Now then.
It was precisely that evening when the story started getting altogether tiresome.
As I was alone in my room reading a fat book I had checked out from the school library, a wild knocking came at my door. Now, it's only natural to be irritated when someone interrupts your valued quiet time like this, but having become rather accustomed to this kind of thing by now, I wasn't particularly angry. Wondering if it was that damned fifteen-year-old brother coming to ask for money again, I opened the door.
"Oh."
It was an older guy and a girl I had never seen before.
There was something particularly peculiar about the guy. He was probably in his mid-to-late thirties, and not so much tall as long-legged. Moreover, he had his hair slicked back. Stranger still, even in this heat he was dressed in a black suit and tie. It was a disturbingly bizarre way to be dressed. He even had sunglasses on. If he had been a foreigner, I would've been afraid it was the MIB here to erase my memory.
The woman, on the other hand, was dressed in a slightly more normal suit and tight skirt. She had straight, black hair, and was relatively pretty. But the look in her eyes was not ordinary. Without a hint of the reservation normally expected when meeting someone for the first time, her eyes met mine with a penetrating, gouging gaze.
She took a step forward. "Have a look," she said, flashing me a police badge. "I'm Sasa Sasaki of the Kyoto Police First Investigative Division." It was the kind of name that threatened to make you bite your own tongue. Her parents must have been awfully whimsical.
"Oh. Hey."
I gave a little head bob for the time being. The woman — Sasaki-san — seemed a bit surprised by my reaction. Maybe I should've shown more surprise myself, but it didn't take more than a glance to tell that these two were obviously police officers. The thought of these two stone-faced individuals being anything other than police officers were, to me, unimaginable.
The male officer chuckled to himself a bit and showed his own badge, "Ikaruga Kazuhito from the same division. Mind if we come inside for a bit?" It was essentially coercion in the form of a question. As a kid, I naturally felt the urge to defy this coercion, but it didn't look like this Kazuhito-san would let it fly.
"Oh, uh, well, sure. It's small, though."
I invited them into the room. They seemed surprised to find that the inside of the room was just as small as I'd said, but they passed it off with an impressive coolness. If I was their boss, I would've given them a raise. Of course, not being their boss, I didn't give them squat.
"Please have a seat over there," I said. I poured water into two cups and placed them in front of the pair. Just as Mikoko-chan had the day before, they ignored this completely.
"Allow me to be frank," Sasaki-san said, eyeing me firmly. "Emoto Tomoe-san is dead."
"Oh." I prepared myself a glass of water and sat down across from them. "Is that right?"
"'Is that right?' Is that all you have to say?" Sasaki broke her poker face for the first time.
"Oh, well, I'm not much for expressing emotion. I'm totally shocked on the inside, so don't pay it any mind."
That and, by this point, I was becoming kind of used to this sort of thing.
But I really was shocked. This was half because Tomoe-chan had been killed, and a half because the instant I had seen these two outside my door, I had guessed they were here to talk about Zerozaki.
I was half-relieved, half-stupefied. It was like a contradiction of emotions swirling around in my gut.
"Umm, is it safe to assume that since there are detectives oil the case, she didn't die under ordinary circumstances? Not to mention that you're from the First Investigative Division."
Considering the kinds of cases First Investigative Divisions usually handle.
"That's correct." Sasaki-san nodded. The seriousness of her expression was pure and undiluted.
"So was it, by any chance, the 'prowler'?"
She shook her head at my inquiry. "No."
"Oh, really."
It was like something had deflated. Part of me was relieved. I couldn't help but wonder why, but I quickly switched trains of thought.
"What happened, then?"
"Her body was found this morning. She had been strangled to death."
"Strangled?"
Strangulation.
Emoto Tomoe.
Murdered...?
I felt my heart going cold.
Just how many people had I seen die? How long had it been since I stopped counting dead friends? My first encounter with death was before I could even remember.
"It's been about a month since the last one, huh? That's got to be a new record."
Sasaki-san gave me a sideways look. It was entirely different from the kind of sideways looks Mikoko-chan gave me, a purely intellectual pose completely devoid of any adorable charm. Then again, in my whole life, I had never seen a pose that was both intellectual and adorably charming, whether it be from a male or a female.
"Did you say something?"
"No, just talking to myself. I do that a lot. They say I'm just a nineteen-year-old soliloquy that can dress and walk around."
Although Sasaki-san looked satisfied with this answer, she didn't crack so much as a smirk.
Suddenly, I noticed that Kazuhito-san had been closely monitoring my expression.
I kept quiet.
Interesting.
That explained the need for sunglasses. Sasaki-san was in charge of doing the talking. Kazuhito-san was the observer. It was marvelous nonsense. A true masterpiece.
It seemed I was a prime suspect.
"I guess that makes sense. I was with her all night."
"Did you say something?"
"No, just your plain old, everyday nonsense." I sat myself up straight. Not that I was nervous, but maybe it was time to start getting a little more serious. "So if she was killed, who killed her?" I asked.
"That's currently under investigation. To tell you the truth, that's the reason we've come here today," Sasaki-san said.
"Then tell me," I wanted to say, but I refrained from provoking her.
"You were in Emoto-san's apartment from about six in the evening to midnight. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Just to check, would you tell us the names of the other people present during that period of time?"
"Umm." Good luck, memory. "Emoto Tomoe-san, Atemiya Muimi-san, Aoi... no, Aoii Mikoko-san, and Usami Akiharu-kun. And then me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"You arrived with Aoii-san. Is that correct?"
"Yes. Aoii-san first came to my place — here, I mean — then we went to Emoto-san's place together. It was around six p.m."
"More specifically? Was it before six or after?"
"Before."
She was barraging me with questions. The limitations of my mind's processing speed had been surpassed long ago, and my head was spinning.
"So all of the guests were there at that time..."
"Please wait a minute," I interrupted. "I can't settle down and focus if you keep throwing out questions one after another like that. I think I mentioned that, but this all has me a little mixed up."
"Oh, sorry about that," Sasaki-san said. It was the most unapologetic apology of all time.
I spent the next hour responding to her assault of questions, divulging every last detail of the previous night's events. The things we talked about during the party. The atmosphere of the party. By going to the convenience store with Muimi-chan. Returning. Akiharu-kun and Muimi-chan leaving at around eleven o'clock. Akiharu-kun giving Tomo-chan a present just before that. The neckstrap. My talk with Tomo-chan after that. Leaving the apartment with Mikoko-chan in tow. The phone call from Tomo-chan around the time we reached Nishiôji Nakadachiuri. Leaving Mikoko-chan with Miiko-san because she appeared to be sleeping (whether it was the truth or not, I didn't know). And then, sleeping. Mikoko-chan's short visit in the morning. The rest of the day, which I spent reading.
I didn't bother mentioning the intense pressure of having Kazuhito-san peering over Sasaki-san's shoulder the whole time when she was already plenty scary on her own. We were just sitting and talking, but I felt like I had wasted a great deal of energy. And then there was Sasaki-san's brilliant last line.
"Okay, so far this pretty much matches what we've already heard."
And boy, was she super.
The string of questions seemed to have come to an end for the time being. "Hmm," Sasaki-san said with a perplexed look. But something about it seemed like an act. If Mikoko-chan could be called a person of no façades, this woman, on the other hand, was a person of nothing but façades, to the point that they appeared to be her true personality. She certainly wouldn't be the easiest person in the world to deal with.
"So how about that phone call?" she said with a finger to her temple. "She really didn't say anything? According to Aoii-san, Emoto-san specifically asked her to pass you the phone, from which one could deduce that she had something to say to you."
"She began to say something, but she didn't. She just said 'never mind,' and hung up."
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
"And it was definitely Emoto-san on the phone?"
"Yes. I never mistake the voices of people I know."
She exchanged glances with Kazuhito-san behind her. It looked like they were done questioning and about to be on their way, but I couldn't just sit idly by in silence.
"Umm, Sasaki-san, may I ask a question?"
"Huh?"
Her poker face broke down once again, naturally. Having had a younger boy suddenly address her by her first name, it would've been stranger if she hadn't been surprised.
"Something's been bothering me."
"Uh-huh..." She exchanged another glance with Kazuhito-san. He responded with nothing more than the slight drop of his jaw. Apparently, a sign of consent; Sasaki-san turned back toward me. "Okay."
This consent was most likely not spurred by sympathy for a boy whose classmate had just been murdered, but by the mean-spirited notion that they could use my question to see into me.
Not that I cared.
"Um... by any chance, was Aoii-san the one who discovered the body?"
"That's correct," she answered coolly, providing no further explanation. It seemed they had no intention of telling me anything more than necessary to answer my questions. Of course, they probably wouldn't answer all of my questions either.
So I was right, after all. She had gone to drop off Tomo-chan's birthday present, but there had been no answer. She tried calling, but nobody picked up. The door to the building had an auto-lock, but surely that was easy enough to get around. All she had to do was follow one of the residents inside. In that sense, it hardly even passed as a lock.
Hmm...
Mikoko-chan.
How must she have felt at that time? She was always so full of emotion. What could she have possibly felt at a time like that?
"Maybe I should've gone with her..."
But then again, how could I have known? Besides, I wasn't sure I would've been much help even if I had gone along. I wasn't worth that much. I might have ended up just making her angry.
"Is that your only question?"
"No, I've got a few more. What was the time of death?"
"We've determined that it was sometime between eleven p.m. on the fourteenth and three a.m. on the fifteenth."
"In that case..." Mikoko-chan and I had left her apartment at midnight, which meant that the crime must have occurred between midnight and three a.m. "Er, and you say she was strangled, correct? There wasn't a knife involved or anything?"
"That's what I said." She narrowed her eyes at my mentioning of the word knife. Of course, I didn't tell her, not even with my eyes, that I knew a certain knife-wielding killer.
"Was it a rope?"
"It was a thin piece of cloth. She most likely died instantly from vascular compression. I doubt she suffered much."
This was the most human thing Sasaki-san had said so far. But to me, whether Tomo-chan suffered or not was relatively trivial. Either way, she was dead.
I knew what it was to die. It isn't death that people fear: It's nothingness. Pain is nothing more than a peripheral add-on, despair nothing more than decoration.
"Um, have you already gone to see everyone else?"
"Everyone else?" Sasaki-san replied, even though she knew damn well what I meant.
"Everyone who was gathered at Emoto-san's place last night. Usami-kun, Atemiya-san, and Aoii-san."
I asked this without any particular expectation. I figured she probably wouldn't even answer. But to my surprise, she answered immediately.
"Yes, we have," she said. "We've finished questioning all of them. Your address was a little hard to find, so we ended up coming here last."
"What was everyone doing during that window of time when Emoto-san was killed?"
One more step. I cautiously took another step forward.
Sasaki-san's lips curled up into a vague smirk. "Usami-san and Atemiya-san say they spent the night singing karaoke in Shijôkawara-machi. As for Aoii-san, well, it probably goes without saying."
It did. Mikoko-chan was staying with Miiko-san in the room next door. I felt a little relieved. If you could believe Sasaki-san's claim, that meant that the top three suspects all had alibis. Akiharu-kun and Muimi-chan could only account for each other, so their alibi wasn't exactly watertight, but it was enough to loosen any suspicions toward them.
I felt the pressure of Kazuhito-san's gaze grow even stronger.
"Tch..."
How unseemly.
Much too late, I broke eye contact with the two of them.
Dammit. They had set me up to feel at ease. They had caused me to let my guard down. I had been careless. These two detectives aside, you were never supposed to let your guard down around a police officer.
Shit... What had they seen?
"Is that all, then?" Sasaki-san asked without a hint of change in her tone.
"Oh, no. One more."
If I had ever known failure, surely this was that time. Kazuhito-san's penetrating gaze was minute subtlety compared to what I was about to face.
But it was a subtlety that had flustered me enough to ask a question I didn't even have to ask, a question that I shouldn't have asked.
"Who do you suppose did it?"
It was a question that had already been answered. And I had gone and repeated it.
"That's currently under investigation," Sasaki-san answered with a meaningful gaze — and the smile of a predator who had just bagged its prey. She rose to her feet. "Pardon us for intruding for so long. I think we'll be back again later to talk more," she said, placing her calling card on the floor. "If you remember anything else, please give us a call."
I took the card in my hand. It gave a number for the prefectural police as well as her own cell phone number.
"Well, take care, Mr. Student," Kazuhito-san said with a smirk, and began to make his way out of my room.
Interesting... So he was the real faker. I had committed such a fatal misstep that I didn't even deserve to call myself a passive bystander anymore. I had completely mixed up the roles of the two detectives.
In other words, it was Kazuhito-san who was rushing me along while Sasaki-san had been absorbing everything I said.
And what's more, Sasaki-san had purposely let down her guard and invited me to attack.
The gall. The utter audacity.
"Oh, by the way," Sasaki-san said as if just remembering something. "About your alibi. For the time being, it's been confirmed by your neighbor, Asano-san. She said you can hear people walking down the hallway from inside the rooms."
She flashed me a refined smile. This was essentially a checkmate. No, this didn't even make for a match.
She even had the nerve to throw in this little scrap of compassion at the end there.
Well, son of a bitch.
I don't know if it was because I hadn't dealt with them for a long time, but I had completely underestimated the Japanese police. Did my arrogance know no bounds? Who the hell did I think I was?
It was the first time I had felt such defeat since my run-in with that redheaded private contractor.
I chewed my lower lip. "Kazuhito-san," I said to him as he was leaving.
"Hmm?" He looked back.
"If you were better-looking, you'd be a dead ringer for Matsuda Yûsaku."
"Guess that means I'm not a dead ringer for Matsuda Yûsaku."
It was a bull's-eye answer. My last hopeless jab at him had been a big whiff, and with that, the two detectives were on their way. I cleared away the cups and plopped myself onto the floor.
It had been a decisive defeat. I hadn't felt this sensation in a month, and I hadn't felt it this strongly in a whole year. But in this case, I could just abandon the emotion. When you thought about the fact that someone had just died, it was all too trivial.
"Tomo-chan..."
I tried whispering the name aloud. The first thing to come to mind was our conversation from the previous night.
"Have you ever felt like, as a human, you're damaged goods?"
Now, now, Tomo-chan, that's not the sort of thing one admits out loud, isn't it?
It's better to not know things; it helps us go on living. As long as we're not too aware of ourselves, we can live in happiness. You might compare us to an airplane that's lost its engine and wings. We're nothing but insignificant nobodies who can only soar like crows who can't call out. Once you start questioning things, it's all over.
It's not about denial. It's about ignorance.
"You can get killed asking questions like that." As someone with experience, it wasn't my job to just dish out empty words of condolence. "If you put your mind to it, it's only natural... Whether you're a person like us or not... Or rather, if you don't put your mind to anything, that is."
Having realized these things myself long ago, I was now a person living without purpose, just as Tomo-chan had been living a life without meaning.
I closed my eyes.
And I opened them.
"Well, so much for mind over matter."
I swiftly rose to my feet.
Now then.
What to do now? There was nothing I was supposed to do, but plenty of things I wanted to. For me, this was a fairly rare condition.
First, I took out my cell phone. I checked the call history, then began to dial Mikoko-chan's number. But halfway through, I stopped myself.
"Seriously, who the hell do I think I am?"
This was utter and complete nonsense. If I did call Mikoko-chan, what did I possibly have to say to her?
So I put off calling her. At that moment, I just didn't have the right words to say to her.
"In that case..."
First things first. I cleared my phone and began reentering a phone number. It was the one and only phone number I knew by heart. With the phone at my ear, I tried to remember how long it had been since we'd talked.
She picked up immediately.
"Ohhh! Ii-chan! A long time indeed, old friend! Do you still love me?"
Her hyperness dwarfed Mikoko-chan's by a factor of about twelve; unlike Mikoko-chan, once you removed her stopper, the gushing would never end. If you let her alone, she would shoot all the way up to Heaven like the Tower of Babel.
"What oh, what oh, what oh, what is wrong? You never call me! This moment is monumental! It's the Himeji Castle! It must be a diversionary tactic! Hyaooo! I wanna take a photograph to record it, but a photograph can't capture sound so there'd be no point! Therefore, commence audio recording!"
"You don't have to bother with the audio recording."
I made an effort to keep my cool.
Muimi-chan had asked me if it was tough keeping up with Mikoko-chan's hyperness, but as I had told her, compared with Kunagisa, Mikoko-chan was pretty much a piece of cake.
If Mikoko-chan was happy-go-lucky, then Kunagisa Tomo was happy-go-crazy.
"Tomo, are you free much these days?"
"Nope! More on the busy side. Extremely occupado. My processing power is facing an imminent meltdown! Emergency memory expansion! Defrag imperative! I'm going to freeze! Oh my God, it's happening! It's happening! Present progressive form! Please reboot!"
"Is it this Kyoto prowling serial killer case?"
"Bingo! Wowww! You're like Maki-chan! Or the red contractor! Kyahahahahaha! Return of the ESP! And forever! Mankind's strongest! This is the end!"
"Sorry, Tomo, could you dial it down a notch?"
"Huh? What's wrong? Well, whatever. Yep, it's the Kyoto prowling serial killer case! But you know what? It's not going the way I expected! This darn case! Hurdles! Serious hurdles! Surely, the killer is the reincarnation of Dread Jones! Wahaha!"
"Let's make a deal, Kunagisa Tomo," I said. "I'll give you some information on this Kyoto prowler case. You'll give me information on a certain murder that's come up."
"Huh?"
She thought for a moment. I knew she wouldn't ask me why I had information on the prowler case or why there was a murder case I was interested in. I believed in her, and she trusted me.
Unnecessary explanations.
Excess clarifications.
Wasted words.
Inane questions.
Distracting chatter.
The very best thing about Kunagisa was that she had no use for any of these things.
"Ehh, I don't like this word deal, Ii-chan."
"How's the bargain?"
"Awful."
"Pact?"
"Almost there."
"Conspiracy?"
"Not technically wrong, but something's off."
"Well, then what about a mutual complementing of each other's attributes?"
"Yeah, that'll do," she said happily.
Give or take.
At this point, I still hadn't decided which.