“Plus you won the match?”
“Yeah.”
We faced each other and smiled.
“But really, thank you,” Juri said. “Because of you, I can keep on living.”
“That’s a little extreme.”
“But it’s the truth…I guess I shouldn’t expect you to understand.” She tilted her head.
Our gazes met and, just like that, we kissed. Her lips were soft and slightly moist. I felt myself stiffening, but didn’t think of trying to undress her. It was always important to know when to quit. I had to cut off our relationship here. I shouldn’t be so wistful.
But still, just once more, for the last time, I held Juri’s body tightly. It seemed she’d lost some weight these past few days. “Thank you,” she whispered again as our bodies parted.
—
We got off the Coastal Way at Oiminami and headed to Shinagawa station. But instead of stopping there, I parked when a large hotel came into view on my left.
“Okay, one last review,” I said.
“Again? You’re so damn persistent.” Juri strained a laugh.
“Persistence is our lifeline. Please don’t complain—can we just do this?”
“When I woke up…” Her eyes grew distant. “I was lying inside a car. I think it was probably a Mercedes. My hands and feet weren’t tied up, and no one else was there. So I got out of the car. I was dizzy, but thinking that it was my last chance, I started running for my life. Because of that, I didn’t have the time to read the car’s plate. It seemed like I was in a parking lot. Actually, it was a hotel’s basement parking lot. I used an elevator to go to the lobby, but it was the middle of the night, so no one was there. I left through the front entrance and headed toward the taxi pickup. I didn’t think about whether I had money or not. I thought that as long as I got home, it would be okay.”
She grinned and looked at me. “Was there anything I got wrong?”
“No, that was perfect.” I gave her an okay sign. “You have the letter?”
“Yeah, I’m all set.”
I’d handed her a letter. The text, which I’d composed on my computer, read as follows:
To Mr. Katsutoshi Katsuragi,
We did indeed receive the ransom. As promised, we will return Juri Katsuragi.
The reason we did not act violently toward her will likely be made clear through her own mouth. We acknowledge that this transaction proceeded in a highly businesslike manner.
It was a fun game. We consider it nothing less than complete. After this, there will be no contact from us. We promise never to choose you as a player again.
From,
The Kidnappers
“Then it’s finally time,” I said.
“Yeah. Take care.”
“You too. Good luck.”
We shook hands. Her gaze lingering on our hands, Juri got out of the car. Thank you, goodbye—with those words, she closed the door. I moved the car out.
The city at night spread before me.
16
On Saturday I went on a date for the first time in a while. She was a twenty-four-year-old event companion. We feasted on Italian fare and had several cocktails at the hotel bar, but it didn’t develop into us staying over at the hotel. Even if we’d wanted to, there probably wouldn’t have been any open rooms. I’d always put in a reservation when I was confident I’d score, but I hadn’t made those preparations that night. It wasn’t because I wasn’t confident. For some reason it just felt like a pain.
Honestly, it wasn’t that I harbored any special feelings for the woman. Anyone could have been my date.
I was in a mood, so even eating wasn’t much fun, and I couldn’t get excited about talking. She was probably wondering until the end why I’d called her.
I couldn’t get Juri out of my head. What had happened since then? Oddly enough, there hadn’t been any reports at all about the case. By all rights, the press should’ve been having a party. The great Nissei Automobile’s executive vice president’s daughter had been kidnapped, and furthermore, the ransom had been stolen. It was hard to think that there was a gag order. The hostage had returned safe and sound, so the police, themselves, could transition to a public investigation. Shouldn’t they be making active use of the press?
When I parted from the event companion and got back to my room, I booted my computer and connected to the internet. I tried accessing the CPT Owners Club. Since successfully seizing the ransom, I hadn’t revisited it once.
I opened the bulletin board page. There was an endless stream of unrelated comments. Unrelated to Juri—actually, those were the legitimate ones.
My hand froze on my mouse. It was because I saw this post:
Please (Julie)
I wonder what’s happened to my dear car. They haven’t gotten in touch even though I paid the money and I wonder what’s happening.
The car’s owner, if you see this post, please contact me.
Please.
What did it mean?
When I looked at the date, it was from the night before. The text was no doubt begging that Juri be returned without delay. However, she should have safely returned to the Katsuragis.
Was it a trap?
That was possible—pretending that Juri hadn’t come home and hoping the culprits would resume contact.
But, I thought. Even if Juri hadn’t gotten home, that wasn’t the kidnappers’ problem. Wasn’t it incredibly naïve to expect them to reply? In fact, I felt no desire to take any sort of action.
But what if Juri hadn’t gotten home?
I thought that was the more likely possibility. I had dropped her off by a hotel in Shinagawa, but she might not have gotten in a taxi there. No, even if she had, there was no knowing if she’d headed on home. She hated the Katsuragis. She’d come into a lot of money and might have decided to just vanish.
If that were the case, it was a catastrophe. The psychology of a victim who’d been kidnapped and who’d finally gotten away from the culprits should have been to return to safety. Even if it wasn’t a very comfortable home, the Katsuragi residence had to be Juri’s sole refuge.
If Juri stayed missing, that would be fine. The truth would never come to light. But wouldn’t that be hard? Could a girl who was barely twenty keep her identity hidden? Even if she had a lot of money, without a certificate of residence or family register, how did she intend to live?
At this rate, the police would have to dive into an open investigation. Pictures of Juri’s face would likely appear all over Japan. TV stations wouldn’t leave the case alone. No matter how much Juri tried to conceal herself, she’d still have to go outside. She’d have to come into contact with people. Someone would definitely recognize her.
What performance did she intend to act out once she was in the custody of the police? Did she mean to start using, only then, the lines I’d fed her? It would be meaningless. The police would eventually suspect the kidnapping was a ruse. I didn’t think Juri could withstand their relentless interrogation. It was just a matter of time before she gave me up.
Unable to sit still, I took my coat in hand and ran out of the room. I was completely sober.
I got into the MR-S and headed towards Yokosuka yet again. If Juri were in hiding, I didn’t think it’d be anywhere other than that condo. The money was also hidden there.
Speeding down the expressway, I organized my next steps in my mind. Finding Juri came first. What would I do once I found her? At any rate, I’d have to make her go home, even if I needed to spank her. I could only spin the extended confinement as an outcome of the culprits’ extreme cautiousness.
Even so, if Juri had already met with someone, it was over. I didn’t think she could be that stupid, but what would I do in that case? My brain was in full gear, but I couldn’t think of a genius plan. I could only pray that she hadn’t seen anyone.
I arrived at Yuki’s condo. I parked my car a little ways away and walked from there. Wandering around a place like this was dangerous,
but leaving Juri alone was riskier. Whatever happened, I had to take her home.
Making sure that no one saw me, I approached the building. It was the middle of the night, so the superintendent probably wasn’t there. But the problem was that I didn’t know the room number. What I did know was the nickname Yuki.
The glass door of the entrance had been left open. It didn’t seem to be auto-locking. Just as I thought, the super wasn’t there. The mailboxes were lined up to the right. There were nametags on some but not all of them. Even when there was one, when it was just the surname it served me no use.
Mindful of my surroundings, I plunged my hand into a mail slot on one end. Though I groped around with my fingers, I couldn’t feel anything. It was Saturday night. Probably all the mail had been picked up.
I moved to the next mailbox. This time I felt something. When I grabbed it with my fingertips and brought it out, it was a postcard. I looked at the addressee. It was for Kaoru Yamamoto. That couldn’t be Yuki.
Next I put my hand into the mailbox beside that. I became anxious. Would I ever get anywhere this way? But it was all I could do.
My fingertips touched something. I carefully pulled it out. This time it was an envelope.
Tetsuya Matsumoto—
I returned it thinking that wasn’t it, either. At that moment, something suddenly came to me.
It’s better if you don’t come. Because it’s a women-only condo—
Juri had definitely said that.
17
Ten days had passed since we had successfully obtained the ransom. My regular life had returned to what it was before the game. Wake up, light exercise, breakfast, go out the door. At the company I did boring work and I’d stop by the gym on the way home. I intended to invite someone out on a date over the weekend. This time, I planned on enjoying myself up to sex. I’d probably need to make a reservation at some hotel.
The days were tranquil; my mind was anything but. I was worried about Juri. Why didn’t they report on it at all? I didn’t think the police needed to censor the press. I was worried about the post on the CPT Owners Club, too. According to the last message, it seemed like Juri hadn’t gotten home at all. What had happened after that? Since then, there hadn’t been a new post.
If Juri were home, that would be okay. Katsutoshi Katsuragi might have pulled some strings to keep the press quiet. Because if a girl that age were kidnapped, everyone would expect something to have happened to her.
But I had the feeling I shouldn’t be too optimistic.
One cause of my anxiety was the Yokosuka condo. According to Juri, her friend Yuki was renting in a women-only condo, but when I looked into it, there were a good number of men living there. And part of the building was even company-owned housing for a steel manufacturer. Juri had said Yuki’s room was a studio, but when I asked the super about it at a later date, he said there were no such units at all.
Why had Juri told such a lie?
I retraced my memory. What she’d said about the condo being for women only had gone something like this:
But it’s better if you don’t come. Because it’s a women-only condo. You could just chill at Yokosuka harbor and gaze at the passing ships.
Basically, she had just not wanted me to go with her and made up that lie on the spot. Why had she not wanted me to come?
I recalled what had happened the time we had gone to Yokosuka again on the last day. On that occasion, I’d tried to go to the condo with her. Her navigation had suddenly become erratic. On the way there we’d actually gotten lost. Why had that happened?
My theory was that she’d been searching for a random condo. She hadn’t wanted me to go to Yuki’s condo no matter what, so she’d found one similar to Yuki’s and tricked me. If so, that condo not being women-only and not having studios made sense. It did, but then new doubts arose. Why had she gone so far to keep me from going to Yuki’s condo? And where had she hidden the two hundred seventy million yen she’d been carrying?
Was there some secret about Yuki’s condo that she didn’t want to share with me? But what sort of secret necessitated not even allowing me to go to the building?
At that point, I tried questioning the fundamentals of the situation. Did Yuki’s condo actually exist? No, to begin with, was this friend, Yuki, real?
Juri had given that name when the game had only just started. She had confessed to calling her friend and leaving a message on the answering machine. When I proposed canceling the whole plan, Juri had said we could just go to the room and erase the message. So we’d gone all the way to Yokosuka.
If Yuki was an imaginary person, that meant the answering machine story was also a lie. Why tell that particular lie?
There was just one thing I could think of. She simply wanted to take me to Yokosuka. What would have been the point, though? Going there had served the tactical use of misdirecting the police as to the location of the culprits’ hideout. But that was my idea and not Juri’s suggestion. To grasp at straws, the only suggestion she did make was to go to a hill where you could see the stars. What was that about? What had that done?
No matter how I thought about it, the Yuki part didn’t seem like a made-up story. Then why had Juri made up a lie about the condo? At that point my thoughts went in circles. I felt like I was wandering in a labyrinth far away from the goal.
There was one more cause for my anxiety. It was Katsutoshi Katsuragi.
According to the people involved in the new Nissei Automobile car release, Katsuragi hadn’t attended meetings at all since last weekend. There were rumors that he hadn’t been coming to work either. Why had that man, who hadn’t let his style suffer even as I inflicted my kidnapping game on him, started taking time off from work now that it was over?
The faces of the father and daughter pair, Katsutoshi and Juri Katsuragi, alternately drifted through my mind. I didn’t know what the two of them were thinking. I couldn’t begin to guess where they were now and what they were up to. That fact harried me to no end.
—
“Excuse me, could you please lift your left hand a little more? Ah, that’s right. That’s perfect.” The bearded cameraman clicked the shutter in succession.
The person being photographed was a popular pro golfer who had recently become active outside of Japan as well. He held a putter and made a pose as though he’d just gotten the ball in the hole. He seemed accustomed to being photographed, and there was little awkwardness in his expression. I took comfort in knowing that the shoot probably wouldn’t take long.
It was for a magazine promo for a wristwatch made by a German company. Because they wanted to highlight its impact- and vibration-resistance, we had a golfer promote it. We were showing how, even with his powerful swing, the watch was invulnerable.
After the shoot was the interview. Beforehand, we had the pro-golfer put on the watch and hit some balls. We would ask about how that felt. Of course, it wasn’t me who would ask; the assigned writer would also conduct the interview. While that happened in a tearoom in the studio, I attended to the wristwatch-only shoot. A junior coworker of mine named Yamamoto would be there for the interview.
It seemed around the time our shoot was done, the interview had ended. After seeing the pro golfer off to the entrance, I had a meeting with the writer about the content. He was a young man with long hair. After we had spoken for a bit, I feared that he might be missing the point, so I instructed him in detail about what aspects to emphasize. The writer seemed dissatisfied, but an article meant to showcase his own literary sensibilities was worthless.
“Mr. Sakuma, you’re as harsh as ever. That writer was hoping to delve into a pro golfer’s true face and was focusing his questions on that,” Yamamoto divulged bemusedly in the car on the way back to the office. He was driving.
“We’re not letting a guy like him tamper with our precious ad. I bet he wants to make it as a nonfiction writer one day, but if he can’t grasp the point of an assignment, no wonder he hasn’t gotten there yet
.”
“Haha, I guess you could say that.” Yamamoto laughed like it was the funniest thing, then lowered his voice a little and added, “By the way, Mr. Sakuma, did you hear about Mr. Katsuragi?”
“Mr. Katsuragi? The executive vice president?” I asked with a start.
“Yes, of course. It seems that something happened to his daughter.”
Now my heart skipped a beat. “Like what?”
“I don’t really know, but it seems she’s gone missing.”
I faced Yamamoto. If he had been looking at me, he might have noticed that I’d gone pale. Luckily, his eyes were on the street.
“Missing?” My voice sounded an octave too high.
“I don’t know the details. I only heard about it from someone else, and he told me it was just a rumor at Nissei Automobile. But it seems like a concrete story, and they’re saying that’s why Mr. Katsuragi hasn’t been showing up to work lately. He did or didn’t put in a missing person report, and so on.”
“Why would that become a rumor? Did Mr. Katsuragi tell someone?”
“He must have. Assuming the rumors are true.”
“When did you hear about this?”
“This morning. Before setting out for this job. I wanted to see if you’d heard about it but didn’t get the chance. The way you’re acting now, I suppose you hadn’t.”
“I didn’t know at all.”
“I see. It’s just a rumor though.” Yamamoto continued to drive unaware of the importance of what had come out of his mouth.
I was lucky he hadn’t asked me before the shoot. If he’d told me, I wouldn’t have been in any state to work and wouldn’t have possessed the judgment to tell off that incompetent writer.
Yamamoto was talking about something else. Contributing to the conversation as necessary, I thought about Juri. She was missing? So she really hadn’t gone home. Then where was she?
The scene of our parting near Shinagawa station revived in my mind. Where had she gone from there? Had she been snatched away by someone? Impossible. Getting abducted right after a staged kidnapping was a story too tall even for TV dramas.