple joke, basically. This was the bomb warning that Hiseki gave to me.
“A princess and three boys, only their memories.” Mikumo was dirtied black and once the Yukimura Gruop had been wiped out, the nightmare-eating explosion disappeared with it.
: And.. that’s Tsuki. Next time, we’ll start Kamuidrome - the penultimate chapter of the Transmitter arc.. assuming I don’t LP The 25th Ward, which also has a Transmitter and a Placebo arc.