Upon the glittering stage of the world, truth is nothing more than a commodity, something that can be bought, shaped, and traded to serve the ambitions of those who control the circuit. Lies, when carefully packaged and presented with enough confidence, have a way of becoming more convincing than the truth itself, until the narrative they create is accepted as the winning one.
Yet the rope hanging in the corner of a cramped apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo refuses to submit to such a performance. Detective Tachibana crouches beside a dead body lying in the middle of the narrow room, his attention fixed on the dark ligature marks circling the dead man's neck as he studies what remains of the scene before him.
"While all of us have been running around trying to find him," Shibata says from directly behind Tachibana, "he goes and hangs himself here."
