One by one he checked the pictures, starting with the ones of his room. As he expected, none of them revealed anything about the girl with the voice like honey. He glanced through the photos from the zoo. Wataru mugging for the camera in front of a flock of flamingoes. Kuniko tossing the pigeons some popcorn. It was a bright, sunny day—Kuniko and Wataru were squinting and smiling.
And Akira Mitani was nowhere to be seen, just like Mitsuru had said.
Chapter 5
The Incident
This is just my unlucky month.
That was the only explanation for it. Clearly, nothing good would come of this June, no matter how hard Wataru tried. How could so many things happen in one month to make him feel so miserable?
I’ve just got to lie low until summer vacation starts.
Wataru hated June more than any other month. For one thing, it rained constantly in Tokyo, and the temperature would drop unexpectedly, making his nose run. Then, after that, he was forced to endure an endless stretch of steamy, sweaty nights. He was never sure if he should wear short sleeves or long sleeves, and the humidity meant his favorite clothes took forever to dry after they came out of the wash. To this day it was a mystery to him why his mom never bought a clothes dryer. Since their place faced south, she figured she could hang laundry outside to dry. Wataru reminded her many times that it didn’t matter which way the apartment faced. If the sun didn’t come out, the clothes wouldn’t dry. And he hated having wet laundry hanging inside the house. It felt so…tacky.
“We don’t need one,” she would patiently explain. “Even during the rainy season, there are sunny days every once in a while.”
And so June passed by somberly and, more often than not, soggily. Yes, just letting June mosey on by was the safest strategy. He would just have to retreat into his shell and become even more subdued than usual.
Wataru no longer heard rumors about the haunted building because he had stopped paying attention to them. People tired of such things quickly. He never saw anyone from the Daimatsu family again, and neither did Katchan. Construction on the building had stopped completely.
Mitsuru continued to prove what a good student he was, both at school and at Kasuga Seminars. When they took the bi-monthly performance tests to gauge their academic progress, he easily scored higher than even Yutaro.
Thankfully, as it came closer to the end of the month, Wataru had something better than Mitsuru Ashikawa and haunted buildings to think about. He would be spending the entire month of August at his grandmother’s house near the ocean in Chiba. Since he started elementary school, it had become tradition for him to spend the end of July and the first week of August—prime beach time—with his grandmother. Akira wasn’t able to get much time off from work, and Kuniko didn’t feel right about leaving her husband to fend for himself, so Wataru inevitably went alone. He had been doing this since he was in kindergarten, so it wasn’t a big deal. Not once had he gotten homesick, or cried for his mother. “My little beach bum,” Uncle Lou would proudly call him.
This year, for the first time, they were letting him spend the entire month of August there. Of course, because he was going to be there so long, he couldn’t just loaf about like a guest. He would be helping out at his grandmother’s store, at the beach-house vending stall, with Uncle Lou’s work, and however else he could.
“You do good work and I’ll pay you a fitting salary,” his uncle had promised, making Wataru jump up and down with glee. A salary! The word was like magic to Wataru’s ears.
After Eldritch Stone Saga III came out, another must-have game called Bionic Road was due for release sometime in mid-November. It was an action game, not an RPG, but the magazine coverage made it look great. It promised to be just the kind of game that he loved best—a complex, science fictionbased story line, full of mystery, with a cool main character. It would be coming out in a two-disc set. Estimated sale price: ¥7,200.
When he first saw the price tag, he gave up hope of ever owning it. Less than two months after Saga III came out? No way could he save up that much money. Maybe Katchan could swing it. He might be able to save enough from his allowance in two months to buy the game. His parents were always busy with work, and they gave him a big allowance in an attempt to make up for the time that they couldn’t spend with him. They were never overly vigilant about the content of the games that he bought either.
But there was one major hurdle to overcome. Katchan hated action games. RPGs were all he ever played.
“Bionic Road? Never heard of it. The hero’s a cyborg? You gotta fight alien invaders and save passengers stranded in a colony ship?” Katchan made it sound like a chore. Wataru had tried his best to sell his friend on the game, but it was like talking to a wall. “What, you can’t even use magic?” Katchan had asked, incredulously. When Wataru had admitted that, yes, you couldn’t, the discussion was over. As far as Katchan was concerned, a game without magic was like peanut butter without jelly. Wataru’s plot to convince Katsumi Komura to buy Bionic Road and let him borrow it or play it at his house seemed dead from the start.
I really need to get some money, Wataru had brooded. It was just then that his uncle made him the offer: “Do you want to come here for all of August? If you can do some work, I can pay you for it.”
“Work? I can work!”
Wataru immediately launched a campaign to convince his parents to let him go. At first Akira and Kuniko had strong reservations about letting their son be away from home for so long. “A couple of weeks, maybe, but a whole month? I don’t know,” his father had said.
“Out of the question!” his mother chimed in. “If you spent your entire vacation playing at your grandmother’s, you’d never finish your summer homework.”
“I’ll finish all of my homework in July! It’s just a bunch of worksheets. And a journal, and an essay—but I can do those in Chiba.”
“What about growing those morning glories for your science class?”
“That’s even easier to do in Chiba! Mom, you said yourself that you don’t want them on our balcony ’cause of the caterpillars!”
That one gave her pause. Kuniko did hate caterpillars. In her mind, they were already creeping up the morning glory vines and shuffling over to the laundry that she would be hanging out on the balcony (because they didn’t have a dryer), leaving tiny caterpillar footprints wherever they went. Every summer that Wataru had to raise morning glories for science class there would be at least one incident in which his mother, having found one of the little critters getting comfortable in her sheets and pillowcases, would shriek loud enough to earn a few raised eyebrows from their neighbors.
His father was a tougher nut to crack.
“Even if it’s for family, I still think you’re too young to be working. You’re in elementary school! You need to wait…at least until middle school.”
“But Uncle Lou said I could!”
“And your father is saying you can’t. You’re still just a child and shouldn’t be working for money.”
It looked like a hopeless case. No matter what he said, no matter how much he begged, the answer was always the same. You’re too young. Wataru almost gave up hope. Each and every day, all he thought about was how to change his father’s mind, and what he might possibly say to help the situation. He even lost sleep obsessing over it.
And then, during a late-morning breakfast on the last Sunday in June, from behind his father’s newspaper came the answer he wanted: “Wataru, you can spend your summer vacation with your grandmother and uncle if you want.” Out of the blue, just like that. Not the bitter denouement of weeks of haggling and pleading, but a casual comment, as though he were asking Wataru to pass the salt. Wataru couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Maybe he was still half-asleep. He shot a glance at his mother.
“Honey, are you sure?” she asked, a vague smile on her face. “You know he’s talking about spending all of August in Chiba, right?”
“Fine by me.” Akira turned the page of hi
s newspaper. “You could go too.”
“I can’t do that,” laughed Kuniko. “Why, it wouldn’t be right leaving you here alone while we went off to play on the beach.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind,” Akira responded nonchalantly, without even lifting his eyes from the paper. “I hardly see you two, our schedules being what they are. It wouldn’t be much different if you were gone. I practically live like a widower anyway.”
Wataru felt uneasy, as though there was something being left unsaid, some deeper meaning behind his words. The day before, a Saturday, Akira had been at the office all day, not getting home until late. Maybe something had gone wrong at work, or maybe he was just really tired. That would explain the foul mood.
“That’s exactly why I was hoping we could all spend some quality time together over the holiday,” Kuniko replied, beaming a smile at Wataru. The look in her eyes was clear. Private Wataru! Captain Akira has entered “bad mood” status! We need backup!
Wataru wasn’t sure how to respond. He wanted his father’s permission to go so badly that he could taste it. How could he take his mother’s side with that dangling right in front of his eyes?
“Also, if Wataru spends all of August in Chiba, then he won’t be able to visit my parents in Odawara,” Kuniko added, rising from the table to fetch the coffee pot. “They would be so disappointed if they didn’t get to see him.”
Akira remained silent. The newspaper lifted higher, hiding his face. Kuniko’s continued protests were met with noncommittal grunts from behind the wall of headlines and weather forecasts. The mood at the breakfast table stagnated until no one said anything at all. From then on, little by little, Wataru’s month of summer vacation in Chiba slowly became a reality.
For his time on the beach to be spent as effectively and pleasurably as possible, he would need to finish off the majority of his summer homework in July, while he was still in Tokyo. Wataru was quite meticulous about that sort of thing. He promised himself that during the ten or so days of vacation in July, no matter what distractions the day might hold, he would force himself to get up in time for the early-morning radio exercise program, and other than his twice-weekly swimming lessons, would stay at home so that he could concentrate on finishing his homework. Just thinking about it made him ecstatic. To think that June, with its drizzly rain and oppressive humidity, and those unexpected chilly nights that gave him a stuffy nose, could be a time of such unbridled joy! All he had to do was think ahead to that day when the sticky air and gloomy skies blew away, leaving behind a golden summer: polished and gleaming and all his.
“You sure are in a good mood,” Katchan observed. He was green with envy when Wataru told him why. “Awww, I wish I could go for a little while too…”
“You want me to ask my uncle if it’s okay?” It wasn’t an entirely selfless suggestion. Wataru knew that he would have more fun if Katchan were there too. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
“Well, I’d sure love to,” Katchan began, his expression uncharacteristically clouded, “but I think I better stick around and help with the bar.”
“You guys have a summer vacation, though, right?”
“Yeah, but we’re going on a trip then. My folks can’t take many days off, so that family vacation is kinda important.”
“Wow, look at you.” Wataru whistled for effect. “Katchan, model son.”
“Ya think?”
The two of them laughed at that.
And so the days passed, and June eventually came to a close with only one page remaining on Wataru’s daily calendar. He had to go to cram school that day, so he hurried home after classes finished so he could wolf something down before he had to rush out again.
He opened the front door to discover a woman’s pretty shoes sitting in the entranceway. There were voices coming from the living room—women’s voices. Peeking in, he saw it was his mother’s friend, the wife of that real estate agent. He seemed to recall her husband’s company having some grandiose name like Saeki Estates. The air was thick with her perfume.
Kuniko spotted him and waved. The woman turned and greeted him. He smiled and asked her how she was doing. With the trip to Chiba this close, he didn’t want to risk any mistakes, and, since he wanted to stay on his mother’s good side, that meant acting like a respectable little boy. It worked. Kuniko went and got him a plate and gave him permission to go eat in his room. The snack was a gorgeous piece of cake, decorated with heaps of fruit. “Mrs. Saeki brought these for us. Be sure to thank her, now.” She smiled at their guest.
In Castle Mitani, it was the law of the land that when Queen Kuniko was entertaining a caller, Prince Wataru’s duty was to sit and take tea with them while they grilled him with boring questions about school and his friends. Today’s unexpected reprieve from his princely chores came first as a relief, but then puzzled him. His parents were super-strict, after all. Why the sudden generosity?
In the living room behind him, Kuniko and Mrs. Saeki were talking in hushed voices. Whisper, whisper.
So that was it! They didn’t want him to hear whatever it was they were talking about. Of course, the only thing to do in this situation was to eavesdrop. Wataru picked at his cake with his fingers, one ear pressed against the door.
The first low voice he heard belonged to his mother. “So what are the police doing about it?”
Wataru’s eyes widened. He licked a stray dollop of cream off one finger.
“Well, they’re looking for the perpetrator, of course. I’m sure they must have a good idea of who did it by now.”
“Some pervert, I’m sure. No doubt he’s done something like this before.”
“Well, maybe. But they think it may have been a group of bullies.”
“What, you mean like high school students? Surely not any kids in middle school, right? I mean, look at what they did. And at least one of them could drive.”
“I suppose, but what about all these children in high school who just stay home and play hooky? It could have been a bunch of those types.”
“Just the sort to cause trouble, I’m sure. But, my, this isn’t just trouble, is it? It’s a serious crime!”
“And that’s exactly why I say we need a neighborhood watch program. I only have boys like you, but think about the parents with girls. They must be terrified!”
“One can only imagine!”
“Those poor dears,” Mrs. Saeki sighed. “And the Daimatsus too…”
Wataru had just finished eating the cherry from the top of his cake. He gasped and swallowed the seed. The Daimatsus? The same Daimatsus who own the building? It made sense that it would be them. It was Mrs. Saeki, after all, who had first told his mother the saga of the unfinished building.
“Their daughter, she was in middle school, wasn’t she?”
“That’s right. But I hear that the Daimatsus never went to the police—not right away, at least. Then this happened, and they started thinking that it might be the same people who kidnapped her. That’s when they finally talked about it. Of course, the police were making the rounds by then.”
“Well, I guess I understand how they felt, but I still think they should have gone to the police sooner.”
“It sounds like the whole affair was quite a shock for the Daimatsus’ daughter…they say she went mute! She was, I don’t know, somehow broken by all of this.”
Kuniko was silent with astonishment. But the one who was truly reeling was Wataru. His ear was still glued to the door, his face as white as the cream smeared on his cheek.
The Daimatsus’ daughter…unable to speak…broken.
They had to be talking about Kaori. Who else could it be? That stunningly beautiful girl in the wheelchair with the vacant eyes, her head wobbling on that graceful neck like a limp doll’s every time her brother gave her a push. Whatever it was they were talking about, it had something to do with her condition. What had those perverts, or hoodlums, or whoever it was, done? And the police were involved. Mrs. Saeki said something about her
being kidnapped. Had someone kidnapped Kaori? Did they do that to her? Did they break her?
Wataru’s stomach shrank to the size of a clenched fist, then sank down, down, down, finally coming to a rest somewhere near his kneecaps. He suddenly lost his appetite for cake.
Wataru hadn’t quite hit puberty yet but was close enough to see it on the road ahead. He had a pretty good idea of what lay in store and already knew twice as much about things as his parents suspected.
He was able to make a decent guess, then, at just what Kaori Daimatsu might have been through to leave her so broken, and what that must have been like for a young girl. Of course, this was all speculation. No doubt the details were a little different—well, very different—but he had an intuitive sense that the whole thing was frightening, detestable, and foul beyond words.
It was almost time for him to leave for cram school. He would have to take his plate back to the kitchen and say goodbye to his mother before he could do that, but he wasn’t sure if he could pull it off. Mom, I know that girl! I know Kaori! I haven’t been able to think about anything else since the day I met her. She was so cute, Mom…like the fairy, Neena.
Just thinking about it brought tears to his eyes.
Wataru tore himself away from the whispered conversation, crept out of the room like a ninja, and dashed straight to cram school with an unexpected energy, the wild look in his eyes raising more than a few eyebrows on the street as he passed.
The entire time that he was in class, sitting motionless in his seat, listening to the teacher explain the mistakes he had made on his arithmetic homework, and watching the rest of the class stare in awe of Yutaro’s academic abilities, Wataru still felt like he was running…alone. He didn’t know where he was going, or why he was running in the first place. He just ran—like a hero on a mission. He didn’t have to ask directions, he didn’t wonder whom he was supposed to save, or what evil monster he was supposed to vanquish—he just ran.
But the reality of it was that he didn’t know where to go, or what to do when he got there. And he was very, very alone.