Beijing, 1920. Ichi-jo Go, an eighteen-year-old Japanese painter living in China, is hired as a teacher of ink painting for Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, a fifteen-year-old boy confined to the Forbidden City. Puyi secretly plans to replace the Forbidden City's ink masterpieces with forgeries and sell the originals to fund the restoration of the Qing. When a eunuch is found dead in a locked room, a dragon painting is mysteriously altered, and another eunuch loses all emotional expression, the young painter and the boy emperor join forces to unravel each enigma. As they solve the mysteries together, an unlikely friendship blossoms across all barriers of rank and nationality.

A historical mystery that transcends rank and nationality. A painter and an emperor confront the riddles hidden within the Forbidden City.

In a provincial hot spring town, women have been disappearing one after another, and a local urban legend takes hold: a monster with a gaping hole in its face is abducting people and swallowing them into the void. Private detective Honoka Takanashi is hired to investigate the creature called "Anadura-sama," and begins to suspect a serial killer lurking behind the myth. Meanwhile, the actual perpetrator faces an unforeseen complication: the yakuza have learned of the crimes and intend to exploit the killer as a corpse-disposal service. A crime novel that blends horror urban legend with mystery, building to a shocking twist.

A monster with a hole where its face should be is stealing people away -- and behind the urban legend lurks a real killer.

A rookie detective at Koganei Police Station, Midori Bamba, investigates a theft at a video arcade while arresting two young women for a series of car break-ins. Meanwhile, corrupt detective Tadayuki Kamei leaks information about a raid on an illegal establishment. The story interweaves Midori's coming-of-age as a detective determined to protect the dignity of victimized women with Kamei's downfall into corruption, building to a dramatic intersection at the climax.

An enthusiastic rookie female detective and a world-weary veteran corrupt detective — a refreshing police procedural in which the trajectories of two contrasting investigators dramatically intersect at the climax.