by Meg Mezeske
She finished the last gulp of green tea and clicked “Send” on an email to her eldest sister with a tap of cold-stiff fingers against the trackpad. With a stretch and a sigh, Jordan leaned against the couch and glanced at the television. She had left it tuned to IQ Sapuri—a quiz show based on logic puzzles and riddles—though many of the Japanese plays on words were beyond her. A spiky ball landed on a contestant’s head as punishment for a wrong answer, and Jordan grinned.
She usually paid more attention to the show but found herself easily distracted that evening, flitting between checking bookmarked webpages, uploading some photos to her seldom-updated blog, and replaying her conversations with Inspector Sakurai. Though she had little reason to question his purpose for being at Ogawa High School, she felt his presence was odd—seemingly unnecessary for two isolated deaths in a remote town.
Jordan then remembered that he had mentioned other recent suicides near Yamagata City. She opened the laptop’s internet browser. After some wrangling of its translation settings, she searched for “high school suicide Yamagata prefecture” and limited the results to within the last year.
The browser’s translations were ungrammatical at best and nonsensical at worst, but it allowed Jordan to skim articles that would have otherwise taken her hours to translate herself. Most results spoke of national suicide statistics or were unrelated. After fifteen minutes and as many more searches, a blurb caught her eye: “Mother Warns Against Bullying, Suicide Clubs.”
When she saw the headline was no more than a week old, Jordan clicked it hurriedly. The article, which was fairly comprehensible, detailed one mother’s campaign to raise awareness about school bullying following the death of her son, Junichi Sato. The boy had taken his own life on the day following Emi’s death, Jordan noted with increased interest. His mother’s statements became mangled in the translation program but generally spoke of how, despite being seemingly well-liked, her son was believed to have committed suicide due to pressures from peers at Sagae High School, where he attended as a senior.
The article went on to widen its scope to the national level and mentioned a letter from an anonymous student sent to the Minister of Education. The letter had received widespread media coverage the month before, speaking of troubles with bullying and the author’s intention to end his or her own life.
The local article’s accompanying photograph showed a petite woman with a severe expression and her hair pulled back so tightly that her skin looked painfully stretched. In her hands, the woman held a framed photograph of a young man, a black ribbon drawn across its upper corner like a shadow. The boy looked somber but handsome, with dark, defined brows and stark cheekbones. The caption read, “Mari Sato and photograph of son, Junichi.”
Jordan’s fingers shook as she clicked the “Print” button—from cold or anxiousness, she couldn’t be sure. The article wasn’t much to go by, she knew, but there were too many coincidences to let it pass unnoticed. The printer whirred to life and spit out the paper in short, noisy bursts until the boy’s dark eyes stared at her from the lip of the machine. With a few quick keystrokes, Jordan bookmarked the page, pausing for only a moment before entitling the webpage, “Emi’s boyfriend?”
A half-hour more of searching for unusual deaths or suicides revealed little else. As she moved to close her laptop, she thought once again of Inspector Sakurai and instead opened a new search window. To her surprise, Jordan was presented with a long list of links related to “Inspector Toshihiko Sakurai,” almost all of which were also ornamented with the word “Yakuza.”
Curious, she leaned forward and clicked on the first link to an article from the Japan Times: “Investigators Arrest Yakuza Lieutenant.” The inspector gazed back at her through the monitor—an official-looking headshot that had probably been supplied by the police department. She didn’t think it possible for him to appear more reserved, but the photograph somehow accomplished exactly that.
His hair was shorter, for one, cut close to the head in severe planes. His mouth was drawn taut in a sober, solemn line that didn’t seem capable of softening around a smile. The article was dated from two years before, but he didn’t look any younger. If anything, he seemed world-wearier, like an invisible weight had settled over him. Though, it didn’t diminish his handsomeness, Jordan thought with a private smile.
She looked from Inspector Sakurai’s small photo, halfway through the article, to the main picture that perched atop the page. A middle-aged man with small eyes and a face like granite was being escorted by a throng of uniformed officers to a waiting police cruiser. He stared straight at the camera—a dark looked imbued with so much anger that it reached through time and across the miles to grip the base of Jordan’s spine. The photo’s caption identified the man as a lieutenant of the Inagawa-kai Yakuza, arrested in Tokyo under suspicion of a laundry list of charges.
Much of the article detailed a then-recent spike in organized crime attributed to actions of Yakuza groups in the region, accompanied by only a smattering of information about the lieutenant and the charges against him—details still unfolding at that time. The remaining paragraphs lauded the young Inspector Sakurai as being instrumental in the arrest, having painstakingly built a case against the Yakuza leader for well over a year. His quotes were dry and formal. He rejected the praise and thanked his team for their hard work, of course.
Nearly an hour and a dozen news articles later, Jordan knew a few things for certain about the inspector. He had been the youngest in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. He was credited as spearheading the investigation against the Inagawa-kai Yakuza. He was clever, talented, and something of a prodigy. An overnight celebrity. And then, nothing. Any news about him had simply dropped off—petered away in the few months following the high-profile arrest he had orchestrated. Not surprising, Jordan decided, seeing as the news cycle thrived on fresh blood and the lieutenant had yet to be found guilty on any charges, his lawyer expertly tying up any legal proceedings.
Still, Jordan wondered what had brought Inspector Sakurai to the Yamagata Prefectural Police and Ogawa. It hardly seemed like the ideal career trajectory for a young man who had just proved the worth of his salt in Japan’s largest police department. Not to mention that investigating a couple of small-town suicides was a strange use of his skills and experience. Unless something more was at work—some silently spinning machination that Jordan couldn’t see.
She considered searching more, perhaps for some falling out between him and the Tokyo police, but the tiredness tugging down her eyelids convinced her otherwise. Besides, maybe she could use the topic as an entry to conversation with the inspector—a way to dip in her toes without causing splashes that would scare him off. His stoic, unsmiling face followed her thoughts as she brushed her teeth and went to bed.
Ten
“Nanami!” Jordan said excitedly and waved the young woman over. Jordan had hurriedly finished lunch and was chatting with students in the hall, lingering with the hope of spotting the girl. Nanami hesitated before trudging over with her head down. Jordan stepped back until they were in a small recess, away from the flow of students.
“You told him about Emi’s secret,” Nanami said and glowered. She could only mean Inspector Sakurai; Jordan had seen her enter the inspector’s makeshift office in the break room earlier that morning. “You promised you wouldn’t say anything.”
“I’m sorry, Nanami, but he is a police officer. Besides, anything we can do to help Inspector Sakurai find Emi’s—” Jordan stopped short when she realized she was about to say Emi’s killer.
Her breath caught and she paused for a moment, feeling strangely disoriented. Certainly she thought Emi’s and Yuki’s deaths were odd, but she hadn’t seriously considered murder. Not really. Nanami was still angry, but a look of confusion seeped into her expression when Jordan continued her silence. Another moment passed and Jordan forced herself to set aside her thoughts, at least for the moment. “That’s actually what I wanted to ask you abou
t—Emi and her boyfriend.”
“Oh, yeah?” Nanami’s mopey attitude shifted to interest.
“Yes. Do you know this boy?” Jordan pulled the printed article from her pocket, which was folded so only the photo of the young man showed.
“Actually, yeah, he does look familiar somehow.” Nanami brushed her long hair from her face and leaned closer, squinting. “I feel like I know him.”
“Do you know anyone named Junichi?”
“Yes! That’s who he is—Junichi Sato!” Nanami clapped her hands once in excitement and kept them clasped against her chest. “I was classmates with Ju-kun, but he moved away from Ogawa when we were first-graders in junior high school. I haven’t heard from him in years.”
“I think he may have been Emi’s boyfriend—the father of her child—do you think that’s possible?”
“Oh, definitely!” Nanami said without hesitation and Jordan felt a small thrill of excitement. “Emi had a huge crush on Junichi ever since she met him in elementary school. Later, right before he left for Sagae, she said she kissed him on the cheek, and he gave her a button from his school jacket. That’s totally romantic, don’t you think? She kept that button on her dresser until she…Well, anyway, Emi would sometimes say he had been her true love.” Nanami’s cheeks colored and she ducked her head.
“But she didn’t say they were together recently? Or even that she had seen him again? That seems odd.” Jordan frowned.
“You didn’t know Emi,” Nanami said wistfully, almost proudly. “We were best friends, but she was secretive, too. She probably didn’t want to jinx anything by telling me. She would say that a lot: ‘Don’t talk about how you think you did on the test, Nanami. You’ll jinx it!’ You know?” She smiled.
“I see. Well, did Emi have a blog or anything? Facebook? Someplace where she might have talked about it, maybe shared a picture of the two of them?” Jordan had actually already checked Facebook, and Instagram, but couldn’t find the Emi she was looking for. She supposed there were probably Japanese social media sites she was unfamiliar with and hoped Nanami could shed some light. Her spirits sank when Nanami shook her head.
“Emi used Snow a lot, but I never saw pics of her with boys. I would’ve remembered that.” Nanami shrugged apologetically. “She kept a diary, I think.”
Inspector Sakurai had likely taken any diary as evidence, or at least read it. Jordan nodded to herself as she thought. Before she could ask Nanami more, one of her classmates spotted the girl and walked over to chat. Jordan paused for a moment as the girls spoke, contemplating whether she should inform Nanami of Junichi’s death. She didn’t know if the girl could take the blow of losing another friend, and Jordan conceded selfishly that she didn’t want to be the one to break the news.
She excused herself with a fumbling apology and hurried back to the teachers’ room, hoping to catch the inspector before the next class hour. Most of the instructors were at their desks, and she heard no movement or voices behind the frosted glass door to the break room. She knocked.
“Yes?”
“Inspector Sakurai, do you have a moment?”
“Ms. Howard. Please come in.” He smiled briefly as she entered, and then resumed collecting the neat stacks of documents from around the table. “What can I do for you?”
“Inspector, I think I may know who Emi’s boyfriend was,” she said, deciding it was best to just jump in. Inspector Sakurai’s hand halted midway to his briefcase; the documents he held were left suspended midair.
“Oh?” His attention on her was rapt and he remained unmoving.
“Yes. A senior at Sagae High School named Junichi Sato.” Jordan swallowed hard. “They knew each other from elementary through junior high school, and Nanami said Emi still carried a torch for him.” Slowly, the inspector laid the documents in his briefcase, running his gaze and his palm smooth over the paper. He seemed lost in thought but eventually refocused his attention on Jordan, as though he had made up his mind about something.
“What makes you so certain they were seeing each other?”
“Junichi died the day after Emi.”
“Suicide?” he asked. Jordan suspected he already had the answer and was only asking to gauge how much she knew.
“Yes, presumably,” she said. He raised an eyebrow at that but she continued. “Inspector, you said you were investigating serial suicides around Yamagata City, but besides Junichi, Emi, and Yuki, I haven’t found nor heard word of any others.” After discovering the article about Junichi the night before, she had run yet more searches that morning and plumbed the recent obituaries for Sagae, Nagai, Higashine, Yamanobe, Kahoku, and a few more major surrounding cities, but no additional information about teen suicides had bubbled to the top.
“I really can’t discuss the particulars of any ongoing investigations at this point, Ms. Howard. I’m sorry.”
“Are you really here to investigate a suicide club, Inspector?”
“Pardon me?” He smiled enough to show teeth, whether in amusement or to disguise a grimace, Jordan couldn’t tell.
“It’s odd that Yamagata Prefectural Police would send one of their best inspectors to the sticks of the inaka over two kids’ suicides.” She considered revealing what she had found in her online searches, about his successful arrest of the Yakuza lieutenant and all the articles lauding him as an unparalleled inspector. His assignment to the Ogawa case did begin to make sense if murder was involved. She pressed forward, now feeling some substance to her empty musings. “I find it even more suspicious that Junichi died right after Emi.”
“You don’t think that points even more strongly to a suicide club? If, as you say, they were lovers, then it’s not a far leap to assume they were in the club together, or that a distraught young man would take his life after his lover died. What do you believe is going on, Ms. Howard?” Surprisingly, his interest seemed genuine, but Jordan felt too self-conscious to answer right away, especially since he was asking her to share her admittedly drastic conclusions.
“I think they were targeted…by someone else,” Jordan said finally. He nodded and the corner of his mouth quirked.
“I like you, Ms. Howard.” He placed the remaining files in his briefcase and snapped its latches shut, the sound expanding to fill the space of the open room. “But once again, I cannot divulge details of the investigation.”
“Are you leaving?”
“Yes. I’ve learned all I can here for the time being.” He removed the suit jacket from the back of his chair and shrugged it on, preparing to depart. “I’ll be back to ask any follow-up questions, and to let the community know about the results of my investigation.”
“Where are you going? Or can’t you divulge that either?” Jordan said, realizing she’d be sorry to see him leave and feeling somehow a little abandoned.
“Sagae High School.” He adjusted his glasses before reaching for the door handle. “Goodbye, Ms. Howard.”
Eleven
The stuffed pheasant’s beady eyes shone in the low light as Jordan peeked through the door to the science supply room. Though they hadn’t agreed to meet, Jordan had waited for Akira in the dusky hall near the science room in hopes of asking about the English competition the week before. Though, she already knew that he hadn’t placed and felt partially responsible, guilty even, having spent the last few days leading up to the contest with the baseball team instead of Akira.
After a few minutes of waiting for him, her attention had wandered and she remembered the bizarre menagerie of taxidermy specimens sitting in the forgotten room. She pulled against the lock on the door experimentally, but it held tight. A squeaky voice behind her suddenly piped up.
“Oh! Jordan-sensei!”
Jordan jumped with surprise and spun to see the small figure of Ms. Tatsuya perched a few feet away.
“Tatsuya-sensei, hello,” Jordan said.
“My goodness, whatever are you doing in this gloomy place?” Such tucked-away corners of the school certainly were uninviti
ng that day, the overcast sky letting no more than a hint of grey light inside.
“I was hoping to speak with Akira, actually.”
“He still comes down here?” Ms. Tatsuya asked, and Jordan nodded. With a sigh, the small woman shook her head and flipped through a large set of keys in her hand. “I’m not terribly surprised, since this was his and Yuki’s favorite spot, even after they were reprimanded.”
“Reprimanded? What happened?” Jordan said and followed Ms. Tatsuya into the room once she had fumbled the lock open. When the light flickered to life, it cast a yellow pallor over the already fading and discolored equipment. As Jordan took in the room, she realized Ms. Tatsuya’s presence there was just as odd as her own. “I didn’t know you taught science as well, sensei.”
“Oh, I don’t! I need vinegar for today’s Home Ec. club, but the school’s all out—there’s not even a single bottle in the main science lab. Goodness, even if there is some here, I don’t think I want to use it.” She grimaced as she wiped a finger across a desk and came away with a pat of chalky dust. She continued to poke through large plastic bottles on a shelf, not showing any intention of answering Jordan’s initial question. Jordan wondered whether the other teacher’s silence was indeed her answer but pushed ahead regardless.
“Tatsuya-sensei, what did Yuki and Akira get in trouble for?”
“Oh, that…Yuki used the room without permission and stole some chemicals. That’s why everything’s locked up now.” She clucked her tongue, sounding sad. “Apparently, Akira tried to stop him, that dear boy. He eventually told the staff about it.”
“What happened then?”
“There was talk of expelling Yuki, even after he’d apologized. Vice Principal Nakamura especially wanted him gone, saying there was no room for thieves in Ogawa High School,” Ms. Tatsuya said and continued rummaging. “Principal Kikuchi saw that Yuki was bright and promising, and he only suspended him for a time. Yuki had only been back for a week or so before he…” Ms. Tatsuya straightened and set down the plastic jug she had been inspecting. Her mouth twisted into a frown and her eyes drifted as though trying to follow the tail of a stray thought bounding away. Then, the short woman snapped her head toward Jordan. “Why do you want to know?”