8
Afterward, Ogami went to visit several more people related to the troupe, with the troupe leader serving as his go-between. Two of them were men who Sumika had six-timed, but they provided no information beyond what he'd heard from the leader, teacher, and detective. Just as the detective said, it seemed the room Ogami was staying in was the final stop. The only other way forward would be to locate Kujirai.
But he had absolutely no intention of going that deep into it. His investigation into Sumika's suicide was nothing more than an excuse to deepen his relationship with Kasumi. And by the time he'd done a full sweep of everything, there seemed to be no need for an excuse anymore. Kasumi was visiting his apartment every few days without a particular reason, having frivolous chats with him, even napping in Ogami's bed.
On weekends or days where her parents came home late, he would take Kasumi on drives lasting about an hour and a half each way. They never decided on a destination; if there was a place they liked, they'd stop there and walk around. It was evidently the time spent with Ogami that she enjoyed, so it didn't seem to matter where they went.
Ever since grabbing her shoulders at the botanical garden, Kasumi looked at Ogami a little differently. She would gently touch Ogami's body if she found an opportunity, with Ogami setting up such opportunities for her. She took a nonchalant approach, but she was trying to confirm something through it. Her physical intimacy implicitly said that "it's fine if we're like this."
When Ogami responded with the same approach, she laughed happily.
I wonder how close I am to achieving my objective by now? Ogami considered it every time he parted from Kasumi. If I confessed to being a Sakura next time we met, how hurt would she be? How much trust does she currently put in me, and how much does she depend on me?
For someone who's not explicitly her boyfriend or anything of the sort, Kasumi looks as attached to me as one could possibly be. But has her trust reached the same level as what I once felt toward Sumika and Kujirai? We'd been interacting for not even a month yet, too short a time. Normally, this point would be when you might finally find yourself at the starting line. But it was clear that she sought a new emotional support after losing her dear sister, so it wouldn't be surprising if all her affection with no place to go was being diverted to me, since I'd dominated that position.
If his communication with Kasumi were being conducted over devices like at work, Ogami might have been easily able to see the workings of her heart. He might have been able to sense the subtle vibrations of her feelings just from short messages. Yet hearing her real voice and following her actions with his eyes overloaded his sensors with information, rendering them useless.
Ultimately, the problem was his lack of experience dealing with people directly without anything in between. Since graduating middle school, he endeavored to not like anyone and not be liked by anyone. He strove to become numb to the goodwill of others. He came to think that behind any smile lurked something that couldn't possibly smile. The reason he had no issues being a Sakura on matchmaking apps was because people's affection was directed at a fictional character he'd made up. Whereas when the affection went toward him directly, there was too much static, making it impossible to use normal judgement.
He even seriously considered not meeting with Kasumi for a while and interacting only by texting for a while. That would make the conditions identical to those at work. But it's likely too late for that, he thought. I already know Kasumi Takasago as a person. Even if we did have exchanges of nothing but text, I wouldn't be able to help imagining her expressions, voice, and gestures.
Ogami honed his senses to observe Kasumi, trying to find something that would indicate her true feelings. This caused him to get incredibly fatigued after meeting with her, and he got stuck spending hours thinking about the meaning of casual actions and statements. As if he were a person in love.
Compared to that, his relationship with the detective was comfortable.
Around the time the investigation into Sumika's suicide came to a pause, the detective appeared at Ogami's apartment again. They hadn't contacted each other once since then despite having exchanged contact details, so his visit came as a surprise, as Ogami had assumed things were already over with him.
The detective first asked about the progress of his investigation. And despite finding that Ogami hadn't made a single substantial step since they last met, he wasn't shocked or disappointed. It seemed he was fully expecting that to be the case from the start. And he even knew that, naturally, Kujirai hadn't come back to the apartment since then.
"I came to visit today for a different matter."
After saying this, the detective went back to his car and brought something out from the trunk. In one hand he held a Boston bag, and in the other he carried a large black tube. When the bag was opened, Ogami saw something familiar: a small projector. That told him the nature of the black tube, too. It must have been the screen for the projector.
The detective removed the clasp on the tube, unfurled the screen, and skillfully set it up on the curtain rail. Then he set up a tripod, affixed the projector to it, and made minute adjustments to point it at the screen. Once done preparing, he told Ogami to turn off the lights.
Projected on the screen was practice footage of the now-defunct troupe.
"Our troupe tried to keep recordings of everything," the detective explained. "And we didn't just record, we made time to watch it over, too. It's absolutely fundamental to review your own acting objectively, but it can be surprisingly easy to overlook things because they're so basic."
Of course, Sumika was in the video as well. She had grown a few years from the 15-year-old girl Ogami knew, and become that much more beautiful.
He supposed this footage was from a year or two ago. But the cheap projector's rough video quality and crunchy sound presented the scene like it was from a more distant past than it really was.
Ogami watched the video in a trance. Before he knew it, a movie's worth of time had passed. The two hadn't said a single word the whole time. Ogami had even forgotten the detective was next to him.
When the video ended, the detective turned off the projector and asked Ogami: "What did you think?"
The voice brought Ogami back to his senses. "What about it?", he asked in return.
"I just thought maybe an old friend of Sumika like you would notice different things from us."
"I can't imagine I would notice something from this footage alone that the people actually there didn't."
"In that case, I'll bring a different video next time."
With that, the detective stood up and left the room without waiting for Ogami to reply, leaving behind the projector and the screen.
Following this, he visited Ogami's apartment numerous times with new videos. Each one was about two to three hours in length, and they were restricted to those that featured Sumika.
No matter how many of these he was shown, he wasn't going to make any new discoveries. I don't really care about the truth of Sumika's death in the first place, Ogami thought to himself. But he didn't drive away the detective, and faithfully watched through the long videos every time.
He continued to watch videos featuring a dead woman, next to a man whose name he didn't even know.
It was a strangely fulfilling time.
The night of the detective's fourth visit, Ogami made popcorn for the two of them. Some of it had burned, and there were many kernels left, but the detective ate it like it was delicious.
"There's a trick to it," he said, licking salt from his fingers. "It's better if instead of cooking them all the way through, you pop 'em all at once in hot oil."
"I'll keep that in mind," Ogami replied. And the next time the detective came over, he was able to prepare some impeccable popcorn.
Ogami saw a resemblance between the detective and Kujirai not because they were in a room Kujirai had once lived in, nor because they were watching videos on a screen together, nor because he had a natural air about him that made him feel inferior as a man. Rather, when he was with the detective, Ogami felt him to be semi-transparent. Despite him being a tall man with a strong presence, Ogami's mind didn't register him as a foreign substance. It was likely the man's conviction that he would be respected whether he was understood or not which brought about that sensation.
It was a sensation he hadn't felt in a long time, not since parting ways with Kujirai.
If this man weren't bringing the shadow of Sumika along with him, maybe we could've become close friends, Ogami thought. But if Sumika hadn't died, we wouldn't have gotten to know each other, and even if we had still met under those circumstances, he'd likely have not a shred of interest in me. Ultimately, it was just another meaningless hypothesis.
Some of the videos the detective brought included Kujirai as well, of course. Ogami only knew Kujirai up to age 15, yet he recognized him at a glance when he showed up on screen. His cheeks had sunken, and he had a somewhat more rugged face, but his general appearance had hardly changed. In Kujirai's case, it probably wasn't right to say he hadn't grown, but rather that he had already achieved perfection at age 15. It gave the impression that his age had caught up to his body.
The last time Ogami directly saw the two perform was on stage at the culture festival, in the summer when he was 14. Compared to then, their acting had advanced to an incomparable level. That was clear even to his untrained eyes. Not only did they not appear lesser next to the other actors, it felt like the two of them stood quite a bit above the rest. I'd stand out like a sore thumb if I stood on stage with them now, Ogami thought. Of course, one of the two had already left this world, and the other's whereabouts were unknown, but still.
As he continued watching their rehearsals through the videos, Ogami eventually stopped following only Sumika, and came to appreciate the plays themselves. He got accustomed to the grammar of theater, which differed from that of films and TV shows, and found his own enjoyment in it. In essence, this is a form of expression that asks for an active attitude from its viewers. If you aren't actively sharing in their madness, you might as well be watching the stage from 100 meters away.
One night, while watching a video with the detective and grabbing popcorn as usual, the video suddenly stopped. Ogami wondered if the projector had broken, but the detective showed no response. Focusing his eyes, he realized that the actor had just wordlessly frozen in place, and time was indeed passing on screen at the same rate as reality.
The actor in question was Sumika. She stood dumbfounded in the center of the stage. Looking up at a point in the sky, she was completely and utterly still. Ogami knew from having repeatedly seen the play that this silence was not part of the script.
Until then, Sumika had never forgotten her lines and tripped over her words. Even if she did forget, she should have been fully capable of ad-libbing something.
As Ogami was beginning to wonder if something had happened off-camera, Sumika returned to her performance as if nothing had happened.
"What was that about?", Ogami asked the detective. "That wasn't like her."
"I don't know," the detective said. "I wasn't present for this. It's certainly a strange mistake to see from her. Or maybe something was going on that forced the play to stop."
"When is this footage from?"
"Around autumn two years ago."
That autumn would be around the time Sumika started to take the teacher's place. But it was difficult to determine the relationship between that and this footage.
The video ended, and the screen went back to the startup menu. The detective lit a cigarette, and Ogami followed suit. The smoke in the air was made whiter by the light of the projector. The ashtray on the folding table was filled with both their cigarette butts.
"What was it about Sumika that charmed you?", the detective asked Ogami.
Ogami waffled over how to answer for a while, but decided to be honest.
"She reached out to me when I was troubled. That was in my first year of middle school."
"Troubled in what way?"
"I was isolated in class for saying something I should've kept to myself. She was the only one who came to speak to me during that."
"I see," the detective said. Then he smiled slightly. "I can picture it."
"What was it about her that charmed you?", Ogami asked back.
"She told me I was cool."
"You must be used to hearing that."
"Yes, you're exactly right," he admitted. "But in her case, it wasn't just that."
Then he quoted Sumika's words, as if reading out a poem.
You're always so cool, all by yourself.
Shall I make you uncool?
After smoking his cigarette to its base and pushing it into the ashtray, he spoke again. "It's a trite line when I say it like that, but those were the exact words I'd been wanting to hear for a long time. Though of course, I didn't realize that until she actually told me them. And she performed those words incredibly effectively. Much like she did for you, I'm sure."
Ogami was surprised by his used of the word "performed." "So you recognize that Sumika's affectionate behavior was an act?"
The detective nodded. "By no means do I think she earnestly loved me, nor do I think she was fully innocent. I just believe her death wasn't a suicide. It's a fact that she was having relations with six men at once. I'm surely no more than one of the people she used."
He then turned toward the heater and rubbed his hands together over it.
"It might sound like nothing but crying sour grapes, but I saw through Sumika's act from the start. I understood from the moment we started hanging out that the girl I was seeing was just a mirror reflecting my ideal, and the real her was lurking far behind that mirror. But it didn't matter if it was a mirror or what. As long as it was comforting for me."
The projector automatically turned itself off, and the room went dark. Neither of them went to turn on the lights. The detective's shape became lost in the darkness, with only the heater's "on" light illuminating the area.
"When Sumika gave up being my ideal girl, I didn't see it as her showing her true colors. Maybe you could say it was her act moving to its next phase. All I thought was, so she's decided to perform as a girl who I hate next. That's why I didn't feel any particular sadness. In fact, maybe the strongest emotion I felt was doubt. What was she trying to accomplish with this series of acts she was putting on?"
He went silent then, awaiting Ogami's reply. But Ogami's mouth stayed closed.
And it wasn't because he couldn't support the detective's opinion.
"To Sumika, even the troupe's destruction was probably just part of a process," the detective mused. "I can't imagine what she was aiming for past that, but it surely wouldn't have been suicide, at least. She didn't care for absurdist theater. She liked her tragedies clear-cut and her comedies clear-cut. When a character died, she wanted there to be a necessity to it. That's why I think the seeming lack of consistency to her actions in life means her play was unintentionally cut short."
After he finished, the detective stood up and turned on the lights.
It felt like the faint presence of Sumika that had been drifting in the darkness was dispersed in that moment.
Ogami gave a short comment on the detective's thoughts. "There's a surprisingly rational line of logic to that theory."
He smiled cheerfully. "You might be the only one who thinks so. All the troupe members look at me like I'm crazy."
"Being rational and being crazy aren't necessarily contradictory," noted Ogami.
The evening they finished watching the final video with Sumika, Ogami made a serious error. While helping the detective pack up the projector, and asking him where to put the cords, he carelessly called him "Kujirai."
The detective wouldn't just let that slide. He stopped what he was doing and slowly turned to Ogami.
"So you were close enough with him for that name to naturally slip out," he said calmly. "Did you keep quiet about it because you didn't want undue suspicion?"
"That's part of it," Ogami admitted. "But it's not like I was trying to protect the guy. Me and Kujirai being friends was back in middle school, and there was nothing there that would relate to Sumika's death. So I thought it didn't really need revealing."
The detective spoke after a short silence. "I believe you."
The two left the room with the projector and loaded it into the black four-by-four.
"In your eyes, Ogami, what sort of man was Kujirai?"
"He's a little like you."
"Well now," the detective said with interest. "So did he seem like the kind of person who'd kill Sumika?"
"Not a chance," Ogami immediately replied. "Now if Sumika had asked him to kill her, that's another story."
"It seemed you trusted him a fair bit."
"It's different from trust. It's an objective fact. He simply wasn't that kind of person."
The detective nodded. "But you know, the type of person who could kill someone isn't the only type who kills people."
His car drove away, and after its tail lights were out of view, Ogami thought back on his own words from earlier.
If Sumika had asked him to kill her.
Were he to hypothesize Kujirai as the culprit, that felt entirely valid as a motive. Seeing a person he cared for since childhood slowly lose her sparkle must have been hard for Kujirai to bear. If Sumika herself had requested it of him, he might have carried it out without hesitation. Like picking a wilting flower, gently putting it between paper, and making it a pressed flower to preserve it.
When he felt too restless to sit around in his room, it was always Ogami's custom to get in the car. He'd think about what to do and his destination once he was inside. That impulse only ever struck him at night, so most places were already closed. Thus, his destinations tended to be a similar bunch of places.
Since coming back to the Town of Sakura, one of his common destinations was a bathhouse along the highway. It wasn't too close nor too far from the apartment, and most importantly, it was open until late at night. Whenever he went home after soaking in a spacious bath, he was able to sleep soundly that night.
He used the bathhouse again that night, and sat on a wicker chair in the lobby to cool off his warmed body. It was around 11 PM, the quietest period in which the night customers switched out for the midnight customers. Closing his eyes, he sensed the smell of the old building. A mix of wood, tatami mats, cigarette smoke, sweat, all sorts of things.
When the woman came into the building, Ogami was moments away from drifting to sleep. So he didn't even notice her coming straight toward him from the lockers.
"Excuse me," she said to Ogami.
Looking up, Ogami saw a refined-looking woman standing in front of him. She looked in her mid-thirties, had a medium build, and her dry hair was tied back simply in a bun. She looked irritated with something, but maybe that was just how she always looked.
The woman had spoken to Ogami, but seeming to have not considered anything past that, stood frozen in silence for a while. Then as if suddenly having an idea, she opened her handbag and dug around, then produced something to offer to him.
It was a light-pink envelope.
After a beat, Ogami's heart started racing.
He felt the ground shaking beneath his feet.
I made a mistake somewhere, he thought. I must have let my guard down. The System once again judged me to be a weakling who needed the support of a Sakura.
Of course, his story didn't make logical sense if you stopped to think about it; as Kasumi's Sakura, he wouldn't be assigned a Sakura of his own, and Sakura are never to reveal themselves in front of high-risk individuals. But having just woken up, his mind didn't make it that far.
If she hadn't quickly corrected his misunderstanding, Ogami might have fled in the next moment.
"I'm Kasumi Takasago's prompter," the woman said. "Like you, Mr. Ogami."
Ogami's slightly-hovering body settled back in the chair, and he let out a large sigh.
He could feel the cold sweat running down his sides.
The woman put the envelope away in her bag, and quietly sat down in the wicker chair next to Ogami's.
"Why do you think I'm one, too?", Ogami asked first.
"Because there's no chance I would be chosen as a prompter and you wouldn't," the woman said. "My apologies for tailing you. There'd be a risk of Ms. Kasumi seeing me elsewhere. Here, this is me."
The woman handed him a business card. It was a monochrome card with no frills, with just the word "Educator" and the name of the high school she worked at. Ogami put the card in his pocket without making particular note of the woman's name. He didn't even want to know the names of Sakura other than him.
"I've been Kasumi Takasago's homeroom teacher since last spring," she informed him, supplementing the info on the card. "I was selected as her prompter around September. Since then, I've been striving to prevent her from taking her own life. I recognize it's rude, but I came to check a few things with you."
This was the second "teacher" Ogami had met since returning to the Town of Sakura. Since this one seemed to be an actual teacher by occupation, he decided to refer to her as "the educator" for convenience, to differentiate her from the troupe's "teacher."
"Aren't you supposed to be forbidden from revealing yourself as a prompter?"
"That's correct. However, these are circumstances where those rules have to bend."
"Meaning?"
"Are you aware of how many prompters Kasumi has had before you?"
Ogami was briefly at a loss for words. "You mean it's not just us two?"
"That's right," the educator confirmed. "I'm not aware of the exact number, but even just counting those I've confirmed, there are three besides you. Including those I haven't confirmed, it's six."
"Six people," Ogami repeated out of surprise. That was a situation where you could rightly expect every person who's friendly with you to be a Sakura. "Is that even possible?"
"I've never heard of such a circumstance before either. Hers must be quite the special case."
Ogami thought it over for a bit, then spoke. "Supposing it's true she has six prompters, and her suicide risk is high enough to warrant it, doesn't it seem like we've passed the time for prompters?"
"Then would you forcibly drag Ms. Kasumi into involuntary hospitalization?", the educator said in a rigid tone. "On the surface, she looks entirely normal. We can't intervene to that degree based solely on the System's diagnosis."
"Do you suppose her parents know? That their daughter's been assigned a whole crowd of prompters."
"Who can say. It's such an unprecedented thing, after all."
The educator didn't appear to be lying. Nor did she look like the type to decide things based on assumptions. For now, he'd just have to accept her statements as the truth.
With Ogami's questions done, this time the educator started asking.
"Numerous prompters have failed to become good friends for Ms. Kasumi up to now. And I'm one of them. Mr. Ogami, you alone are succeeding at forming an ideal relationship with her. What sets you apart from the other prompters, I wonder?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's because I feel the least will to save her. She's attuned to that sort of forced behavior."
"I see..." The educator seemed a little disappointed by Ogami's answer. "What are you thinking regarding the cause of Ms. Kasumi's suicidal thoughts?"
"Just looking at it straightforwardly, it'd probably be her sister's death. She seemed to revere her like a god."
"That's true. But don't you think there's more to it than that?"
The quiet hour ended, and more guests started coming and going. They were largely people who came by themselves, and passed by Ogami and the educator without even a glance.
"It's true, the death of family is a sad thing," she said with sympathy in her voice. "I have experience with that myself. It's all the sadder when it's someone for whom you had a special adoration. However, all emotions come to a peak. Once that point is overcome, even intense feelings that seemed they would never tire will slowly weaken."
Ogami was about to object, but finding that maybe she was right now that she mentioned it, he shut his mouth. His grudge for Sumika still remained, running deep enough to make him plot a substitute revenge on Kasumi. But whether his emotions remained as intense as they were back then was something he couldn't say decisively and with confidence.
"She is young. She has strong problem-solving capabilities, and is skilled at controlling her emotions. In addition, by gaining an ideal friend in you, she seems to be gaining enthusiasm for life lately. At a glance, everything seems to be going well. Yet in spite of this, her prompters seem to be multiplying even now. Mr. Ogami, you are not her final prompter. Given this, I have to think there is a cause besides her sister's death."
"You don't think it's the System being faulty?"
"That was what I questioned first. That perhaps Ms. Kasumi possesses some factor that the System tends to misinterpret, and this was brought on by a mistaken diagnosis. From what I've researched, such a case can't be entirely ruled out. But in the event of repeated unnatural diagnoses, the System is supposed to quickly correct its standards."
"Then maybe it's just slow to make that correction."
"Indeed, I pray that's the case," the educator said. "This winter marks my last chance to be Ms. Kasumi's prompter. Once she graduates and leaves high school, I'll surely be removed from duty. We have only a weak connection. In the end, I was unable to do anything teacherly nor anything prompter-like for her. So I thought I should at least tell you what I knew, given that you're likely to continue accompanying her."
The educator bowed her head deeply and left. What a dutiful person, Ogami admired. I've never seen such a stand-up teacher. No, actually, maybe there were teachers I've met who were as finely-intentioned as her. Maybe some of my teachers' hearts ached seeing me lie low in the corner of class and not make any friends, wanting to do something for me somehow.
He'd gotten chilly, so he decided to go warm up his body again. Dipping into the bath up to his shoulders, he closed his eyes and let the heat slowly permeate to his core. And he thought back on his conversation with the educator.
What must it feel like to be surrounded by six Sakura? I wouldn't be able to bear it. Heck, it sounds like a living nightmare. Of course, Kasumi herself probably hadn't noticed that, but what would happen if I told her?
No, there's no need to tell her everything. In fact, it was more convenient to let her think I was her only Sakura. The shock of learning she had six would only soften the wounds from each individual betrayal. To increase the purity of being betrayed by everyone she trusted, I ought to claim I'm her only Sakura.
Just like Sumika back then, Kasumi seemed to show no resistance to letting Ogami watch her sleep. She'd say "My body feels sluggish today" or "I couldn't sleep well last night," and frequently use Ogami's room for napping. Seeing her fall asleep in no time after lying down on his futon, it seemed that her being sleep-deprived was no lie.
So he'd had plenty of chances. That day, Kasumi fell asleep while having a frivolous chat with Ogami. He laid her down on the futon, then picked up her smartphone on the low table. After double-checking that Kasumi was sound asleep, he touched the power button.
It was locked with a good old passcode. Not getting his hopes up too much, Ogami entered Sumika's birthday. He didn't like that he still remembered it even now, but it came to his aid in that moment. He unlocked the phone in one try, and a home screen appeared that looked untouched from the factory settings.
He felt anxious about how easily he'd broken through, wondering if it suggested there was some trap laid for him, but he couldn't be turning back at this point. He went into any app that seemed like it might contain private information and gave it a check. They were all abnormally clean for the phone of a girl her age, making him wonder if this was a secondary phone used for work. Come to think of it, Ogami realized he'd hardly ever seen her use her smartphone except to make calls.
Just as he was about to give up and put the phone to sleep, he remembered a place he hadn't looked. He'd neglected to check the photos. Despite being the first thing you ought to check if you wanted to learn private information, it was so basic that he'd overlooked it.
He opened the photo album.
And he gasped.
The screen was filled with photos of Sumika.
No matter how far back he scrolled, he could find nothing but photos of Sumika. And it was thorough. Not only was there no sign of Kasumi herself, there wasn't even any trace of her parents or people who looked like friends. He couldn't even find any photos of scenery or food.
That said, it wasn't like it was all that unexpected to Ogami. He was aware that Kasumi's attachment toward her sister was extreme, and had noticed her lack of interest in anything else. With Sumika leaving this world, it seemed that attachment had practically entered the realm of worship.
But as he was looking at one of the photos, a cold chill ran up Ogami's spine.
The date on the photo was around summer of last year. If Ogami remembered right, it was one week after Sumika died.
And even past the date on that photo, photos of Sumika had been taken daily, without fail.
It was a ghost album.
But when he enlarged the photo to examine the details, that notion quickly fell apart. Through makeup, hairstyle, and angle, it was cleverly made to appear like Sumika, but it was no more than Kasumi in disguise.
Why was she continuing to take such photos? To meet her sister, no doubt. By transforming into her sister to update the album, she could immerse herself in the illusion that Sumika was still alive.
He felt like he'd finally gotten to catch a glimpse of her pathology.
After Kasumi woke up and Ogami took her home, he returned to the apartment to eat dinner by himself. When he went to have a drink after eating, he found the bottle empty, so he walked to a nearby liquor store to buy some more. Yet it was long past the store's closing time, and there was nowhere else within walking distance where he could expect to buy some alcohol. Giving up, he headed back to the apartment.
While walking through the night, he casually glanced at a bulletin board on a street corner, and a suicide-prevention poster caught his eye. It was the same kind as the one he'd seen posted in the supermarket's rest area.
He initially walked right past the bulletin board, but rethinking it, he walked back and stood in front of it. There was a phone number on the poster, which Ogami memorized. Thanks to the use of a simple mnemonic, he didn't even need to write it down.
Even after getting back to the room, he hesitated to call for a while. He sipped on the tiny bit of whiskey left at the bottom of the bottle, and smoked a cigarette under the ventilation fan. Around the time he finished that, the light in his room suddenly went out. It seemed his lightbulb had reached the end of its lifespan. Luckily, a small light in the kitchen still survived. But the room becoming darker made the cold feel that much more severe.
Ogami took his smartphone, and dialed the number he had memorized earlier.
Of course, he wasn't calling to actually talk through suicidal feelings; he had a different objective in mind.
The call was picked up right away. This is the phone consultation center, a man's voice responded. It wasn't too high nor too low, not too distant and not too familiar, a voice that comforted the listener. A voice suited for recitation, skilled at reading not just lines, but other kinds of writing as well.
"What would you like to discuss today?", the counselor asked.
"I have a friend who seems like they might be considering suicide," Ogami said. After saying it, he realized it sounded exactly as if he were doing a consultation on behalf of someone who was resistant to calling a suicide hotline. Not that there was any real problem with him being misunderstood. "Is a case like this acceptable for consultation?"
"Of course," the counselor confirmed. From his tone of voice, Ogami could tell he was giving a deep affirmation. "In fact, from certain perspectives, it's more desirable than consulting with the person themselves. There's only so much we counselors can do, but there's much someone in a position like yours can do. You're able to give them that support."
"Is that right?"
"Indeed, so please, don't hesitate to discuss it."
"This friend - she's a girl - a relative of hers killed herself a little while ago. It seems like she still hasn't escaped that sadness even now, so while she seems cheerful at a glance, there are also sudden moments where she looks very precarious."
"Precarious in what way?"
"More than wanting to die, it's like she wants to assimilate with the dead... I'm not really sure how to put it."
"No, I understand that well," the counselor said with sympathy. Indeed, his voice carried genuine sympathy, not a professional "listening and sympathizing." At least, Ogami heard it that way. Maybe this counselor actually did understand. To prove it, he tried rephrasing Ogami's words. "It may be a slightly inappropriate expression, but... it's not that she's trying to end her life, but that she's longing for the grave."
"I see. It might be something close to that."
"Could you describe your friend some more?"
"She's rather young, but she's rational and sometimes takes the long view on things; for someone like that, I'd expect suicide to be the furthest thing from her mind. Yet, when it comes to said relative, she can do things that defy common sense."
"Has anyone other than yourself noticed the crisis your friend is in?"
Ogami recalled his conversation with the educator. "There are several. However, I'm the only one of them she's close with."
"I see," the counselor assented. "So that's what made you call. You made the right decision not to try and resolve it on your own."
After a thoughtful pause, the counselor continued.
"From what I've heard, I imagine your friend having someone like you nearby is, in itself, her greatest protection. You have the affection to want to do something for her, calmness to look at the situation objectively, and you're able to ask for help instead of overestimating your own abilities. You're an ideal individual."
"And yet, her condition seems to be worsening by the day."
"It's easy to imagine that without you there, she would have died already," the counselor said encouragingly. "Currently, you are the one most contributing to her survival, and you're fulfilling that duty to the utmost. My concern, rather, is that you may push yourself too much and break before she does. You seem like a deeply responsible sort, after all."
What a way with words this guy has, Ogami quietly admired. He might be able to easily coax someone who's been cornered into a situation that's given them tunnel vision.
"And also, suicidal thoughts can be contagious. Just as you have an influence on her, she has an influence on you. The more cordial you are to others, the more that influence can take hold. It's not uncommon to try to pull someone up, yet find yourself being pulled down with them."
"That's true. I'll be sure to be careful of that," Ogami said. "Although, you're mistaken about me being deeply responsible."
"That's how all truly responsible people think," the counselor said with a laugh.
"See, I'm her prompter."
He could sense the counselor's expression freezing over the phone.
"I don't have a serious will to save her. I'm accepting the duty out of curiosity for now, but who knows when I'll abandon it."
The counselor fell silent. This time, the silence didn't feel carefully calculated like before.
"I see," the counselor said at length. "It must have been hard not being able to open up about it to anyone else. These conversations are private, so please be at ease."
"Is that right? Well then, I'll be completely frank and speak without reservations," Ogami said. He could feel himself getting a dark enjoyment out of this conversation. "This girl in danger of suicide, her name is Kasumi Takasago."
Again, the call went silent. It was a heavy, tactile silence.
That convinced Ogami that he'd hit the nail on the head.
...Since my sister died, both my mother and father have been doing a lot of volunteer work. For suicide prevention, you see. You know, talking with people about their troubles over the phone. Apparently a lot of people who need support like that call late at night. So the real work begins after everyone's gone to sleep.
The counselor finally opened his mouth. "Did you hear from Kasumi that I was working as a counselor here?"
"That's right," Ogami said. "Though I didn't imagine I'd hit the jackpot in one try."
"You're working as Kasumi's prompter," Kasumi's father said to confirm, "and you called to tell me that?"
Despite having just been informed his daughter was at risk of suicide, he had already returned to his usual calm.
"Could it be you already knew?", Ogami asked.
"No, it's not like that," Kasumi's father quietly denied. "It's just, I thought it was probably something like that. It's an unfortunate thing."
He phrased it as if lamenting the misfortune of a friend he wasn't particularly close to.
"Is there perhaps something you know?"
"No, nothing like that. It's just..."
His voice suddenly cut off. Ogami thought he'd put down the receiver, but listening close, he still heard some faint noises.
"Is it all right if I call you again later?", Kasumi's father proposed, then continued in a lower voice: "It's difficult to talk about it here..."
Ogami pictured a place like a call center, with rows of operators. Even if they got more calls late at night, it surely wasn't like they were always on the phone. Maybe some unoccupied counselors were listening in on his conversation.
"Understood," Ogami said. "Later, then."
Sorry, said Kasumi's father, then hung up.
The return call came an hour later. First, he apologized for the delay. I'm in a place without anyone else around now, so we can talk freely, he said.
"Where are you calling from?", Ogami asked out of curiosity. It surely wasn't from home, at least.
"A phone booth," Kasumi's father replied. "It's on an street so empty, it's almost bizarre that they set up a phone booth here. Whenever I passed by, I'd wondered who on Earth would call from a place like this, but I never expected to be using it myself."
"Are you always doing consultation this late every night?"
"Not as often as that. Only for about half the week. Chatbots never take a day off, so a good one can respond to people anytime. Even so, there are many people who want a real conversation partner for discussions of this nature, so we have to answer the call, so to speak."
"That kind of volunteer work is generally unpaid, isn't it?"
"That's correct. It's a very difficult problem," he said gravely. "But speaking to my personal experience, I feel I get sufficient value out of it. Not that I took this job expecting something in return by any means, but I've learned many things from my exchanges with the people who call."
"Like what, for example?"
"Well, for instance..." He paused to take a breath. "That in the end, we can only save those with no desire to kill themselves."
Ogami first chose to take those words literally.
"But aren't people with suicidal thoughts the only ones who call?"
"That's surely how they recognize themselves," he said with a roundabout turn of phrase. "Of course, this has nothing to do with off-base claims like "the kinds of people who say they have suicidal urges don't actually kill themselves." What I mean to say is, many people who call are mistaking something similar as suicidal urges. Our role is to gently correct that misunderstanding in such a way that they don't even notice."
"And what if it's not a misunderstanding?"
"Then there is almost nothing we can do. Beyond offer words of pity like "you've done well to make it this far," I suppose."
"And it's not a misunderstanding in Kasumi's case," Ogami inferred. "Is that how it is?"
Kasumi's father neither confirmed nor denied it. So Ogami slightly altered the question.
"What about with Sumika? When did she start showing signs like that?"
"With Sumika, hmm..." He spoke bit by bit, as if retracing his memories. "I'm still uncertain when she started having such thoughts. It's possible the System detected it early and assigned her a prompter, but unless that person comes forth personally, we have no way of confirming that. We - my wife and I - only noticed something wrong with Sumika about a month before she took her life."
Sumika's suicide was half a year ago, in August. So this would have been around July.
"I believe it was drizzling that night, as the rainy season was on its way out. All of a sudden, we were contacted by the college Sumika went to. They were calling to confirm if the signatures on the withdrawal form Sumika had given them were indeed from her parents. Naturally, this was completely out of the blue to us. I hurried to contact Sumika, but my wife stopped me. She said that directly questioning her would be pointless; after all, she was going as far as to forge our signatures to drop out of college, and didn't even try discussing it with us first. So we should calmly wait and see for now. And indeed, she was right. Sumika was always an obedient girl, but once she decided on something, she wouldn't give it up. Us trying to convince her would only ensure she'd never be convinced."
"Even so, I decided I would try going to see Sumika. I came up with a few reasonable excuses, and went by myself to visit her apartment. I intended to not bring up the withdrawal form, nor even ask "how college was going" with feigned ignorance, but just have a light chat with her for a few minutes. I didn't let her know in advance I'd be visiting. I hadn't really contacted her about prior visits to her apartment, so I thought suddenly doing it this time would only invite suspicion."
He took a breath there in a way that resembled a sigh.
"Sumika wasn't at home. And yet, the door was unlocked. At first I thought she might have been pretending not to be there, but when I entered the room calling her name, I found it completely empty. Not just in the sense that the room's owner wasn't there. There was nothing there; not a bed, a table, drawers, a bookshelf, a refrigerator, a microwave, a washing machine. There was only a futon laid out in the corner of the room. It hadn't been in that state when I visited before, of course. It had been an entirely typical room for a young girl to be living in."
Ogami was reminded of Sumika's room - the one that now belonged to Kasumi.
"It looked to me like the cleaned-out room of a person who had resolved to die. By then, Sumika had caused an incident with the acting troupe she belonged to, forcing it to dissolve - are you familiar with that?"
"Yes, I heard from Kasumi."
"Thinking about it now, that was probably just another part of the "cleaning" she did. She was trying to cut ties with everything she belonged to and become unfettered. The fact she so thoroughly destroyed the troupe, paradoxically, may have been because she felt such a strong bond with them that anything less couldn't sever it."
"I see," Ogami remarked. This felt like the simplest and most logical theory he'd heard so far.
"Seeing that this was happening, I couldn't take a leisurely view. My wife and I did everything we could to prevent Sumika's suicide. We asked many people for assistance in not letting her isolate herself. But she kept escaping from place to place as if she'd already planned against all of it, solemnly continuing her process of cleaning. And at last, she'd abandoned everything but her family blood ties."
"Ultimately, we were left no other choice but to forcibly bring Sumika back home and keep her under 24-hour surveillance. We paid even more caution to her than when she was a baby, dedicating our lives to preserving hers. I don't recall letting up for a single moment. And yet in spite of it all, we couldn't prevent her suicide. We realized she had vanished, and the next time we saw her, her life had been lost. When she seriously set out to do something, no one could stop her."
He went silent there. As if expecting agreement from Ogami. Or perhaps wanting some words of sympathy. But Ogami said nothing. He wasn't even quite sure how to take the man's story.
"Kasumi resembles Sumika quite a bit," her father said after some time. "And I feel a similar air about Kasumi now as I did from Sumika back then. In fact, I might call it the very same. If it's come to this, there's nothing more that we can do. Only watch over her so that she can spend her last days carefree."
"So you're bravely giving up on Kasumi, and dedicating yourself to saving the other lives you can save?"
"If you prefer to put it in such an ironic way, then yes, that's how it is."
Like daughter, like father, Ogami thought.
"Do you suppose Kasumi's suicidal urges were caused by Sumika's death?", Ogami asked.
"What are your thoughts?", Kasumi's father asked back.
"I just can't bring myself to think it's only that. Although I couldn't tell you why I feel that way."
To that, he let out a small breath. It didn't sound entirely unlike a voiceless laugh.
"I think your instinct is probably correct," he said. "But to speak honestly, my wife and I don't want to know about it."
"You don't want to know?"
"Forgive the vagueness, but... apparently, just before Sumika took her own life, she seemingly did something horrifying. It's possible Kasumi had some part in it as well. And yet, now that it's too late for them both, we don't feel any desire to uncover the truth of that."
"Sounds pretty irresponsible to me."
"Indeed. It is irresponsible. And you'll fail to fulfill your responsibility as a prompter too, won't you?"
Ogami couldn't say anything back after being told that. Because he never had any desire to fulfill that responsibility to begin with.
"Please don't trouble yourself over not being able to save Kasumi. She's been dead from the start. You've been holding onto a dead girl's hand."
With that, Kasumi's father hung up.
A dead girl's hand, huh, Ogami thought after lying down in bed.
That hand was far warmer than mine.