by Kōji Suzuki
When he’d set about to find Saeko’s father, Kitazawa imagined her joy should he succeed, and it drove him to do everything he could. But the case was simply unsolvable. Oddly, the circumstances of the case were different from anything he had seen before.
The subject had none of the usual involvements associated with a missing persons case—debt, a love affair, ties to illicit activities—that might serve as the motive of an intentional disappearance. Kitazawa could only imagine that Saeko’s father had wound up at the bottom of a river or steep cliff through some sort of freak accident or perhaps fallen victim to a random criminal act. In either case, the implications were the same. Unless Saeko’s father was being held captive somewhere, it was unlikely that he was still alive.
On top of everything else, Shinichiro Kuriyama was completely devoted to Saeko, his only child. The closeness of their relationship was the reason Saeko had been aware of his disappearance at such an early stage.
Based on Saeko’s own account, her determination to find her father, and the testimony of her father’s friends and acquaintances, Kitazawa was positive that Saeko had meant the world to Shinichiro and that the man would never have dreamed of abandoning her. The more clear it became that Shinichiro had no motivation to disappear, the more likely it seemed that he had met with an accident and that his body merely remained to be recovered. Kitazawa knew the possibility was absolutely unacceptable to Saeko, but he couldn’t convince himself otherwise.
Eighteen years ago, when he had informed Saeko that he was calling off the search, she had been absolutely furious.
“He’s alive!” she had raged at him. “I can feel his pulse. Maybe he’s lost his memory. Maybe he’s out there somewhere and doesn’t know where his home is …”
Of course, Kitazawa had considered that possibility. He had inquired at hospitals and with the police, but there had been no profiles that fit the bill. Kitazawa shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Fine,” Saeko had declared. “I won’t ask you to go on searching for him. You can teach me how to do it instead. From this day onward, I want to be your apprentice.”
And sure enough, she had trailed after Kitazawa unrelentingly until he finally caved. How could he accomplish any sleuthing with a teenage girl constantly at his heels? He had no choice but to devote his spare time to teaching Saeko the ropes, and in the process they had forged a strong bond. It was this experience that had planted the seed for his detective school in Kitazawa’s mind, a project that later brought him quite a bit of success. And Saeko had wound up applying her investigative skills to her career as a journalist. You never knew where things led you in life.
With the file Saeko had handed him balanced on his knees, Kitazawa smiled wryly as he sipped his weight-loss tea. His wife had turned him on to it a decade ago, but it didn’t seem to have had any effect.
Saeko was now thirty-five years old and had been through both a marriage and a divorce. But had she ever really come to terms with the loss of her father? Kitazawa wondered. Even if it was her editor’s idea, the fact that Saeko was still walking around with a missing persons file after all this time led Kitazawa to suspect that she had never truly given up on her father, and the realization pained him.
Oblivious to Kitazawa’s concern, Saeko glanced hesitantly over her shoulder. “By the way, is Toshiya around?”
“Of course he is. He can’t wait to see you!” Kitazawa hit the button on his intercom, announcing, “Saeko’s here!”
Immediately, the door swung open and a younger man bounced into the room. His face was the spitting image of Kitazawa’s, but his frame was a size smaller and the energy he gave off was completely different.
“Sensei! Long time no see!” Toshiya greeted Saeko breathlessly, grinning from ear to ear. But the moment his eyes met Saeko’s, he averted them awkwardly, his gaze wandering off into space.
“It has been a long time, Toshiya. You’ve slimmed down, haven’t you?”
Kitazawa’s only child, Toshiya, was six years younger than Saeko. At twenty-nine, his entire being seemed to exude that odor of childishness of those who fled from reality. Saeko hadn’t seen him since Chieko’s funeral, but Kitazawa had brought her up to speed over the phone as to Toshiya’s recent activities.
An image flashed through the back of Saeko’s mind of Toshiya’s penis, half buried in foreskin, withering like a deflating balloon—evidence, surely, that the exact same image was flashing through Toshiya’s mind. Saeko retreated a half-pace, gazing off to the side to avoid looking Toshiya in the face.
Saeko, Kitazawa, and Toshiya. The three had been linked by student-teacher relationships. Kitazawa had schooled Saeko in the fundamentals of tracking down missing persons, and Saeko had worked as Toshiya’s private tutor.
Toshiya had been a roly-poly little sixth grader when they had first met. In time, at Kitazawa’s request, Saeko helped the boy prepare for his high school entrance exams, and Toshiya ended up successfully testing into his first-choice school.
Saeko was in college at the time. She based her approach on how her father had taught her, with special emphasis on the subjects of English, math, and physics. Thanks partly to that history, Toshiya eventually got into the engineering program at a national university where he went on to study information theory. Saeko hadn’t helped Toshiya prepare for his university entrance exams, though she did help him achieve top marks in math and physics.
When Toshiya was in his second year of high school, a year before he took his tests, she stepped down as his tutor. To Kitazawa senior, she claimed to be too busy job hunting. But the real reason was that during winter vacation that year, Toshiya had attempted to rape her.
Toshiya’s parents had been away, traveling on business. Saeko had lined up two chairs in Toshiya’s warm, cozy room and sat down with a page of physics problems for him to solve, oblivious to the fact that his thoughts were elsewhere and that he was in no state to study.
His expression distracted, Toshiya’s mind seemed to be churning over something. Muttering incomprehensively, he looked up from the page frequently to take a deep breath and let it out. Then his lips began to tremble, and he shook himself violently several times like a dog emerging from a river and shaking himself dry. It was then that Saeko began to notice the change that had come over Toshiya. Even from the side, she could see that his whole body was rigid with tension. He seemed to vacillate between hesitation and intention. Just as he seemed about to reach a decision, Saeko experienced a flash of wariness and suddenly drew back in her chair. At that moment, something seemed to well over in Toshiya, and he looked up with bloodshot eyes brimming with intensity and seized her shoulders with both hands.
“I’m sorry, sensei … I can’t take it any longer.”
What?!
Saeko tried to pull away, but it was too late. Toshiya pushed her down onto the bed behind her and climbed on top of her.
With close to eighty kilograms of body weight suddenly crushing her chest and stomach, Saeko’s breathing froze. Normally sluggish, Toshiya’s movements were uncharacteristically swift, and for a moment Saeko was too baffled by what was going on to even cry out.
Toshiya brought his mouth up to Saeko’s ear and whispered, “Sensei … I just can’t take it anymore. I’m so crazy about you. It’s okay, right?”
“W-Wait …”
But of course, Toshiya wasn’t about to wait. He pushed up Saeko’s skirt and tugged at her panties.
A fuse blew in Saeko’s mind, and all of the colors in the room ceased to exist. The fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling was a glowing ring on the back of her eyelids, but its light grew fainter and fainter. An intense urge to escape flooded her. The desire to free herself surged within her stronger than any feelings of fear or anger. If she couldn’t somehow escape from this big hunk of meat that was holding her down, she would be stripped of all human dignity. Saeko curled her body like a shrimp, flipped over, and tried to straighten herself again. But Toshiya’s soft body weighe
d her down, inhibiting her movements. Pushed down, immobilized, insulted, this was no time to bite back on her anger. Saeko gave full vent to her rage. Gritting her teeth, she tried to ram her chin into Toshiya’s head, but it was just beyond reach. When she finally wrenched one hand free from under his body, she clawed at his exposed skin and sank her teeth into his upper arm.
Toshiya howled and his upper body jerked away, creating room between their bodies and a momentary reprieve for Saeko. She seized the opportunity to twist herself sideways, channeling the momentum to drive a fist into Toshiya’s chin. Already unbalanced, the direct hit sent Toshiya tumbling off the bed. He landed with a dull thud.
As soon as she was free, Saeko yanked her panties back up and fixed her skirt. Then she kneeled on the bed and glared down at Toshiya. Roiling now with anger, indignity, and fear, she was unable to scream at him for a lack of words. Instead, she simply fixed him with a look of pure reproach. Then, all at once, she burst into tears.
“Was it something I did?” she sobbed. Her first thought was that somehow, she was to blame.
Toshiya rolled over on the carpet, rubbing his jaw with an expression of incomprehension. His white briefs were bunched at his knees along with his track pants, and his erect penis peeked out, still half-shrouded in foreskin. But it was visibly withering, like a separate organism cut off from its main body. Toshiya began to weep. Of course Saeko was upset, but Toshiya, too, was overcome with tremendous regret.
“I’m sorry, sensei …” he choked, coughing and burying his face in his hands. Pathetically, his need to hide his face was greater than that of hiding his groin. Saeko’s intense rebuttal had shattered his naïve, self-serving delusions.
Toshiya’s good-for-nothing teenage friends had probably filled his head with garbage about how women responded well to men who took forceful action. With no experience of the opposite sex, he had based his warped ideas of how women functioned solely on the misguided theories of his equally ignorant pals. Or perhaps they had ridiculed him for being a virgin and he felt unable to back down. Teenagers’ most outrageous actions were usually motivated by the need to impress their peers.
Already a young adult, Saeko was out of touch with the unbalanced emotional state of adolescence. She still saw Toshiya as the sixth grader he’d been when they’d first met. She had never imagined that the maturing Toshiya harbored romantic feelings for her. Surely there had been indications, but her persisting image of Toshiya as a child had prevented her from recognizing them. If only she had, she might have been able to avert the crisis at an earlier stage without driving Toshiya to utter humiliation.
Even though both of them could have made better choices, it didn’t change the fact that their sibling-like relationship had been completely destroyed. Even after Toshiya’s apology, the mood between them remained strained.
If Saeko knew how Toshiya had overcome his humiliation and used it as a fodder for growth, perhaps she could rebuild her relationship with him. Toshiya was no taller than he had been in high school, and his weight hadn’t changed much either. Even at the age of twenty-nine, his skin was still as smooth as a child’s. His sex appeal was still nil—it was possible that he remained a virgin even now.
Without meaning to, Saeko found herself comparing Toshiya to her ex-husband. Unlike Toshiya, her ex had actually been something of a ladies’ man, but Saeko’s relationship with both of them had not ended well. Having recently analyzed the root cause of her marriage’s failure, whether or not a damaged relationship could ever be repaired loomed large in her mind once again.
“How’s your dissertation coming, Toshiya?” Saeko inquired, shaking away the lingering image in her mind.
“It’s coming along.”
Saeko had heard from Kitazawa that Toshiya had completed his graduate coursework at the same university. He was working at the detective agency while he wrote his dissertation. He hoped to land a post at the university, but there were a number of other post-docs as well, and competition was steep even for non-tenure-track positions. Meanwhile, as a specialist in information theory, his skills were in high demand at Man Search. There’s no information my boy can’t find, Kitazawa boasted.
“Speaking of which, there’s something I wanted to ask you,” Saeko said. “What’s the connection between information theory and black holes?”
Both were major themes in Saeko’s father’s postcard. He’d jotted those notes in 1994, and science had advanced quite a bit over the last eighteen years. Though schooled in both science and philosophy, Saeko’s absence from the halls of academia had left her behind the times.
“What brought that on?” Toshiya widened his eyes dramatically, using exaggerated surprise to conceal his delight that Saeko would consult him about his field of expertise.
“Well, I’m working on a science-related article at the moment, and I was just wondering …” Saeko replied evasively.
“Is that so? Black holes and information theory? That’s easy! They have a lot to do with each other!” Toshiya tapped his head with his finger and made thinking sounds. “Hmm … Hmm … Please excuse me for a moment.”
He ducked out of the room. After about ten minutes, he returned with a document in English, printed in full color.
“Here, read this. It’s an article that appeared in Scientific American last year, by the renowned physicist Jack Thorne. It specifically addresses the relationship between information theory and black holes.”
Accepting the article, Saeko was unable to conceal her amazement at Toshiya’s ability to instantly produce the exact information she was looking for.
Kitazawa had been observing the exchange. “That looks like some complicated material there, little lady.” He squinted at the article.
Right now, Saeko needed help from both father and son. She needed Kitazawa’s support for her missing persons search and Toshiya’s assistance in deciphering the meaning behind her father’s message. Clearly, she stood a much better chance at success if she had help. Toshiya was the perfect person to provide objective analysis of Saeko’s approach—something she desperately needed.
It was a pleasure to witness a former pupil’s progress, even if solely in academic terms. No doubt her father would have liked to see the same in her, Saeko mused.
9Saeko made her way down the corridor of Car 5 of the Super Azusa express train for Matsumoto, checking once more the number on her ticket and scanning the rows for her business-class seat. There it was—but Saeko froze when she recognized the face of the elderly woman in the seat next to hers. Immediately, she began to regret not having ridden with the caravan of vehicles that had departed Tokyo the night before.
Originally, Saeko had been scheduled to ride out with the crew. But due to a looming deadline, she’d arranged to delay her departure by a day, pulling an all-nighter and rushing to catch the express train this morning. The assistant director, Sakai, had purchased her a reserved seat and handed her the ticket on the platform. But Saeko had never been warned that she was to be seated next to Shigeko Torii, the famous psychic.
She’s tiny …
That was Saeko’s first impression. Saeko was an average-sized woman, but she was still a whole head taller than Shigeko Torii. The woman was so petite that a business-class ticket seemed almost pointless; no doubt she would have been perfectly comfortable in an ordinary seat. Also, Saeko seemed to remember Shigeko Torii being younger, but in person her face was puckered with deep wrinkles, her hair was white with thin patches here and there, and the skin underneath was mottled with dark blotches. She looked about eighty years old.
“Excuse me.” Saeko bowed politely as she sat down.
“I’m Shigeko Torii,” the old woman responded, twisting her upper body to face Saeko. Assistant Director Sakai must have informed her that they would be sitting together.
“Pleased to meet you. My name is Kuriyama. I’m a reporter.”
Saeko retrieved a business card from her bag and passed it to Shigeko Torii. The old woman accepted it
politely with both hands, like a child being presented with an award certificate. She stared at the card for almost a full minute, even though it was printed only with Saeko’s name and contact details without so much as a job title.
Shigeko Torii’s hands trembled as she held the card, but Saeko wasn’t sure why. On the one hand, the elderly woman looked like an alcoholic experiencing DTs. Then again, it could have been some sort of minor nervous disorder. Not just her fingertips, but her jaw trembled slightly as well. On television the psychic seemed much more bold; in person she was so tiny and unsure.
Saeko didn’t relish traveling all the way to Ina next to this woman. She couldn’t relax; the old woman gave her goose bumps. It was as if Shigeko Torii’s entire body radiated some sort of unique energy.
Saeko found herself wondering if the assistant director had deliberately chosen to travel economy class. When a television crew traveled by train to cover a story, it was customary for the talent to travel business class while the rest of the staff rode in economy. As a collaborator on the project, it would have made sense for Saeko to travel economy too, but for some reason Sakai had bought her a business-class seat. Perhaps Shigeko Torii had asked him to. Perhaps she’d wanted someone to talk with, and Sakai had offered up Saeko as a human sacrifice.
Torii looked up from the business card and looked into Saeko’s eyes, first one and then the other. She exhaled sharply through her nose and retrieved her bag from the floor, setting it atop her knees.
“It must be very hard for you, all alone.”
The comment was cryptic, but it made Saeko gasp. It was as if the old woman had used Saeko’s card as a window to peer into her heart.
Biting solitude … The summer eighteen years ago when Saeko’s life had changed forever …
Or was it just a lucky guess?
In either case, Saeko didn’t appreciate having her past dredged up. The thought of enduring two hours of unsolicited mind-reading made her shudder. And even though she was exhausted from her all-nighter, she could hardly abandon the old lady to take a nap.