site 57: Shun Moritsuka

It was Saturday, and the open area in front of Akihabara station was filled with shoppers. Lately, it was common to see non-Japanese buying huge amounts of appliances and general household items. Japanese products were cheap, reliable, and if you were foreign, you didn’t have to pay taxes.

After World War II, Akihabara was filled with shops selling circuits, condensers, and other electronic parts, and when the economy started to grow, it developed fast. In addition to customers looking for normal appliances, there were places to buy radios, audio equipment, and remote-controlled toys. People came from all over Japan to buy things.

When electronic games started to appear, the city moved from selling hardware to software. Now it was a mecca for otaku culture, and there was very little left to remind anyone of the time when it was called “the Electric City.”

“Well, if this were a worldline where Faris-tan didn’t exist, then maybe it would still be selling electronics. If this were Steins;Gate, that is.” I grinned, thinking about the anime.

I looked around and saw signs everywhere covered with cute girls, hot boys, and lots of strange characters I didn’t understand. The giant TV on the UDX was playing anime videos all day long. Akihabara was like a 3D website, in a way. A portal site to otaku culture.

There were no windows on the buildings, and all of them were covered with ads, some of which were put up and taken down in the course of a single night. It really was just like a website.

“I love the chaos here. Or I would, if it weren’t for work. This is the best place to find good Vanguard cards, for one thing.” But as a place for the action and drama-filled life of a detective, it was somewhat lacking. “There’s no Castle of Cagliostro here, either.”

It wasn’t exactly good for hard-boiled noir stuff, either. There were rows of neon signs along the main drag. If they were only a little brighter and more obnoxious, it could give the place some atmosphere. But that was more of a Shinjuku or Kabukicho kind of thing.

The fact of the matter was that the place had become too famous overseas, and now it had changed to become more normal and touristy. Because of that, the unique sense of chaos and danger that the city offered was, compared to a place like Shinjuku, nowhere to be found—or if that was going too far, at least there was less of it.

In the past, there had been an atrocity here that had shaken the city to its foundation. But it had been sudden and random, with no politics and no conspiracies involved. In the end, all it left behind was a feeling of empty frustration.

I would never forget it. I wanted the person who ruined everyone’s treasured memories to spend the rest of their life in jail.

Crime didn’t suit this town. That much was clear.

“But the whole ‘underground’ thing is gone now, too...”

Twenty years ago, there were tons of shady junk parts shops, as well as lots of suspicious-looking foreigners selling things down side alleys, I’d been told. But at this point, most of those had been cleaned out.

That must be why you didn’t hear of a lot of TV crime shows set in Akihabara. You would see the occasional police car or uniformed officer, but they were usually dealing with shoplifters or handling traffic. That was an important job too, but...

Some places had an atmosphere that suggested a dark and dangerous world, that inspired an almost instinctual fear. You could still sense that atmosphere in Kabukicho, but in twenty-first-century Japan, it was gradually disappearing from the cities.

It wasn’t just Akihabara: Center Street in Shibuya and Ikebukuro Nishiguchi were a lot more peaceful than they used to be.

“I guess that goes for Kichijoji, too...”

Kichijoji was one of the areas under the jurisdiction of my station, the Musashino Police. You could head down the back alleys there and only get a mild sense that something strange might be going on.

Sometimes there would be minor incidents, but never any crimes. Even Harmonica Alley, the area near the station, was a lot safer than it was a few years ago. It was no longer an underground black market, but a spot with a lot of yummy hidden restaurants.

The people on the streets were always kind and cheerful. On the weekends, you could see families and couples going shopping and relaxing at any number of different stores and cafés. It was a wonderful place to have a good time.

There was a reason it always ranked first place in surveys of “Towns in Tokyo You’d Want to Live in.” It was a place your average person wanted to visit, and there were always lots of visitors from outside the city. And unlike Akihabara, there were a lot of old historical sites, like shrines. Stuff like that gave the locals a strange sense of peace. Maybe the temples protected the town with some kind of barrier that brought peace to the hearts of visitors?

...Okay, that was just being silly. But that image of a cool, wonderful city had only lasted until a week ago.

A famous professor who’d been on TV was murdered in his lab at his college. And then 256 bodies, victims of a mass drowning suicide, had been pulled up from the heart of Inokashira Park, the symbol of Kichijoji.

Ever since these two cases were reported, I’d seen fewer people traveling about the city, and no more lines at popular cafés and food stalls.

“Our station’s been in an uproar, too.”

We hadn’t ID’d all the bodies yet. The problem was, weirdly, that over half the victims were carrying nothing that would identify them. Because of this, we detectives were being sent around to help identify the bodies. But despite the fact that everyone was busy, here I was wandering around Akihabara. If my co-workers, Kozaki and Shinoyama, saw me here, I’d be in for one hell of a lecture.

“Well, they won’t be yelling at me when they see me anymore, probably.”

I was standing on the pedestrian bridge that connected to UDX. I was leaning up against the rails and looking down at the people below.

As I did, I thought about Shinoyama and Kozaki. I didn’t know if we had different values or they just didn’t like me, but those two had a habit of behaving really nastily towards me. But somehow I felt a little sad when I realized that I’d never be hearing their yelling again.

I thought back to what had happened just a few hours ago. I’d finished my morning work and come back to the station. Something had felt weird. The air was heavy, like it was hard to breathe. When I went to the floor where the detectives’ division was, it got worse.

Part of my trouble breathing might just have been that I’d run up four flights of stairs, though.

“Pant... pant... pant... Man, I’ve got the worst luck. I just get back, and the elevator is getting repaired. My heart’s pounding like a drum! Maybe I’m just getting old!” I said, pretending to catch my breath even though I wasn’t exhausted at all. To tell the truth, four flights of stairs was nothing. Compared to the way Inspector Zenigata ran from the bottom floor of the castle all the way to the top, this was nothing at all.

...But none of the other detectives reacted to my joke.

“...?”

Sure, normally they’d just look at me coldly or get annoyed, but today there wasn’t even that kind of a reaction. Only silence. I could see the staff and investigators scattered across the room, but nobody said anything. They just kept at their work. This was the first time they’d completely and totally ignored me.

“What’s wrong? Has there been some new development in the Inokashira case?”

Nobody answered.

“Hmm? Hello? Can you hear me?” I said to someone nearby, but there was no response. Not even the slightest twitch. Everybody was ignoring me completely.

That was strange... I’d worked pretty hard to establish a position as the guy in the department that everybody beat up on. Maybe it was just my imagination, but everyone seemed really tense...

There was a strange air that hung over the whole floor. I decided to take the hint and stop messing around. “Did something happen?” I asked. No answer. Nobody even looked at me.

“...Oh, dear.” I tried waving my hand in front of one of my co-workers’ faces, but I got ignored. Then I tried talking to someone sitting a bit away, but he didn’t even look up at me.

What was going on here? Had I done something to make them hate me this much? I mean sure, sometimes I would blow off investigations to go hit up card shops. But I’d done my job as a detective, or at least, I’d thought I had.

“Oh!”

And then, Shinoyama and Kozaki came up the stairs, back from their investigations. Just like usual, the two of them were working together. At this point, I was willing to take even their sarcasm.

I walked over to them desperately. “Hey, listen to me, Shinoyama! Everybody’s being mean to me!”

“I’m so tired... How come the elevator’s being repaired?”

“You’ve got that right.”

“What do you want for lunch, Kozaki?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Oh, I’m hungry,” I said, raising my hand. “Want to go somewhere?” This was perfect. I’d just found a restaurant with really good prices, and I’d been meaning to go back. “I just found this great place near here a week ago. The food is great, but it’s in an out-of-the-way place, so it doesn’t get crowded at lunch.”

And what was even better, they didn’t even care if you had an after-lunch cigarette, which was unusual for lunch places. Both of them were heavy smokers, so it was perfect for them. I didn’t like cigarette smoke, so I’d always avoided going to lunch with them, but on a day like this I was willing to ignore it.

“I recommend the motsunabe stew,” I said. “It’s gotten a little warmer lately, so you might break into a sweat, though. And also—”

But...

“I guess I can skip lunch today.”

“Yeah... Sorry.”

“Huh? Um, excuse me?!” I spread out my hands wide and yelled, but they just slowly walked right past me. “...Come on, now.”

Even these two were ignoring me? That’s going a little too far.

And then I finally realized that they weren’t wearing their beat-up old suits, but dark, black ones. Their neckties were black too, which meant...

“Why are you guys in mourning clothes?”

They didn’t answer.

“Did you just get back from somebody’s funeral?”

They didn’t even look at me.

“Listen. I don’t know what you’re so mad about, but—”

They couldn’t hear me.

“That bastard, making us do all this crap...” Kozaki took off his jacket and slammed it down on the back of his chair. For some reason, he looked so frustrated—and he was crying. Shinoyama was quiet; he didn’t blame him or agree. He just looked down with a serious expression on his face.

The two of them were clearly different than usual. What was going on here? And why were both of them glaring at my seat at my desk? It was almost like...

“...Huh?”

...And then suddenly, intuitively, I realized.

A certain possibility came to my mind. It was just a possibility, but if I assumed it was true, everything made sense... Not that that made it any better. More than anything, it was so crazy that even I couldn’t believe it.

“Um, I’m gonna go do some questioning,” I said softly, then fled the station to clear my head.

Of course, nobody responded.

“And... I was right.” I took a sip from my warm canned coffee as I stared at the giant UDX screen from atop the overpass.

I’d tried several ways to see if my hypothesis was right. First, I went to my usual spot at the trading card corner at Gamers. Then to the café restaurant “Backstage Pass,” where I was basically a regular. Then the Sega arcade. I tried them all, and they all came back with the same, unshakable result.

To be honest, I was surprised. But strangely, I didn’t feel angry or sad. If I did feel anything, it was... Yeah. Disappointment. “It” had happened, and for a while, I hadn’t even noticed. I was disappointed in my own stupidity.

“Man, what a screw-up. I can’t believe I’m dead. So I guess that means I only weigh twenty-one grams?” In 1970, American doctor Duncan MacDougall had announced that he’d proved a soul weighed twenty-one grams. I guess that meant I’d lost a lot of weight.

I sighed, tasting a bitterness that felt like defeat. Nearby, a group of otaku were leaning up against the railings just like I was and sharing what they’d bought with each other. I watched them out of the corner of my eye as I tried to decide what I needed to do next.

I was still in a bit of a state of shock, reasonably enough. Not only did I not have any kind of plan at all, my head was completely blank.

With nothing else to do, I decided to take my mind off it by looking at the giant UDX TV. The text on the screen said, “More Victims in Inokashira Mass Suicide Case Announced,” and a list of names was scrolling down it. I’d looked a moment ago, and sure enough, my name was there.

“Sheesh...” I’d come all the way to Akihabara because I wanted to shut the case out of my mind, too. But there was probably no way to do that in Tokyo right now.

The announcer on the huge screen was reading from the list of names, oblivious to my problems. They were already announcing the list of people who’d been identified today. Yuta Gamon’s name was on the list, too. It was possible they’d ID’d over two hundred people now.

“...In the end, I guess I couldn’t stop it.”

I’d just been forced to watch as ‘their’ plan went forward. I thought of how stupid I’d been and tore at my hair.

“They forced me to dance with Nicola Tesla’s ghost, and I never even realized it. I guess I’m just too old for this.”