I understood that the young man in front of us was - at least in part - at the heart of the case. For it now seemed to me that it had allowed the detective to find the real culprit.
"I saw something... or rather, someone," the young man continued. "There was someone in your apartment, with all the lights off, that I could see walking past the window. At first I thought it was you, and that you had just forgotten to turn on the light. But a few minutes later, I saw you walking back toward the residence..."
Ms. Munehara was shaken to hear this.
I was also surprised. Did this mean that this man had entered her apartment again, after the incident with the flowers?
"You told me you live alone, and that alarmed me. But..." The young man paused.
"You couldn't say anything without having to reveal how you found out about it, right?" Interjected the detective.
The young man nodded as he looked at the detective. It seemed to me that these two had some sort of agreement without our knowledge.
"I should have not only said that I had followed Mrs. Munehara without her knowledge... But also..." He said with a sorry tone. "I realize now that it was really stupid, and that I should have told her everything from the beginning..."
The detective then addressed her client.
"The reason Sagawa-kun called you and told you to 'leave' was because he was scared of the way you would look at him if you found out he had followed you home." She explained. "But it was all sincere, and was based on the fact that he was really worried about you."
Mrs. Munehara then began to smile, without reservation this time, and addressed the young man.
"If I had known that someone was checking up on me all this time... You have my thanks, Sagawa-kun..."
She was really sincere in her words, and her smile comforted everyone in the room.
Maybe she had gotten out of the habit of being cared about since her husband died.
I wasn't sure what it was like to care about someone.
However, I had had a brief glimpse of it the day before when I rushed to the detective's aid. That irrepressible urge to do something, to act. To put oneself in danger for the other.
It was still a foreign sensation to me. At least for me, who usually didn't care about anyone else but myself.
I had already been lectured several times, either during my studies, or at work, about my lack of empathy towards others. About my selfishness. So I had to doubt what I had felt.
Had I ultimately acted in the detective's best interest? Or my own ?
This doubt kept swirling around inside me, and no matter how much I tried to take my mind off it with work, it kept coming back.
But on closer inspection, something else about this whole situation was bothering me. And as I usually - wrongly - did, I spoke without a filter.
"You say you saw someone in the apartment from the street, while it was in the dark?" I asked suspiciously.
I then heard the detective sigh at length.
"I forgot how quick-witted you can be, Nijima-kun..." she complained.
She then turned to the high schooler.
"But now that it's out in the open, we can't really hide it anymore... Sorry, Sagawa-kun."
The young man shook his head.
"It's okay... Just..."
He then looked at Ms. Munehara, with a pleading look.
"I just hope that you... won't think of me differently..."
There was obviously something the client and I didn't know, which he had tried to keep hidden. But with my question, he had been found out.
He then leaned forward, and brought his hand to his face, as if searching for something with his hand. Then, after groping for a moment, he raised his head, to reveal, instead of two brown eyes, one brown eye, and one light blue eye.
He had just removed a colored contact lens, which he was still holding.
Mrs. Munehara had at first a movement of recoil, which disappointed the young man; because he lowered again the head, ashamed.
"I'm sorry I had to show you this..." He apologized quickly. "I know it's really disgusting, and it tends to make people uncomfortable..."
He was really distressed, and very uncomfortable that he had to show this rather rare physical feature. So much so that he didn't even dare look at anyone in the room.
Until he felt two hands on his, and instinctively looked up.
Mrs. Munehara had risen from her seat, and had walked to him, to attract his attention.
"Personally, I think that it is very beautiful," she smiled with tenderness.
Her words had an effect on the high school student, for he widened his eyes. He could hardly believe what he had just heard.
"You see, my late husband was from the UK, so I lived abroad for a short time... before he passed away." Mrs. Munehara explained. "So your eye, it's not something disgusting. It's very beautiful."
I saw the young man quickly bite his lips.
He had surely been afraid of having to reveal this part of him; much more so than the fact that he had been following someone without his knowledge. I understood him on that point.
There were things that scared people, especially when they didn't understand them.
"Munehara-san is right," said the detective. "Because it was because of that eye that you could see that she was in danger, right?"
The young man nodded, while the client now had a questioning look on her face.
"I was born with this eye of a different color," he explained. "And thanks to it, I can see in the dark. The doctors say it's because I have an excess of photosensitive cells."
"Is that how you were able to see that someone was in my house?" Ms. Munehara asked.
The high school student nodded, before apologizing again.
The detective then took this opportunity to continue her report.
"All this I discovered during the preliminary investigation that I carried out in the past week, between your e-mail requesting my services, and yesterday afternoon, when Nijima-kun and I came to see you." She explained. "So I considered Sagawa-kun a more than likely suspect. However, when you told me more about what happened with the flowers, I began to reconsider my position."
"What I said about the flowers?" Mrs. Munehara repeated, confused.
I had also been present at the discussion, and although I had quickly replayed the discussion in all the ways, I did not see what could have seemed suspicious...
"You told us that following the incident, you had changed the locks on your door and window. It was at that time, knowing what had already happened with Sagawa-kun, that I realized there might be another suspect. Now, what do you think may have tipped me off?"
I had a bit of a feeling that the detective was having a lot of fun revealing everything she understood about the events. Yet she kept a rather impassive face.
But I should not forget that she seemed to be good at acting.
She then raised her index finger, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room to that particular spot on her body.
"The answer lies in one word: door."