[b]Masako Yamamoto[/b]

Masako stood up slowly from the body she had crouched over.

“I am a nurse,” she began. Looking at the body again, she squinted in the extra light. She pulled a cigarette out and lit it quickly with one of her matches, drawing a deep puff in before continuing.

“This is bad news,” she added ominously. She put the cigarette back in her mouth and fumbled for a moment, before pulling out a pen from her chatelaine. With it, she crouched down again and gestured with it towards one of the most prominent bites.

“That’s a human bite,” she stated. Pointing towards another, she repeated, “That is too. They’re all human bites. None of these are dog bites.”

Returning to the first bite, she followed the curve of the mark with her pen, and added, “Look at the shape—it’s like a half-moon. It is deepest here,” she continued, pointing to the centre of the arc, “Where the front teeth—the biggest ones—will make contact. If somehow there was a dog with a mouth shaped like this, there would be many deep points, from the sharp teeth. I have stitched up a thousand dog bites, so I know it is definitely not a dog bite.”

She sighed, clearly becoming increasingly frustrated with her explanation. 

“あのう...” she murmured for a second, before suddenly taking her cigarette out and biting her free hand hard enough to leave a temporary mark.

“Look!” she exclaimed, holding her bitten hand beside the bite mark she had been examining, “Same shape. Same features. These are human bites—they cannot be anything else.”

Masako withdrew her hand and flicked it for a moment before replacing her cigarette and standing up again.

“I have seen other bites from people before. There were many desperate fighters in Siberia. But I have never seen anything like this. So I will say a human mouth must have done this, but I do not know what kind of person would do this.”

Masako looked around the group with a grim expression and took another deep puff of her cigarette.