Someone under the radar, as it were.
“Well then,” Kunugi said and reached out to the door panel again, when just at the same moment, a beeping sound went off and her desk monitor turned on.
“Wait.”
Kunugi turned around.
Shizue put an index finger to her lips as if to say be quiet.
“Yes, this is Fuwa.”
On the display was a female employee at the center’s entry.
“There’s a child here requesting to see Counselor Fuwa.”
“A child?”
“Did you not have an appointment to see a child privately?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I see. This is a real contact request. The child is presently here. Insists on seeing you—given the circumstances I felt I ought to call the director, who asked that the child be apprehended at your office.
“Apprehended…either way I’d like you to see the child. I can’t turn her away. Since children aren’t allowed to be out right now anyway.”
Shizue shifted her gaze from the monitor screen to Kunugi.
Kunugi received her look and moved away from the window toward the desk.
Shizue’s face was being watched by one of the cameras, so she couldn’t make any facial gestures to express what she wanted to say to Kunugi.
Kunugi came up to just behind the monitor and opened his mouth to speak. Shizue quickly uttered, “I understand, I’ll be with you in one second,” and closed the dialogue.
“What are you doing? I told you not to make a sound.”
“Yeah. I thought it would be easiest if someone on your monitor saw me attack you. Then Lieutenant Ishida would arrive immediately. Otherwise—”
“I’ll figure something out. Just sit still.”
“Figure something out? Isn’t there a kid about to show up here? Then what?”
“These aren’t normal office hours. Something’s wrong.”
Shizue called the reception desk.
“This is Fuwa. I apologize for abruptly signing off. I was slightly confused. Now who did you say was this child that requested to see me?”
“Uh, one Ayumi Kono. She’s in your session for age fourteens.”
“Kono?”
Ayumi Kono. What kind of child was she?
After thinking about it, Shizue gathered herself.
“She lives alone, if I’m correct.”
“That’s right. We have received a notice of long absence of her guardian. In case of emergency our center takes over as her guardian, which is why I thought the director’s judgment…”
“I see. But this girl…”
Her older sister was a member of the environmental cleanup development project and living abroad. That much Shizue recalled, but that didn’t help her remember anything else about the girl herself. She couldn’t remember any characteristics. She left her sentence unfinished and searched for her file, whereupon a picture of Ayumi Kono came up on the display.
Very short hair and a refined-looking face.
Ahh…
“W-where is Miss Kono now?”
“It was dangerous to be outside the building, so I let her through the entrance gate, but she’s not yet in the hall. If you give me the cue I can open the hall gate.”
“The child in question has a fear of strangers and will not like seeing people she is not acquainted with. Are there any police-related personnel in the East C road between the entrance hall and the counseling booth?”
“Please wait a second while I check.”
Kunugi waited with bated breath. Shizue looked at the still image of Ayumi Kono on her display. Something about it…
Something about it troubled her.
There is no one there, the display answered.
“Is that so? In that case please block the East C road from the entrance hall until the visiting minor has gone through. Obviously if there is an emergency you can lift the block, but this child is particularly frightened of police and authority figures. Please advise.”
“I need the director’s permission to block the road, but I can tell you what the odds are of this child running into anyone. As of now all the police personnel are in the south corridor, and all the center personnel short of the director are in separate meetings in the west corridor. You and Ms. Shima are the only counselors here as the rest of them have been asked to return home. Right now in the east corridor it is just you and Ms. Shima.”
“That’s fine. In that case please open the hall gate for Miss Kono and ask her to proceed to counseling booth C0045.”
Shizue was about to close the dialogue when the attendant said, “Wait, there’s something else. The police have instructed to have the minor escorted back to her house by a guard brought in by the area patrol after the interview. You will have to contact me again about the passersby in the East C road anyway, so please contact me as soon as your interview is over.”
“Understood.”
Shizue turned off her communication, turned her chair around, and faced Kunugi.
“What do you think?”
“What do you mean? What are you going to do?”
“The minor will be headed this way. Right now there is no one between here and the entrance. You just need to leave before the child arrives.”
“Into the hall?”
“The only sensor in the hall is one for body temperature. There is no visual surveillance. I will tell the child that you are the bodyguard assigned by the police—that’s not technically a lie. Stay outside the door and flat up against the wall until our meeting is over.”
“You mean like a bodyguard.”
“Yes. If you’re in the middle of the hall they’ll know you’re a human. When the interview is over I will escort the child out, so at that point please follow us to the entrance hall. I can open the gate from inside. Once it’s open we’ll appear on the management department’s scans, but there’s a brief interval before the scan begins. I realize I said you’re old for the exertion, but you will have to run as fast as you can to outside the center. The area patrol will send someone for the child immediately, so you need to clear out before they arrive.”
Go anywhere, Shizue would have normally said.
“You could go to your parents. You can say you lost your monitor in the house and went home to your parents. They’ll buy that, won’t they? Losing track of your monitor is a minor violation.”
As Shizue finished her sentence she stood in front of the door and brought her hand up to the sensor panel.
The door opened.
Kunugi moved uncharacteristically correctly from the window to where Shizue stood, and said, “I owe you one, big time.”
“I don’t expect anything,” Shizue said.
Kunugi stepped into the hall at almost the same time a small figure appeared on her floor.
She looked just like the girl in her monitor.
Her gaze looked somehow pained and forced Shizue to look down.
It was immoral.
Shizue still didn’t know what compelled this girl to come to her.
She’d come out to make a real contact conversation in the midst of a warning not to leave home, so it must have been a serious issue. And yet the whole time, Shizue was thinking of how to use this opportunity to help Kunugi escape the center. This was unforgivable as a counselor. Not only against the counselor’s code but her own personal code of conduct. She was behaving…recklessly.
“I’m Ayumi Kono,” the girl said.
“Miss Kono…” Shizue still couldn’t recall anything about her. “Please come in. This is the police…”
Shizue gulped. Ayumi was looking at Kunugi’s hands. Kunugi must have noticed as well. He put his hands behind him. In those hands were his mud-caked shoes.
“I am your bodyguard,” Kunugi said. “Please come in.”
“Wait a second.” Ayumi stood her ground.
“Wait…wait for what?”
“Please don’t close the door. When you do a
nd I swipe my ID to come in, the room starts recording. I came to tell you something I don’t want recorded.”
Don’t want recorded…
Shizue’s heart started racing. This girl…
What was she doing here?
“But as I’m sure you’re aware then, what gets recorded here can’t leave the center without your permission. So…”
That wasn’t true.
Recordings might be abridged, but they all got handed over to the police.
Shizue was lying.
So…
She couldn’t tell her not to worry.
Shizue turned her eyes away again.
“In any case don’t worry. As long as what you say doesn’t have to do with a crime I don’t—”
“It does have to do with a crime,” Ayumi said.
“What did you say?”
“It does have to do with a crime.”
“What do you mean?”
“The police report clearly indicates a criminal.”
“What?”
Shizue stopped Kunugi from coming forward.
“Not just that, but the police distorted the information on the criminal,” Ayumi said.
“Th-that’s ridiculous.”
“Please, Mr. Kunugi.” Shizue had to speak harshly to Kunugi. This was probably not just childish fancy.
“Do you have proof?”
Ayumi didn’t respond but instead swallowed Shizue’s look.
She was not the kind of child to play a joke like this.
No child would play this kind of prank at a time like this.
Besides.
Her gaze was totally fixed. Uncomfortably so.
Shizue pressed a button on her monitor. “All right. The security is turned off now. If you come in now, the sensor won’t go off, so you won’t be recorded. Just say you forgot your ID card.”
“I had to use it to get into the center.”
“Oh, right. Then…”
“This is fine,” Ayumi said.
“I understand. So what did you want to tell me?”
Ayumi looked up and down the hall and, having confirmed no one was around, began to speak.
“It’s about Yuko Yabe’s murder.”
“Is there information about her murder already out in public?”
Ayumi didn’t respond to Shizue’s question.
“Yuko Yabe was being threatened by Nakamura and Kawabata. They lured her out and beat her up. Did the police know that?”
“That Nakamura and Kawabata were after Yabe? Well…”
“Lieutenant Ishida had said there was no record of communication from them in Yabe’s monitor,” Kunugi said.
“I heard from the victim herself,” Ayumi said.
“The victim…you were in contact with Yabe?”
“If there is no record of the messages, then they were erased from her monitor.”
“You’re saying the murderer was also erasing personal information?”
“Did you also know that Yabe trespassed into Representative Makino’s home on Saturday night and that the area patrol apprehended her?”
“Makino…”
Shizue looked to Kunugi for a sign. Kunugi was petrified.
“S-Saturday night?”
“An emergency call was placed, the area patrol came to secure her, and the patrol car took her away. That much is certain. But then the car was attacked by two men, and Yabe was abducted.”
“Hey! Stop talking nonsense. This is ridiculous. The police would have…”
Overcome with emotion Kunugi blurted all this out but then suddenly exhaled.
“Did you see something, kid?”
“Is that true, Miss Kono?” Shizue asked.
“Did you see someone?”
“I can’t say,” Ayumi said. “That undocumented resident saw it.”
“So that’s what this is,” Shizue said, emphatically.
Ayumi didn’t respond.
Shizue’s imagination ran with a new ferocity. “Did this undocumented resident happen to kill Kawabata while rescuing Yabe from him?”
“That’s false,” Ayumi said. “The undocumented resident has not killed anyone. Your suspicions are misdirected. There is another killer.”
“You know who? The killer?”
“I don’t know who killed Yabe,” Ayumi said. “But I do know that the information the police have is all useless. That much is certain.”
Shizue looked at Kunugi anew. Kunugi’s brow creased even more deeply and his face expressed discouragement. “You’re saying that there’s been tampering with evidence regarding the crime.”
“Ms. Fuwa,” Ayumi said. She was almost never called that by her children. “I have a favor to ask. You need to keep Mio Tsuzuki and Hazuki Makino in a safe place.”
“Tsuzuki and Makino?”
“Both of them know everything I know. Makino knows that the trespasser at her home was Yabe. So she knows that there is something wrong with the information about this case. Through her father she is making this statement to the area patrol shortly. But…
“We can no longer trust the area patrol,” Ayumi finished.
“If there is an information leak, there’s a possibility that we may have disadvantageous information going out to the murderer.”
“But, no, if information is in fact being falsified, the police will still only depend on the information on record. They won’t simply trust anything they’re told.”
“Not even if it’s from a prefectural assemblyman?”
No, that wouldn’t be ignored.
Still, there was no way to know for certain if recorded information was being falsified. In which case all they had to depend on was the informant’s memory. Obviously…
That’s why she would be threatened.
“Miss Kono…” Shizue stared straight at Ayumi’s face.
“We don’t know who killed Yabe. All we know is that she was attacked by Kawabata and Nakamura, that she was at one point secured by the area patrol on Saturday, and that she was then abducted. But neither Tsuzuki or Makino are suspicious of the cops.”
“And you are, missy?” Kunugi asked. Ayumi looked back at him.
“It is not that I suspect the police. I just don’t trust anyone right now.”
“But you trust this counselor?”
“I do.”
“Miss Kono…why would you say that?” Shizue asked.
“It’s not a good thing to murder people, right?”
“Huh?”
How cavalier. That was what Shizue thought before she could think of a response for Ayumi. Ayumi Kono struck Shizue as a cavalier girl for some reason. Her short haircut, her thin neck, the way she stood completely still in the same posture, all of it meant to be exactly that way. Totally different from the diminished face Shizue saw in the mirror.
Shizue was made up entirely of useless parts.
“It’s not good,” Shizue answered.
“Why isn’t it?”
“Because the law has determined it so.”
She would leave it at that. Kunugi looked perplexed, but Ayumi let out a little laugh.
“I think it would be bad for any more dead bodies to surface. But I can’t do anything about it. I don’t know Makino or Tsuzuki very well. But you know them better. Plus you’re an adult. Slightly better for this…than me.”
“But I’m with the police,” Kunugi said. “Remember, you don’t trust us?”
“I think the kind of bodyguard that doesn’t even have indoor shoes and has to hold his dirty outside shoes while waiting in a hallway is probably not trusted by the police. Whether I trust you isn’t an issue anymore.”
The young girl’s smart comment caught Kunugi a little off guard. He brought out his shoes from behind him. “All right, you have a point. You got me.”
“Please.” Ayumi lowered her head.
“All right. I’ll see what I can do.”
“What should I do?”
Kunugi said, “Don’t wor
ry. We won’t let them kill any more people.
But adults are cunning. They may betray you. You’re not safe.”
“I’m fine.”
What a girl.
Shizue was a little scared of this purposeful girl with nothing out of place.
Was she always this way?
She was definitely one of her original kids. They’d had several meetings. Countless communications. But she’d never seen this face before. She’d never received this straight visual line.
It was as if she were a wild animal setting her sights on prey.
There was a sound behind them.
What was it?
A slight noise.
This sound…
She’d heard it before. What was it? It wasn’t out of place. She’d even gotten used to hearing it day to day. But it stood out. It was a sound she shouldn’t have been hearing here. Not now.
No, it was…
Shizue, thinking only of what the sound was, pushed Kunugi to the side.
Did they see her?
As soon as Shizue moved her body to push Kunugi, there appeared on the glass wall of the hallway a pinpoint red dot. There was no mistaking it. The tally lamp was reflected off that wall.
That sound was of the surveillance camera turning on. Security was in motion. No…
“Oh. Really, you don’t say. Okay. I understand,” Shizue said aloud and purposefully, and motioned to Ayumi to walk back toward the entrance. “I’ll send her out, so don’t worry,” Shizue said into her office in a loud voice again and closed the door.
She swiped her ID card.
The room signal indicated vacancy.
“What’s going on!” Kunugi said. “What are you trying to pull? Hey!”
“Some of those cunning adults…seems they’ve already betrayed us.”
“What?”
“The surveillance cameras.”
“What?!”
“The surveillance cameras on the ceiling…”
“Did they move? Are we being recorded?”
“The security was turned off, so the recording system wasn’t supposed to activate till the door closed and the room was in counseling mode. I can’t believe it was recording.”
“The conversation in your room was recorded then…”
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