The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories (11 page)

“So in the end you didn't go, right?”

Miyamoto shrugged, and fiddled with the lighter in his hand. “What could I do? I'd just started at the bar, so no way could I take time off already. The first weeks are crucial, see? And anyway, I never thought he'd go and kill himself. He never said anything about suicide.”

“He says here that he was scared to go on living.”

“Isn't everyone? Life in Tokyo is tough.”

There was something flippant about the way he said this. Perhaps it was “cool” for youngsters to make light of serious issues. Sawaki did not know whether to put it down to youthful self-consciousness or to pluck. All he did know was that Shinkichi Yoshizawa did not have the ability to make fun of life.

“Why do you think he killed himself?”

“How should I know?” retorted Miyamoto rolling his eyes up at the ceiling. “I can't be expected to know what someone else was feeling.”

“What sort of person would you say Yoshizawa was?”

“A good guy. Strong, but kind. Although you could say that was his problem. These days, the bad guys tend to win out.”

These days, huh?

Sawaki smiled sourly. What sort of worldview did this youngster have? And what about poor Yoshizawa?

“But it's a bummer he died,” muttered Miyamoto under his breath, then turned to Toku and smiled. “Would you prefer some Coke?” There wasn't even a trace of a shadow behind his smile. He appeared absolutely unaffected by the death of his friend. Sawaki realized that any further questioning would be fruitless, but he wanted to find out who the third letter had been written to. When he asked Miyamoto whether he had any idea at all who it could be, the youth thought for a moment.

“It must have been her.”

“Her?”

“Akiko Shimojo. There's a bakery near the laundry in Asakusa. She's the daughter of the people who run it. She's quite cute, and he seemed to have a thing for her.”

Sawaki asked for the name of the shop and was on his way out with Toku when Miyamoto turned to her and said smoothly, “One of these days, with your permission, I would like to visit Shinkichi's grave.” He was hardly sincere in the way he said it, yet Toku politely bowed her head and said, “Thank you.”

Unfortunately a “Closed” sign hung in the window of Shimojo Confectioners in the Senzoku district of Asakusa. Sawaki tried ringing the bell just in case, but there was no answer. Reluctantly he decided to try again the following day. He put Toku in a taxi back to the inn in Ueno and then dropped by the newspaper office.

After listening to Sawaki's account, the desk editor, as might have been predicted, grimaced. “Not much to go on, is there?” he commented. “It all hangs on why he committed suicide. Look, I let you go for it because you said it wouldn't be just a broken heart or money problems or anything like that. You said it was a social issue affecting all the kids brought into the city from the provinces on the recruitment program. But now you're telling me you haven't dug up anything specific, and not even the mother's angry about losing her only son. Doesn't sound like you've got much of a story!”

“I know, I know,” said Sawaki resignedly. He was far from satisfied himself. He had managed to find two of the letters, but however many times he read them, he could not find any motive for suicide in them. And then there was Toku's attitude. Why wasn't she angry?

“How about turning up the heat on her a bit?” asked the desk editor, tapping the end of his pencil on the desk. “Tomorrow you're going to meet the recipient of the last letter, right?”

“Assuming the third letter was addressed to Akiko Shimojo.”

“Right. If she had replied, then surely Yoshizawa wouldn't have killed himself. His mother must be feeling angry and resentful that she didn't bother. You've got to provoke her into showing that. Get Toku to slap that girl's face. If you get a photo like that, I'll be able to use it. I'll caption it ‘Rage of a mother robbed of her son'.”

“But that doesn't help us know what it was that robbed a young man of his life, you know.”

“So find out. Quickly.”

“Yeah, alright.” Sawaki shrugged, and then produced the toy monkey he had borrowed off Toku. “I don't know why, but Yoshizawa was clutching this when he died.”

“A cheap toy like this?” The desk editor turned it over in his stubby fingers examining it, then wound it up. The toy monkey started crashing the cymbals together, but it sounded far feebler than it had in Hokuriku, perhaps because of the surrounding hubbub of the city news office.

“Simple,” said the desk editor absentmindedly. Sawaki stared at him blankly. “This toy,” he jutted his chin at it, “must have been a present from some girl he liked. That's why it was so important to him. He probably got it from that Akiko Shimojo.”

It was clear that the desk editor had formed a specific image of Shinkichi Yoshizawa as a virtuous but timid and sentimental young man. Sawaki recalled what Kiichiro Fujishima had said about it being symbolic of Yoshizawa's feminization. For all the commentator's high-blown language, his image of Yoshizawa was probably not so very different to the desk editor's now.

Sawaki was not so sure. This was partly due to his cautious nature, but it also had to do with being directly involved in the investigation. Having seen with his own eyes the dark sea in Hokuriku where the young man had chosen to die, and having spent two days with Toku, he was reluctant to make any hasty judgments.

Sawaki gazed doubtfully at the toy monkey, now still. Was it really as the desk editor claimed, that Yoshizawa had treasured it up until the moment he died because he had been given it by some girl he liked? Was that all it was?

The next day, Sawaki took a company car and went to pick up Toku from the inn in Ueno. When he asked the maid how Toku had been. She said she had spent all the time shut up in her room and had not taken even a single step outside. Unaware of the circumstances, the dissatisfied maid complained, “I suggested she visit Sensoji temple in Asakusa, but she didn't even do that.” Sawaki tried to imagine how Toku must have looked, but all he could see was that stiff, hard expression of hers. What Sawaki wanted to know was what lay beyond that stony face, but he was not at all confident he would discover it today, either.

When Toku came downstairs, she bowed deeply to Sawaki and said, “I'm sorry for all the trouble I'm causing you.”

Her face showed signs of exhaustion, and her eyes were redrimmed and bloodshot. She probably had not slept well last night, thought Sawaki, but he deliberately did not express any sympathy as he took her out to the car. If Toku's nerves were on edge, there was more likelihood of getting her to slap the girl's face as the desk editor was hoping. He was also concerned that by hiding her feelings and putting her defenses up, any misplaced sympathy would result in those defenses becoming even more impenetrable. Today he felt it better to keep an eye on Toku from a distance. That way he might get to see her true feelings.

Today Shimojo Confectioners was open. It was almost noon by the time they arrived there, and the shop was crowded with local office workers, male and female.

Sawaki waited for the shop to clear before taking Toku in. He handed his business card to the middle-aged woman behind the counter, and asked after Akiko. The woman looked at Sawaki, and then again at his business card before replying, “My daughter is not back from work yet.”

Her expression revealed curiosity tinged with wariness, no doubt because of the newspaper's name printed on the business card. When he asked whether he could meet Akiko, the woman replied that she would be home after six o'clock.

“She started at M Trading a couple of weeks ago. That's in Marunouchi—” She seemed proud that her daughter was employed at a well-known company. The way she had emphasized Marunouchi, the upmarket business district around Tokyo Station, gave her a rather old-fashioned air.

Sawaki introduced Toku to her. The woman did not appear to recognize Shinkichi Yoshizawa's name at first, but when Sawaki mentioned the name of the laundry she at last went “Ah! Is he the one who committed suicide recently?”

“That's right,” assented Sawaki, his heart sinking. From her reaction, it did not appear that the relationship between Akiko and Shinkichi had been all that strong. Even if Akiko had been the recipient of the third letter, they would probably be none the wiser about the reason for his suicide.

Sawaki and Toku left the shop intending to return soon after six o'clock. In the intervening hours, Sawaki showed Toku around Asakusa's Sensoji temple and Space Tower. However, Toku never once relaxed her rigid expression. She followed Sawaki around in silence, showing no irritation or any other emotion even when he turned his camera on her.

When they returned to the bakery, Akiko Shimojo was back from work. Just as Miyamoto had said, she was cute, with a round face, and about eighteen or nineteen years of age.

“I heard you work at M Trading,” ventured Sawaki.

“It was so boring working in the bakery!” said Akiko innocently. “Working here I'd never meet anyone worth mentioning. The customers here are all liquor shop boys or sushi chefs. You get some office workers too, but they're all from small companies. A bunch of losers. That's why I joined M Trading. All the guys there went to university and have a future.”

Listening to her, Sawaki felt his mouth widening into a sardonic smile. Having worked in a laundry, Shinkichi Yoshizawa was exactly the sort of loser that Akiko would think not worth mentioning. Sawaki had introduced Toku as Shinkichi's mother, but that did not stop Akiko from saying such things to her face. He could not help smiling at her pluck. Perhaps such artlessness was considered “cool” these days.

“Did Shinkichi happen to send you a letter?”

“Letter?” repeated Akiko blankly. “Yeah, maybe,” she added vaguely. Jumping to her feet, she said she would go and look for it and disappeared inside. It was nearly ten minutes before she came back. “Here it is,” she said, handing over an unopened letter.

“Didn't you read it?” Sawaki asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's nothing to do with me.”

“What do you mean, nothing to do with you?”

“I mean I'm not interested. And besides, I'm dating someone else.”

“So he wasn't your boyfriend, then?”

“Boyfriend?” snickered Akiko. “He wasn't my type. He was a serious sort, but there's not much of a future working in a laundry, is there?”

She was not in the slightest bothered about how she said it. It seemed that “a future” was her mantra. In Akiko's mind, the opposite sex was apparently divided simply into two types: men with a future and men without. It seemed Shinkichi Yoshizawa had unfortunately been classified as the latter. And Akiko's new boyfriend was no doubt an elite employee of M Trading, a university graduate with a promising future. Sawaki was more amused than angry.

Wordlessly, Sawaki opened the envelope.

I'm in Hokuriku. The boss gave me some days off so I came here. Apparently he gave me special leave because I work so hard. At this rate, he said, in five or six years he'll be able to let me run the store. If I become a store manager, I'll earn easily 100,000 yen, I reckon. Of course, I won't be satisfied with just managing one small store. In the future, I plan to have my own store, make it into a company, and have a chain of stores all over Tokyo.

The reason I'm writing this to you Aki is that I want you to know what sort of guy I am. I want you to know that I'm not the sort of guy to be satisfied with working as an assistant in a laundry. People should dream big, right? Miyamoto told me you like sports cars, and I'm sure that one of these days I'll be able to buy one. I've already got my driver's license.

Aki, you really look like that actress, N—Miyamoto thinks she's childish and he doesn't like her, but I do. I think she's pure.

I'm going to stay here for a week. I'd really like for you to write me back while I'm here, Aki. Please tell me what you think of me. I find it difficult to say what I want whenever I meet you in Tokyo, so please write to me while I'm here.

Sawaki was dumbfounded. He had expected this of all the letters to be full of reproach, but if he had hoped to learn the reason for the suicide from it he was disappointed.

This letter did not reveal even a trace of the vague anxiety that permeated the other two. It reminded Sawaki of a rooster shaking its crest at a hen, flaunting itself to get attention. It was absolutely not the sort of letter you would expect from a young man about to commit suicide. Sawaki stared at Akiko, baffled. No two ways about it, this was a love letter.

“What does it say?” asked Akiko.

“That he's in love with you,” Sawaki answered, and she grinned.

“Then I should have read it after all.”

“Why's that?”

“Because it's fun!”

“But he killed himself.”

“Because of me?”