site 60: Asuna Kizaki

My dorm was a ten-minute walk from Inokashira Park Station, the station next to Kichijoji Station.

It was two stories high and a little old, but it had a cafeteria that offered breakfast and dinner. Most of the residents were college kids who had come from the countryside to Tokyo, but I’d lived overseas, so I was given special permission to stay here. Since I was going to Seimei University, I wouldn’t be moving out this year, either.

After I got back from school, I opened the closet and tried to find something to wear. Oliver wanted me to start working with the FBI again immediately. When I’d agreed, he’d acted fast.

“A detective from the Musashino Police will be at your dorm in an hour. Meet him there.”

That was all he’d said before he left.

“He doesn’t care about my schedule at all, huh?” I whispered. But I’d known what Oliver was like when I started working with him, and I wasn’t really surprised.

I took off my school uniform and quickly changed into my civilian clothes. I needed to wear something that wouldn’t attract attention at a crime scene. I had a child’s face and a small body, so I wanted something that wouldn’t make me look like a child. Unfortunately, nothing I had with me qualified.

When I was with the FBI, I could wear a jacket with the bureau’s name printed in big letters on the back. Did the Japanese police have anything like that? If they did, they probably wouldn’t give it to me.

I finished changing and checked myself in the mirror. I’d chosen a white and blue jacket to wear over a one-piece dress, and I looked to make sure there was no obvious dirt on my black leggings. It would have been better if I had a suit, but since I was now a Japanese high school girl, I didn’t need one, and it wouldn’t look good on me anyway. I was going to have to go buy one now, though...

Compared to FBI agents, how would Japanese detectives treat me?

“Back then, I really was a kid...”

I wanted to believe that as I’d gotten older, I’d started to look more like a grown-up, but the truth was that I hadn’t gotten much taller at all. Maybe it was because I didn’t eat much, or maybe it was because of my condition, but I hadn’t really grown up at all.

Anyway, that didn’t matter. No matter what I looked like in the eyes of the Japanese detectives, it didn’t matter right now. My one priority was to take over Moritsuka’s case and solve it.

The last thing I did was put on my black cat-paw gloves. They weren’t the white ones I usually used, but the ones Moritsuka had given me.

The feeling of the paw pads on the palms brought back memories. I hadn’t worn these since I worked for the FBI. When I put them on, I felt just a little bit better.

After fifteen minutes of waiting in front of the dorm, a black car appeared. A heavily built man in a suit got out from the driver’s side.

But his suit was beaten up, and his hair was kind of a mess. He had an unshaven beard on his chin and a cigarette in his mouth. If this were a movie, he’d be less an FBI agent and more like a crusty old local police detective. Just from looking at him, he seemed pretty stubborn and hard-headed.

Our eyes met.

“Oh, you’re Kizaki?”

“Yes. Are you from the Musashino police?”

The man nodded. He looked annoyed. “I’m Shinoyama, from the Musashino police.”

“Nice to meet you.” I bowed, but Detective Shinoyama just looked at me suspiciously. But I was used to that.

“I’m FBI Agent Asuna Kizaki.”

To drive the point home, I handed him the temporary ID card Oliver had given me earlier. It had the stamp of the FBI Director on it. Oliver said he’d prepared it in advance. The photo was one from when I’d been in America.

Shinoyama only glanced at the ID. He’d probably already been briefed. “Get in.”

He extinguished the cigarette in a portable ashtray, then got back into the car and turned it on. I decided to ride in the back instead of the front.

It stank. The whole car stank of cigarette smoke. I had to deal with it all the way to the station.

The media was gathered in front of Musashino Police Station. Some of the reporters were broadcasting live already. After all the big crimes going on in Kichijoji, everybody was on edge. The same was true of Mitaka, where Musashino Police Station was located.

Speaking from experience, I expected the same atmosphere inside the station itself... but once I stepped past the front door, I was surprised at how empty it felt.

“There don’t seem to be many people here. Is it usually like this?” I asked, before I even realized I’d done so. It was my first time in a Japanese police station, so I couldn’t be sure.

“Everybody’s out now dealing with the Inokashira incident, and the others, too. It’s rare to have this many major crimes at once,” Shinoyama said without looking back at me.

We got into the elevator and he pushed the button for the fourth floor.

“By ‘others,’ do you mean the murder of the professor at Seimei?”

“That’s part of it. The other would be the dismembered body of a girl that was found at Enmeiji. That was a murder, too.”

I felt like I’d heard that story on the news, but I didn’t know the details. “Any connection to the mass suicides?”

“None that we’ve found yet.”

“Tell me the details.” I stared straight into his eyes as I spoke. He sighed in resignation and told me.

According to him, a wooden box, forty centimeters on a side, had been found on the grounds of Enmeiji Temple. It was filled with tiny pieces of what used to be a person. They hadn’t ID’ed the body yet, but from the objects that were left in the box, they believed it likely that it was a girl from Seimei High.

...That was my school. I’d had no idea that over the past few weeks, multiple people from Seimei Academy had died...

There was also a rumor that several of the suicides were Seimei people, too. Even if it was too soon to assume they were connected, I couldn’t help but feel that something terrifying was happening in this town.

Shinoyama led me to a room marked “Meeting Room #2.” It was a decent-sized room with several tables and chairs lined up. He told me to wait there a while and then came back with another detective—this one’s name was Kozaki—carrying three cardboard boxes.

“These are Moritsuka’s things.”

The three boxes were placed on one of the tables.

“Let me take a look.”

The first contained a wallet and cellphone, kept in plastic bags to preserve them as evidence. His favorite cap was in there, too. I’d seen him wearing it at the FBI. He’d told me he wore it out of respect for an anime character named Zenigata. I’d even seen him wearing it in summer, so it must have been really important to him.

The second box held a small amount of clothes and paperwork. And the third box, the heaviest, held...

“Anime DVDs, manga, and... what’s this?”

“Cards. Supposedly it’s something called a ‘trading card game,’” Kozaki answered. He was a little younger and thinner than Shinoyama, and he looked kind of nervous.

Moritsuka had more cards than anything else in his things. There were hundreds of cards, carefully placed in six binders.

“All this was found in Moritsuka’s desk?”

Shinoyama pointed at the box holding his wallet and phone. “That box was taken from his house, but the others, yes.”

That would mean he kept the DVDs and cards at his desk at the police station. He was a government worker, but he brought his personal possessions to work and played with them? Sure, Moritsuka was always a bit odd, and he always kept pieces of candy in his coat pocket. But that wasn’t quite like the Moritsuka I knew. He’d been working here at the station in Mitaka for almost a year, though.

I’d been going to the high school one station over. If only I’d known he was so close... I would have come to see him.

I bit my lip and tried to pick what objects to use my power on. I could use my psychometry on anything, be it human or object. But naturally, there was a difference in how many memories I could read. If I had a metal object that the person kept with him at all times, I could replay memories very clearly. But nothing I found fit that criteria. The fastest way was probably the phone, then.

The battery must have run out, because when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. But psychometry didn’t need electricity.

Shinoyama and Kozaki were staring at me silently.

“I’m going to concentrate for a minute. Don’t talk to me, please,” I said, then I took off my gloves and closed my eyes.

— Begin the performance.

I imagined an empty movie theater. The projector started to roll.

Moritsuka’s face appeared up close on the screen. There was no warning, so I almost screamed.

He was staring into the camera of his phone, it looked like. It felt like it had been a long, long time since I’d seen his face. He looked young enough that if you told me he was my age, I’d probably believe you, and his face hadn’t changed a bit since he was in the FBI.

I stopped myself from crying, somehow, and ran the film back into the past.

“Huh? The battery’s run out.” Moritsuka had just stuck the phone onto its charging cradle, but he must have put it on wrong, because it didn’t start charging. He kept chuckling and adjusting it. Then he headed towards the bathroom.

I stopped the performance and opened my eyes. This phone hadn’t recorded the moment of his death.

“Moritsuka left his wallet and his phone at home, and then went to Inokashira Park to kill himself?”

If the phone had been found at his home, not near his body, that would explain things. If he’d gone to kill himself, that wouldn’t have been that surprising, but...

Oliver had said he’d been killed. Did that mean that he’d been kidnapped from his home?

“Listen... Kizaki, was that your name?” Kozaki asked me, sounding surprised. “What were you just doing?”

“Psychometry. Agent Oliver didn’t tell you?”

“No.” Shinoyama shook his head as well.

“It’s the power to read the memories of a person or thing by touching them.”

“Didn’t they used to do that on TV?”

Shinoyama’s eyes went wider. “The FBI is really doing that stuff, huh? I thought it was just something they made up for TV.” He believed me more easily than I thought he would.

“You believe me?”

“To be honest, not in the slightest. But if the FBI sent you, you must be good for something. If nothing else, Moritsuka wasn’t holding his phone or his wallet when he died. That much you got right.”

So my guess was correct, then.

“Thank you.”

“Right now, we need all the help we can get. That’s all.”

That meant the investigation into all these cases wasn’t going well.

“Where are the things he was carrying with him when he died?’

“In the temporary morgue. Not everybody’s been identified yet, so we can’t get permission to take them out.”

The temporary morgue... That would have to be my next stop, then.

“Do the Japanese police intend to call this a suicide?”

“That’s what the brass thinks, it seems.”

“That Moritsuka’s death was a suicide?”

Shinoyama sighed a little and scratched his head. “To be honest, we didn’t really understand Moritsuka. He died without us learning anything about him.”

Kozaki’s reaction was similar. Both of them seemed to be telling the truth. Moritsuka was the type who preferred to act on his own. Maybe he didn’t have any deep connections with the Musashino police.

I moved Moritsuka’s phone back into the cardboard box. Then I decided to look for other things that I could use for my psychometry. I rummaged through the box with the DVDs and manga and found one thing that interested me.

“A book?”

It was the size of a magazine, but much thinner than the other manga. It didn’t seem to have many pages at all. The drawings seemed kind of amateur-ish, too.

The Bottom of the Deep Water. That was the title. There were two men on the cover. I flipped through it, more out of curiosity than anything.

And I gasped a little in surprise. On the pages inside, the male characters were naked and embracing each other.

“Why?”

“Did Moritsuka swing that way, maybe?”

Shinoyama and Kozaki both seemed a little confused, too.

Was this what Moritsuka liked? I’d never heard anything about that. If he had been, I wouldn’t have told him it was wrong, but...

The question was: Why did he have this thing?

I looked through the rest of his things, but the only book of that kind was this one. Out of all the manga and anime he had, it stood out from the rest.

I remembered how Moritsuka had behaved when he was at the FBI. Often he would do things that looked like playing around to everyone else. But every time he did something like that, he would always solve the case immediately afterward.

“This is Moritsuka magic, you see.”

He’d say it like he was joking, but... maybe there was some kind of meaning to this.

“Did Moritsuka tell you anything about this book?”

“Come to think of it...”

“He did, then?”

“When Isayuki Hashigami was killed, Moritsuka was the first on the scene. I remember him saying something really strange. Something about how the way the professor was killed matched up with what was in some doujin manga. Maybe that’s the manga?”

“A doujin manga?” I went back to the start and began to read through it again. “What did Moritsuka say matched between the case and this manga?”

“Hmm... What was it again?”

“The tooth,” Kozaki answered. “He said the tooth being removed was the same.”

“The tooth... Here it is.” I found the page halfway through the book. There were several panels devoted to a scene of a man raping the corpse of a man he’d killed and then ripping out an implanted tooth with a knife. “Dr. Hashigami had an implant that was removed?”

“Yeah. Forensics said that there were no signs that he was alive when it was done. Which means—”

“Which means it was removed after death, right?”

The media had said nothing about the tooth. The police must have been keeping it to themselves.

“What have you been doing to follow up on this?”

“...We haven’t followed up.”

“Why?”

Shinoyama looked away awkwardly. “When Moritsuka gave us the report, we laughed it off as a joke and ignored it.”

“I see.”

The rest of the force had ignored him, so Moritsuka had decided to investigate it himself, perhaps? If that was the case, then did the killer find him and kill him too, before he could tell anyone else?

I flipped through the pages some more. As I did, a single card fell out and landed on the floor. I picked it up and saw that its design was the same as the trading cards in the binders. The picture was of a European-style dragon, and the card itself shimmered rainbow colors in the fluorescent lights.

Why was this card stuck in the manga, instead of filed away?

I suddenly felt anxious. I put the manga down on the desk and clutched the card with both hands as if praying.

— Begin the performance.

On the screen, Moritsuka was staring at the card, no... at me. In the theater.

“Umm... Ahem. This card, which was placed inside the doujin manga, will be a critical piece of evidence in the search for Dr. Hashigami, the murdered professor from Seimei University.”

The way he was talking was very strange. It was as if he was talking to the card itself...

“This manga depicts accurately what happened after the professor’s murder. Oh, by the way, it came out at last year’s Comiket. It wasn’t drawn after the murder. It was drawn before.”

What... was this? Why was Moritsuka saying all this to himself? There was nobody else in the room he was in. He wasn’t talking to anyone on his phone. Who was he talking to?

And then I realized...

Was this...?

“This is just my intuition talking, but I think this book holds a lot of secrets. You could say it’s like... Yes.” Moritsuka sighed a little.

And then he said...

“Like a book of prophecy, you could say.”

His expression was serious. There was no trace of his usual childish, easygoing manner.

“I think I’ll be okay again, but I’m going to leave clues just in case something happens. Not... that I really want to think about what that something might be.”

I was right. The memories of this card...

Moritsuka wasn’t talking to himself...

He was talking to a psychometer, like me?

On the screen, he smiled.

Even at the worst crime scenes, Moritsuka’s laughs were always filled with cheer. This was just like the time I’d been brought to a certain crime scene and been terrified of the stench of blood and screams of the other agents. It was Moritsuka’s smile that had cheered me up.

I’d never see that smile again...

But he’d handed the baton to me like this.

“I’ll tell you the two things I’m investigating that I’m sure about. The first is Ririka Nishizono and this manga that she wrote. The other is FM-KCZ, a mini-FM radio station in Kichijoji. Well, that one I’m about to investigate. There’s also the Hachifukushin Circle. Those guys are suspicious, too. Anyway, if I find something else out, I’ll make a note in my memories. Bye.”

The screen went blank. The memory replay ended.

— Performance complete.

I opened my eyes. I looked down at the card Moritsuka had left me.

He’d left me two, no, three hints.

“FM radio...” I whispered one of the last words he’d said. “What’s that?” I asked the detectives.

“You seriously don’t know?” Kozaki was astonished.

“I’m sorry. I’ve only lived in Japan for a year.”

“Kids these days don’t listen to the radio, huh? Well, I guess I only listen to it in the car, though.”

“What’s FM?”

“I think it’s the type of frequency or something... What’s this about a radio?”

“FM-KCZ in Kichijoji. Ever heard of a mini-FM radio station with that name?”

“Nope. Never.”

The two of them glanced at each other and thought. It seemed they really didn’t remember.

I took out my phone from my pocket and ran a search online. The first hit was for a homepage with an old design. It wasn’t a homepage for FM-KCZ itself, it was a list of mini-FM radio stations all across eastern Japan. One of those stations was FM-KCZ.

According to the page, it was privately run by one person, and the station broadcasted news about events in Kichijoji and introductions to local stores. However, it said, the station had been dormant for years. The reason was written on the page.

The host and operator passed away, so the broadcasts stopped.

Death. Again. But what did an FM radio station that stopped broadcasting years ago have to do with anything?

I explained what I’d found about FM-KCZ to Kozaki and Shinoyama and told them that Moritsuka had been researching it. But the two of them just looked suspicious.

“We don’t have any men to spare right now.” They’d said it before I could ask. I’d have to look into it myself.

I picked up my other clue, the manga, again. At the back of the book, Ririka Nishizono was listed as the author, and under her name was an email address and the name of the publishing company.

“It seems someone named Ririka Nishizono is the author of this book.” I glanced at the detectives. From the way they were frowning, it seemed... unlikely that they’d look into it.

It was hard to call this cooperative. They’d just said they needed all the help they could get, but it seemed they had no intention of helping me.

Feeling that this was a little unfair, I opened my phone and called Oliver. He picked up on the first ring.

“Learn anything?”

“I want you to look into someone for me. Ririka Nishizono. She’s using a free email address, it looks like.”

“Who is she?”

“Someone Moritsuka was looking into.”

“Give me the address.”

“Alright.”

I read him the email address off the last page of the manga. It was a commonly used free email service, but if he tracked it, he might be able to find a phone number.

“Wait five minutes,” he said, then hung up without waiting for my answer.

My heart started beating a little faster. It was probably because I’d used my psychometry twice in such a short time.

“May I sit?” I asked, pointing to a chair.

“S-Sure. You don’t look so good. You okay?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m just a little tired.” I sat down on the chair. I sighed a little and used my fingers to wipe the sweat off my forehead. “I’m sorry, can you at least look up the address for FM-KCZ? I’ll do the rest of the work myself.”

“I don’t know if we can use resources on something that’s not connected to the case...”

They were still hesitant. Fine, then.

I touched both of their hands at once.

“H-Hey, what are you doing?”

It seemed that even a big, tough policeman blushed when he was touched by a high school girl. But I wasn’t trying to seduce them.

— Begin the performance.

I’d start with a vision of Shinoyama. Important incidents in his life flashed by on the screen. I chose a few of the most obvious. Then I did the same thing for Kozaki.

“Kozaki, you went to a batting center on Sunday two weeks ago, didn’t you? While you were there, you hurt your right hand. Does it still hurt? You think you may have fractured it. I think you should go to a hospital.”

“What?!”

“And Shinoyama, you should make up with your wife as soon as possible, okay? This is your third big fight this year, right? Also, you had thirteen cigarettes yesterday, didn’t you? You were warned during your last physical that you were smoking too much, so you’d been limiting yourself to ten a day. But yesterday, after what happened with Moritsuka, you smoked three more than usual. Am I wrong?”

“H-How did you know...”

I needed both of them to understand that my psychometry worked, and I needed them to tell the rest of the station that Asuna Kizaki was the real thing.

“This is an official request for help from the FBI. Local information is most easily found by local police. So I want your help.”

“...R-Right.”

Shinoyama and Kozaki left the room, both looking confused.

Once they were gone, I took a minute to catch my breath and let my heart rate calm down. If just a few attempts at psychometry in a row were doing this to me, I was going to have a bad time soon. Using my powers was definitely shortening my lifespan, but if I didn’t use them now, I wouldn’t be able to find what Moritsuka was researching.

A call came in on my phone. The caller was unidentified, but it was probably Oliver.

“Yes, this is Kizaki.”

“Ririka Nishizono. A student at Seimei University. I’ll email you her address, phone, and social networking accounts. The rest of the information will take some time.”

“Thank you.”

“Until last month, she was using her email at least once a day, but for the past several days there’s no record that she logged in.”

“I see.” I was curious, but since neither of us could do anything but make guesses right now, I didn’t ask.

I decided to ask for something else instead. “Please look into a group called the Hachifukushin Circle as well.”

“Something else Moritsuka was looking into?”

“Yes.”

“Understood. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got something,” he said, and then he hung up.

A moment later, an email came with Ririka Nishizono’s phone number in it. I called. The phone rang, but there was no sign of her picking up. If she hadn’t been using her email for several days, she was probably out of contact. If I wanted to be optimistic, it was possible she was on a trip overseas. Students were out of class this time of year.

I hung up the phone. The conference room was as quiet as a tomb. I had nothing to do now until the detectives got back. To be honest, I hadn’t expected to get this much information at the start of my investigation. I’d thought things would be harder. It was safe to say that this was thanks to Moritsuka.

Did he leave that message for me assuming that the FBI would send a psychometer, because he was worried about whether he’d survive? Was something that dangerous hidden within the case he was researching?

I read back through Ririka Nishizono’s doujin manga. It was awkward looking at the detailed depictions of men embracing one another.

“......Ugh.” Each new page introduced me to a world I’d never seen before. I was starting to feel dizzy.

I didn’t have a problem with homosexuality, as long as both people involved were happy. But how much demand was there in Japan for pictures of men having sex like this? Who was the target market, anyway? Men? Women? I had no idea. Where did Moritsuka find this book, anyway?

“Huh?” Suddenly, my eyes landed on one of the panels.

It was the second story in a collection of five stories. There was a box there that the manga identified as the “Kotoribako.” Unlike the characters in the manga, this drawing was detailed, as if the artist had been looking at it while she drew it.

At first I thought there was a pattern drawn on the surface of the box, but then I saw that all the lines in the pattern ran from side to side, as if the whole box was made from tiny little pieces of wood.

“A box...”

It reminded me of what Shinoyama had just told me about the murder at Enmeiji temple.

This was what Moritsuka had said in his memories about the box:

“You could say it’s like... Yes. Like a book of prophecy.”

“A book of prophecy...”

The title on the cover read The Bottom of the Deep Water. When I thought about what that meant, a chill ran up my spine.

Moritsuka had died in Inokashira Park in the middle of the night. He’d died at the bottom of deep water. And not alone, but with 255 other people.

It was like the book was foretelling that...

I gulped and slammed the manga shut.