“My name is Akiba.”
As though he had finally connected the Kanako now with the young girl who had carried the four picture frames of her deceased family members, the security guard’s mirror-like mask cracked for a single instant and let through a smile.
“I have to stand facing this way, but please sit and make yourself comfortable anywhere…”
There was a paving stone among the shrubbery. Kanako sat down, the position making her look up to talk to him.
Hashimoto put the hat back on so it shadowed his eyes from the crowd. He surveyed his surroundings with a piercing gaze.
“First, I believe I must thank you,” Kanako said.
Just as Hashimoto had been unable to recall Norio Tsuzuki’s words for the longest time, she, too, had a memory fragment that had remained hidden until now. Last night, after she ended the call, it suddenly returned as a vivid memory.
“It was when I went to visit their graves after the first anniversary memorial service. Someone had already lit incense for them before us. And that person had left offerings. They were tin toys, matching police cars for Tomoki and Naoki. That was you, wasn’t it, Mr. Hashimoto?”
Hashimoto seemed to know what she was talking about, and nodded.
“I thought so. Since they were police cars, I had thought a policeman had left them.”
The memory could be used as a tool to pry open Hashimoto’s heart. That was the plan she had hatched last night.
“I had been a rookie officer, only twenty-three. For a while, I couldn’t help but hold a grudge, wondering why I’d run into such a case.”
He was an honest man, Kanako thought. Almost foolishly honest.
Hashimoto seemed unable to hold back the words that threatened to flood forth. Kanako waited impatiently for them to come. Hashimoto took a deep breath and slowly began to speak.
“If Norio Tsuzuki had waited just one more day before committing the crime, I doubt I would have been the first person to arrive at the scene. The scars I’ve received from that incident must be nothing compared to yours, Miss Akiba. Even so, I felt it twisted my experiences during my seven years as a police officer.”
He had given Tomoki and Naoki the police cars. The past had no doubt puppeteered and guided him to the Akibas’ graves on the second and third anniversaries as well. The man didn’t know how to live.
“When I was acting as security for the prize exchange counter, I suddenly remembered Norio Tsuzuki’s words. It actually took a bit longer for me to start feeling responsible for conveying them to his daughter. My first thought after remembering was that I wanted to curse the mysterious paths of my memory for continuing to cause me pain from that incident eight years ago.”
Hashimoto’s speech sounded strained. It was easy to imagine him as a rigid police officer.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Hashimoto, I have a question. How exactly did you suffer from being the first person to discover my family?”
“That’s my own problem. A mere trifle.”
“If it’s not a bother, I’d like to know.”
She wanted to make him remember everything properly. Hashimoto had finally escaped from the sludge of his past, but Kanako was intent on dragging him through it once more.
Hashimoto was choosing his words carefully and seemed unsure about telling Kanako, but as though deciding to trust in her strength, he started to speak.
“Blood isn’t all one color.” His eyes roved. He was being moved by some repulsive memory. “The blood that flowed from your father, mother, and two little brothers was red, pitch black, muddled, reflecting the light from the kitchen. The sea of blood seemed to swirl endlessly. The four of them lay there in it. The shock I received then was just simple shock. But now I have another word to describe it.” He took a deep breath, then spat out one trembling word. “Powerlessness.”
Hashimoto’s eyes were gazing somewhere far away.
“Norio Tsuzuki was on his knees before them. As a third party, I was completely powerless in face of the terribly violent gusts of wind that had blown between the murderer and the victims. Arriving at the crime scene only made me an observer. On top of that, I was a rookie cop with cherished notions about protecting the populace. The four victims who lay in the sea of blood, and the moaning man who was the assailant—that picture just beat me down.”
The image of blood flowing from her father, mother, and two younger brothers and mixing together into a vortex pounded against Kanako’s mind.
The image of her hideaway overflowing with her family’s blood leapt towards her more vividly. As she had always known, she had no choice but to drown in that deep red.
She could imagine the overwhelming despair and powerlessness that Hashimoto claimed to have felt.
“Admitting powerlessness in the face of a crime negated my role as a police officer. I had been pushing myself: to be strong in mind and body, to be an excellent officer in everyone’s eyes, to get promoted ahead of anyone else. Non-career college grads usually make sergeant around the time they’re thirty, so I suppose my promotion was on the faster side.” Sneering at himself, he added, “I even fought over a woman with my senior to prove that I was strong. In the end, I got tired from burning up so much fuel every day for so long.”
Hashimoto wanted to say that he, too, had been a victim.
“Do you want to meet Tsuzuki’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“How do you plan on meeting her? Are you going to watch her from afar? Will you approach her and steal a glance at her face? Are you going to hide your identity and actually speak to her?”
How about bluntly saying, Your father killed my family, watching Miho Tsuzuki pale in horror, and looking down at her in scorn? Hashimoto probably hadn’t included that among the options because he trusted in Kanako’s good intentions. It seemed her mask of “the surviving relative who continues to live life to the fullest” was holding up.
“I want to know what she meant when she said, ‘They should just kill me’ along with her father.”
“I don’t think she meant too much by those parting words. Even though I was no longer a police officer, in her eyes I must have looked like yet another person who wielded the law as a weapon. Her father was being killed by legal decree, so I understand why she might have wanted to say what she did.”
“When I was in middle school, I read Norio Tsuzuki’s statement and imagined the pain each one of my family members had felt before leaving this world. That was the first time I cried. It had been around two in the morning, and I stood outside my aunt’s house with my bare feet and wept, staring up at the night sky.”
Her words naturally grew more passionate. This wasn’t an act. She saw Hashimoto’s cheeks stiffen. He was trying to focus on Kanako’s story.
“ ‘I’m sorry for staying alive by myself,’ I apologized to my family. I was being raised in my aunt’s house as one of her own, and I couldn’t forgive my carefree life. This girl Miho Tsuzuki was affected by the case at the same age I was, twelve. Now that her father’s death sentence is final, I feel like I need to learn how she is trying to live her life, and if she doesn’t want to live, how she has tried to ruin herself.”
Kanako was hooking Hashimoto’s heart. It was the ace from her hideaway: her true feelings. Only, she had taken them out yesterday night, not today, and she had polished them to form the most effective script before arriving.
“I believe Mr. Shiina must have already told you,” Hashimoto said. “Your pain is different from hers. I don’t think it will ever be possible for you to overlap her feelings with your own. If you reveal your backgrounds to each other, you’ll just reopen each other’s wounds.”
Kanako, who had expected him to resist, countered, “I don’t want to lick wounds with someone who has experienced the same pain. Nor am I searching for someone who’s unhappier than me.” There were multiple layers of lies packed into those words. “I just want to know. Just as I want to understand your powerlessness, I want t
o understand Miho Tsuzuki’s despair. I feel like that’s the last piece left for me to find…the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle.”
Hashimoto took off his hat and wiped away the sweat along his hairline. He was carefully considering Kanako’s words. She patiently waited for Hashimoto to give.
“Please. Tell me where she lives.”
“Why is it that I feel that the two of you are similar…” Hashimoto spoke as though to himself. “Your hairstyles are different. Your faces are different, and so is the strength behind your words. But there’s something about the air that the two of you project. It’s not that I see you and feel pity or sorrow. If anything, I feel afraid of both you and Tsuzuki’s daughter.”
Afraid? What kind of fear could that be? Kanako wanted to interrogate him, but first, her request. One last push.
“I’ll promise. When I meet her, I won’t torment her by revealing my background.”
“What if I refuse, and say I can’t tell you after all?”
“A communal toilet, no bathtub, a wooden apartment building that looks to be on the verge of collapse. I don’t know how many hundreds of those there are in Tokyo’s twenty-three wards, but I’ll comb through every one of them.”
Kanako had spoken quickly to make sure he understood how serious she was.
Hashimoto laughed bitterly, his face twisted in pain. After breathing out a huge ball of air, he recited gruffly as though he’d given up, “Asahi House Room 3, the first floor…4 Shimomeguro, Meguro Ward.”
He’d told her.
Kanako frantically memorized the address. Shimomeguro, Meguro Ward. As the bird flew, it was only three miles from Kanako’s place in Kitazawa, Setagaya Ward. She was surprised that the Tsuzuki girl had been living so close by.
“Thank you very much.”
Her voice betrayed her excitement. Hashimoto’s expression didn’t change as he continued to cast his sharp gaze across the purple wave of girls.
“Please take care of yourself. That’s all I can say.”
His tone was more casual now. The fog that had been surrounding the man called Hashimoto for eight years had cleared just a bit.
What about herself should she take care of? Hashimoto spoke as though he understood. Kanako silently scoffed at him.
“Mr. Hashimoto, you take care of yourself too.”
“I will.”
There was nothing else she wanted from this man. Kanako gave him a bow before turning on her heel. Passing by the girls who were playing and singing along to a recording of the band, she quickly stepped out to Park Road.
It was downhill and her pace accelerated. She wanted to arrive quickly to Miho Tsuzuki. Hashimoto surely watched her leave; was he feeling fear rather than pity or sorrow?
Kanako put strength into her calves and slowed down as she descended the hill.
She went as far as Meguro station on the Yamanote line, and the rest was a walkable distance. She looked at a map at a bookstore in Shibuya and hammered the path into her head. From Gonnosuke Slope she passed Yamate Street, saw the Otori Shrine on her left, and entered the fourth district of Shimomeguro.
Her timing coincided with that of middle schoolers returning home from school, who swallowed her up in a wave of sweaty, smelly bodies. A short kid stumbling along before her carrying four or five of his friends’ bags was in her way. Kanako jogged past, carefully confirmed the street numbers, and waded deeper into the residential area.
She found Asahi House. The morning light, its namesake, was blocked by the adjacent condominium. The building was made of black panels and looked flimsy, like a wooden model built by an amateur. When Kanako peered through the entrance, there was only a single twenty-watt light bulb hanging in the hallway, and an acidic smell lingered in the stagnant air, possibly from the bathroom at the end of the hall.
Room 3 on the first floor. She approached with quiet footsteps. There was no nameplate. There were trash bags piled high in front of the room. She wondered if the neighbors or landlord ever complained.
Kanako was at a loss as to what she should say if she came face to face with the girl within and spoke to her. She was only able to reach the cowardly decision to confirm the location of the room for now and to lurk near the apartment building to try to catch a glimpse of Miho Tsuzuki’s face.
Something that looked like a stack of wires had ripped through a garbage bag and was sticking out. They were cheap coat hangers. Kanako remembered that the only time she organized her things enough to throw those out was during her big annual cleaning.
That, or when she was moving.
The window on the door was cracked and the edges were duct-taped from the inside. Kanako pushed at that part with her finger, peeling it off, and peeked into the interior. All she could see was a pathetic husk of a room, minimal in size and containing only a faintly dirty sink.
She heard dragging footsteps from the entrance. It was an old woman wearing a pair of sandals and holding a broom and dustpan. She gave Kanako a glance as she stood before Room 3.
“Um, excuse me…are you the landlady?”
The only reply was an unclear mumble, and the woman started sweeping the entryway. Apparently she had said, “Yeah.”
“Do you know if Miss Tsuzuki in Room 3—”
“Who’re you?”
“I’m one of her classmates. A friend,” a makeshift lie rolled off her tongue.
“She moved out three days ago.”
“Would you happen to know her new address?”
“Who knows…She was the type of girl who would leave out all her trash.”
The old woman came down the hallway, dragging her sandaled feet, and grabbed the garbage bag Miho Tsuzuki had left behind to carry outside.
“Oh, let me help.”
Kanako grabbed the bag with both hands. The old woman didn’t give her a word of thanks, as though it was only natural for her rude former tenant’s classmate to help take out the trash.
Something spilled out from the bag and sent a loud ring down the hallway. On top of not having been tied, Kanako had apparently held the bag from the bottom, and now some of its contents had fallen out. Several glass products all the same shapes. They hadn’t shattered.
“Uh-oh,” accused the old lady.
“I’m sorry,” Kanako apologized before scooping up the contents.
They were glass ashtrays about three inches in diameter. There were around twenty of them. They had logo marks on the bottom in English—commemorative ashtrays, the kind distributed when a new restaurant opened or for its tenth anniversary or something.
Kanako quickly stuffed one into her own tote bag. After she finished taking out the garbage bag, she stepped out on the street and brandished the ashtray towards the sun in the west.
The text on the bottom was in blue ink. ICE STORM.
“Ice storm…”
Why had Miho Tsuzuki been in possession of twenty of these ashtrays? There was no way a customer would have received that many. If she had been asked to distribute them to people she knew…
“She must work there.”
Miho Tsuzuki was working at an establishment called Ice Storm.
Kanako walked quickly out to Meguro Street and looked for a phone booth. The place would no doubt be listed on the town pages provided there.
Weaving through the throng of businessmen on their way home, they exited Gotanda station and walked east along the Meguro River.
Night had fully fallen all around them. Ice Storm was located at the edge of an area lined with an electronic product company, a printing factory, and a film developer.
The words “ICE STORM” glowed in the form of blue neon-pipe lights. A steep staircase led downwards from the narrow doorway. Kanako stepped into the gaping blue maw of darkness with Takumi.
When they opened the door, the interior was already flooded with smoke from the customers’ cigarettes despite it still being only 8 p.m. A counter that could probably seat around twenty stretched deeper in, and table seating spread
off to the right.
Decoration icicles dangled from the ceiling, and the walls were covered in glass ice crystals that dimly scattered the blue lighting. To guess from its name, the place’s concept was an icy cavern locked away by a storm.
The majority of the customers were young businessmen and office ladies. To have so many customers despite being in a lonely factory district quite a distance from the station suggested that Ice Storm got good word of mouth.
The bar that people visited after work to differentiate between day and night. It was apparently where businessmen with their neckties loosened and the first button of their shirts undone could chill and get drunk.
Kanako made her way in, keeping an eye out for the staff. A man with long hair pulled into a ponytail was rattling a shaker behind the counter. A bleached-blond guy carrying martinis to the table seats called out to Kanako and Takumi, “Welcome, we can seat you over here.”
There was only one open seat at the counter. The two of them sat down on stools at a table.
“You know fancy places, huh?”
Takumi lit one of his Lark Mild cigarettes. Kanako had invited him, telling him that a friend had introduced her to a bar that she wanted to check out. She had roped him in, not wanting to do this alone, but also because she’d stand out less with Takumi at her side.
The blond guy with narrow eyes cheerfully took their orders. Takumi ordered a draft beer, and Kanako asked for a weak gin tonic.
There were currently only two waiters. Perhaps the Tsuzuki girl had nothing to do with this place after all. She might have just been a regular patron who had been given a large amount of leftover ashtrays.
To judge from the movements of Blond and Ponytail, they clearly needed more staff. They couldn’t take all of the customers’ orders and were scuttling around like mice. She could imagine there being one or two more staff during rush hour.
“…Sorry, did you say something?”
She had been distracted observing the waiters and hadn’t heard what Takumi had said.
“So, I was wondering if you’d thought about my offer.”
The offer to model for Takumi.
“You’re going to show the photos in public, right? That’s kind of hard.”
Deep Red Page 15