Hikikomori Killer

The following is the abstract for a 50-page novella I wrote as part of SDSU’s English Honors Program in 2016.

Hikikomori Killer documents the seduction and abduction of the hikikomori, Japanese shut-ins, by a cult devoted to the art of vanishing. The abductions begin in the year 2000, two years after Saito Tamaki coins the term ‘hikikomori’ to refer to Japan’s estimated 1,000,000 reclusive youth, eight years after the discovery of the Wei Mirrors, and three years before Myspace was created. Ikiryo, a part-time detective ‘consultant’ for the Tokyo P.D. who is known for his obsessive methods, hunts down the cause of the hikikomori’s disappearance. His niece was one of the first hikikomori to disappear, and due to his own past as a recovering hikikomori and his niece’s unexpected descent into the condition, he is determined to discover why so many hikikomori are disappearing from their homes. Discovering three disappeared hikikomori from the same neighborhood, Ikiryo uses his intrusive investigative methods to determine that the three were in contact through a chatroom. Each had been contacted by a mysterious person via chat who offered them an escape from their mundane existence to a place where hikikomori were celebrated. This mysterious chatter befriended them and built their confidence in people again—all the while telling them more about this secret place, apparently ran by and ancient prince who loved children. One night, the chatter, a boy, tapped on each of their windows and made them an offer to reply to in one week: come to the secret place. The three found each other online, each worried about the virility of the offer, and Ikiryo finds the evidence of them researching 1) The sun god Amaterasu’s encounter with a mirror 2) The Wei Mirror discovery of 1992 3) An eccentric prince from the Yamato Kingdom. Ikiryo’s obsessive methods, however, including breaking and entering one of the children’s houses, cause him to be disowned by the police department, so he decides to stake out the house of a currently un-abducted hikikomori. Seeing a group of hooded hikikomori escort the child out at midnight, he follows them to an ancient fortress from the Yamato period, and discovers a labyrinth of tunnels underneath. In the tunnels there are vats filled with ornate silk blankets, and the hikikomori bury themselves within and stare into tsukumogami, possessed mirrors, about the size of the average smart phone. Ikiryo attempts to rescue his niece, who he finds, but is confronted by the ancient being who believes himself to be a Yamato prince safeguarding ‘the art of vanishing’ from reality through the mirrors. He is unsure as to the validity of this surreal cult. Ikiryo is confronted with the question: are people really vanishing all the time, for seconds, months, years, lifetimes, into their mirrors?