Status Updates From Out

When a woman commits an unpremeditated murder, her first problem is what to do with the body. In general, she isn’t strong enough to move it by herself, so she’s often left with no choice but to cut it up. Men sometimes cut up bodies, too, but they usually do it to conceal the victim’s identity or because it gives them some kind of sick thrill; women do it because they can’t carry it whole.

Satake hated summer. It wasn’t the heat that bothered him so much as the various signs of the season in the back streets of the city that brought back memories with them. It was during summer vacation in his second year of high school that he’d hit his father hard enough to break his jaw, and then left home. That event, which had changed his life for ever, had taken place in a room just like this one, in August,