A Cop's Eyes

by Gaku Yakumaru

  Natsume halted and turned a piercing gaze at her. It was similar to the one he’d directed at Yuka. The man hadn’t ever shown so razor-sharp an edge to Kumiko in the old days. Were these, then, a cop’s eyes?

  “Natsume … you’ve changed completely,” she muttered wistfully. It was possible that the Natsume she knew was gone.

  “You think?” asked the detective.

  “Did you catch the culprit from that case ten years ago?” It was difficult asking about it, but she couldn’t leave the question hanging.

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “And your daughter …”

  “She’s been in the hospital the whole time since then.”

  “Since then?”

  Close to ten years had passed. What could have happened for her to be in the hospital even now?

  “She’s a vegetable.”

  Hearing this made Kumiko gasp and look back at Natsume. “Are you saying that you became a detective to catch the person who attacked your daughter?”

  “That’s about half of it,” Natsume nodded, his expression unchanging.

  “What about the other half?”

  “I ran away.”

  “Ran away?” Kumiko repeated the words as a question.

  “Do you remember Yoshio?”

  “Of course.”

  “After Yoshio’s case, I thought I wanted to become a judiciary technical officer who could help rehabilitate offending kids by properly facing their problems, the causes that had driven them to crime. But when my daughter became the victim of a crime, it shook my conviction to its core.”

  The sharpness in Natsume’s eyes gave way to melancholy.

  “Eyewitness accounts pointed to a minor as the perpetrator in that case. Day after day, I sat across boys who’d been sent to a juvenile detention center, and every time I did, I was seized by the feeling that the kid in front of me might be the one who hurt my daughter. As the days went on, my desire to help those boys ceded to a different emotion that was swelling in my heart.”

  “A hatred toward criminals?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re saying that instead of providing support to kids like Yoshio, you chose to chase down criminals?”

  Natsume dropped his gaze pensively for a bit, then nodded. He was biting his lip.

  Perhaps a conflict was raging in him even now. It hurt to watch him like this.

  “Sorry if I bored you.”

  With that, Natsume turned his back to her and resumed walking.

  “So … what’s behind her truancy and wrist-cutting?” Natsume asked as they got in the car.

  “I don’t know for certain. She won’t talk to me about anything. But …”

  Kumiko told him about Yuka’s father being arrested by the police and her subsequent state during counseling.

  “But after that she got better and could come to school again, right? Why did she stop and go as far as to cut herself?”

  “I’m not sure if it’s the cause, but a year ago, she was molested.”

  “Molested?”

  Just as Kumiko had thought Yuka was at last regaining her cheer and attending school again, the girl had been groped on the train during her commute. She had complained, and a passenger had subdued the man and handed him over to a station attendant. Apparently the offender had been a middle school teacher who had a daughter around the same age as Yuka. When Kumiko had heard about that, she’d felt irate toward the man.

  Following that incident, Yuka’s spirits had sunk again. She said things like “I’ve become dirty” and started cutting her wrists with a knife. The encounter must have left an ugly scar on her heart.

  “Despite scarring a girl’s heart like that, the guy got a suspended sentence. Unbelievable, no?”

  “So something like that had happened …”

  When they reached the school gate, Kumiko got out of the car.

  “Well, I’m going back to the station,” Natsume said. “Thanks for today.”

  After watching the departing car for a moment, Kumiko went into the school.

  Her cellphone rang as she walked to the train station, her day’s work done. It was from Yuka’s mother.

  “Ms. Tanabe, it’s terrible—” a shriek echoed in Kumiko’s ears.

  “What in the world happened?”

  “There was a call from the hospital just now … They said Yuka … she disappeared from the hospital …”

  Listening to the voice, Kumiko wanted to kick herself. How careless of her—

  Having brought a detective to Yuka’s room, she should have been on guard about what the girl might do.

  “Okay,” she said. “For now, please go home to see if Yuka is there. I’ll go search around the hospital.”

  She hung up and ran toward the station.

  She took the train to Hibarigaoka and headed toward the hospital by taxi from there. She’d said she’d search for Yuka but had no idea where to begin. For the time being, she walked around the vicinity hollering her name.

  There was another call from Yuka’s mother.

  “Yuka … Yuka was … at home. She cut her wrists and there’s so much blood coming out … What do I do … Yuka … Yuka!” the panicked mother screamed into the phone.

  “Keep it together!” Kumiko shouted back at her, trying to calm her down. “Hurry and call an ambulance!”

  “I just did …”

  “Then I’ll be waiting in front of the hospital. It’ll be all right. Hold yourself together.”

  Hanging up, Kumiko headed to the hospital. After waiting outside for ten minutes or so, the sound of a siren approached, and an ambulance pulled up.

  “Yuka!” She rushed to the stretcher that emerged.

  “Yuka! Yuka!” the sobbing mother followed out, shouting her daughter’s name.

  The ambulance attendants rolled the stretcher into the hospital.

  Yuka’s face was pale as she slept on the bed.

  A bright ray of sun broke through the window. Kumiko, not having slept a wink, gazed at Yuka’s face.

  Upon learning that she was in critical condition, her mother had collapsed on the spot, the strain of the last few days taking its toll. Currently she was asleep, hooked up to an IV drip, in a separate room.

  Kumiko was helpless against the anger and frustration that welled up in her as she gazed at Yuka’s sleeping face: anger at the girl’s disregard of life and frustration at her own inability to save her.

  Yuka slowly opened her eyes. When she looked around and saw Kumiko’s face, her expression sank.

  “Why … wouldn’t you let me die,” the girl muttered, partially raising herself.

  Kumiko gritted her teeth at the words.

  “I’m worthless alive … I’d be better off if you’d let me die.”

  Something snapped in Kumiko at that moment, and she promptly struck Yuka’s cheek, hard.

  “No one’s life is worthless! Do you have any idea how many people you’ll hurt by dying? Have you even thought once about how sad your mom will be?! If you really want to die then go ahead, but at least wait until your mom passes away,” Kumiko let loose, glowering at the girl.

  Yuka held her left hand at her cheek and stared at her counselor.

  “Why are you suffering all alone?” Kumiko couldn’t stop tearing up, try as she might. “Why won’t you tell me anything? Am I not a support to you at all?”

  “Ms. Tanabe … if you end up killing someone, how bad is the punishment?”

  A chill ran down Kumiko’s spine at the muttered question. Her vision was too blurry to make out Yuka’s expression.

  “My dad got sent to prison for as long as two and a half years on a bribery charge. If you’ve killed someone, how long do you have to stay in prison?”

  Yuka’s point eluded Kumiko. Was she confessing to having killed someone? Kumiko was too afraid to ask and find out.

  Sticking her right hand into her bedding, Yuka pulled out a business card that she seemed to have kept in her pocket and off
ered it to Kumiko. It was the one that Natsume had left there the day before. A phone number was written out on the reverse side.

  “I want you to call the detective who was here yesterday,” Yuka said.

  “You mean Natsume?”

  “If it’s that detective, I feel like I can tell the truth.”

  “Why … him?” asked Kumiko.

  “Because I think he’ll scold me properly like you did just now.”

  Her eyes on the card, Kumiko hesitated. It frightened her to imagine what Yuka might say, but as her tears dried, she noticed that Yuka was looking at her earnestly. Kumiko took her cellphone out of her bag and called Natsume.

  “He should be here in about an hour.”

  An oppressive silence filled the room as they waited; just as it was becoming unbearable, there was a knock on the door and Natsume came in.

  For a moment, her eyes met with Natsume’s. She thought they looked lonely.

  “I’ll tell you what really happened,” Yuka said.

  The detective quietly sat down in the folding chair that had been set up next to Kumiko and nodded at the girl.

  “My dad was arrested about a year and a half ago. He worked hard for his family and was a really kind dad. I was too shocked by his arrest to care about anything anymore, and I stopped going to school and started going out every night. I even kept going to clubs and drinking until morning … and that’s where I met Koji Sawamura. At first, he was a kind guy who just helped me forget my loneliness, but he made me do things I didn’t want to do when I went to his room …”

  Yuka paused and, instead of continuing, put her hand into her bedding and pulled out a phone. She pressed some buttons and handed it to Kumiko. It was the first time Kumiko had seen this phone.

  The image on the display instantly made her avert her eyes. It showed Yuka in an obscene position.

  “He took a lot of other photos and videos. If I didn’t want them to be spread on the internet, I needed to do what he said. He forced me to do a lot of things I hated.”

  What kind of things had she been coerced into? Kumiko could more or less guess given that obscene picture, though.

  I’ve become dirty.

  Had Yuka been cutting herself out of the pain and self-loathing she’d suffered as a result?

  “Ms. Tanabe always cheered me on, so I somehow kept trying, but as long as he existed … and had those pictures … Thinking that, I killed him. The fact that I have this phone is proof enough.”

  Kumiko’s heart nearly froze at Yuka’s confession.

  She faced Natsume, who was sitting next to her and staring at Yuka. She sensed in his unblinking gaze neither the harsh edge of the day before nor the gentleness of the old days, but rather a will to gauge Yuka’s truthfulness.

  “But … I was wracked by guilt for having killed a person … I thought I’d atone for my crime by killing myself.”

  “That’s not atoning for your crime, it’s running away,” Natsume said.

  “I know. That’s why—”

  “Harming yourself doesn’t atone for it, either,” Natsume interrupted. “For that, you need to come clean about what really happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Kumiko asked him.

  “The first time you cut yourself, weren’t you trying to make amends to Mitsuo Iwasaki in your own way and coping with self-hatred for what you’d done?”

  Yuka’s shoulders twitched when she heard that name. Mitsuo Iwasaki—

  Kumiko recalled hearing it somewhere before. Where? She frantically searched her memories and finally remembered. The man who’d been caught groping Yuka.

  Amends to Iwasaki and self-hatred for what she’d done? What was Natsume talking about?

  “What the heck? You’ve lost me,” Yuka said, glaring at Natsume.

  “You were ordered to frame Iwasaki for groping,” the detective accused. Yuka’s expression stiffened the moment he did. “Isn’t that the thing you didn’t want to do that Sawamura forced you into?”

  “Wrong.” Yuka frantically shook her head. “I never did anything like that …”

  “Your first target was Mr. Iwasaki. Am I mistaken? As soon as you claimed you’d been groped, Sawamura would close in and get the target off the train, onto the platform, with the pretext of taking him to a station attendant. Then, he’d make a show of talking with you, still pretending to be a stranger, and threaten to turn the mark in to the police if he didn’t pay up. If a woman claims that she was groped and she has a male witness, the victim really has no way out. But maybe because it was your first try, your timing was off, and an actual stranger on the train grabbed Mr. Iwasaki and handed him over to a station attendant. You ended up going to the police together and got stuck with filing a complaint against Mr. Iwasaki.”

  “That’s not true!” Yuka denied vehemently.

  “If it isn’t, why are you covering for Mr. Iwasaki, a supposedly detestable man who groped you?”

  Yuka looked at the detective dubiously. “Cover?”

  “This morning, Mr. Iwasaki came to the police station to confess that he was the one who killed Sawamura,” Natsume informed Yuka, who turned pale. “You must have been sick with guilt for what you’d done to Mr. Iwasaki. Yet, Sawamura kept on coercing you into fabricating gropings. There are no other records of you filing a complaint, so you must have succeeded at the blackmailing. Making up those cases, you came to cut your wrists from the guilt …”

  Yuka hung her head at Natsume’s words.

  “I’ll say it again … What you need to do to atone is to tell the truth.”

  Still hanging her head, Yuka didn’t open her mouth.

  “Yuka! Please do,” Kumiko begged. She wanted to know what Yuka was really suffering from, to be able to support her, so she’d never contemplate suicide again.

  “That day … encouraged by Ms. Tanabe and my mom, I thought I’d try and go to school. But I ran into Mr. Iwasaki on the way. He noticed me and followed me with a really intense look on his face. I rushed to get away, but he caught hold of my wrist in the park. Then, he frantically started pleading with me that he wasn’t the one who’d groped me. I was seriously scared, but the moment he saw the scars on my wrists, his expression changed and he immediately let go of my hand. He was really kind and said I should stop doing it because my parents would be sad. He said he had a daughter around the same age and if he saw her looking like I did, he’d almost feel like his heart was being cut apart … When I heard him say that, I started crying right there.”

  Her eyes grew moist even as she spoke.

  “He bought us juice at the park and we talked for a while. Thanks to my groping charge, he was unemployed and lived alone in a cheap apartment away from his wife and daughter. He said he was on his way to an employment agency to find work … but didn’t say a single grudging word against me. Instead, he sympathized with me and said it was terrible that I’d been groped. But he swore that it wasn’t him. If nothing else, he wanted me to know that. When I thought about his daughter, I couldn’t stand it anymore. My dad getting arrested had been so painful for me … So I told Mr. Iwasaki the truth. I told him how I’d been blackmailed into making the whole thing up. I cried and apologized to him and told him I wanted to go to the police right then and testify that he was innocent, but if I did, that guy would …”

  “And you told Mr. Iwasaki about the obscene pictures and your ongoing false accusations of groping?” Natsume asked, to which Yuka nodded.

  “Then Mr. Iwasaki asked me where Sawamura lived … He said he’d talk to Sawamura and get back those photos. If he did that, he asked me, would I come to the police with him and tell them honestly that he hadn’t groped me? When I nodded, he told me to wait there and headed to Sawamura’s condo …”

  “And you began to worry about Mr. Iwasaki and went to see how he was doing.”

  “When I arrived, I saw him coming out of Sawamura’s room. I thought Mr. Iwasaki looked different from before, like he was afraid. When he started wiping the
doorknob with something that looked like a towel, I had a bad feeling. After he left the condo, I went into Sawamura’s room and …”

  Then Yuka must have found Sawamura’s body. She’d taken his cell with the loathsome footage and made herself scarce.

  “If I hadn’t done that … if I hadn’t given Mr. Iwasaki his address, none of it would have happened. I trapped him not just once but twice. It’s all my fault! I wish I’d never been born!” Yuka wailed.

  “Mr. Iwasaki testified that when he met you, he was reminded of his daughter. He said he had to get those pictures somehow in order to prove his innocence, but even more, to eliminate the source of your continued suffering. But Sawamura was adamant about holding on to them. Not only that, he turned violent, grabbing Mr. Iwasaki by the collar. During the altercation and scuffle that ensued, Sawamura fell and ended up dying …”

  Yuka lifted her head and looked at them. Her eyes were bloodshot.

  “Mr. Iwasaki hadn’t been able to confess to the police up until now, but he said he couldn’t run from his mistake—if he kept running, he’d continue to make you suffer, so he turned himself in. You can’t run from your own errors, either. I know it won’t be easy for you, but will you talk about what really happened, to the police and at Mr. Iwasaki’s trial?”

  Stealing a glance at Natsume’s profile, Kumiko was struck by his eyes. They were the same ones from their grad school days when he used to talk to kids with such passion.

  “It’s your responsibility, as well as your atonement.” Sniveling, Yuka nodded broadly.

  “Well … the rest is your job.” Standing up and clapping Kumiko on the back, Natsume left the room.

  Kumiko immediately rose and chased after him. “Natsume—” she called.

  The detective turned around.

  “I guess you haven’t changed much, after all.”

  Natsume laughed. “What, so I haven’t grown?”

  “I might say that,” Kumiko returned with a smile.

  She was still absolutely certain that no occupation suited Natsume less than being a detective. At the same time, just maybe, a cop like him wasn’t such a bad thing.

  A Cop’s Eyes