Chapter 019
HAZUKI HEARD BACK from her father not thirty minutes after sending her message.
At the moment Hazuki sent her message, her foster father was in a meeting with an influential person—the president of some big corporation Hazuki didn’t recognize.
She was sure he would be surprised, since she’d never sent a message to her father before, and though her foster father was in this big important meeting, he read her message nonetheless.
Perhaps because the message reached him in the midst of work, his reply was curt. And yet it was clear he was worried. It was different from the kind of message Hazuki would send—direct language meant to avoid any misinterpretation.
Hazuki was sure she’d understood exactly how her father felt, but conversely it was his interpretation of what Hazuki was going through that was now uncertain.
Her foster father was not so much concerned with whether the intruder Hazuki had identified turned out to be the latest murder victim in this killing spree, but that there had been an intruder at his house so shortly after he’d just come in to check on his daughter. Normally in a situation like that the guardian would be alerted directly. He was not only going to send a message of complaint to the security company for not having received any notice, but he would also ask for a detailed account of what took place.
He’d sent a message, received a message, made a vocal communication, and his communication duties were completed.
That should about do it.
It wasn’t as if he needed to be apprised of the situation in detail.
Besides, what her father was doing or thinking were all the assumptions of a child, from a child’s point of view. It’d be impossible to conjecture. Hazuki herself hadn’t grasped the circumstances she’d been put in. What the problem was, or how to resolve it, were practically unknowable for her. She just couldn’t relax. Her feelings wouldn’t settle.
She was probably sad.
This was probably what it was like to be sad.
She’d done something out of the ordinary, so it followed that she’d feel out of the ordinary.
If this was what happened when one dealt with other people, she did not want to interact with people anymore, or so Hazuki, for a moment, thought.
She faced her terminal and started to do homework as a matter of habit.
As long as she was studying she wouldn’t think about Yuko or Ayumi or Mio.
It was nice to be moving automatically.
Not even nice. It was a state of no feelings at all.
An hour later she received a vocal prompt.
“Are you studying?”
It was her foster father on the monitor.
“How did you know?” Hazuki asked.
“Because you answered so quickly. You must have already been facing your monitor. Besides, you are always studying at this hour.”
“Yeah, but…”
He was like a dog. Animals only knew how to recognize patterns, Mio had said. Hazuki didn’t like that.
“I went ahead and asked D&S about it. I mean, the security company. The meeting I just came out of just happened to be with the new president of the company.”
“Oh. Is that right?” She didn’t voice any opinion on the matter.
Should she have found that a relief?
“So I was able to confirm right there,” her foster father said.
“You mean you confirmed that she was…”
“A different person.”
“Different? What was different?”
“The girl who was caught climbing onto our property and that groupmate who met her untimely…I’m sorry, she wasn’t a groupmate, was she? She wasn’t even your age. According to their report the girl was an eighteen-year-old life preservationist. One of those who believe even antiseptic cleaners used to kill bacteria are inhumane. Actually she’d been harping for antiseptics to be called floracides.”
Who cares?
“She just wanted politicians to acknowledge that it is living beings we kill when we approve antibacterials,” he said. “One of these people who believed we have to be aware of all the murder we commit in order to lead healthy lives. Anyway, the girl who tried to break into our house was in one of these organizations. She was there to petition something.”
What planet was he on?
“Normally they’re supposed to make appointments to see me and make real contact, but you know, those guys are impetuous.”
“Those guys…”
I don’t know those guys, Hazuki thought.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying,” her foster father said politely.
If this wasn’t a lie, then it was Hazuki’s story that was a lie.
“I have it on record, so it can’t be a lie,” her foster father said. “They even showed me the record themselves, and just to be extra sure they let me talk to the security personnel that apprehended her, along with the area patrol that accompanied him. I confirmed their patrol car ID and everything.”
Car ID. Hazuki didn’t remember it, but she knew Mio would. She thought about asking for it but realized it would seem unnatural and was probably a waste of time at this point. Mio had said that the patrol record was erased.
In which case all of this was bullshit.
“As for why I didn’t get notice of this myself, D&S is not to blame. They are doing their sincere best to fulfill their duties. You weren’t harmed, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t,” Hazuki said. Should I have been?
“Well, I know it was probably unpleasant, but nothing happened. They even responded to your call inside the time they guarantee. They were apparently just held up in processing the data from the night’s report.”
Hazuki didn’t doubt that. The data was being rewritten.
“In the case of an intrusion, after the target has been secured, the security company is contractually obligated to contact the police as well as the security client within twenty-four hours with a detailed report. In this case, myself and you should both be receiving a report.”
Hazuki didn’t want that report.
That wasn’t the problem. There was no point in announcing that the person apprehended was Yuko Yabe. There was no point. She was dead.
On top of which, being told this story about some girl she’d never seen or heard of was only confusing.
“This time, they were apparently having difficulty identifying the intruder. She didn’t have an ID card or portable monitor on her. That was probably to protect accomplices who helped her get on our property.”
Lies. This was all made up.
“Furthermore, they were having a hard time processing the data. They don’t know why, but the information chain got stopped up somewhere. I own three properties in just this area alone and many more in the whole prefecture. It could be because of that. The security in this entire prefecture is managed by D&S alone, so you can imagine it gets confusing. Still, they’ve apologized,” her foster father said.
“They assured your safety but didn’t protect you after all. The president, the CEO, and our security liaison all expressed great regret. They wanted to come and apologize to you personally at the home, but I figured that would be a nuisance for you.”
Nuisance was right. There was no reason to come visit the home.
“Usually I’d announce this publicly and make it a problem, but I’ve decided to leave them alone since they did inspect the system so expeditiously and assured resolution of the problem. Oh, but of course if this isn’t enough for you, I will definitely take punitive measures against them.”
“It’s not that it’s not enough, it’s just…”
It was all wrong. Someone was fabricating the truth.
The past was being tampered with. Hazuki’s experience had been negated.
“Do you know the name of this girl?” A made-up girl like that couldn’t possibly have a name, Hazuki thought. It was a lie, after all.
But her foster father uttered a name.
“It was technically illegal entry, but she didn’t get past the front gate, so we can’t really sue her. It’s not a criminal case, so there’s no police report to file. But if you’re still feeling scared, that’s reason enough to place a fine on her. Do you want me to do that?”
That would be pointless.
This woman was probably not real. A girl who existed only in a terminal, only as a fragment of data. Since data was truth, and what was in the terminal was evidence of truth, then this person probably existed. But if this girl existed, that made Hazuki the phantom.
Hazuki was the lie.
“I don’t want a lawsuit.”
“You’re right,” her father said. “Taking this to court would be difficult. But if you don’t think D&S adequately looked into the bug or demonstrated sufficient good faith, I will turn this incident into a worldwide spectacle and demand proper resolution. Fortunately nothing bad happened this time, but there must be times this kind of thing yields much worse outcomes, so I can certainly take extreme measures. This is a precarious situation to be put in for anyone living in this prefecture, no, in this country. In a more serious situation this would have to be dealt with by central. This might force a reassessment of everything from the relationship between the area patrol and security companies to system license standards.”
These words meant nothing to Hazuki.
He was probably exactly correct. Words so exacting that other adults who spoke this way would understand easily, she thought. She thought, but she knew the words and the reality were disjointed.
“Anyway, I’m glad you brought this to my attention,” her foster father said. “To be honest, I was really surprised, then worried, when I received your message, but actually I was also glad. This is the first time I’ve heard from you in a while.”
Glad?
Hazuki didn’t understand why receiving a communication from her would make him happy.
“Oh, and as for the murder case, well the victim count has gone up, but this incident doesn’t help solve the case at all. It truly pains me not to be able to be there with you, honestly. Unfortunately I just can’t. But I’ve requested a special patrol tour of the premises. A patrol officer will be regularly checking in on the house, so please don’t worry.”
That was…
“Father.” It was the first time Hazuki had called him that. She didn’t know why.
Maybe because she was feeling so desolate. Her foster father made a seemingly happy, seemingly sad, difficult-to-interpret facial expression and said, “It’s going to be all right.”
The monitor went blank.
All right.
Would it be all right?
“Dad…”
Her body was sunk, but her mood was floating. Her body and mind were not in sync. It made her uncomfortable.
Was she scared?
Yes, scared.
What was she scared of? She’d never felt this way before.
Hazuki took the disc out of its case and put it in the desktop computer on her table.
Recorded on that disc, per the workings of Mio, was another truth that had been pulled and copied from the house’s main terminal data bank.
But it was actually not a fact anymore. It was a lie.
She ran the recording.
It displayed the time.
A girl appears before the gate and collapses.
It displays the fact that a security transmission is sent.
Five minutes later the screen freezes.
Then the patrol officer and security representative arrive.
Voice.
We’ve apprehended the intruder.
Could you please verify?
Her face appears on the screen.
That sullen face.
Hazuki’s voice.
I don’t know her.
Their voices.
Really?
Could that have really been someone she did not know? She said she didn’t know who it was, and that was what was on record; that was now the truth. The past could only be verified by records like this.
No.
The girl she didn’t know that appeared on her monitor smiles faintly.
It was Yuko. It was definitely Yuko Yabe.
Hazuki froze the image of Yuko smiling, because it was the only frame in which Hazuki was certain it was her. A girl she’d never seen or known before wouldn’t smile like that. Would never smile for her like that.
Then she slumped, got serious. Hazuki remembered the warmth of the touch of flesh. The feel of a human.
The smell.
That was the unrecorded memory of Yuko Yabe.
Those things were not recorded on this disc. Therefore, this disc would not be able to prove anything. This so-called life preservationist girl probably had a face very similar to Yuko’s. No way to distinguish them from just a grainy monitor image.
If there were no record of Yuko, there was definitely going to be problems.
They just had to make a copy of this moving image.
It all becomes a lie.
Hazuki noticed something blinking in the corner of her vision.
A turtle.
Another message from Mio.
OPEN.
JUST ONE HOUR AGO, THE PATROL COMPANY RE-ENTERED THEIR DATA. THE ENEMY IS A STEP AHEAD OF US. THE IMAGES AND THE MOTION RECORDERS APPEAR TO BE A FABRICATION. ALL THE DATA IS BUNK. FABRICATION 800. COULD BE BAD. I WANT TO DRAFT A COUNTERMEASURE PLAN. MEET AT THE DOVE HOUSE. THERE WILL BE A POWER OUTAGE AT EXACTLY 1900 HOURS.
--MIO
Seven o’clock.
Her monitor said it was 6:48:38. She had less than twelve minutes.
Hazuki closed the image of Yuko smiling and ejected the disc from her drive. Then she changed from her house clothes to a tracksuit.
The suit was made of a new material that could measure body temperature and regulate moisture absorption and release. It was light and easy to move around in but didn’t feel like anything when worn. Hazuki just liked the way it looked.
Then she put on the walking shoes she hadn’t yet worn.
The power had been out for a mere thirty seconds the last time and the time before that. She didn’t want to get stuck in the foyer still putting on her shoes when that time was up.
She remained still for five minutes.
Then she left her bedroom, the monitor still on, and locked the door.
Just as she descended to the living room, a visitor’s call rang.
Who was it?
Hazuki ran to the living room’s main terminal to confirm.
There were two men in area patrol uniforms standing in front of the gate.
“Miss Makino. We’re local area patrol officers. We’ve come to talk to you about last week’s incident with the unannounced intruder and to check in on you.”
This was bad.
There were only five minutes till the planned outage.
“I’ve already spoken with my father about this. There’s no need for a follow-up.”
Go away. Go away!
“Ah yes. But you see, we have a special police matter here. Plus it’s in our private surveillance contract with you to come by…if you could just spare us a moment of real contact.”
Real?
“That is, as part of our duties we’d just like to assure you by meeting face-to-face on at least this first occasion.”
“That’s all right. Really—”
“It’s a rule. We’ve seen the layout of your home, but if for the record we could just assure your security personally…We just need to see the interior of your home. It will really only take a minute.”
Only four minutes left.
What to do.
“We’re not here to harm you. I’ll run my ID card now so you can see.”
The two men slid their ID cards through the reader, one after the other.
On her screen appeared their headshots, names, and ID numbers.
She couldn’t keep denying them.
“All right, one minute,” Hazuki said. She switched her security system to visitor mode and unlocked the front gate.
The door clicked open.
“Employee ID DV320054, DV321886, now entering the Makino residence, in 122 Section A 5035-62.”
Hazuki stood in the hallway. Two large men appeared in the hall.
One of them was skinny for his height, but the other looked enormous, like he was from a foreign country.
“If we could just check the windows by the doors, then. Oh, and you should confirm our IDs. Protocol.”
“Your IDs…of course.”
Hazuki turned on the main monitor in the foyer.
The last images of the two of them popped up.
Hazuki assumed they wanted her to compare their ID images to their real faces.
The skinny one was definitely himself. The helmet made him look a little bigger, but…
The other one.
Huh?
This can’t be.
“What seems to be the matter?”
“Oh nothing.”
The other face on her monitor, the headshot of the other man.
Peacock tattoo on his head.
“Is there a problem?”
“N-no.”
Her heart was racing. It pumped and squeezed. The blood in her veins raced, and for a split second her vision went completely black.
What do I do. What do I do. What do I do.
These were the guys.
These were the guys that had killed Yuko.
“Do you mind then if we come in?” the skinnier one said.
Hazuki shifted over against the wall.
She couldn’t say a word.
Her tongue was glued to the back of her mouth and her voice would not work.
“The back entrance is over there, then? And I’m sure it’s usually kept locked.”
The skinnier man took off his shoes and came into the house. Hazuki walked around him.
Then…
The larger man took off his shoes. Her heart. Her heart.
He silently walked past Hazuki, slowly. Very slowly.
They walked past her.
She stopped right at the door to the living room.
Her fingers.
Her fingers were trembling. No.
No no no no no.
“What’s the matter?” The bigger man looked back.
“Why are you shaking?”
Go. Go to the back.
“What’s the matter?”
“Uh…” This was bad. She didn’t want to look at his face. She was scared. Scared. Very scared.
Hazuki turned her face away. She looked at the monitor.
If only she could go into the monitor. In there, she was never scared.
“You don’t seem well. Perhaps you’ve come down with something?”
They were moving.
The time. 6:59:05 pm.
Fifty-five more seconds.
Hazuki closed her eyes and started running.
She caught the larger man, who stood there mouth agape, off guard as she whisked past him and made it to the living room. She closed the door.
“What’s going on?” The large man opened the door. The other one ran toward the hallway. The larger man entered the living room. The thin one followed him. Hazuki rounded halfway around the room along the wall.
“What’s the matter, Miss Makino? Miss Hazuki Makino!” the men said loudly. They followed her. One more corner till the door. She was in front of the door.
“What’s the matter? Hey, you don’t think—”
“She knows about us!”
Her hand was on the doorknob. The skinnier man…
Pulled out a knife.
Its reflection splintered through the air for a flash and then.
Lights out.
Hazuki lowered her head and ran with all her might down the hall, opened the door to the foyer, and shut it hard.
She ran till she made it outside the gate.
If they were still putting on their shoes in the foyer when the power went back on they would be locked in the house. They needed a code to get out of the house. And if the number of people inside the house before and after the power outage was different, the system would read an error. The security system would initiate a check. Then…
Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Thirty seconds.
Hazuki ran.
Slam.
They’d run after her without putting on their shoes.
They were coming. They were coming at her fast.
Whoosh. The sound cut through the wind.
Something incredibly hot sped through the space under her earlobe.
She heard the sound of something thudding on the ground. She turned back. A fan of blackness spread across the ground.
The thin man’s arm was aimed forward like a spear. His weapon flew from the tip of his hand and gleamed in the air once.
Then the black night behind them lit up through her windows. The electricity went back on.
Something quivered. It spread like it was riding the wind.
Ggg, the man’s voice.
“Get up. Hurry.”
That voice.
Rey Mao.
Rey Mao’s straight hair whipped about again.
Those long arms were wrapped around the skinny man’s throat.
“Run away, now. When the other guy gets out we’re both in trouble.”
Another blow. The man collapsed on the grass.
“It’s no use. I can’t kill him with gongfu. Hurry now. Run.”
Hazuki couldn’t respond.
But.
Her arms and legs started moving. She couldn’t tell if it was her or the world moving.
She couldn’t see anything before her. Her head was empty. There was no inside or outside.
Hazuki had not normally thought about the fact that she was alive. Every day she felt half dead. So why was she so scared of death now? If Hazuki alive was the same as Hazuki dead so far as the world was concerned, why did she fear death so much now?
She turned down an alley and ran up a hill.
Ayumi!
Her body moved involuntarily.
Behind Ayumi’s house, at the foot of the metal spiral staircase, Hazuki had a fit of dizziness and collapsed. Her equilibrium failed her, and the world started to turn. Hazuki turned over on the ground once. Then somehow she got herself up, braced herself against the wall of the house, and wrapped her arms around herself. Her teeth wouldn’t stay still.
Rey Mao silently appeared before her.
“It’s all right. We got out of there before the other guy got out.”
“Haaa…”
“Calm down. Mio called me out here. She said our enemies were onto our movements. The data we were trying to send was being rewritten, and she worried you would be attacked. What a pain in the ass.”
“Pain in…”
“You know what I mean,” Rey Mao said. “She means well but she causes trouble. That’s all. Now get up. Can you stand?”
Long arms. Hazuki fell into those arms. They were colder than her father’s.
The girls wound up the spiral staircase to the roof.
“I doubt if they know about this place,” Rey Mao said. “No one would suspect an unmarked room like this to be in Section A. It’s a great hideout.”
The sky was black and large.
There was no light on in the dove cage.
“Ayumi must be out. I wonder where she’s gone at this hour.”
Rey Mao scoped the area out before opening the door. It was unlocked.
“Mio’s not here either. We got here at a good time. Well, let’s just go in.”
Hazuki floated in.
It was dark inside. The window to the dove room looked like a floating cutout.
“This is weird,” Rey Mao said. She told Hazuki, who just stood by the door, to sit down.
“Th-thanks.” That was all she said for a while.
Rey Mao let out a deep sigh.
“I thought you might get attacked on your way here, but to think they actually went into your house. Those were area patrol. Or did they disguise themselves as area patrol to get in?”
Hazuki shook her head.
“What does that mean?”
“They were real.”
“Real? What do you mean real?”
“I checked their IDs. They were both real area patrol guys.”
“But that was definitely the guy the other day who apprehended Yuko in the car. The other one…”
“Yeah. The guy with the peacock head art.”
“Then it was definitely them. They’re real…patrol? Then our enemy is the area patrol…” Rey Mao said. “This is no good. Maybe Mio’s also…”
No.
Hazuki didn’t want to hear the rest of that sentence.
“Uh…”
“Hazuki. My name’s Hazuki Makino.”
“Ha-zuke-ee…” Rey Mao sat down in a chair. “What kind of girl is Ayumi?”
“Huh?”
“She’s weird, eh?”
“Well…”
“Aren’t you friends?”
“We’re not…friends.”
What are we? We’re definitely not friends, but…
“I’m not sure,” Hazuki answered. She really didn’t know. She didn’t know much about Ayumi. Just what everyone else could find out about her on the public data server. The only undocumented fact Hazuki had on her was this illegal room on her roof.
“Hmph,” Rey Mao said. “You guys are so complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“Never mind. Hazuki. Just hide here for now.”
“Here?”
“You can’t go back home, you know that.” Rey Mao stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to follow those two guys.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“Of course it is,” Rey Mao said matter-of-factly. “For us, living is dangerous.” She stood in the middle of the room and looked all around her. “There’s nothing here.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing of use,” Rey Mao said looking up at the ceiling. “Oh by the way, Hazuki. You should turn off your monitor. We don’t know exactly what it can do, but it does indicate that you are at the terminus.”
Hazuki had not once ever thought of it that way, but Rey Mao was correct.
“You all are connected one way or another. That might make you feel safe, but it’s restrictive. You can’t run with a thread tied around your waist.”
But.
Without it…
“If the area patrol is your enemy they will find out where you are.”
Certainly so if Hazuki’s monitor was in GPS mode.
Even if it weren’t, the police could force a search.
She stuck her hand in her pocket. The disc with Yuko Yabe’s record.
That was all she had on her.
Hazuki frantically patted her body. It wasn’t there. Hazuki didn’t have her monitor on her. This meant that her location, her coordinates…
She had no idea where she was.
A harsh flapping sound caught Hazuki by surprise. Rey Mao grabbed one of the doves. The small creepy-looking animal with eyes that looked almost as though it understood its captor shook violently in Rey Mao’s long arms.
The dove was just like Hazuki.
“If anything happens, I’ll let this dove fly back.”
“Let it fly?”
“They know exactly where they need to go, so it’ll come back here.
So don’t go anywhere till it comes back.”
The dove was nothing like Hazuki.
“Don’t get yourself killed,” Rey Mao said, then she disappeared into the night.