Chapter 6: The Truth

1

I caught up with Masami in an octagonal hall where the Yakushi Nyorai painting was hanging in the center of a golden altar. Paper lanterns on both sides were lit with what I assumed were LED lights. Their flickering gave the display a mystical atmosphere.

In the middle of the hall, several men were collapsed on the floor like sea lions lying on the shore. I doubted my own eyes for a moment, but when I saw Komatsu leaning against the wall, clearly injured, Holmes standing in the middle of the men, and Rikyu, I immediately realized what had happened.

Masami stood completely still, staring at something in shock. What is she looking at? I followed her gaze and saw Yuko, who was wearing a T-shirt and shorts—normal loungewear. She was looking back at us with a pleading look in her eyes. Based on her appearance, it didn’t seem like she was being abused.

“Mama...” Yuko said, breaking the silence.

“Yuko,” Masami murmured, barely audible. She immediately began sobbing. “I’m so sorry, Yuko!”

Yuko looked genuinely surprised. Her mother had probably never apologized to her before. She shook her head and said, “I’m sorry too! I honestly couldn’t believe you’d do such a thing, but I said a lot of terrible things too. I...I was a terrible person too.” She cried with all her might and clung to her mother. I didn’t know what had happened to her while she was here, but it seemed clear that she hadn’t been free to leave.

“Yuko, are you all right?” Komatsu asked, walking up to them on shaky feet. “Did they do anything bad to you?”

“Papa...” Yuko’s eyes were wet with tears. “I’m okay. Everything’s okay, so let’s go home.” She tugged on Masami and Komatsu’s hands.

“What? It doesn’t look like anything’s okay here, Yuko,” Komatsu said with a hesitant look.

“Sorry I’m late,” said the manager, entering the hall.

“Manager!” I shouted.

Next to the manager was Hiro Haraguchi. He wasn’t tied up anymore, so he must’ve come here of his own volition.

“Piro...” Yuko murmured, taken aback.

Hiro Haraguchi looked down with what looked like a slight bow.

“You were tricked by this man, right?” Komatsu asked.

Holmes sighed lightly and stepped forward. “I wouldn’t say ‘tricked.’”

Komatsu turned to look at him.

“This incident wasn’t necessarily elaborate, but it was indeed the result of several motives mixing together,” Holmes continued.

“Motives?” Komatsu frowned.

“Yes. Komatsu, your investigation showed that Hiro Haraguchi was once the leader of a delinquent group called Idaten. Hiro, am I correct in assuming that these four men on the ground were in that group?”

Hiro nodded with a bitter expression.

“Suguru Shirasaki, the prep school student who was arrested, is your friend too. As was his companion, Yohei Sato.”

Hiro looked surprised, but nodded again.

“It doesn’t seem like there’d be any connection between you. How did you meet them?”

“At Amamiya’s house.”

“It felt like Representative Amamiya was trying to hide your existence. Did you go to his house often?”

Hiro heaved a sigh and scratched his head. “Only in the last few years. When he was moving up in politics, he must’ve figured it’d be better to butter me up. He’d suddenly invite me to his house and let me join his parties. Although he treated me like a relative’s kid.”

“I see. So that’s when you met Suguru Shirasaki and hit it off with him.”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you decide to start an organization like this?” Holmes asked, looking at the altar.

Hiro looked down, seeming uneasy. “Suguru told me, ‘We can make money off of religion. With your charisma and my intellect, I know we can do it.’”

“I see. However, you currently are not in the organization. Put another way, you were kicked out, right?”

“Yeah.” Hiro nodded, surprisingly unfazed.

“As revenge, you reported Suguru Shirasaki to the police for possession of cannabis.”

Hiro had a sheepish look on his face. “I did, but it wasn’t revenge.”

“Then why?”

“I was...scared,” he murmured, looking down. “It was cool at first. I was excited about the money, and when I saw a Yakushi Nyorai hanging scroll at an auction, I thought, ‘This will work.’ I bought it, but then...”

“Because of that hanging scroll, a third party—the cannabis association, Unbound—got involved,” Holmes continued calmly.

Hiro’s face sprung up.

“Your primitive plan with Suguru Shirasaki became what it is now because of Unbound. It was also their idea to make Yuko into a living goddess. Your role was to carry out their orders...”

Hiro nodded silently.

“The people involved in this case are five members of Idaten, the two disciplinary committee members—Shirasaki and Sato, and five members of Unbound, which was formerly a group for modern artists. These twelve people made Yuko into Yakushi Nyorai, called themselves her Twelve Divine Generals, and started a religious organization centered around seminars and cannabis. The ringleader is Unbound’s leader—the artist who painted this Yakushi Nyorai.”

The hall fell silent. I immediately looked at the hanging scroll. The person who painted it was...

“You’re here, right?” Holmes called in the direction of the door. “Please come out, Kunishiro.”

Everyone’s eyes widened in shock, mine included.

After some time of silence, Yutaka Kunishiro came out. “You really are a fearsome one,” he said quietly, looking at Holmes, who said nothing in response. He then smiled self-deprecatingly and said, “When you first came to my house, you stared at this hanging scroll. I asked, ‘What do you think?’ and you said, ‘It’s beautiful. I can sense the artist’s fixation.’ I was so surprised.”

“Did I say that?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I see. Well, it appears that my impression hasn’t changed since then. I can still sense the artist’s fixation from this painting. Your fixation led you to find the hanging scroll after it was stolen, and that’s how you met Hiro. He was doing something interesting with it, and you thought it was a good idea, right?”

“Well...pretty much. Coincidentally, I was originally a believer of Yakushi Nyorai too.”

“I’d expect as much, seeing as how you painted the deity.” Holmes chuckled. “Then you happened to see Yuko in a magazine, and you were surprised that Masami had a daughter who was the spitting image of her. You wanted to get your hands on Yuko, and you used Hiro to do it.”

“I wouldn’t say I used him. He was pretty interested in the idea of making her a living goddess too.”

Hiro looked away, ashamed.

Holmes shifted his gaze to Masami. “Masami, when Yuko ran away from home, you knew that she went to Kunishiro, right? But of course, it doesn’t seem like you knew how suspicious this organization was...”

Masami flinched.

“What do you mean?” Komatsu asked in a wary tone.

Yutaka Kunishiro sighed loudly. “I’ll explain. I’m sorry, Komatsu. Yuko is my daughter.”

Komatsu’s eyes widened.

“No!” Masami shouted. “That’s not it! The truth is, I don’t know who her father is!”

“You don’t know?” Komatsu asked.

“Before I was pregnant with Yuko, Kunishiro tried to make advances on me, but I didn’t budge. But then one day, he said, ‘I’ve given up on you, but at least let me channel these feelings into a painting of you.’ I was honored, so I went to his studio to model for him. He offered me alcohol and burned a strange incense for relaxation purposes, and my consciousness gradually became hazy. When I came to, it was morning, and I was in bed with him. I don’t remember what happened. But just when I decided to accept it as a one-night blunder, I got pregnant with Yuko afterwards... I’ve never known who the real father was. I wanted to believe it was Komatsu, of course. But I was so scared that I couldn’t bring myself to get a DNA test done. When Yuko was growing up, she didn’t resemble Komatsu at all, and the guilt ate away at me until I couldn’t stay with him anymore... That’s the real reason why I got divorced.”

“So that’s why you said, ‘I don’t need any settlement money or child support—you’re not going to make any money now that you’ve quit your job anyway,’” Komatsu murmured, finally understanding what happened all those years ago.

“Yes. But no matter how many times I said I didn’t need it, you still sent child support payments. I knew I couldn’t accept them, but at the same time, it was possible that you were the father, so I set the money aside. One day I’d get a DNA test done, and if it was found that you were the father, I’d put the money towards Yuko’s marriage expenses. If Kunishiro was the father, then I’d give you the money back,” Masami said with teary eyes.

“Most likely, Kunishiro drugged Masami, had his way with her, completed his Yakushi Nyorai painting, and moved on from his feelings. This is a crime in every way, but let me set that issue aside for now. When Kunishiro saw Yuko in that magazine, he also found out that Masami was divorced, and believed that Yuko must be his child. Wanting to have her in his custody at any cost, he used Hiro to bring her to him. He showed her the Yakushi Nyorai painting and told her something along the lines of, ‘Masami and I were in a relationship, and you’re my daughter.’ Am I correct?”

“So Hiro Haraguchi and Yuko weren’t dating?” Komatsu asked.

“I imagine Yuko did fall in love with Hiro, but they weren’t in a relationship. She simply told her classmates her fantasies. Also, it was Kunishiro who gave her the Kelly bag, not Hiro, right?”

Yuko nodded with a sour look on her face. Holmes really wasn’t holding back.

“Kunishiro was the reason why Yuko and Masami got into such a big fight, of course. Yuko may have called Masami a loose woman, the proof of which was the man she had over right that moment. During the fight, did Yuko announce that she was going to live with Kunishiro? Something along the lines of, ‘I’m going to live with my real father.’ That’s why Masami wasn’t particularly worried about Yuko’s well-being, despite being too shocked to tell her the truth. Yuko had simply left to live with her father.”

I gasped. When we were outside the dojo, Masami was trembling. She said, “I never thought it’d end up like this.” Regardless of the truth, Yuko had accepted her possible father as her real father, and she went to him of her own free will. Masami may have felt that there was nothing she could do about that. That’s why she was suddenly so scared when she found out that her daughter had actually gotten involved with cannabis and a suspicious organization.

“Hiro, you’re the one who went around stealing paintings and ornaments of the Twelve Divine Generals, right?” Holmes asked.

Hiro flinched and nodded. “Yes.”

“It was with the help of Unbound, right?”

“Yeah. The artists in Unbound were angry because the works they’d poured their souls into were being kept in the backs of shelves. I said I’d steal them back, and they happily helped me out.”

“But that’s not the truth, right?” Holmes continued.

Hiro blinked.

“You were afraid, were you not?”

“You really are incredible,” Hiro said, laughing self-deprecatingly. “Yeah... I was scared. The organization was making a lot of cash from cannabis, and Kunishiro was manipulating Yuko with his words.” He started to tremble and tear up. “He was obviously brainwashing her into house arrest. It’s been snowballing ever since the thefts, and I just wanted someone, somewhere, to bring it to a stop.”

The hall fell silent again. Then we heard a siren.

“Finally,” Holmes said, sighing. “Thank you, dad.”

“All I did was make the phone call,” said the manager. “There’s nothing to thank me for... But now, everything will be made public. Just as you wished, Hiro.” The words he murmured left a deep impression on me.

2

After that, the police took our group in for questioning too, which took quite a while. In the end, all of the twelve were arrested: the Unbound members led by Yutaka Kunishiro and Kuro Amamiya, the five Idaten members led by Hiro Haraguchi, and the disciplinary committee members, Suguru Shirasaki and Yohei Sato. Kuro Amamiya made major news, seeing as how he was a rising politician caught using cannabis to start a religious organization. Even though it was Holmes that solved the case, he insisted that he was only Komatsu’s assistant. As a result, Komatsu received the credit.

“We really got caught up in something troublesome this time,” Holmes said, placing a cup of coffee on the counter in front of me. “Enjoy.”

It was quiet and peaceful at Teramachi-Sanjo’s antique store, Kura. As usual, people were passing by outside without coming in. I didn’t have work today, but I was studying at the counter.

“Thank you,” I said, and Holmes smiled. “It really did turn out to be a huge incident.”

“Indeed. I had a bad premonition when Komatsu first came here,” Holmes said, now placing a cup of coffee in front of Rikyu, who was sitting beside me.

“Thanks.” Rikyu smiled and rested his chin in his hands. “But you know, my school has it the worst. We were famous for being an elite private school, but now another one of the disciplinary committee members has been arrested. It’s pure chaos. Apparently there are staff meetings and PTA conferences every single day.”

“Yeah, it must be hard for your school,” I said.

“Well, it’s only hard for the adults. The students are surprisingly calm about it all. We’re already joking about it, like, ‘It makes sense coming from those power-tripping disciplinary committee members’ and ‘We’d better not study too hard either.’”

“That’s impressive...” I sipped my coffee.

“Children are smarter and more resilient than adults think,” Holmes said. “I hope you’ve learned a lesson from this incident.”

“A lesson, huh? Don’t do drugs, right?” Rikyu grinned mischievously.

“That too, but there’s something that’s just as terrifying.”

“There is?” Rikyu and I both tilted our heads.

“Yes, and that is ‘trying to control people.’ I don’t think there’s anything more terrifying than that.”

Rikyu crossed his arms. “Hmm. I know what you mean, but no one likes it when people don’t do what they want, right?”

“Huh?” I frowned and looked at Rikyu.

“Like if someone asks me for advice, I’ll give them the best solution to their problem, right? But if they don’t follow my advice, I’ll get really annoyed, and ask, ‘Why didn’t they listen to me?’ Is this what it means to want to control someone?”

“Oh, I see.” It made a bit more sense to me now. It’s not on the same scale as what Holmes was talking about, but human nature does have that aspect to it. Maybe people inherently want to control others, to some extent.

“Helping people and giving them advice is a commendable act,” Holmes said, “but after you’ve given your advice, you should forget about it. In the end, they have to choose their path for themselves. Even if your suggestion was objectively the best solution, if they don’t choose it, then that’s their decision, and you must respect it.”

“Guiding is different from controlling, huh?” I nodded firmly.

“Right,” Holmes said. He stopped what he was doing. “In this world, there are people who control under the pretense of guiding. That may very well be the scariest situation of them all.”

“Are you talking about yourself, Kiyo?” Rikyu said immediately. I rushed to cover my mouth before I could burst out laughing.

Holmes shrugged. “I don’t do that, and I’d like to believe that I’m not like that. However, it’s true that it may be in my nature, so I will be careful. Unlike that man in this incident...”

“Which man?”

“Representative Amamiya... As soon as this case was brought to light, his wife shoved a letter of divorce at him, and so they got divorced. She then changed her surname back to her maiden name, and she and Shiro both left for the US.”

“Huh...?” I didn’t know what to say. A divorce was to be expected, but it felt like it happened far too quickly.

“I don’t have proof, but I cannot help but feel that Shiro was pulling the strings behind the scenes, even though he was not directly involved. I suspect he used his father, his younger brother, and Unbound as his pawns so that he wouldn’t have to dirty his own hands.” Holmes spoke in a low voice that sent chills down my spine. “Well, it’s nothing more than my own conjecture.” He relaxed his expression and sat down across from us.

“Come to think of it, I heard that Komatsu decided to live in Kyoto again,” I said, wanting to change the topic to something happier.

“Huh, did he get back together with Masami?” Rikyu asked.

“It hasn’t reached that point yet, but he’s living close enough that they can visit each other,” Holmes said. “The three of them, including Yuko, have been eating together.”

“Are they gonna do the DNA test?”

“I wouldn’t know. Either way, Yuko is still the child of his beloved. As long as Masami’s heart didn’t betray him, I think they’re fine as they are. Besides, if I were Komatsu, I absolutely would not do the DNA test.” Holmes sipped his coffee.

Rikyu looked at him with deep respect. “You really are an adult, Kiyo.”

“No, that’s not it,” Holmes said smoothly, holding up his hand.

“Huh?”

“For Komatsu, what he wants the most is Masami and Yuko. If he accepts them without doing the test, then he can capture the hearts of the people he truly wants. It doesn’t get any better than that, right? If it were me, I’d never do the test. However, the other man definitely will not back down. He’ll surely come back for revenge,” Holmes said with a bold smile.

Rikyu’s eyes lit up. “That’s my big bro, calculating and blackhearted! In the end, that means manipulating them, right? Is it okay to say that in front of Aoi?”

Holmes looked at me, visibly startled. He collapsed onto the counter.

“K-Kiyo?”

“I’ve done it again. Why can’t I hide myself when I’m in front of Aoi? It’s not like I want to be this blatantly calculating...” Holmes muttered.

I hurriedly leaned forward and said, “U-Um, I’ve known that you’re calculating and black-hearted for a long time, so there’s no need to get worked up over it now. I think what you said was very characteristic of you. It’s the ‘usual’ Holmes.”

“Thank you, Aoi, but as usual, you’re so harsh. I suppose this is the ‘usual’ Aoi.”

“Th-That’s not...” I stuttered. Holmes sat back up and smiled cheerfully.

Rikyu looked between the two of us and mumbled something under his breath. “So that’s how it is...”

“Is something wrong, Rikyu?” I asked.

“Not really. Don’t get the wrong idea, though. I haven’t approved of you.” He looked away.

“What?”

“Rikyu, could you refrain from bullying my girlfriend?”

“Huh?” I blushed.

Rikyu grimaced. “Again with the ‘my girlfriend’ thing... You just want to say that, don’t you?!”

Rikyu’s grouchy voice and our laughter echoed through the store. It was a peaceful afternoon after an unsettling incident.