The Tokyo Police Journey Begins with the Ability to See Evil Thoughts

Half an hour later, in the interrogation room.

"I killed them."

Faced with the evidence laid out on the table, Akihiro Sakaguchi finally confessed.

He leaned back in the cold interrogation chair, his back slightly hunched, his once meticulously styled hair now disheveled and plastered to his forehead. His voice was hoarse but unusually calm as he recounted the entire incident, word by word.

"The person who died was my younger brother, Kenta Sakaguchi."

"This guy has been good-for-nothing since he was a child. People who know us brothers usually say that we don't seem like children raised in a family."

"I studied hard since I was little and got excellent grades, while he was always skipping classes or getting into fights, always causing trouble for the family..."

"Three years ago, this bastard owed more than 20 million yuan in gambling debts at an underground casino. He was being chased by loan sharks and had nowhere to go, so he stole my money and fled the country illegally."

"At that time, my business was just starting out. After he took the money, he almost drove me to the brink of despair. I hated him to the core, but life had to go on and business had to be done. I could only try to find ways to get through that difficult period."

"After that, everyone thought he had died out there, and I had long since stopped caring about having a younger brother."

"Then, about two weeks ago, he secretly ran back, looking disheveled, and blocked the entrance to my factory, kneeling on the ground and begging me to help him one more time."

As he said this, a hateful sneer escaped his throat.

This wasn't the first time Kamiya Gen and Kiha Yuzu had interrogated a prisoner, so they knew that there was no need to say anything at this time. They just had to wait for the other party to spill everything they knew, so they remained silent.

"I was completely out of my mind at the time. Seeing his pitiful state and thinking of our shared motherhood, I gave him some money and told him to find a proper job and stop gambling. But what happened? He threw millions into the casino and lost it all in three days."

"The problem is that those loan sharks know he's my brother, and they're all willing to lend him money."

"Then, without my knowledge, he gambled away a lot of money and ended up owing 80 million yen in high-interest loans. They threatened that if he didn't pay back the money within ten days, they would break both his arms and sink him into Tokyo Bay."

"He came to me again, but this time he didn't beg on his knees; he came with threats."

Sakaguchi Akihiro's voice gradually faded, his eyes brimming with suppressed grievances and exhaustion.

"Officer, do you think running a factory is easy? In this day and age, legitimate business profits are as thin as paper. Environmental protection, labor, and raw material costs rise every year, and orders are decreasing year by year. I have to support hundreds of workers, pay their wages, and make social security contributions. If I didn't secretly do some gray business selling high-end replica watch movements, my factory would have gone out of business three years ago! I have no choice! If I don't do it, my workers will lose their jobs, and my whole family will starve!"

Hearing his words, Muheyou frowned slightly, trying to say something profound, but Kamiya Gen pressed her hand down.

"I have to agree with you on this point. I know quite a few factory owners who eventually went out of business and committed suicide due to debt."

Kamiya Gen began, deliberately sighing, "Continue, Mr. Sakaguchi..."

Akihiro Sakaguchi nodded, then continued speaking, his voice filled with a deep sense of helplessness:

"I did this discreetly, so much so that even the old workers in the factory didn't know what I was doing. But this bastard found out. He came to me with the records of my smuggling of special steel, the processing drawings, and the transaction records of the underground workshop. He said that if I didn't give him 100 million to pay off my gambling debts, he would hand all these things over to the tax police and the brand owner, so that my factory would be shut down, I would go to jail, all my hard work would be ruined, and I would rot in the mud with him."

"I raised money for him time and time again, giving him more than 20 million yuan in total, but he was a bottomless pit that could never be filled! He used my money to gamble and squander it, and then turned around and used those evidence to threaten me, demanding more money. On the night of the incident, I arranged to meet him in the factory workshop. I wanted to persuade him one last time, to tell him that I really couldn't come up with any more money, and to ask him to stop pressuring me. But he wouldn't listen to reason. He slapped the printed letter of complaint in my face and said that he would mail it at dawn, saying that if I didn't pay up, we would all die together."

As Sakaguchi Akihiro finished speaking, he lowered his eyes, his voice trailing off, as if he had exhausted all his strength.

"I was really driven to the brink at that time. Looking at his face and the letter of complaint in his hand, I had only one thought in my mind: I can't let him ruin me, I can't let him ruin the factory. I poured him a glass of water and added the sedative I usually take for my anxiety. He passed out not long after drinking it. I originally just wanted to take the evidence from his hand, tie him up and send him abroad, but he woke up halfway through and started fighting with me like a madman, shouting that he wanted to take me with him to die. In desperation, I grabbed the steel pipe next to me and smashed it on his head."

"By the time I realized what was happening, he was already dead."

He paused, his throat moved, and he continued, "I panicked at the time. My first reaction was that I couldn't let anyone know that he died here, otherwise my counterfeit watch business would be completely exposed. Fortunately, I already knew that Toda Toshiaki had a ghost employee named Ueda Kazuki. No one in the factory had ever seen this person, so I thought of faking his death as an accidental death while operating a milling machine."

"You all know what happened next. I did everything myself: bribing people to keep quiet, even slipping checks to you, officer."

Having said that, he seemed to have completely unloaded all his burdens, leaned back in his chair, and asked:

"Officer, how long would I be sentenced to?"

After hearing his question, Kamiya Gen and Kiha Yu exchanged a glance, and the latter opened the criminal law and sentencing standards manual at hand.

"Based on all the facts you have confessed to, and considering current Japanese criminal law and judicial practice, you are involved in multiple crimes, and your final sentence will be calculated according to the rule of concurrent sentencing."

Mu Heyou's voice was completely calm as she first pointed out the most crucial act that led to death: "First of all, it was your act of causing someone's death. The prosecution will most likely bring charges against you for causing death by injury under Article 205 of the Criminal Law, rather than for intentional homicide."

You did not premeditate the murder; your original purpose was to control the victim and seize the incriminating materials. The death was an act of excessive force in the heat of the fight, and there was no clear intent to kill. The statutory penalty for this crime is imprisonment for three years or more.

She paused, then added the crucial prerequisite for leniency: "There are two legally recognized mitigating circumstances: First, the deceased, Kenta Sakaguchi, committed serious wrongdoing by repeatedly extorting huge sums of money by threatening to report your illegal business operations. On the night of the incident, he also threatened to die with you, which was the direct cause of the conflict."

Second, since you voluntarily and truthfully confessed to all your crimes after being apprehended, this constitutes self-surrender, and according to law, you can be given a reduced sentence, exceeding the lower limit of the statutory penalty.

"specific……"

Upon hearing that the punishment would be reduced, Sakaguchi Akihiro immediately asked, "How much exactly will it be reduced?"

Muheyou glanced at Kamiya Gen, indicating that he should analyze it, since she didn't know much about this area.

Kamiya Gen immediately picked up the conversation, but didn't discuss mitigating the sentence, because what Kiha Yu said was incomplete and, frankly, sounded particularly grating to him:

"If you put a corpse into a milling machine to destroy evidence, the statutory penalty is imprisonment for up to 3 years; if you impersonate a ghost employee to cover up the identity of the deceased and fabricate an accident scene, the statutory penalty is imprisonment for up to 10 years."

However, in judicial practice, such forgery, which is merely intended to cover up a single crime and does not result in serious consequences such as wrongful convictions, usually results in a sentence of only about one year in prison, not the maximum penalty.

"And your act of slipping me checks constitutes attempted bribery of a public official."

After thinking for a moment, Kamiya Gen added, "You did not actually complete the bribery or cause any adverse effects. In judicial practice, you are unlikely to be prosecuted separately. Even if you are prosecuted, you will only be fined, which will have almost no impact on the final sentence."

Finally, there's your three-year-long business of counterfeiting high-end watch movements. The statutory penalty is up to 10 years imprisonment or a fine of up to ten million, and both can be imposed concurrently.

Sakaguchi Akihiro's face paled slightly: "Then... how long will the sentence be?"

After considering it for a while, Kamiya Gen gave the final conclusion directly:

"Seven years, I think normally it would be seven years, definitely a prison sentence."

"Seven years? I'm forty-two this year, after I got out..."

"I'm calculating the time," Sakaguchi Akihiro murmured.

However, Kamiya Gen abruptly changed the subject, waving his hand to interrupt, "Mr. Sakaguchi, there's no need to calculate those times. What I just said was under normal circumstances, but it's clear that your case is not normal."

Muheyou looked at him with a puzzled expression.

At the same time, Akihiro Sakaguchi asked, "W-What's wrong, officer?"

Kamiya Gen picked up his pen and thought for a moment. After sorting out the current clues, he said, "I guess the first part of what you just said is true. You do have a younger brother, and he does owe gambling debts. But the problem lies in the second part."

At this point, Kamiya Gen slowed his speech, staring intently at Sakaguchi Akihiro's face:

"Mr. Sakaguchi, would you like to repeat the second half? You can still be considered to have confessed. If you don't tell the truth, then after my investigation, there won't be any chance of a reduced sentence..."

……

A few minutes later, outside the interrogation room.

"What did you mean when you said the case was unusual?"

Muheyou leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, her brows furrowed slightly, her face full of doubt. "Sakaguchi Akihiro's confession is logically sound, the timeline matches the surveillance footage and physical evidence we have, and even the source of the drug and the motive for disposing of the body are reasonable. I don't see anything wrong with it."

Upon hearing this, Kamiya Gen smiled, but there was no sign of relief on his face. He reached out and pushed open half of the window: "I can't really explain it, but it just feels too smooth, almost unrealistically smooth."

He paused, then meticulously laid out the suspicious points hidden in the details, omitting his system that could perceive evil thoughts, and only pointing out the obvious flaws:

"His confession was too perfect. When a suspect commits a murder in a fit of rage, he will more or less experience emotional fluctuations, become confused about the details, and even subconsciously avoid mentioning the moment he committed the murder."

Mu Heyou nodded subconsciously—she had been so focused on verifying the statements that she had overlooked this crucial detail.

Kamiya Gen continued, "But what about him? From drugging me to dismembering the body, and then slipping me the check, every detail was meticulously planned, like... a script that had been rehearsed countless times in advance."

Kamiya Gen's voice lowered slightly, his gaze fixed on the direction of the detention cells at the end of the corridor.

"There's another point. He didn't mention Kyoko Morishita at all from beginning to end. From 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. on the night of the incident, Kyoko Morishita's car was in the factory area. What was she doing for those four hours?"

In his full confession just now, he claimed that everything was done by Sakaguchi Akihiro alone, even the heavy work of moving the body and operating the milling machine.

He chuckled self-deprecatingly at this point, then added, his uncertainty becoming even more pronounced.

"Of course, these are all just my guesses, without any concrete evidence. Maybe I'm just overthinking it."

Muhe You remained silent for a long time. She had previously thought that the case had been solved smoothly, but after Kamiya Gen reviewed it, she realized that there were so many flaws in the seemingly perfect confession that could not withstand scrutiny.

"Then why do you think... he did that?" she asked, looking up at Kamiya Gen.

"It's hard to say."

Kamiya Gen shook his head. He couldn't very well say that he was thinking so much because he saw the yellow evil thought of "I have to deceive the police" rising above the other person's head, could he?

He could only vaguely say, "I always felt that Kyoko Morishita was definitely not an outsider in this case, but there is no evidence right now, it's all just a guess based on intuition."

Muheyou immediately composed herself and asked, "So, what are the plans? Re-interrogating Morishita Kyoko? Shall we proceed now..."

"Go ahead and investigate... It's too late, I want to go back and rest."

"Huh?" Muheyou was stunned, not expecting Kamiya Gen to suddenly leave.

"What time is it? Do you think it's appropriate for me to stay up all night? I originally just wanted to help Takeuchi-senpai casually, but who knew it would turn into this long? I'm still hungry and haven't eaten yet," Kamiya Gen said helplessly.

"I ordered takeout from 'Shijing Beef Rice' on Central Street."

Kamiya Gen turned to look at her, completely surprised that this guy would be so thoughtful.

The two had worked together to solve cases before, often staying at the police station until the very end, during which time Muheyou basically didn't eat or drink.

"What's wrong?" Muheyou asked, noticing his gaze.

"I just can't imagine you would do something like this."

"I still have a lot to do," Yuzu said speechlessly. Then, as if remembering something, she added, "By the way, Kamiya-kun, staying in the hotel every day is quite a hassle. The dormitory building will be renovated for at least several more months. Have you considered...?"

"What are you planning?" Kamiya Gen asked, puzzled.

Muheyou hesitated for a moment before finally speaking:

"I'm thinking of finding a place to rent around here... I've actually looked at a few, and the prices are all reasonable..."

"etc……"

Kamiya Gen narrowed his eyes and asked cautiously, "You mean, we—go rent a place?"

"Yes." Muheyou nodded.