The Rainy Mansion was a house that looked damp and gloomy even on a sunny day. It was a place where the boundary between the living and the dead was ambiguous.... more>>

When a mu*der case happened at the Rainy Mansion, it seemed it could be easily solved because the heritance dispute among the residents was well known.

The detectives investigating the case were perplexed by the strange deduction made by Ayano Hayase, a beautiful woman who was freeloading at the mansion.

“The open roof is a locked-room.”

“There is a granny ghost inside the closet.”

It was said that the criminal cases at the Rainy Mansion would always end up being cold cases. And now, a serial mu*der had occurred there.

A rookie detective, Tanimoto, was working hard to solve the case while being puzzled by words and action of the poker face beauty Ayano. <<less

Ling Hua'an possessed peculiar eyes. He couldn’t see the living, but he has the ability to see ghosts. He runs a small supermarket with his profit obviously earned from the living people. But in fact, his massive income actually comes from finding out the cause of death of the wronged souls and helping them enter the cycle of reincarnation.... more>>

There is a saying that has been circulating in the Underworld:

The grocery store’s door is open. Ghosts must not come in if they have no money!

Jiang Chengyan is the captain of the criminal investigation team of Yuncheng Municipal Bureau.

He is busy everyday, and often works overtime. His dinner would mostly be instant noodles he had bought from the supermarket near the gate.

But every time he went out shopping, he would always sense the gloomy atmosphere surrounding the market. But he’s a firm atheist, so it‘s reasonable for him to go. (Actually, I think the supermarket owner is quite a good-looking fellow and has good disposition.)

By an incidental chance, Ling Hua'an suddenly received a huge order. If he could do it, he will no longer have to worry about food and clothing in his lifetime. But it’s quite difficult, thus, Ling Hua’an naturally approached Jiang Chengyan.

Afterwards, Jiang Chengyan who is a firm atheist, had his three views broken, and it was really sweet… <<less

She is a street-walking prostitute; he is a cog in the law enforcement machine; they live in different worlds, but life has brought them together.... more>> This is a beautiful love story, this is a series of mysterious mu*ders, this is the story of a fantastic supernatural power. Perhaps they live right beside us, or perhaps they never really existed at all… <<less

Physically confronting your abusive superior might be cool and satisfying when it happens in a drama, but, as Kazuo Sugishita is learning, it's less cool when you're sitting at home afterwards, terrified to learn how you'll be punished when you return to work the next day. The sentence he faces sounds surprisingly lenient - just a temporary reassignment to the company's entertainment department while things blow over. But he changes his mind when he gets the specifics: Kazuo has been assigned as manager-in-training (read "servant") to Shiro Hoshizono, the "Star Watcher": A pompous, showoff-y, completely insufferable talent with no actual talents except using his sickeningly sweet words and foreign model looks to seduce lonely middle... more>> aged women into paying for the privilege of hearing him speak.

The day after his new assignment, Kazuo and Hoshizono leave for Saitama Prefecture, where Hoshizono has been recruited to become an image character for a campground in the mountains, alongside a group of other colorful characters, including a romance novelist with the looks of Cleopatra but the personality of someone's grandpa and a UFO obsessed conspiracy theorist.

But the morning after their arrival, their host is found strangled to death in his lodge, the road back is buried in an avalanche, and... you can probably see where this is going.

Turns out, despite how he comes across normally, Hoshizono is actually a genius detective!

The novel features a unique chapter naming scheme where each chapter is titled as a three to four sentence summary of its own contents, focused upon what information about the case is discovered and what evidence appears, for ease of reference.

A nominee for the 50th annual Mystery Writers Association of Japan Award, long story category. <<less