6
By the time Ogami was back in the Town of Sakura, it was 8 PM. When he called Kasumi, she answered on the second dial tone. She whispered that her parents were home tonight, so they should rendezvous outside. The designated meeting spot was the supermarket rest area.
When Ogami arrived, he didn't see Kasumi there. He stood in front of a vending machine, and after some slight indecision, pressed the button for tea. He'd had plenty of coffee already today. Sitting on a pipe chair repaired with packing tape, he took a sip of the hot tea and instantly felt revived from the warmth.
After that, Ogami took another look around the area. Above some shelves carrying microwave ovens and electric kettles was a familiar poster, part of a campaign for suicide prevention. An illustration of a woman crossing her arms by her chest with a gentle smile was accompanied by the slogan "Don't keep it in, talk it out."
Back when he was in middle school, there had been a blunt notice reading "Please refrain from using for more than 30 minutes" where that poster was. It was nowhere to be seen now. Maybe it had outlived its usefulness with the town's dwindling population.
After about five minutes, Kasumi appeared in her usual coat and sat down next to Ogami. Figured he should buy a drink for her too, he asked what she'd like, and she replied "I'll have the same thing as you, Ogami."
Kasumi took a sip of the tea he gave her, then put down the cup. Then, putting both elbows on the table, she stared at Ogami with her chin in her hands.
"Were you able to have a good talk with the troupe leader?"
"He kindly explained everything, even things I didn't ask about. I feel like I kind of get why you didn't want to give me the details yourself."
She nodded. "I worried that even if I told you things just as they were, it might sound like I was being overly bitter because we're relatives, or that I was still hiding something crucial. The troupe leader was able to see things relatively calmly, so I figured he would be best to ask first."
"I think you made the right call, too."
Ogami summarized what the leader had told him. Kasumi listened to it in silence. It seemed there was nothing that needed appending or correcting.
"Was your sister really just playing with those guys?", Ogami tried asking. "She didn't strike me as someone to do such a pointless thing."
Kasumi stared into her cup as she spoke. "I don't know the truth, either. But I do think she did it not on a whim or impulse, but with a firm intention. I have no proof, but you can call it a sister's intuition. And also, like the troupe leader said, I feel like her objective certainly wasn't to ruin the troupe or get revenge on a member."
"If not that, were there some circumstances that forced her to do it?"
Kasumi shook her head, suggesting she didn't know.
"The number one thing that doesn't sit right with me is..." She briefly paused, then continued. "Why, if my sister possessed such eminent acting talent as to be almost magical, she would purposefully paint herself as a villain. There should have been plenty of ways to make herself appear like a victim as well. And yet in reality, it seems she actively chose to reveal the secret. In so doing, she resigned herself to accepting the role of villain. That just gives a mismatched impression, doesn't it?"
Ogami nodded, and drank his tea instead of replying. That's exactly what he had been stuck on, too. If Sumika was mentally unstable, maybe that sufficed to explain it, but could someone walk a tightrope with six men for over half a year in such a state?
To drive away the heavy silence that came over the two of them, Kasumi spoke up in a cheery voice.
"Um, do you want to go for a walk?"
The town was already half-asleep. Houses with their lights on were sparse, and there was no noise worth qualifying as noise. There were no aromas of dinner nor soap; there was only a scent like clear water that was unique to snowy towns.
Every time he passed a bulletin board at a street corner, Ogami casually checked it. All of the boards had posters on them similar to the one he'd seen in the supermarket earlier, affixed with thumbtacks. In some cases, there were even posters about suicide hotlines on the fences and walls of people's houses, though most had faded completely from exposure to the sun. He'd heard that national suicide rates, which peaked about 20 years ago, had improved considerably with the spread of Handcuffs and introduction of the prompter system, but it didn't change it being a serious societal problem.
"Do you smoke, Ogami?", Kasumi suddenly asked.
"I do," Ogami replied simply. He recalled how he'd smoked quite a few while talking with the troupe leader. "Do I smell like it?"
"No. I just thought I smelled something like that for a moment," said Kasumi. Then she stared at Ogami's face. "Ogami, do you have a death wish?"
"What, because I smoke?"
"My middle school health teacher said so. That the only people who smoke these days either aren't thinking at all, or have a latent death wish. You don't strike me as someone who doesn't think at all, so I wondered if it was the latter."
"Who knows, maybe I'm not thinking at all."
"Is that so? Then good."
Ogami nodded vaguely, unsure how to respond to that.
"It's good to not think about anything," Kasumi said after a while. "I'm striving to be like that myself."
"Hope it goes well for you."
"When I'm walking at night like this, sometimes I find it's going quite well."
"And right now?"
"Right now, I'm thinking about how I hope you aren't bored."
"I'm not."
It was the truth. At least since coming to this town, he hadn't felt bored once.
"Now I'm thinking about whether you're just saying that to be diplomatic."
"It's useless to think things like that," Ogami said. "Besides, I like walking too. Probably for the same reasons as you."
Soon, they arrived at an elevated plaza. The two approached a bench placed in front of a wooden fence, and sat down after checking that the surface wasn't wet. And they gazed at the night town, not doing anything in particular.
Kasumi repeatedly reassured him "feel free to smoke," so Ogami moved a little further away and smoked just a single cigarette. Seeing him remove his Handcuff before lighting it, Kasumi remarked with wonder, "So it's true that smokers "jailbreak" before smoking."
The cigarette tasted worse than usual in the night air. Even Ogami didn't quite know why he was smoking these things. Maybe it was in fact a drawn-out suicide, or maybe he wasn't thinking like Kasumi said. Or maybe it was just a chronic case of "having nothing to do."
There were no large buildings in town to obstruct their vision, so they could see to the edges of town from the plaza. Amid the flat darkness that spread out from the unlit houses, there was a solitary light. Ogami supposed it was a hospital. The one he'd visited Kozaki in when he was staying there.
Come to think of it, Kozaki'd suspected I was a Sakura, Ogami suddenly recalled. To have one foot in Sakura Delusion as a grade schooler must be a pretty rare case, thinking about it. Maybe spending so much time in a hospital was fertile soil for delusions like that.
No, that's not right. Ogami thought it over more. What Kozaki had couldn't strictly be called Sakura Delusion. He likely did have Sakura assigned to him; he just misjudged Ogami as one, is all. No doubt there were some fakers among his "friends at the hospital" he'd mentioned. And they had failed to prevent Kozaki's suicide - that seemed like a safe assumption.
Even as early as then, Sakura were near at hand.
"Oh, I wasn't thinking anything just now," Kasumi reported as Ogami returned to the bench.
"Good to hear."
"Still, I'm going to have to think about what comes next soon."
"I was just thinking about discussing that," Ogami said. "Actually, I've already decided who I'm going to meet next."
"Ah, did the troupe leader tell you about someone?"
"Yeah. Though due to scheduling, we probably won't meet until next week."
"Who exactly is it?"
"Don't know her name. But she's a woman, and was apparently on good terms with your sister."
"Oh, Teacher? A good choice."
"Teacher?"
"Everyone called her that because she took initiative to teach newcomers, I'm told. She evidently helped my sister a lot, and meeting and speaking with her myself a few times, she seemed very kind. Though from what I hear, she left the troupe herself before it was officially set to be dissolved."
"Was that... prompted by your sister?"
"I don't know. But I think there's a good chance it was. Since she had been quite close with my sister until then."
"Seems worth talking with her."
"Indeed. Teacher might know a side of my sister that we don't. I hope we can learn something new."
The two got up from the bench and went back to the supermarket taking a different path than the one they'd come from.
While walking absentmindedly with Kasumi, Ogami realized he'd pass by Kujirai's house if they continued this way. It was hard to imagine he remained at his parents' house, but even so, his pace quickened as they reached it. Because of this, he almost missed seeing the "For Sale" sign.
It seemed the Kujirai family had already left this town. So it wasn't just Sumika; the other threat had also been removed without him realizing.
Ogami stood in front of that sign for a while.
"Was this an acquaintance's house?", Kasumi asked, standing beside him.
"Nah," Ogami said. "Just thinking how there are a lot more empty houses around."
Kasumi still seemed like she wanted to ask something, so Ogami brought up a different topic. "By the way, have you decided what you'll do after you graduate?"
"I'm going to the college my sister went to," Kasumi answered. "Even if there's no significance to it now. I wish I'd aimed for somewhere better. I had pretty good grades, you see."
"You wanted to support your sister from nearby?"
"Sure, something like that." She didn't seem very interested in the topic. "What are you doing these days, Ogami? Are you in college?"
"I'm bouncing between various jobs," Ogami replied, dodging the question. Certainly he couldn't say he worked as a Sakura on matchmaking apps. "Currently I'm working as somewhat of a counselor, but I'm not able to disclose much about it."
"Ah, confidentiality, I see."
"Right. It's confidential."
"You seem like you'd be well-suited to work like that. I get the feeling you really listen to what people say."
"What are you aiming to do?"
Kasumi hummed in thought. "Nothing in particular for now... but if I have to name something, I'd like to be a happy bride."
"That's a fine goal, too."
"Do you think I can do it?"
"Dunno. I don't really know much about brides - too complicated for me. Happiness, too."
"I don't know much either," Kasumi said with a smile. "It's a very difficult problem."
His meeting with the teacher was in a week. There wasn't much to be doing until then. He spent his time aimlessly at the old apartment, occasionally went shopping, and shoveled snow when it snowed, moving through the days like clockwork.
After the fourth day, he got a call from Kasumi. She was calling to confirm if it was okay to visit the apartment tomorrow. He had no reason to refuse, of course. Ogami told her she could come anytime she liked, so Kasumi said "Then I'll be visiting at 10 AM," and hung up.
There was a knock on his door at 10 that night. The knocking had a kind of weight to it that Kasumi's delicate hands couldn't possibly produce. It was unquestionably someone other than Kasumi, but he couldn't think of a single other person who'd visit his room. He hadn't told the troupe leader about this apartment, and it was far too late for a mail delivery. Was it a neighbor who mistook their room?
He held his breath to wait out the situation, and they knocked again. This time it was an even stronger knock, filled with conviction. The light from his room was probably visible from outside, so he couldn't pretend to be out. Ogami went up to the door, unlocked it, and opened it while bracing himself.
Standing there was a man who Ogami indeed had no acquaintance with. He was a tall man wearing a military parka over a suit. Judging from his eyes, he was probably about the same age as Ogami. Greasy forelocks and stubble covered a good deal, but even through these, Ogami could tell he had a good-looking face. He's like a movie actor done up to look like an outcast, Ogami thought. It was the kind of face where trying to dirty it just made its beauty stand out more.
In spite of the snowstorm starting up outside, there was hardly any snow on the man's jacket. Behind him was a large four-wheel-drive car that felt out of place with the old apartment's parking spots. It seemed that was what he came here in.
The man faced Ogami in silence for a while. It appeared as if he was just as taken aback as Ogami.
"Do you need something?", Ogami asked.
The man continued staring at Ogami as if he hadn't heard it. Ogami felt an impulse to just shut the door on him, but he couldn't imagine that would make the man simply give up and leave.
Finally, the man opened his mouth. "So that means... I suppose you must be Mr. Ogami?"
"That's me," Ogami affirmed. "And you are?"
"As I thought." The man nodded with self-satisfaction. "I heard from the troupe leader. That a man had recently started looking into the truth of Sumika's death."
With his use of the title "troupe leader," this man must have been a member of that troupe. But Ogami didn't recall telling the leader his address, and it didn't seem like even the man had come with the expectation of Ogami being here.
"I see, living here to await the fiend's return... An interesting idea," the man remarked with admiration. "I wouldn't have thought of it, at least, and even if I had, I certainly couldn't pull it off. Your feelings for Sumika seem genuine."
He wasn't following at all. What in the world was this man saying? "Await the fiend's return"?
"I think you've made some kind of mistake," Ogami told him, endeavoring to keep a polite tone. "I'm not living here to wait for anyone's return. I was just looking for a residence in the area ,and rented one here because there happened to be a room open."
Then the man fell silent again. He seemed like the type who would talk when it pleased him, and not talk when that pleased him.
"If that's true," the man said at length, "you're in possession of some absolutely incredible luck."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm your ally," the man said with a smile. "I've been running after the truth of Sumika's suspicious death ever since then. And if my guess is correct, this very room you're living in is the goal. Even if the goal tape has disappeared."
Ogami settled on "the detective" as a tentative name for the man. Sure, he probably would've given his name if asked, but he also didn't particularly care to know.
The room had no chairs or cushions for visitors. As Ogami puzzled over what to do, the detective said "I'm fine with here," leaning his back on the door. "I don't intend to stay here long."
Ogami nodded. If he didn't mind, that was fine.
"Instead of me talking, I think it'd be faster if I hear what you can tell me first," the detective said. "How much do you know about Sumika's death?"
"Nothing beyond what I've heard from Sumika's sister and the troupe leader."
"And what sort of story did you hear from the troupe leader?"
"That after tearing the troupe to shreds, she finished things off with a mysterious suicide."
The detective twisted his mouth into a smile and laughed with ridicule at that. "Guess it's not unreasonable he'd think of it that way. He was out of the loop about the essential parts the whole time. Though of course, that was a silver lining for him. Even though his troupe dissolved, he got away with a much lighter impact than what some of the members did."
From the detective's loathsome-sounding tone, Ogami supposed he was one of Sumika's ex-lovers. It was clear he had some form of attachment to Sumika, for good or ill.
"Well then, what are you thinking about her suicide?", Ogami asked.
"I'm convinced that her death wasn't suicide," the detective declared.
"Why?"
"Because there's no chance she would kill herself."
His face practically had "isn't that obvious?" written on it. This guy probably still hasn't escaped the spell Sumika cast on him, Ogami thought. Actually, perhaps her death had made the spell fully take hold on him.
"You don't seem to believe me," the detective remarked, as if reading Ogami's mind.
"Saying "it's not suicide because it shouldn't be suicide" is the same as saying nothing at all."
Then the detective laughed out loud, as if Ogami had told a clever joke.
"You've got a point. You're right," the detective conceded. "But you see, when you work in theater for a long time, you start to pick up on that kind of thing. The more serious you are when acting, the easier it is to see through. It's the same as how trying desperately to hide something makes it easier to spot. And she acted something out for us very seriously. Which is why I know her actions weren't her genuine feelings."
The detective adjusted the front of his military parka, as if only just starting to feel the cold.
"She had no intent of dying," he insisted, looking into Ogami's eyes. "At the very least, her death wasn't a simple suicide fully of her own volition. I guarantee it."
"So you're saying she was murdered?", Ogami inferred. Then he appended, with a hint of irony, "By one of the six guys she cheated on, for instance."
"It's a more likely possibility than suicide," the detective said calmly. "If they really hated Sumika that much, that is."
"And weren't you one of them?"
The detective smiled wordlessly.
"Well, I suppose it's hard asking you to believe me when we only just met. But it's true. Which is why I can tell that you're convinced Sumika was murdered, too. You have sufficient grounds to believe it was murder, don't you? I'd appreciate if you could fill me in."
Ogami didn't respond, instead asking: "By the way, who's this "fiend"? You said this room was your "goal.""
"The man who lived here before you moved in. One of the troupe members. If there's anyone who has important information about Sumika's death, it's him. It's pointless even asking any other related parties. Because ultimately, their knowledge ends at wondering "what kind of show was Sumika putting on?" But he fell off the map at about the same time Sumika died. So I've been periodically checking here to see if he'd come back."
"But since I was able to move in, he must have moved out some time ago."
"Yep, that's what it means. But I don't have any leads pointing to anywhere else he'd go. In that sense, this is our final stop for the time being."
"You're sure it's not just "a dead end"?"
"I try to keep an optimistic outlook," the detective said. "By the way, are you familiar with where and how Sumika met her end?"
"I'm not."
"Would you be willing to go there with me?"
In contrast to his soft demeanor, the detective was a rough driver. The tires would sometimes get caught in a deep rut in the snowy road, making the car shake violently. Yet paying it no mind, he just further pressed on the gas pedal. Ogami imagined this wasn't him getting worked up as they neared the site of Sumika's suicide, but just the way he normally drove.
Taking a side road in front of a bridge that went across a large river, they descended a gentle slope to a riverside park. There was no sign or anything at the entrance, and the road to the parking lot had fallen into disrepair, so it seemed to repel visitors in spite of being a park. It of course hadn't been cleared of snow either, so everything had been buried.
The detective parked beneath a solitary streetlight and turned off the engine. Aside from an echo in the back of Ogami's ears, it was so perfectly silent as to make you think you'd gotten something wrong. An excessive silence, like being left behind in a massive movie theater after closing. He felt like if he stayed still, his sense of sight and touch might also become strange.
"This is where her life ended," the detective said in a whisper.
"How?", Ogami asked. His voice sounded muffled, like he was talking with earplugs in.
"The car was parked like this, then sealed up with tape... you know, the old standby."
Ogami pictured the scene. As it progressed, he started to hallucinate that the air in the car was getting thinner.
He opened the door to exit the car. Stepping on the ground, his boots sank into snow up to the ankle. The wind was calm, but the damp cold air coming over the river stung his skin. He buttoned his duffle coat up to the neck, then crunching through the hard snow to cross the parking lot, headed to where he believed there'd be a walking path. The detective followed behind him. The darkness intensified the further they got from the streetlight, but when there was this much snow, it didn't make much difference whether you could see where you were walking or not.
After reaching a point where he could go no further, Ogami scooped up some snow to make a snowball, and chucked it up high in the direction of the river. It immediately went out of sight, sucked up by the darkness. A few seconds passed, but there was no sound of a splash. Maybe it hadn't reached the river, or maybe it hit a tree branch or something.
"Lonely place, right?", the detective said from behind.
"I wouldn't necessarily say that," Ogami said, turning around and rubbing his hands together for warmth. "Sure, it's pretty awful right now, but you can at least see something here in the spring."
The detective didn't reply for a while. Ogami couldn't read his expression in the darkness.
"That's right, you were a local here. Is this a famous place?"
"No. I just happened to know it."
"That's a funny coincidence," the detective said, not sounding amused at all. Of course it wasn't a coincidence, which he seemed to understand as well. "Though naturally, she died at the end of summer. Probably didn't get to see the "something" you're talking about."
"That's a shame," said Ogami.
*
During the spring break before their third year of middle school, the trio went to meet the cherry blossoms.
In the Town of Sakura, spring break was spring in name only, as in reality it was closer to a second winter break. You couldn't expect to see sakura blossoming at graduation, and even upon getting into April, you'd catch glimpses of snow for a while. You'd only get to put away your coat around the middle of April. That day, the trio were huddled around the heater dressed just the same as in the dead of winter.
It was Kujirai who proposed it. Leaning back in the sofa and paging through an old magazine, he unexpectedly said "Let's go meet the cherry blossoms."
Ogami and Sumika looked at each other, then back to Kujirai.
"You mean, head south to where the cherry blossom front is?", Ogami translated.
"How far have they reached at this point?", Sumika asked.
"Closer than I thought." Kujirai opened a map on his smartphone and pointed at the location of the front. "It's still too much to walk, but we can get there in two hours taking buses and trains."
The next afternoon, the trio left town to go meet the cherry blossoms. The sky was clear, and soft rays shone upon the ground. The gusty wind was still roughly as cold as in the middle of winter, but there was occasionally a faint sweet smell mixed in.
Ogami truthfully didn't care one bit about the sakura, but any excuse to go out as a trio was welcome. Even Kujirai surely didn't have the sort of interests that suggested a love of flowers, so it wouldn't have mattered if they were cherry blossoms, plum blossoms, peach blossoms, whatever.
To give away the outcome, they weren't able to meet the cherry blossoms. They got a bus transfer wrong, and headed in a direction that was completely off the mark. Part of it was being in unfamiliar territory, and part of it was not checking their location very well when they got engrossed in some discussion along the way. After laughing at their inattention, the three retraced their steps back to the Town of Sakura where no sakura bloomed.
A string of warm days continued the next week, and real spring came to the Town of Sakura earlier than usual. Waiting another week after that, the trio again went out for flower-viewing. While riding bicycles around town, they happened to come across that riverside park. Though surrounding trees made it impossible to tell from the outside, the plaza was enclosed by sakura in bloom, and a carpet of petals lay at their feet. The three gasped at the sight.
"If they're blooming this early, there's no need to go out and meet them," Sumika said, stretching happily in the shade of a tree.
"Because we went out to meet them, they tactfully hurried over to us," Kujirai theorized while lying in the grass. "We should be grateful."
They didn't see anyone but themselves who'd come to see the sakura. A wind a bit too lacking in modesty to call a "spring breeze" blew through the park, quickly scattering the petals of the sakura that had bloomed away from people's gaze.
The countless white petals fluttering on the wind looked less like a snowstorm, as was the common comparison, but a swarm of butterflies.
*
The detective's four-by-four arrived back at the apartment around midnight. When Ogami got out of the car to return to his room, the detective stopped him.
"If that guy comes back or anything, you should let me know."
He put his arm out the window and indicated his Handcuff. Ogami approached him and touched the Handcuffs to trade contact information.
"The last person Sumika went to meet before she died was the previous tenant of this room. He was always the kind to abruptly vanish and wander here and there, but he came back to this town just a few days before Sumika's suicide, and met with her in secret. Then after that, he disappeared completely. He must know something about Sumika's death."
"I'll contact you if he comes back."
"Appreciate it. And I'll report any developments on my end too," the detective said. Then he added, as if just remembering it: "The man's name is Shogo Kujirai. You should remember it just in case."
"Right," Ogami affirmed, feigning calm. "I'll be sure to remember it."