‘Well, that was dumb.’
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, dislodging a folded piece of paper, which fell out on the floor.
‘Are you all right?’ Yukiho asked.
‘I’m fine. It wasn’t much.’
‘You dropped something.’ She picked the paper off the floor, but when she looked at it, her almond eyes went wide. ‘What’s this?’
She held the paper out to Masaharu. It had a hand-drawn map and a telephone number with the words ‘Tagawa Real Estate’ below.
Oops.
‘Tagawa Real Estate? In Ikuno?’ she asked. Her earlier good humour seemed to have vanished.
‘No, not in Ikuno,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s in Higashinari ward. See here, it says “Fukaebashi”?’ Masaharu pointed at the map with his finger.
‘But that must be a branch of the one in Ikuno. I’ll bet the son of the owner opened that.’
‘Huh, no kidding.’ Masaharu tried not to let his bewilderment show on his face.
‘Are you looking for an apartment?’
‘No, I just went with a friend.’
‘Oh.’ Her eyes had a faraway look to them. ‘I’ve just remembered something strange.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tagawa Real Estate, the original one in Ikuno, managed the apartment building I lived in as a child. I used to live there, you know, in Ōe.’
‘Really?’ Masaharu tried to focus on his teacup, not meeting her eyes.
‘Have you heard about when my mother died? My real mother, I mean,’ she said, her voice calm and somehow deeper than usual.
‘Uh, no, I haven’t,’ he said, shaking his head.
She chuckled. ‘You’re a bad actor. I know you know. The other day, when you talked to my mom for a long time, she told you then, didn’t she.’
‘Well, OK, maybe a little,’ he said, setting down his cup and scratching his head.
Yukiho took a couple of sips of her own tea and breathed a long sigh of steam.
‘May twenty-second,’ she said, ‘was the day my mother died.’
Masaharu nodded silently.
‘It was a little cold that day. I wore a cardigan my mother had knitted for me to school. I still have it, you know – the cardigan.’
She glanced over at the dresser in the corner. Masaharu could only imagine what painful memories it contained.
‘It must’ve been quite a shock,’ Masaharu said, immediately regretting saying something so bland.
‘It was like I was dreaming – a nightmare, of course,’ Yukiho said, an awkward smile flashing briefly across her lips. ‘I went to play with some friends after school that day. That’s why I was a little late getting home. If I hadn’t gone to play, I might have been home an hour earlier.’
Masaharu understood what she was trying to say. That one hour had changed her life.
Yukiho bit her lip before continuing. ‘When I think about that —’
Masaharu tensed, hearing the tears in her voice. He thought maybe he should pull out his handkerchief, but didn’t dare move.
‘Sometimes, I feel like I killed her,’ she said.
‘You should never think that. You didn’t come home late on purpose, Yukiho.’
‘That’s not what I mean. My mother had it very hard those days. She was giving up sleep to work. That’s why she was so tired that day. I think if I’d been more helpful, if she hadn’t had to work so hard…’
Masaharu held his breath as he watched a large tear trace a path down her white cheek. He wanted more than anything else to hold her. I’m an idiot, Masaharu cursed himself. Because ever since talking to Mr Tagawa at the estate agency and hearing about what had happened, a horrible thought had been growing in the back of his mind.
The unusual number of cold medicine packages, the sake cups, the locked window – everything pointed towards suicide. The only thing that didn’t make sense was the pot that had boiled over – boiled over, but not enough to leave a mess, according to the police. Not enough to put out a burner.
Maybe it had been a suicide, but then someone had come by and spilled soup out of the pot in order to make it look like an accident. The one who could have done that was Yukiho. She could have spilled the soup then opened the cold medicine boxes and the cups of sake.
Why make it look like an accident? Because she was afraid of what people would think? Yet the scenario raised another frightening question. If Yukiho had returned home earlier, before coming with the estate agent, had her mother already been dead at that time? Or could she still have been saved? Hadn’t Mr Tagawa said that had they been there thirty minutes earlier, they might have been able to save her?
What if the young Yukiho had, upon walking in on her own mother on the brink of death, seen not tragedy, but opportunity? What if, in her weekly visits to Reiko Karasawa’s house, Yukiho had realised that if something ever happened to her own mother, she could rely on this elegant lady to take her in?
The thought was not a place Masaharu wanted to linger long. And yet there was something grimly compelling about the scenario. He couldn’t get it out of his head.
Now, seeing her tears, Masaharu chastised himself for having such a twisted mind. This was a human being sitting before him, a real, vulnerable girl. She could never have done something so cold.
‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t think that. You wouldn’t want your mother to be sad where she is now.’
‘I just wish I’d had a key,’ Yukiho whispered between sobs.
‘It was just bad luck.’
Yukiho shook her head and stood, going to her school uniform where it hung on a hanger in the closet. She pulled a key out of the pocket. ‘That’s why I always keep a house key with me now,’ she said. She held the key up to show him.
‘That keychain looks ancient,’ Masaharu said.
‘It is. I’ve had it for ever. Except, that day, I forgot it at home.’
As she put the key back in her pocket, her hand brushed against the closet door, making the tiny bell on her keychain ring.
FIVE
The noise hit them as soon as they were through the ticket gates. Students from a nearby university – all of them boys – were practically falling over each other to hand flyers to the girls from Seika Girls College. ‘Join our tennis club!’ they shouted. ‘Join our skiing club!’ Their voices had long since gone hoarse.
Eriko succeeded in making it out of the station without accepting a single flyer. She and Yukiho exchanged glances and laughed.
‘That was impressive,’ said Eriko. ‘I wonder how many different schools were there.’
‘Today’s the most important day of the year for them,’ Yukiho told her. ‘A word of advice: never settle for a flyer boy.’ She brushed back her long hair.
The school buildings of Seika Girls College stood in the middle of a residential area that was mostly newer houses, with the occasional sprawling old walled-in property. It was a small college with only three departments: English Literature, Home Economics, and Athletics – meaning that there were usually very few students in what was ostensibly a college town. This kept things quiet, with the exception of recruitment day, when students from nearby men’s universities competed to attract girls from Seika to join their clubs. Boys from nearby Eimei University were thickest on the ground. They loitered along the street leading to the school, casting about with hungry eyes for likely targets. When they spotted a freshman, they launched into their pitch.
‘You don’t even have to really be in the club if you don’t want to,’ shouted one as they passed. ‘Just come to the parties. You don’t even need to pay dues!’