site 75: Yuta Gamon

Toko had told me she had something she wanted to talk to me about, so I headed to Café☆Blue Moon. As I walked through the hotel section on the way from the station to the café, Sarai called out to me from behind.

He walked up alongside me. “Where did you go yesterday?”

If he meant after we met at Daiseiji, I’d gone home and cried... but I couldn’t tell Sarai that. So I said nothing.

Oh, but maybe I should tell him about Asunyan. Before I could decide what to say, he began to talk.

“I looked to see if there was anyone else we knew at Daiseiji.”

“Huh? Seriously? Man, you’re tough. Or are you some kind of monster?”

“Are you insulting me?”

“I just... I just don’t know how you could do that and stay calm.”

“It wasn’t easy, even for me. But panicking won’t help solve anything.”

Man, maybe he really was tough...

“And?”

“I found Aikawa.”

“...Yeah.”

“And the mistress of the House of Crimson.”

“Aria Kurenaino? I see...”

The incident at Enmeiji was after the 256 incident. We’d been able to talk with Aria when she visited Blue Moon, so it made sense that she was dead.

“Also, I don’t know if it’s the same person... but there was also the body of a girl named Ririka Nishizono.”

“Huh, really?!” Ririka Nishizono, the one who’d drawn that manga that had foretold what happened?

“If I remember right, I met her once at school. We didn’t really talk, though.”

“If she’s dead, does that mean she doesn’t have anything to do with Dr. Hashigami’s death?”

“I don’t know. There’s no way to be sure it’s even the same Ririka Nishizono who drew the manga.”

“Y-You’re right...”

Even so, a lot of people I knew were dead. Two hundred fifty-six people who either lived, worked, or went to school in Kichijoji... It felt like the odds of me knowing anybody would be pretty low.

Was it just a coincidence that so many names I knew were included? Or... was there some reason?

Asunyan said that my father was involved somehow in the 256 incident, and so was I. Was something happening around me?

“By the way, Narusawa wasn’t there,” Sarai added.

“Huh? Really?” Did that mean Ryotasu wasn’t dead? Then that meant that just like Asunyan, she could see and talk to me even though she was alive, huh? “What about Master Izumin?”

“I don’t even know his real name. There was no way to look.”

“Oh, I see. But you should be able to tell once you see his body, right? He’s so creepy— I mean, distinctive.”

“You’re right. I didn’t see any bodies like that.”

In other words, Ryotasu and Master Izumin weren’t victims of the 256 incident. Both were alive.

“I see. They’re... alive.”

I didn’t care so much about Master Izumin, but I wanted to be happy that Ryotasu was alive... yet somehow, it wasn’t that easy. After all, I was dead.

“It may be too early to be sure. All we know for a fact is that her body wasn’t there.”

“What about the list of victims? Shouldn’t they have everybody ID’d by now?”

If Ryotasu’s name wasn’t on it, that would settle it.

“There are still about twenty people who haven’t been identified. We should look again.”

And then the conversation cut off.

Sarai and I headed to the café, walking side-by-side. Walking like this with Sarai was somehow kind of...

“I’d rather walk next to a pretty girl.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” I fell silent again.

There was probably no reason I had to force myself to talk to Sarai, but...

When I was with Ryotasu, I had no trouble talking, so what was different now?

“Hey Sarai, what do you think about psychometers?”

“Psychometers?”

“Um, there’s a type of psychic power where you can touch something and read the memories it has—”

“I know that. It’s stupid. Memories, in objects? How are objects going to have memories when they don’t have an organ that functions like a brain? The ‘memories’ are just a fantasy dreamed up by the psychometer.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“So why are you asking?”

“W-Well, I met this girl who’s a (hot) Japanese high school girl who’s also a psychometer FBI agent...”

If I introduced her to Sarai, they’d probably have a big fight. Would Sarai win? Or would Asunyan use her powers to prove him wrong?

...Damn. That would be really interesting. It would be like those TV programs they used to do where they’d test psychics. If I put together something like that on Kirikiri Basara, it would be a big hit.

“If you want to talk about manga, talk to Narusawa, not me.” Sarai said.

Grr... Just you wait. Soon I’ll introduce you to Asunyan, and you’ll see who’s boss!

Eventually, we reached Café☆Blue Moon. Toko was there, and she told us what happened at the Mumuu office.

“My dad... Dr. Hashigami... had another essay?”

“Yes. And it was finished on February eleventh.”

“That’s the day my dad went missing!” Sarai gasped.

“It’s possible my editor-in-chief is involved with his murder, isn’t it?” Toko took off her glasses and rubbed her eyelids with her thumbs. She wore a subdued expression. “There was one time he went to get a draft from the doctor without saying anything to me. I did think that was strange.”

“What do you mean?”

“Going to get the draft was my job. That was the only time he ever did it.”

“When was this?”

“I just checked in my notebook. February sixteenth.”

“That’s after my dad had gone missing.”

Dr. Hashigami had died on February twenty-fourth. That’s the day I’d gone to his lab. And—

“My dad died on the twenty-fourth. On that day, somebody raided his study.”

“So it was possible the editor-in-chief got into the study before then and took the draft.” Toko snapped her fingers. “It was probably something different than he planned to run in the magazine. It was way too big to fit his column length.”

“Maybe it was the culmination of my father’s research, then?” Sarai shivered a little.

“Um,” I raised my hand timidly. “Why did Mumuu’s editor-in-chief have to take the draft?”

“The obvious answer is that somebody didn’t want it getting published.”

“But it’s weird that the Mumuu editor-in-chief is involved, then.”

Of course, this was still a guess.

“But think about it. What if Mumuu was controlling information? What if they were making sure all the information that got out was stuff normal people wouldn’t believe in order to trick people? And then they kept the truth hidden... You could make a hypothesis like that, couldn’t you?” Toko said.

Toko was a Mumuu editor, too... Did she realize how impossible most of the stuff she wrote sounded? But...

“It smells like a conspiracy!”

Normally this was where Sarai would jump in to prove us wrong. But...

Sarai just bit his lip and clenched his fists. He was being emotional, for once. He was trying his best to keep his emotions in check with his reason... That’s how it looked.

Sarai sighed and took out his phone, making notes with incredible speed.

“I understand the situation. Let’s go over all this.” By the time he was done writing, Sarai was back to his usual self. “Sumikaze, do you know what was in the paper your boss was hiding?”

“Yes.” Toko nodded. “He hid the USB memory stick it was on right in front of me. I still can’t believe that his Easter Island statue had a gimmick like that. No, actually that’s more like something I would expect from him.”

So she’d been able to find his secret because she was a ghost? It was the same thing I’d done when I went to peek into the bath. I wondered if we could do some kind of detective thing. We could make Ryotasu the actual detective while Sarai and I solved the crimes. Like some kind of Conan thing.

“I copied the data onto my phone.”

“Huh, wait a second. Toko, you were able to touch that USB stick?”

“What do you mean?”

“No, just... we’re dead, and like ghosts, right? Can we touch physical objects?”

“That’s a good point...” Toko’s eyebrows furrowed. “But I was able to touch it just fine. I was even able to use the PC.”

“Oh...”

That’s right. I’d done plenty of updates on Kirikiri Basara. I was a ghost, but I could still use the laptop.

Toko took out her phone and showed me the screen. It was a PDF of a handwritten draft. Dr. Hashigami’s handwriting covered the page.

“The title is ‘Time and the Spiritualizing World.’ This was my father’s last essay...” Sarai took more notes with his phone. That seemed to be how he was trying to maintain his calm. “Can you up it to the Cloud? I’ll be able to download it then.”

Toko used her phone to start uploading the data.

“So was there anything else you noticed? You said he was talking on the phone. Who was he talking to?”

“I don’t know. But he said the name of some weird group.”

“Group?”

Toko nodded and gave me the name. “The Hachifukushin Circle.”

“What?!” That name! I was so stunned that for a moment I forgot to breathe.

“Gamon, you know it?”

“Kn-Know it? I just heard it from someone else today.” My father’s secret, which Asunyan had told me about. “It’s an organization my dad belonged to... I guess.”

“What did you say?”

What was going on here? The dots were starting to connect.

And it was my dad who connected them. An ordinary guy who’d died seven years ago. An ordinary guy who’d just happened to have his own mini-FM radio station.

He was kind, and gentle... and because of that he often suffered, but at least he wasn’t the type of person to trick people or hurt them. That had always been how I’d thought of my dad.

But today that image was falling apart.

“That... That can’t be true.”

“It doesn’t mean everything happened because your father wanted it to.”

Suddenly, someone whispered in my ear from behind, and I jumped up. It was a man with a young-looking face, wearing a trench coat and a cap.

“Oh! It’s the cosplaying detective!” When did he get here? I hadn’t even seen him come into the café!

Detective Moritsuka smiled. “Hello there. It’s me, Zenigata! Just kidding. By the way, this isn’t cosplay.” He took off his cap and bowed. “Moritsuka, with the Musashino Police. Not Morizuka, Moritsuka. Nice to meet you.”

Toko and Sarai bowed back, obviously confused.

“You’re dead too, right? Asu... the high school girl FBI investigator... was worried about you.”

“Was she?” Moritsuka whispered her name and looked sad. But that was only for a moment, and he quickly went back to his normal, faint smile. Then he put his hand on my shoulder, a little too friendly for my liking. “Can you tell her not to push herself too hard if you see her? Thanks.”

“So you do know her.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Moritsuka stepped away from me and began to twirl his cap with his fingers. “Still, she’s already found out all that about the Hachifukushin Circle? Pretty impressive.”

Asunyan said that Moritsuka had been in charge of the case before she was. She was investigating the hints that he’d left. So maybe he knew something about my dad and the case that I didn’t. But from what I knew about him, there was no way he’d just tell me...

“How much do you know, and about what?” Sarai asked Moritsuka warily.

“Tch-tch-tch. Don’t make too many assumptions about me.” Moritsuka didn’t answer. He always talked like this. “There isn’t much I know. Making it seem like you know more than you do and upsetting the person you talk to are both interrogation techniques. Scare them or make them mad, and they’ll tell you things they didn’t intend to.”

“Grr...”

He was so right I couldn’t do anything but groan.

“The thing is, though, we don’t have a lot of time. If we want to take action, it’s best that we hurry.”