by Eiji Mikage
And Koichiro said he was still rebuilding his household finances. If his daughter had that much money, he’d never say something like that. It seemed likely that she was intentionally concealing her wealth and that even that apartment was meant to camouflage what she had.
It was difficult to imagine that Reina, a lone casino employee, built up that much money through legitimate means. So of course she could never tell her father about it.
But did anyone know about it? There had to be someone who knew about it and was hiding that fact. And if they couldn’t say anything about it, perhaps her death was connected to her money?
“But even so…” I mumbled.
I was still convinced Reina wasn’t ordinary.
And I didn’t think her mystery ended with the money.
I zoned out, looking over at the hotel entrance while I thought about Reina. A number of guests were coming and going, but there wasn’t anything unusual.
“Is everything okay?” Dr. Higano asked.
At first, it seemed he was talking to me, but I realized he was looking at someone behind me.
I turned around to find a man with slicked-back black hair. He gave the impression of a Johnny-on-the-spot concierge, and I thought he was for a moment, but when I looked closely I realized it was none other Shota Akiyama.
“Huh?! Shota? What happened to your hair? Didn’t you just have a dyed perm?”
“That was a wig,” Dr. Higano replied for him.
“A wig? What on earth for?”
Shota scratched his nose. “Don’t worry about that. There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
It wasn’t just his hair; he seemed completely different from earlier. His face was more masculine, and there was an intensity in his eyes.
What the hell was going on? Had I missed something?
I was completely confused, but this had to be something important. I straightened my collar.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll listen.”
“Umm…Well, it’s kind of important, so I wanted to let that guy Yamaji know. Is he still at the station?”
“Yeah, he should be.”
“Then I’ll go to the station.” He turned to walk away.
“Excuse me? Uhh, wait a second. There’s no reason for you walk away like that. We can go over togeth—Ah, but I have to watch the others.”
“I’ll wait here,” Dr. Higano said.
Dr. Higano wasn’t an officer, so I couldn’t just let him take over, but Shota had already walked off. I nodded and decided to leave the guard duty to him.
The doctor passed me the tablet. I looked at the screen and saw that Noi-tan had a psychotic-looking smile on her face and was gesturing with her hand. Take me with you, she seemed to be saying.
I put the tablet under my arm and quickly chased after Shota, who had already exited the hotel.
* * *
—
The hotel was only about 300 meters from Tokyo Bay Station. We walked the dimly lit alleys, which didn’t match the rest of Odaiba. I looked at Shota from the side. He was walking briskly, his posture straight. And it finally came to me—Shota had only been pretending to be superficial.
What did that mean? I didn’t have my thoughts together yet. I had too many questions, and it was impossible to know which one to ask first.
Eventually I asked the first question that came to me. “Shota, did you know that Reina had over 100 million yen?”
Shota opened his eyes widely. “Damn, you cops are impressive…” he stammered. His face tightened up. “I can’t believe you figured that out so fast. When you need the cops, I guess—”
“You guess what?”
Shota looked me in the eyes and then averted his gaze. “I’ll save it for later.”
In the end, Shota didn’t tell me anything that made a difference.
* * *
—
We made it to the station quickly. I showed Shota in and then turned to go back to the hotel.
I was annoyed. He clearly seemed to know something important and I had to wait to hear it. But I couldn’t leave Dr. Higano alone on guard duty for too long, and I had to deal with Otoha Tamachi. The only solution was to leave Shota to Yamaji.
“Hey hey heeeeyyy,” Noi-tan’s strange voice called out to me. The timing couldn’t have been worse. “Now I know you’re a worthless rookie leeching off the taxpayers’ dime—did you really think Shota was just some bozo with a part-time job? I’m right, right? Well, you’re wrong. Why would you ever think that? Akiyama had a serious relationship with Reina. She’s not gonna waste her time on a nobody!”
When Noi-tan put it that way, I knew she had a point, but I couldn’t believe Shota would actually go as far as putting on a wig to disguise himself.
Irritated, I kept the tablet under my arm and refused to look at it.
“Oh, the silent treatment? Is that what you’re doing now? Well, you can ignore me, but you can’t ignore the fact that you’re dumb as bricks! Did you think Dr. Higano was wrong? He saw through Shota’s disguise from the beginning and had me look into things.”
“Look into things?” I said, finally looking at the damn green bear again.
“Hehe. Want to hear something good? I’ll tell you, but nothing’s free: Promise me you’ll stop flirting with Doctor and I’ll tell you.”
“I haven’t been flirting with him,” I retorted.
And it wasn’t like my pitiful attempts at flirtation would’ve had any effect anyway.
“Then promise not to make anymore duck faces at Doctor. Promise not to talk so cutesy and not to purposefully let your bra strap show.”
“I wasn’t doing any of that in the first place!”
“Also,” she said, her animated face turning serious. “I want you to cut off your right hand.”
“What?”
Because her voice was artificially modulated, there was no way for me to know what she was thinking on the other side of the screen.
I felt chilled, like I’d been stabbed in the back with an icicle. I didn’t blink, and I could feel myself start to sweat.
Noi-tan continued to stare at me seriously, and then suddenly burst into hysterical laughter. “Pfff haaa ha ha ha!” She buckled over, clutching her stomach.
“I’m kidding, duh! Why so serious? Are you that dumb? You’re probably dumb enough to believe those urban legends on the net, like that the moon landing was fake.”
I was completely dumbfounded for a moment, then I bit my lip and looked up at the ceiling.
What was wrong with me? Why did I keep taking this bear at her word when she was just a bag of jokes? I was embarrassed about how quickly I’d gotten worked up.
“Well…I guess you basically agreed not to flirt with Doctor, so I’ll tell you what I know. So listen up! And I hope this frustrates you!”
I stared at the awful bear.
It probably wasn’t anything at all. I prepared myself for nothing.
“Shota Akiyama also has over 100 million to his name,” Noi-tan said.
I just kept staring at her, waiting for her favorite words: I’m joking.
I mean, it was Shota Akiyama we were talking about. He seemed like your average young dude.
But what about everything he had said before he cleaned up his appearance?
I waited and waited, but Noi-tan didn’t say anything else.
I looked up at the ceiling again.
11
Shota Akiyama, just like Reina Myoko, had saved up more than 100 million yen.
There were a few things we could confirm based on this fact: Shota and Reina had likely worked together to amass such a large amount of money. And they both made efforts to prevent anyone from realizing they had that much money.
And if this murder was connected to the source of that money, Shota probably had an
idea who the killer might be.
I was abuzz with ideas, but there was something I had to take care of first.
I had to hear what Otoha Tamachi knew about Reina.
When I arrived at the entrance to the hotel, I realized a car was parked in the lot.
Maybe Otoha had arrived. My wristwatch read 1:20 A.M.
I looked up at the car. It was a red BMW.
* * *
—
I went back to the lobby and returned the tablet to Dr. Higano. He and Noi-tan began to update each other on what they’d missed while apart.
Not even a second later, the automatic entrance to the hotel slid open.
“Sorry to make you wait!” Otoha strolled towards us, her voice slow and easygoing.
Not having seen her for such a long time, I was first struck by the fact that she was more beautiful than I’d remembered. She was dressed stylishly in an elegant summer coat, a blue shirt, and a long skirt with a floral pattern. She had on pink flower-shaped earrings. Unlike me, she looked like a real “princess,” beautiful enough to make me feel self-conscious.
Junseiwa Academy had an ability to shield its students from social trends, and while there Otoha had been another unremarkable, unpolished adolescent girl. She must’ve discovered makeup and fashion after she graduated. Had she really become this beautiful?
I tried to recall my impression of her at that time, but nothing came to me. We hadn’t been all that close, and it wasn’t nice of me to say, but she hadn’t seemed like anything other than one of Reina’s hangers-on. I racked my brain, but all I could remember was chatting about shampoos with her when we happened to be alone in her dorm bathroom once.
“So Otoha, sorry to get right to the questions, but what can you tell me about that red BWM?”
Otoha tilted her head inquisitively. “What about it? My dad bought it for me.”
That made sense. I was surprised the cars were the same, but there was no way the BMW Otoha had arrived in could’ve been Reina’s still-missing BMW. I remembered the plate number, and of course it was different from the one we’d written down as Reina’s.
Otoha took off her summer coat and leisurely sat down opposite Dr. Higano and me. She smiled bashfully at Dr. Higano in his white coat.
It was a tender smile, and gave her the warm air of a sunbeam. She was probably liked by everyone she met.
As one might imagine, Junseiwa Academy had been full of women just like her. Most of these women weren’t competitive, didn’t have a mean bone in their bodies, and, indeed, required this sense of harmony to live.
The classrooms had almost seemed to give off the pleasant aroma of warm milk.
As one of the hoi polloi, I always felt somewhat isolated from the rarified, enclosed environment. Then after Nadeshiko was murdered, the isolation was certainly no longer the product of my self-consciousness. I was actually ostracized from the group.
They never explicitly rejected me. Whenever my sister’s death came up, the other girls in the academy cried with me and were incredibly sympathetic, almost too kind. They were nice people, so I was thankful.
But they all considered me a foreigner of sorts. No one considered me part of their group, and none of them ever once thought of themselves as being on the same side as the victim. They were completely ignorant of their privilege. They deigned to look upon me with kindness.
And that’s probably why alarm bells were going off in my head at that moment, despite the fact that Otoha seemed so sweet.
Dr. Higano introduced himself as a detective helping with the case, took out his cube puzzle, and looked straight at Otoha. “It seems you’ve been looking into Reina’s case,” he said.
“Yes. But all I was able to find is that she—” Otoha suddenly became choked up and put her hands to the corners of her eyes. She took out a handkerchief and wiped away her tears.
“You’ll have to excuse me. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Reina,” she choked out.
She cried quietly. I watched her, a little confused. When she had settled down I asked, “What exactly do you mean by ‘I’m sorry’? Did something happen between you and Reina?”
She sniffed. “I had always wanted to apologize to her. But I wasn’t able to in the end. I distanced myself from her during college after…something happened.”
“You mean…You cut off ties with her?”
“Yes. And it wasn’t just me. Everyone who was close with Reina during high school distanced themselves from her.”
“You mean all the Bumblebees?”
Her eyes and the tip of her nose had reddened. She nodded.
“You guys were inseparable. How could that happen?”
She hesitated. Quietly, she said, “She…She cheated.”
I frowned. I didn’t know what she meant.
“I met a guy shortly after starting college,” she explained. “Reina stole him from me. It’s a little embarrassing, but I was just a teenager at the time and I was obsessed with being in a relationship, so it was really difficult to handle the betrayal. It felt like the Bumblebees had to choose between me or Reina, and they took my side and decided to separate themselves from Reina, like I did.”
It seemed a little strange for a group as tight as the Bumblebees to have broken up because of romantic troubles, but this was not an uncommon adolescent occurrence.
However, there was something that didn’t sit right with me. “Reina doesn’t strike me as someone who would lose her head over a guy…”
“Reina was involved with a lot of guys,” Otoha said. “Do you remember Sawazaki-sensei?”
I couldn’t remember him from the name alone. Otoha reminded me that he had been the chemistry teacher, and after she provided some nearly-obsessive details about him, I eventually recalled him vaguely.
“Didn’t he have to leave for some disciplinary reason?” I asked.
Sawazaki-sensei had always kept some distance between himself and students, so his dismissal, a pretty serious punishment, hadn’t created much noise, but I did remember students spreading rumors about him.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “That was Sawazaki-sensei. He had an affair with Reina while she was in high school.”
“No way!”
Sawazaki-sensei was your average, married, middle-age man. There was absolutely nothing cool about him. I had trouble imagining any interaction between the two of them other than an ordinary student-teacher relationship.
“It wasn’t just Sawazaki-sensei. She was dating guys from other schools while she was seeing him. And before that she was seeing a couple of older guys as well.”
The almost holy ideal of Reina that I had held was being dramatically rewritten.
I was shocked, but I began to think. If this was the case, then maybe it wasn’t that strange that she was dating Shota while engaged to Ken. Maybe Reina was the type to date anyone.
Dr. Higano listened attentively, his eyes settled on Otoha. He spun his puzzle between his fingers and said, “Let’s assume that Reina dated obsessively. And that she stole your ex. Why would you want to apologize to someone who did something so awful to you?”
“First, let me clarify one thing,” Otoha said. “I don’t think Reina was slutty or obsessive or anything. I just think she never turned down anyone who hit on her.”
“Interesting. She was beautiful, so there was probably no shortage of men who flirted with her. What you’re suggesting, then, is that she wasn’t being led astray by her emotions, correct?”
“Yes. But I still don’t know why she went out with that many guys.”
Dr. Higano nodded slightly. “Yes, why didn’t she reject them?”
“I don’t know,” Otoha said. “I think it might’ve been something Reina just had to do.”
The doctor put a hand to his chin thoughtfully, and nodded. “I see. I think I know why you wante
d to apologize. You realized that Reina stealing your boyfriend was something ‘she had to do.’”
Otoha opened her eyes wide. “Impressive…You’re right. I think Reina cheated with him because she had to. In order to help me, she had to take my boyfriend from me.”
I was unable to follow. “What do you mean? How would Reina cheating with your boyfriend help you?”
“If I hadn’t broken up with him, it might have destroyed my life.” Otoha bit her lip and then slowly continued her explanation. “He was worthless. But I’d just graduated from Junseiwa—I was incredibly naive. A guy telling me he liked me was enough to make me giddy. I was convinced that it was fate, that it was love. I was totally blind. The Bumblebees were all so happy, seeing how infatuated I was. But Reina knew he was worthless, and she warned me a number of times I should break up with him. But I was so beside myself and head over heels in love that what she was trying to say never reached me.”
“So basically, Reina couldn’t convince you to break up with him, so she cheated with him to rip him away from you?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Higano began to fiddle with his puzzle again. “Ms. Tamachi,” he said. “Can you tell us what specifically was the issue with this man?”
“He loved to gamble. And he played fast and loose with women. Not to mention that he was always trying to get money for one thing or another once he found out my family was wealthy. If that had been it, he’d have been like any other shitty guy, but there was something…more decisive in his case. Not long after we split up, he was arrested for fraud! He was part of some group that was doing bank transfer scams. If not for Reina, I might’ve been naive enough to be tricked into being part of a crime. When I think about it now…it’s really scary.”
“You didn’t try to get in touch with Reina again after you realized that she might have been acting in your best interests?” Dr. Higano asked.
“I wanted to. But she dropped out of school right after that and everyone deleted her contact information when we cut her out…” Otoha took out her handkerchief again. “But if I really wanted to get in touch with her, I’m sure there were ways. I’m sure if I hired a detective like you, they would’ve been able to track her down easily enough. But I didn’t. I guess in the end I felt so bad, I just left things as they were. And it took—all this—to force me to get serious, but now it’s too late. It’s too late for me to apologize to Reina. No matter how many regrets I have, it doesn’t change the fact that she…she’s…”