The Bathhouse Mural Was Watching

By 杏仁豆腐

The front counter is the best seat in town.
Beyond the steam, another small mystery is coming to a boil today.

Setting: Modern Japan, the Yanagimori-yu bathhouse in the Irifune-cho shopping street | A steamy slice-of-life mystery

♨ The Ex-Detective Never Leaves the Counter

At the front counter of Yanagimori-yu, a bathhouse founded in the Taisho era, sits Wanibuchi Gozo, an ex-detective who spent thirty years with the prefectural police. What gets brought to him are mysteries too small to take to the police. Unidentified red dots multiplying on the Mount Fuji mural. Three hundred thousand yen in takings that vanished from the safe thirty years ago and has since passed the statute of limitations. And once a year, a customer just before closing who leaves only the entry fee and goes home without bathing. Gozo picks up clues from the stray remarks of customers fresh out of the bath and assembles the truth without taking a single step from the counter. But before revealing the answer, he always wants to hear your reasoning first.

You are Yanagimori-yu's live-in part-timer. As a trainee boiler hand you feed the firewood, polish the buckets, and walk the shopping street as the Boss's eyes and feet. The clues to each mystery are always lying in the changing room and in the customers' words.

Characters

Wanibuchi Gozo (68): Owner of Yanagimori-yu. Gruff, but tea and sweet bean jelly come out before any lecture does. When his reasoning firms up, for some reason he slips back into the report-giving tone of his detective days. He hates guesswork, and the furthest he will go is "that's how I see it."

Oga Asahi (26): One of the few young bathhouse mural painters in the whole country. Talks in the clipped, polite style of a sports club kid, and is up a stepladder again today. Her master has told her "never let Yanagimori-yu's Fuji lapse," but she doesn't yet know why.

How to Play

Every mystery plays fair. The clues needed for the truth are always placed where you can see or hear them. Observe the faces at the morning bath, remember what customers let slip, and report to the Boss. You are the one who voices the deduction first. The reveal, and the human business of settling things afterward, the Boss at the counter takes care of. The three mysteries can be solved independently, but in the end they connect into a single Fuji. Come on in, before you catch a chill.