The Town of Sakura
by Sugaru Miaki
1
What made him willing to meet with that woman in person was that he hadn't been able to sense an ounce of goodwill or affection in her message. So blunt that he couldn't imagine how someone who works as a chat operator could have written it, it was lacking in any etiquette at all. It was almost the sort of thing you'd use in a teaching exercise as an example of what not to do. The gist of it was that she was feeling stuck with work lately and wanted some advice - but seeing this, that was no wonder, Ogami thought.
For the average person, receiving an email like this would probably put them in a bad mood. But for Ogami, things were different. He would only open up for one kind of person: someone there was no chance he'd be fond of, with likewise no chance that they'd be fond of him. In that way, the sender of this email was an ideal fit. Only when dealing with a person who had no expectation of a favorable relationship from the beginning could he ease his nerves.
Of course, he wouldn't completely let his guard down. Depending on how you look at it, people who give a first impression like hers could be considered the most dangerous. Even the smallest thing can turn a negative first impression into a positive one. And a trust that's overwritten a prior negative impression is much sturdier than any positive first impression could be. Truly excellent scammers should probably lead with a negative impression, Ogami theorized.
Once he went to meet the woman face-to-face and they started conversing, he found no need for such worries. The young woman, who gave the name Miwa, seemed to him not to have a deceptive bone in her body. From her choice of words to the way they were timed, she seemed like the type to just say anything she was thinking as soon as she thought it. In short, she wasn't all suited for her current occupation.
Thought she had perfectly fine looks, she wasn't the type that would captivate Ogami's heart, and she didn't appear especially charmed by Ogami on first meeting him either. Thanks to this, he was able to let loose and talk with another person in a way he hadn't in a long time.
They sat on two sides of a table in the back of a café. Taking a light-pink smartphone from Miwa, Ogami looked over some messages sent between Miwa and another user.
Her messages were actually much better than he'd expected. Contrary to the email she'd sent Ogami, she had been writing entirely adequate messages. She kept to all the rules outlined in the manual, and demonstrated some creativity with each message rather than falling into a predictable pattern.
Just being able to do this is pretty impressive, Ogami thought. Do I need to give any advice here? He'd been approached by colleagues for similar consultations in the past, but most of them just proved to be lazy people who hadn't even read the manual once, convinced that all they had to do was pretend to be interested in the other person. Compared to them, this woman certainly wasn't taking the job of a Sakura lightly, at least. That, he could appreciate.
Ogami handed the smartphone back to Miwa.
"I don't think you've got any real problem."
Miwa looked between the smartphone and Ogami's face. Her expression told how unsatisfied she was with that response.
"If there's no problem, then why is it my results are on such a decline?", she said with displeasure. "I just can't keep up a long conversation with users lately. I think I must be outing myself as a Sakura at some point or another. In fact, I've been told several times "you're a Sakura, aren't you?" So of course there's a problem. And yet, I can't figure out what it is."
"Sure, I've been told that too. Some people just get suspicious of everything, seeing Sakura in every shadow."
"Yes, but there are also people who can do it as skillfully as you, Mr. Ogami. I want to know what makes that difference."
Ogami folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, thinking back on the messages he'd just read.
"I think maybe your messages are a bit too excess-free, Ms. Miwa," Ogami replied. "You follow the manual closely, you take care not to fall into a pattern, you give responses that properly take their messages into account. It's skillfully done. There's nothing to get hung up on. So they receive you well at first. But once the conversation has gone long enough, that lack of hang-ups starts to become a hang-up."
Miwa thought about that for a while, but eventually looked to Ogami's face, seeking further explanation.
"There's too little noise. Conversations usually don't go that well. Everybody knows that from experience. You both feel like you're being misunderstood a little, but you accept some compromise and keep pushing forward. That's just how it works. There's none of that in your messages. So maybe that's giving a bit of a mechanical impression."
"But take right now for instance - aren't we talking to each other without any misunderstandings?", Miwa argued.
"That's because we're having what's ultimately a professional discussion. Two users on a matchmaking app aren't gonna be discussing their work concerns."
"Well... I suppose that's true."
"The point is," Ogami continued, "having hang-ups like that makes it feel more like you're talking with a flesh-and-blood person."
"So you're telling me to say more useless things?"
"What I'm saying is, be someone who doesn't do as expected to just the right degree," Ogami corrected.
"And what degree is that?"
"You can only learn how to gauge that for yourself. Personally, even I can't say I understand it perfectly."
Miwa rested her chin on the table and let out a little sigh.
"I'm no good at making recipes that just say "to taste.""
"In some cases, it might even be more honest to express that."
With that, Ogami took a sip of his until then untouched coffee.
Miwa looked at him with a dissatisfied expression, but then, as if struck by an idea, said "Mr. Ogami, you're more earnest than I expected."
Ogami didn't give her a reply. He silently put his cup on its saucer, and glanced toward some customers at the next table over. It was a pair of women who seemed to be making plans for a trip, apparently paying no mind to the conversation over here.
"There, I tried saying something useless," Miwa said, laughing to herself. "I've certainly learned something from you today. However, I imagine it's not a skill I can just pick up in a day. Could you maybe have some simple techniques that can produce results in a shorter time? Like, one little trick that'll keep you from being seen through as a Sakura..."
"Can't say there aren't any," Ogami replied, turning back to Miwa. "For instance, suspecting them before they suspect you - that one's simple yet effective. If a user's uneasy that a Sakura might be deceiving them, get them on the side of clearing their own suspicion instead of suspecting. It's like a criminal suggesting a search for the criminal. You can get into their mental blind spot."
"I see..."
Miwa nodded with a renewed sense of admiration. Then she picked up the smartphone on the table and started inputting something with both hands. It seemed she was eager to put Ogami's advice into practice.
He watched her do it without making it a full-on gaze, but when she was about to look up, he quickly averted his eyes toward a sugar container on the corner of the table.
"By the way," Miwa asked, "how exactly should I try to convey my suspicion? If I say outright "I bet you're a Sakura, aren't you?", it might put them in a bad mood."
"There's a bunch of ways. Hard to just sum it up. But I bet a lot of the users you get are anxious men prone to suspicion, right? You should observe any guys like that. The trends should become apparent quick."
Miwa then peered intently at Ogami's face. She remained silent for an unnaturally long time.
"What's the matter?", Ogami questioned.
"I'm observing an anxious-looking man."
"Me?"
"Indeed," Miwa affirmed with a smile. "What about me are you so afraid of?"
After leaving Miwa, Ogami drove back to his apartment. He made some coffee and sat at his desk, then got started on his work for the day. He didn't put on music, so as not to be put in a particular mood. He kept his work room as neutral an environment as possible.
The term "chat operator" might make it sound all fancy, but in essence, his job was to catfish on matchmaking apps. He'd go onto the app wearing the skin of a fictional person, show users a dream, and scam them out of their money - that was all the job entailed.
The app Ogami was currently on was a lesser-known one. The userbase was mainly people in their twenties to thirties, and it targeted people seriously looking for marriage partners. It didn't have many users compared to the bigger apps, but that spoke to its high review standards - anyone who was obviously a scammer or with some kind of business was promptly removed, making it an excellent pick for those in the know.
Ogami's primary role was, in a manning of speaking, to draw the short straws. He'd target users who nobody else was willing to date, leaving them just enough scraps to keep them from deleting their accounts in despair.
It was no easy task to patch up the self-respect of users who had developed an inferiority from being consistently ignored. Yet without anyone even teaching him, Ogami was a master at it from the jump.
It was only natural, considering it was what he was always doing for himself.
He finished up work around 11. Returning to the living room, he sat himself on the sofa and poured a glass of whiskey. Alcohol was indispensable after talking with large numbers of people. Without it, their voices (not that he'd actually heard their voices) would be ringing in his head all night, and he'd never get any sleep.
Closing his eyes, he tilted the glass, and drove the voices of people starved for love out of his head.
As he stared absentmindedly at the ceiling after emptying the glass, his smartphone suddenly went off. Miwa's face was what first came to mind, yet the number on screen was unfamiliar to him. It didn't seem to be a work-related call, but Ogami didn't have a single acquaintance who would call him for personal reasons. No doubt they had the wrong number.
He answered the phone without thinking on it too deeply. Hoping that the voice on the call would cancel out the ones in his head.
"Is this Masaki Ogami?", a man's voice asked. It was an unremarkable voice that he might've forgotten by the next moment.
Briefly, Ogami hesitated to respond. When you live using so many pseudonyms, you start to resist revealing your real name, even if there's no good reason for it.
After acknowledging that he was indeed Masaki Ogami, the voice abruptly informed him:
"Sumika Takasago has killed herself."
Sumika Takasago has killed herself. Ogami repeated the words in his head. As if to confirm that it was real, he tightly gripped the phone in his hand, then stood up from the sofa for no particular reason. Leaving the living room, he stopped in the hall and leaned against the wall.
"I'm sorry, but who would this be?", Ogami finally asked.
"I just thought that you should know," the man said, ignoring Ogami's question. "That's all. Even if I told you my name, I think you probably don't remember me. Well, goodbye."
Before Ogami could voice another question, the call had ended.
The hallway was freezing, but that chilliness seemed somehow irrelevant to him.
He returned to the living room and sat back on the sofa. After looking at the phone screen again for no particular reason, he placed it on the table.
Hearing the name Sumika Takasago after so many years didn't instantly make memories of her cross his mind. There was no feeling of nostalgia, nor the accompanying feeling of suffering.
No, it was just natural. Because for these past few years, she had always been sitting in the center of his mind. Until just moments ago, it had been an issue in the present tense.
For now, should I just be glad that the issue has come to an end?, Ogami wondered. Though it's unfortunate I wasn't able to resolve it myself, if you really think it about it, there was no conceivable solution as long as she still lived. Perhaps Sumika Takasago's suicide was the best settlement I could hope for.
There was no guarantee that what the man on the phone said was true, but it was hard to imagine it was a lie. There was no point to a lie like that, and even if he were to tell him false information out of some malice, he'd have put together a story with more detail. You couldn't expect much of a result from just the words "Sumika Takasago has killed herself."
He then started trying to recall voices that matched the man on the phone. But sure enough, he was having a hard time of it. Still, if it was someone who knew Ogami and Sumika's relationship, it seemed unmistakable that it was a classmate from middle school. And given what he'd said, probably one with little enough connection to him that he wouldn't remember even after hearing his name.
He felt it would be pointless thinking about it any more than that.
Even after getting into bed and falling asleep, Sumika didn't appear in his dreams or anything.
The notion of his life's biggest obstacle having been removed just wasn't feeling real.
Two days passed, then three, and his mood not only didn't clear up, it became muddier. Unable to concentrate on work, he made a number of stupid mistakes. His sleep became lighter, and he drank more.
On the fourth day, he couldn't muster the energy to do anything, spending a whole day making a round trip to the convenience store.
The morning of the fifth day, the words of Miwa, the woman he met at the café, suddenly came back to him.
What about me are you so afraid of?
The woman's face and voice, which he already couldn't remember, were filled in by those of Sumika Takasago.
I still can't feel at ease, Ogami finally realized. No way can a single phone call put me at ease. If I don't go back to that town and confirm Sumika's death for certain, she'll keep being a menace upon my life forever.
The Sumika that's in me still won't die.
He pulled out his suitcase and quickly packed up, went down to the parking lot, and got in his car. When he started the engine and the navigation system asked his destination, he spat out the name of the town where he was born.
In much the same way a criminal returns to the scene of the crime, Ogami set his sights on that town again after four years.
Moving to Tokyo after high school and bouncing all over the map since then, seeing so many varied places as a result, Ogami had come to realize what a colorless town it had really been. It had no rich nature, nor dazzling streets, nor a culture with much history; he spent his childhood in a dull, transparent town. As if it had been diligently pruned of any element that could be charming, as if it were a strangely-shaped blot that rejected any mental association, as if it were created with the very goal of being overlooked and forgotten - it was a town with a tragically commonplace name.
Yet he would always refer to the town of his birth by another name, imbued with hatred:
The Town of Sakura.