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Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's story is going to be really, really weird.
And just know going into this that a lot of what happened in the story has never been fully explained.
And so we did our best to make this make sense.
But I'm sure many of you at the end of the story are going to be like, what did I just hear?
And if that's you, I would highly encourage you to just Google the case yourself because it really is a totally insane story.
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Okay, let's get into today's story. On April 15th, 2018, a 56-year-old woman named Yoshika Yasutake began dusting a piano inside of her family's very small and very clean home in the English village of Helmsley.
Like she always did, after dusting the outside of this piano, Yoshika lifted up the lid and began individually dusting each of the piano keys.
But as she did this, she was very careful not to press down accidentally on any of the keys and make a sound.
That was the last thing she wanted to do.
Every time Yoshika was in charge of cleaning the house, she always dreaded getting to the piano because she was so worried about making a sound.
After Yoshika had finished dusting this piano both outside and inside, she lowered the lid and then walked over to a bookcase right next to a window and began dusting each of the books.
And as she did, she began to hear out the window the sounds of birds chirping and cars driving around and people chatting.
And Yoshika, when she heard this, she stopped dusting for a moment and just looked out the window at the beautiful town, all the little stone cottages that lined the road, and as she looked out there and listened to the sounds of her village, Yoshika was struck with a sadness about all the things that she was missing out on.
Once, Yoshika had been a world-class pianist.
She had trained at the Royal College of Music, which is one of the most prestigious institutions in London, and she used to play packed symphony halls where sometimes in the audience would be literal members of the royal family.
I mean, she was a really big deal. But Yoshika didn't play the piano anymore because her younger sister, Rina, had come back home.
Now, as soon as Yoshika thought of Rina, she got angry and instinctively just turned and stared at Rina's closed bedroom door.
And just for a moment, Yoshika wished that Rina had not come home.
Because ever since Rina had come home, it was like all of Yoshika's family had decided that nothing else was important.
Rina was the only thing that mattered. The Yasutake family consisted of Yoshika, as well as, of course, Rina, who was 49 years old, and they both had a brother who was 51 years old, and his name was Takahiro, and the three siblings' mother also lived with them, and she was 80 years old.
As for their dad, he had passed away a few years earlier.
Yoshika and Takahiro were both very impressive in their own ways.
Yoshika had been this amazing pianist, and Takahiro was this amazing writer, but Rina was just on another level.
Rina not only spoke fluent Greek, Latin, English, and Japanese, but she also created her own dialect of Japanese with a complete system of grammar.
Rina was also this unbelievable artist, and everybody wanted to buy her paintings, but Rina would never sell.
Or if she did, it was quite rare, but that only created lots of hype around her artwork.
It was like so valuable to get your hands on one of Rina's paintings.
As a child, Rena had been awarded all these scholarships to all these prestigious private schools, and then after graduating high school, she was given a full-ride scholarship to the University of Cambridge, which is one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
And so everybody assumed Rena was on track to become this world-famous artist.
But there was something dark inside of Rina that no one could quite place.
It only came out when she would have these sudden outbursts of anger, and people would see this side of her that just didn't line up with the rest of who she was.
But these flashes of anger would often pass quickly, and so people kind of wrote it off as a byproduct of extreme genius.
It was like her brain just sometimes couldn't quite handle how smart she was, and she would get mad and frustrated.
But when Rina graduated from the University of Cambridge and came back home, she just was totally different.
It was like something inside of her had snapped and stayed broken.
A couple of days after Rina had come home, she had one of those sudden outbursts of anger, but Rina's anger never went away.
She just stayed mad for days and days, and her family began asking her, like, what has gotten you so upset?
But Rina refused to talk about it. And eventually, Rena just locked herself in her bedroom in the family home, and she would stay inside of there, refusing to talk to her family for weeks.
And then when she did finally emerge after several weeks, it was clear Rena was just different.
She basically refused to speak to anyone, family included, unless it was absolutely necessary, and she really never left the house or even her room unless it was totally necessary.
And it would turn out this was not some post-college phase Rina was going through.
This would become Rina's life. She basically became a total recluse inside of that bedroom for decades, to the point where the family's neighbors didn't even know Rina existed because she basically never came out of the house.
Yoshika stopped staring at her sister's closed bedroom door and turned her attention back to the books on the shelf.
She finished dusting them, and then after she was done, she was done cleaning the house, and so she put the duster down, and Yoshika very quietly tiptoed her way over to Rina's closed bedroom door, and very quietly, she knocked.
Rina hated loud noises, which is why Yoshika was no longer allowed to play the piano, because it was too loud for Rina.
After Yoshika gave this light knock, she began counting in her head to 30, because Rina had told her, you do not come in right away.
You knock, and you wait 30 seconds at least, and then maybe I'll let you come inside.
And so Yoshika, she's counting in her head, 1, 2, 3, she gets to 25, 26, 27, and then from inside the room, Rina would tell Yoshika, okay, you're allowed to enter.
Yoshika very slowly reached down, she turned the knob, and opened up her sister's bedroom door, and it revealed this totally dark room, this very small cramped space.
All the shades and blinds had been drawn, and Rina was sitting on her bed, completely silent.
And Yoshika, she kept her head down, being very careful not to make eye contact with Rina.
She didn't want to upset her. And Yoshika, she walked into the room, she made her way to the table, and she scooped up all of Rina's dirty dishes.
And then Yoshika, she turned around and began walking out again.
And as she did, she tried to take a quick glimpse at whatever Rina was working on in her bedroom.
Because Rina had told her family that she was working on this masterwork, but wouldn't really elaborate on it.
And in order to work on this thing, she needed the room to be dark and the house to be silent.
And she needed to focus exclusively on this masterwork.
And the family needed to support her as she did this.
But again, Rina just never really elaborated on what this masterwork was.
She would just say that it was very special, and it would combine all the elements of her life, her spirit, her body, her soul.
Even the family would be a part of building this masterwork.
And when her family asked her, well, what do you mean?
How can we support you in making this masterwork?
Rina would just say, oh, you'll know when the time is right.
Yoshika couldn't get a glimpse of the masterwork, and so she quickly turned her head back down to the ground and shuffled her way out of Rina's room and shut the door behind her.
And then Yoshika, she went to the kitchen and she dumped Rina's dishes in the sink, which was totally clean to begin with, because one of Rina's rules was the house must always be immaculately clean, no dirty dish, no dust anywhere.
I mean, it had to be perfect, spotless at all times, because that's the only way Rina could work on this masterwork.
And so as Yoshika cleaned and dried off all of Rina's dishes and began putting them away, her brother Takahiro walked into the kitchen and he would say to Yoshika that it was time for them to leave the house and go to the market and buy some supplies for Rina so she can continue to work on this masterwork.
Yoshika was immediately totally annoyed that they had to go do this because everything was all about Rina, but she kind of buried those feelings and told her brother, okay, sure, let's go.
Takahiro was different than Yoshika in how he thought about their younger sister, Rina.
Yoshika totally resented Rina because now that Rina was home, Yoshika basically had to give up her career as this amazing pianist in order to support Rina in this whole masterwork she was working on.
But Takahiro, he was totally fine giving up his writing career to just focus on supporting Rina, because he really believed in Rina, and he thought that this masterwork she was building was going to be like the single greatest piece of art in the history of humankind.
And so Takahiro felt proud to kind of be a part of it.
Now, Takahiro, like the rest of his family, had no idea what this masterwork actually was, but Takahiro and Rina had a much better relationship than Yoshika and Rina, and so Rina would tell Takahiro the specific things that she needed in order to build this masterwork.
And so that day, Rina had told Takahiro some things she needed, and so he and Yoshika were going to go out and get them.
So Takahiro and Yoshika threw on their jackets and stepped outside.
And as soon as they were out there, they both flipped their collars up and kind of concealed their faces and put their heads down because they were very careful not to make eye contact with other people.
This family was already very private, but with Rina, they had been instructed to be even more private and not even really interact with the outside world.
And so basically anytime they went out in public, they would kind of hide themselves.
And so, Yoshika and Takahiro, they made their way to the pharmacy, they ducked their way inside, and they would purchase a bottle of surgical spirits, which is sort of like a medical alcohol.
And then after buying that, the brother and sister put their collars back up, headed back outside, and they went to an old used bookstore, and they bought a book on palm reading, which is the art of studying the lines on your hands in order to tell someone's future.
And when the brother and sister bought this book, even though the cashier was talking to them, they kept their heads down and didn't say a word to the cashier.
And then after getting their book, the brother and sister hurried their way back home, and when they got there, the door was locked, but instead of pulling out a key and unlocking the door of their own home, the brother and sister knocked and they waited.
And then at some point, their mother came to the door, and they heard four locks turning.
The door opened up, and then Yoshika and Takahiro walked inside, and they shut the door and then locked again the four deadbolts.
Rina was adamant that no one in the family could carry around a key to the house.
It was too dangerous, because they could potentially lose the key in town, and then someone could come into their house and potentially see Rina's masterwork, and they couldn't have that happen.
And so nobody had keys. They had to knock each time they came home.
And the reason they had four locks on the door was, again, because Rina was very worried about somebody coming into this house and seeing what she was doing.
Yoshika carried the bag with the supplies inside of it, the surgical spirits and the palm reading book, over to Rina's closed bedroom door.
And instead of knocking, Yoshika just placed the bag right outside the door.
She turned around and began walking away.
And then as she did, she heard the sound of Rina's door opening just a crack and Yoshika, she quickly turned around and she saw a tiny skinny arm reach out from behind the door.
It grabbed the bag and then pulled the bag back into the room and the door shut and locked.
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Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time... My show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now. or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery+.
Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now. much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, Redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light, and it's called Lawless Planet.
Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
From activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A Redacted Medical Mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds, or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
Three days later, on April 18th, 2018, Yoshika was sitting in the kitchen reading a book when she overheard her brother, Takahiro, chatting with Rina.
Now, Takahiro and Rina were not facing each other in the same room talking.
Rina was still in her bedroom, her door was closed, and Takahiro was outside of her bedroom and he was just sitting on the ground with his back to the door, talking through the door to Rina.
Now, this was not unusual because unlike Yoshika and Rina, who did not have a good relationship and who really didn't talk at all, Takahiro and Rina did have a good relationship and they would do this fairly often.
They would chat through the door for like hours at a time.
And so for a minute, Yoshika kind of ignored her brother and sister chatting and focused again on her book.
But at some point, she began hearing what her brother was saying, and it was just totally weird.
And so she put her book down and just began listening to Takahiro.
And what he was saying was, how can you do that?
That doesn't make any sense. How? Only your soul?
How? Yoshika sensed that her brother was confused and maybe upset about something, and so she couldn't help herself.
She put a book down and Yoshika walked out to the living room and looked down at her brother to see if he would kind of give her some indication of what was going on.
But when Takahiro looked up and saw Yoshika, he and Rina stopped talking and Takahiro just shook his head, stood up, and walked away.
After Takahiro was gone, Yoshika very quietly walked over to Rina's bedroom door, and just out of curiosity, she pressed her ear up against the wood and tried to listen to see if she could maybe hear Rina and catch something she was saying that would begin to explain what she had just overheard.
But all she heard was the sound of Rina slowly shuffling towards the back of her bedroom where her bed was, and then it was totally silent.
And so Yoshika moved away from the door and went back into the kitchen and she sat down to read again, but she couldn't focus on the book because it was like this wave of sadness was just coming over her.
And the reason Yoshika was feeling this way is she was thinking about the fact that back in the day when she was a kid, her and Rina used to be as close as sisters could possibly be than for much of their lives.
They were very close, even after... Rena began this kind of reclusive lifestyle, they still, you know, were friends, they interacted.
But something happened in 2013, five years earlier, that totally severed their relationship for good.
On that day, Rina had emerged from her bedroom and Yoshika offered to read Rina's palm.
This was something the two sisters did for each other periodically.
It was like a way for them to bond. And so Rina held out her hand and Yoshika took it and she began tracing a long horizontal line across her palm.
Now, Rina's hands were different than most people's hands.
Rina had something called a simian line, which is a very rare thing on people's palms.
It's like this long horizontal line that runs the length of your hand.
In palm reading, a simian line can be either very good or very bad.
It can indicate that the person is a visionary or a mystic, so that's the good side, or it can indicate that this person has a terrible disease or they're very aggressive, so that's the bad side.
Rina knew she had the simian line and she believed that it represented something good.
She would say that she had a visionary soul.
But on this particular day in 2013, the family had recently been banned from a local supermarket because Rina had actually gone to this market and gotten really upset with some staff members and totally lost her cool and screamed and yelled at them and so they had been banned.
And so Yoshika, thinking about this, she's looking at Rina's palm and she goes, oh, the simian line.
Maybe this is why you were acting so aggressive at the supermarket.
Maybe this means you're an aggressive person.
But after Yoshika said this, Rina was so offended that she whipped her hand back. and began screaming and yelling at Yoshika, calling her an idiot, and saying, you don't understand the vision that I have.
I'm going to show the world someday this vision, and you and those idiots down at the grocery store would never understand.
And then Rina began beating and punching and kicking Yoshika, and Yoshika's screaming and trying to protect herself.
And then Takahiro, the brother, had to run in and separate the two of them.
Now, even though Rina was prone to these angry outbursts, this was the first time that she had lashed out physically.
And so Rina's mother was concerned that Rina had some underlying condition that was causing her to lash out physically.
And so she sent Rina to the doctor and the doctor would say, you know, there is no underlying condition that led to this.
However, it seems pretty clear that Rina is having some kind of psychological breakdown and needs psychiatric treatment, maybe even hospitalization.
But Rina had totally rejected this, refused to get treatment, and blamed everything on Yoshika.
And then after that, Rina really stopped leaving her bedroom.
She left like once every couple of months before that, but now she basically stayed in there 24-7.
And at the same time, Rina had added all these new rules that her family now needed to follow to allow Rina to be able to focus on her masterwork while she was in her bedroom.
And that included no one having house keys and adding those four locks to the door.
Also, the family was told to learn the new dialect of Japanese that Rina had created.
This way no one would ever understand what they were talking about.
It would kind of protect them even more from the evils of the outside world.
Also, Rina made sure her family got rid of all of their telephones, their TVs, and their computers.
And so Yoshika would sit in the kitchen for a bit longer, thinking about how sad it was that she had lost this relationship with her sister, and, you know, Yoshika had a lot of regret about what she had said about the simian line.
But eventually, like always, Yoshika just kind of pushed her feelings for Rina down, and before long, Yoshika was back to reading her book.
For the next several weeks, Yoshika would see her brother, Takahiro, sitting up against the door to Rina's bedroom more often than usual, having these kind of hushed conversations through the door with Rina.
Also, Yoshika began to notice that Takahiro was now cooking all of Rina's meals.
Normally, their mother was the one who cooked Rina's food, but now Takahiro seemed to have taken over that task entirely.
As for Yoshika, because she was primarily in charge of being the one to constantly clean the house, that meant she was the one going into Rina's bedroom and collecting her dirty dishes.
And as soon as Takahiro had begun being the cook for Rina, Yoshika began to notice that more and more food was being left on Rina's plates.
Basically, Rina wasn't eating as much food as she normally did, and this started to worry Yoshika.
Rina was already a very small person. She was four foot 11 inches tall, barely 90 pounds.
And Yoshiko worried that, you know, she really needs to eat.
She's already so small, she can't afford to miss meals.
And then one day in the middle of May, Yoshiko went into Rina's bedroom and she saw all of her dishes were basically completely filled with the food she had been given.
She basically had not touched them. And Yoshika, she really never actually spoke to Rina when she was in the bedroom, but this time she just couldn't help herself, and without even looking at Rina, Yoshika, she gathered up the plates full of food, and she said, Rina, you need to eat more of your food.
Rina didn't say anything back, and Yoshika, she just quickly turned and walked out of the room, but after that interaction, Takahiro would tell Yoshika that Rina doesn't want you going in her room ever again.
And so from now on, the dishes that you would normally collect, Rina will place them right outside of the door.
That way, you don't have to go inside that room.
Also around the same time, Rina, who normally would only leave her bedroom to go use the bathroom, well, she began going to the bathroom exclusively at night when her family was asleep to avoid any interaction with them.
And so by this point, Rina's interactions with her family were reduced to basically zero.
By early August, Takahiro and Yoshika were being sent to the store more and more often by Rina to get more of these surgical spirits, the medical alcohol.
Now, neither Takahiro nor Yoshika had any idea what Rina was doing with these surgical spirits, but they knew it was their duty to support her, and so they kept buying them, and what they would do is they would come back home with these bottles, and Takahiro would barely open reena's door and he would tuck the bottle inside and then reena would take it the door would shut and then reena would never give them her empty bottle basically the bottle went in and it stayed inside Then, on August 18th of 2018, Takahiro and Rina appeared to get in some kind of a fight.
Yoshika was in the kitchen and she saw that Takahiro was sitting against the door of Rina's bedroom and the two were having kind of a hushed conversation.
And then at some point, Takahiro stood up and he turned around and faced the door and kind of yelled into it, "'I told you your soul was not enough!'
And then Rina said something back to him, at which point Takahiro said, no, please, please, as if he was kind of begging with Rina to change her mind.
And then before Yoshika could come over and ask Takahiro what was going on, Takahiro just opened up Rina's bedroom door and walked inside, and suddenly the house went completely silent.
Yoshika was too nervous to walk over and look inside of the room, and so she just stayed in the kitchen and listened.
And for 15 minutes, it was absolute silence.
And then Takahiro walked out of Rina's bedroom, shut the door behind him, and he looked very calm.
And at this point, Yoshika looked over at him and said, what's going on?
And Takahiro, he would just smile and tell Yoshika that Rina's masterwork is nearly completed.
And then Takahiro asked Yoshika if she remembered when Rina had said, you know, at some point her masterwork was going to require some direct help from the family.
But she said, you know, we'll know when the time is right for us to participate.
And Yoshika would say, yes, you know, I remember that.
And Takahiro said, well, the time is now.
Then Takahiro told Yoshika that they had to go to the store and get more surgical spirits.
And so really without questioning him, Yoshika went with him.
They went to the store and they would purchase three times the normal amount of surgical spirits that they normally would.
And then when they got home, Takahiro alone would go into Rina's bedroom with these surgical spirits.
He would shut the door behind him. And Yoshika just sat in the kitchen for about 10 minutes until Takahiro came out. out again, no longer carrying these surgical spirits.
And he would come over to Yoshika and he would say, Rina is ready to reconcile with you.
She wants you to sit by the door and talk to her.
And if you do that, you can be more involved in creating her masterwork.
And at this news, Yoshika felt a mixture of frustration and relief.
She had never thought it was fair that Rina had so completely cut her off after that 2013 simian line joke she made while palm reading.
Also, Rina had made Yoshika's life so difficult for so long.
I mean, Yoshika had basically been forced to give up her dreams of playing the piano, and she had to give up her friends and all of her life ambitions and goals to just support Rina.
But despite all of that, deep down, Yoshika missed Rina terribly.
They did used to be so close, she wanted to have that relationship again.
And so, Yoshika walked over to Rina's closed bedroom door, she sat down against it, and at first, she didn't say anything.
And Rina didn't say anything either. But then at some point it was like the floodgates just opened and Yoshika kind of began pouring her heart out about how sad she was, about how her and Rina's relationship had really gone south and how she wanted to fix it.
And now normally on the rare times that Yoshika would talk through the door to Rina, like when she was trying to open it up to drop something off or whatever it was, oftentimes Rina would just start banging on something inside of the room kind of to tell Yoshika to stop talking and go away.
But as Yoshika sat there pouring her heart out to Rina through the door, the one thing Yoshika noticed was there was no pounding coming from inside the room.
Rina was listening to her. And then the next day, after Yoshika and Takahiro had gone to the store again and gotten more surgical spirits and brought them back to the house, instead of just Takahiro being allowed to enter Rina's bedroom, this time Yoshika was allowed to join.
And so Takahiro and Yoshika, they went into the dark bedroom and Rina was laying on the bed and they walked over to her and Takahiro showed Yoshika what they needed to do.
It was the last step of this masterwork project that Rina was working on.
They basically needed to rub these surgical spirits all over Rina's body.
Now, Yoshika didn't really understand why they were doing this, but she respected that this was part of Rina's plan, and frankly, Yoshika was just happy to be included in creating this masterwork, and so she didn't really ask any questions.
And so after the brother and sister had rubbed this alcohol all over Rina for about 10 minutes, They walked back outside.
They shut the door. And then Yoshika, she stayed back and sat down against the door and kind of poured her heart out again to Rina.
And it was just very therapeutic. And in many ways, this was the first time that Yoshika was feeling happy again.
I mean, she was finally starting to repair this relationship with Rina.
And so over the next several weeks, this became Yoshika's new daily routine.
Her and her brother would get all these surgical spirits, they'd come home, they'd rub them all over Rina, and then over the course of the day, Yoshika would stop by the door and chat with Rina through it, and that was it.
And then on September 25th, 2018, after Yoshika and Takahiro had applied these surgical spirits to Rina's body, Yoshika told Rina that she had a very special surprise for her.
Yoshika was in a really good mood this day because one, she was feeling really good about her new relationship with her sister, but also two, when she had gone to the pharmacy earlier with her brother, normally they didn't have any interaction with the pharmacist who sold the surgical spirits, mostly because Yoshika and her brother did their best to kind of like hide themselves and make it very clear they were not looking to talk.
But on this particular day, the pharmacist had been very talkative and was trying to talk to Yoshika, and Yoshika, you know, she decided she would talk back.
Now, their conversation was not very substantive.
Basically, the pharmacist finally had asked Yoshika, why are you buying all these surgical spirits?
And Yoshika would say, oh, they're for my sister Rina.
And, you know, she needs more and more of them every day.
And, you know, she's working on something special and we don't really know what it is, but this is part of it.
And we know whatever she's doing, it's going to be worth it.
And so even though this conversation seems kind of meaningless, for Yoshika, who had virtually no contact with other people, it was great having that little talk.
And so when she came home, she just felt ready to do something special for Rina.
And so after Yoshika and Takahiro had left Rina's bedroom after applying these surgical spirits, Yoshika went to go give Rina her surprise.
And so Yoshika, she walked over to the family piano that was not far from Rina's bedroom door and And Yoshika, she was nervous, but she sat down on the bench and she opened up the lid and she placed her fingers on the keys.
Yoshika's big surprise was she was going to play a song called The Waltz of the Flowers, which is a famous piece of classical music that was inspired by the composer's love for his sister.
And so Yoshika thought this was the perfect song to finally play in this house for Rina.
She'll see that I love her so much. And so Yoshika, she began to play the song.
And as she did, she was constantly listening to see if Rina would start banging on something to tell Yoshika to stop.
But again, she didn't. It was quiet. And so Yoshika, she played this beautiful song.
And then when it was all over again, Yoshika's listening carefully for Rina to yell out or be mad that she's playing this loud music in the house.
But it was just quiet. And so again, Yoshika just felt this closeness to her sister, and before long, Yoshika felt tears of happiness coming down her cheeks.
But then, as Yoshika closed the lid of the piano, she did hear a banging, but it wasn't coming from Rina's bedroom, it was coming from the front door.
And then a moment later, Yoshika heard someone scream from outside the front door, POLICE OPEN UP!
But before Yoshika could go to the door to open it, her mother had ran to the door.
She opened all four locks, but then only opened it a crack and tried to yell at the police to go away, go away.
But the police, they were kind of pushing on the door, trying to get the mother to get out of the way.
And Yoshika, she kind of moved over and looked through the crack and she saw it wasn't just a couple of police officers.
It was a whole army of police officers and firefighters and EMTs.
There was an ambulance. And then before long, the police officer that had been yelling, you know, open up, he finally just pushed and got the door open all the way.
And then a swarm of people in uniforms flooded the home. and as soon as all these officers were in the house they immediately began opening up every door like they were looking for something and then finally they got to Rina's bedroom and they opened the door and as soon as they did Yoshiko watched as the officers just stopped at the doorway and they began cussing and yelling and turning their faces away and then the officers went into Rina's bedroom and then a minute later they began talking on their radio And then EMTs came into the house with a stretcher.
They went into Rina's bedroom. And then before long, Yoshika, Takahiro, and their mother watched as the stretcher came out again with these officers and EMTs.
And on the stretcher was Rina. And she looked terrible.
Her eyes were sunken back in her head. And her skin was so pale it was practically see-through.
I mean, really, she just kind of looked like a skeleton.
The real story of what happened inside of that family's home would quickly become international news, and not because Rena was secretly creating a masterwork of art in her bedroom.
Here's what really happened. Rina stopped eating food in April of 2018.
She would say that the only thing she needed to be nourished was her visionary soul.
And so basically, because she had this visionary soul, she didn't need food.
That was the conversation that Yoshika had overheard between Takahiro and Rina when Takahiro was saying, only your soul?
How? How? Well, he was trying to figure out how Rina was going to survive by being nourished by her soul.
It didn't make any sense. Fast forward four months to August 18th, and again, Yoshika had overheard her brother and her sister talking through the bedroom door, except on this day, it sounded like Takahiro was fighting with Rina, because at some point he had stood up and yelled through the door, I told you your soul wasn't enough!
And then he had busted inside of Rina's bedroom and stayed in there in silence for 15 minutes, only to come back out again and very calmly tell Yoshika that, don't worry, Rina is nearing the end of her masterwork, and we just need to go out and get her more surgical spirits.
Well, it would turn out the reason Takahiro was mad and yelled through the door at Rina is because he was trying to talk to her through the door and she wasn't talking back.
And he suspected it was because she wasn't eating.
And so he had yelled at her about that and then barged into her room only to find Rina totally unresponsive, not moving, not talking, nothing.
And so he just stood there wondering what to do.
And so as Takahiro is standing there, it clicks for him that now is the time.
Now's the time to get involved. And so Takahiro left the bedroom, he grabbed Yoshika, they went to the pharmacy, they got more surgical spirits, they came back, and Takahiro alone went into Rina's bedroom and covered her head to toe in these spirits.
Because that was something she had wanted him to do before, and he believed that that's what she needed right now.
Because she can't talk, she can't move, she needs more of these spirits.
That's going to help her visionary soul nourish her while she completes this masterwork.
And for the next month, Takahiro and Yoshika would continue to apply these spirits to Rina's body, believing they were helping her complete her masterwork.
On September 25th, when Yoshika and Takahiro were at the pharmacy getting more spirits, the reason this pharmacist finally struck up a conversation with Yoshika is because over time, the pharmacist had noticed that every time they came in to buy these surgical spirits, they smelled so bad.
And on this particular day, when they came in, the stench was just overwhelming.
And so the pharmacist finally had asked Yoshika, you know, like, what are these surgical spirits for?
And Yoshika would give this totally weird answer about how the spirits were for her sister and she was working on this masterwork in her bedroom and it was all going to be worth it.
And so when Yoshika and Takahiro had left that day, the pharmacist was just so weirded out and alarmed by them that he called the police.
And when the police arrived at the family's home, they discovered that Rina was not building a masterwork in her bedroom, she was just dead in her bed, and had been for six weeks.
Rina died around August 18th, which is the day that Takahiro came into the room and discovered her unresponsive, which meant there was never any reconciliation happening between Yoshika and Rina.
It's unclear why Takahiro had told Yoshika, hey, you know, Rina's ready to reconcile with you, because again, Rina was dead at the time, so there's no way she would have said anything to him.
And so when Yoshika was having these supposed heart-to-hearts through the door with her sister or playing music for her, that wasn't real.
The only real thing that was happening is Yoshika and Takahiro, from August 18th until the end of September when the police busted into their home, they would spend nearly every day rubbing this weird medical alcohol all over their dead sister's body because that's what they believed she wanted, when in reality, all this alcohol was doing was actually mummifying her body.
Yoshika, Takahiro, and their mother were all charged with preventing a proper and decent burial.
As for Rina, her cause of death could not actually be determined, but based on what she looked like, they assumed she died from starvation.
The court would eventually drop the charges against the family, saying that basically the family was too mentally ill to stand trial.
And this was because the court had discovered that Yoshika, Takahiro, and their mother actually had not accepted that Rina was dead.
They believed she was actually still alive, that all the work they had done rubbing those spirits on her had nourished her soul, and she was still working on this masterwork.
And as of a few years ago, the family is still living in that same cottage, and it's not clear if they ever actually came to understand that Rina was in fact dead.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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