Having turned himself in to the police, Ishigami details how he murdered Togashi in a way that accounts for all of the facts of the case. He portrays himself as a stalker who was afflicted with delusions of being Yasuko’s bodyguard. To add credence to this idea, Ishigami puts together a makeshift listening device in the wall between his apartment and that of Yasuko. According to his "stalker" story, while eavesdropping on Yasuko, he overhears her frustration with her ex-husband Togashi. In a moment of frustration, according to this contrived account, Yasuko allegedly mutters, “I want to kill him,” which Ishigami interprets as an "order" to kill Togashi. In addition, Ishigami, under the delusion of being Yasuko’s bodyguard, believes that Yasuko is communicating to him in a confidential and coded manner. Furthermore, Ishigami claims that he frequently called Yasuko according to an agreed-upon arrangement where he would ring five times so that she would recognize him as the caller. Later on, when the police question Yasuko, she will deny there ever having been any such pre-arranged code whereby she communicated through the apartment walls, and she will further deny ever having agreed to accept phone calls from him every night. In fact, she will say that she merely picked up the phone twice by accident, which Ishigami, because of his delusions as a stalker, interpreted as a tacit agreement to their arrangement. All of this, of course, is merely an act by which Ishigami and Yasuko, through scripted replies given to the police, help reinforce the conclusion that Ishigami is stalker who felt it was his responsibility to kill Togashi in order to protect her.

As far as Togashi is concerned, Ishigami says that he encountered Togashi one day while the latter was looking for Yasuko. Ishigami, believing it was his duty to kill Togashi, tells Togashi that Yasuko has changed both her job and address and gives Togashi a false address corresponding to the site where the dead body was found by the police. According to this “Ishigami-as-stalker” version of the crime, Ishigami purposely misleads Togashi, giving him a false address to a remote location so that it would be possible to kill Togashi without any witnesses present. Furthermore, Ishigami feeds additional false information to Togashi, telling him that Yasuko gets off work at 11:00 p.m. so that Togashi will go to the phony address late at night. Upon arriving at the false address, Togashi, unable to find the apartment, calls Ishigami, who then sneaks up from behind him and chokes him with a kotatsu cord. After murdering Togashi, Ishigami smashes the face of the dead body, burns off the fingerprints, and removes the clothing, attempting to burn it in a oil drum, an idea which he abandons midway for fear that the flames coming from the oil drum would attract undue attention.

The three letters given to Yasuko in the last chapter are planted as evidence to further reinforce his role as stalker. The letters portray Ishigami as a possessive stalker who is obsessed with Yasuko and is jealous of her relationship with Kudo. Ishigami plants further evidence for this hypothesis by typing a threatening letter to Ishigami on his computer, which the detectives find later while canvassing his apartment for evidence, among other items, such as the kotatsu cord used to strangle Togashi. We already know that Ishigami followed Kudo, took photographs of him in secret, and left him a message indicating his displeasure with Kudo’s relationship with Yasuko. Now, Ishigami seamlessly weaves this into his “stalker” tale so as to further leave the impression of his being a jealous and disturbed individual.

Yasuko plays dumb and denies having had any arrangement with Kudo. She feigns shock and amazement at hearing about how Ishigami imagined himself as being a protector. Chief Mamiya and Detective Kishitani are fully convinced by Ishigami’s confession and Yasuko’s play-acting. Kusanagi remains