The Lying Counselor’s Eloquent Reasoning - Chapter 37

“You can tell by that?”

“I can’t say for sure, but yes. First of all, I noticed that there is no depressive state of mind that could be linked to suicide in his daily life based on the messages he exchanged with you. Depression tends to affect people’s daily lives in many ways, such as decreased motivation and concentration, lack of attention to personal appearance, increased forgetfulness and mistakes, etc. However, from reading these logs, there is no such tendency. Rather, it seems that you are evidently more forgetful and prone to careless mistakes. Mr. Hirose is much more solid.”

“No, no, forget about me.”

Sayuri’s face reddened at the sudden personal attack. It seemed that she was looser than she looked, especially with the video tape.

“And according to social media, shortly before he died, he bought a new issue of an American hero comic book, which he greatly enjoyed reading. This would be unlikely in a depressed person either. In depression, people lose interest in everything. It’s rare to have the energy to read manga.”

“I see, that’s true.”

“Another reason, besides the content of his social networking and messaging, is that his writings are not very typical of a depressed person. As a matter of fact, according to recent studies, depressed people often show their characteristics in their writings.”

“Do the characteristics of depression show up in writing?”

“Yes. It is commonly called ‘depressive language,’ and it has three major characteristics. First, they often use negative emotional expressions such as ‘sad’ and ‘painful’. Next, they use a lot of first-person expressions such as ‘I‘ and ‘me‘. Finally, there is the overuse of definite words such as ‘absolute,’ ‘perfectly,’ and ‘must’.”

“I never knew there was such a thing. I understand the first one, but…”

“With regards to the overuse of the first-person pronoun in people with depression, it is likely a sign that they are so occupied with their own suffering that they have lost interest in others. Also, the overuse of definite words may be an expression of black-and-white thinking, good versus bad, yes versus no, and other extreme ways of perceiving things that depressed people are prone to. As the old saying goes, ‘A sentence is only as good as the person who writes it,’ and I suppose this means that our psychological state is reflected in our writing to some extent.”

“Psychological state is reflected in writing…”

Sayuri fiddled with her phone and mumbled as she checked her message logs with James.

“So what you’re saying is that Jimmy’s writing wasn’t in depressive language, and of course, he was not likely to be depressed?”

“As far as I can tell, yes. Moreover, there are other points that suggest he didn’t seem to be depressed. It was the pictures he had posted on social media.”

“Can you tell anything from the pictures?”

“Yes. According to a recent research, depressed people tend to use darker color filters, such as sepia and monochrome, in the photos they post on SNS than normal people. Also, photos of people with depression are distinctive; they tend to have relatively few or minimal people, and even selfies tend to have small faces.”

“I can understand that. That’s certainly not the case with Jimmy’s photos.”

Sayuri fiddled with her phone again and murmured as she gazed at the pictures on James’ social networking site. Tomomi also glanced at the photos from the side of the screen, but all the colors were vivid and the people looked normal. Based on the social networking assessment that Uroma had explained, it didn’t indicate depression.

“In other words, judging from what I can gather here, Mr. Hirose was not in a particularly suicidal state of mind prior to his death.”

“I see…”

Sayuri could not conceal her confusion. Ultimately, she was back to square one.

“Um, is there any other way to determine the cause of Jimmy’s death?”

“Certainly. If you allow me to visit your house in person, I may be able to shed some light on the matter.”

“Are you sure? Please come to my house!”

Sayuri’s answer was immediate.

“I understand. Then, let’s visit your house next Saturday afternoon. Along with my chore girl here.”

Uroma readily agreed, taking the liberty of arranging Tomomi’s schedule.

T/N:

‘I‘ and ‘me‘ – ‘?’ and ‘?’, in reality, the I here is called watashi, a polite and neutral way of referring typically used in a formal context and me is called ore, a masculine and intimate way of referring typically used in an informal context, both which are first-person pronoun. However, since they are no such equivalent terms in English, I simply used I and me