“Just got a call from the detective who was posted at the old folks’ home. Hiromi Asai’s supposed mother just hanged herself.”
“Damn! Is she dead?”
“No. One of the staff noticed just in time and they managed to save her. The old woman fought back like crazy, yelling that she wanted to die. I thought I’d let you know, since you’ve actually met the woman.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the sick bay at the home. She’s resting. The detective is keeping an eye on her along with one of the staff from the home.”
“What was her motive for the attempted suicide?”
“She won’t say. She’s in an excited state and is incoherent.”
“You think she got some huge psychological shock?”
“Say Kaga’s theory is right and Hiromi Asai told her mother everything. In that case, she’d have every reason to go off the rails. If everything comes out, she is not going to look very good. Or who knows, perhaps she discovered she still had some trace of a conscience.”
26
As she poured the bourbon into the glass, the ice gave a loud crack and started to melt. She stirred it with the swizzle stick and took a little sip. A warm sensation slowly spread from her throat to her whole body.
She’d gone to bed half an hour before. She wanted to sleep, but she was unable to wind down. Eventually, she’d given up, gotten out of bed, and grabbed the bottle of Wild Turkey out of the living-room cabinet. Maybe I’ll spend the whole night drinking. It’ll be fine, just as long as I don’t end up dropping off during the final performance of my show.
Hiromi smiled sardonically. That would never happen. Her play meant everything to her.
Just for a split second, she mistook the swizzle stick she’d deposited on the tabletop for a chopstick. For the chopstick, the chopstick that had taken a man’s life. The physical sensations of that moment were something that would stay with her forever. How would her and her father’s lives have turned out if she hadn’t done it? All she could say for sure was that she wouldn’t be in the position she found herself in today. Would things be better or worse? She had no idea. Perhaps she would have died long ago.
The morning after she and Tadao had said their goodbyes, Hiromi did exactly what her father had instructed her to do. She informed the inn staff that her father was missing. In next to no time, a number of police cars pulled up at the inn and a search of the area got underway. The police interviewed Hiromi, who told them she’d been fast asleep all night and didn’t hear her father leaving the room. When she explained the sequence of events that had brought them to the inn, the detectives looked visibly worried.
Soon after, a body was found at the foot of the cliffs. They bundled Hiromi into a police car and drove her to the scene where the body of a man was lying on a blue plastic sheet.
The moment she saw it, Hiromi screamed. She was not playacting. The biggest shock was not that the corpse was horribly battered but that it was wearing Tadao’s clothes. For a second, she genuinely thought the body was his.
It was only when she timidly took a second look that she realized the face was different. Although the head was split open and covered in blood, she was quite sure. Tadao must have swapped clothes with the dead man. That couldn’t have been easy. It must have been a physical and mental ordeal. At the thought of what her father had done, Hiromi steeled herself. I mustn’t make any mistakes.
“That’s my father. I recognize him.”
The police took her at her word. They had found fingerprints matching those of the corpse on multiple items in Tadao’s bag at the inn. The police determined there was no evidence of criminality and didn’t conduct an autopsy. The fact that they couldn’t find Tadao’s driving license anywhere didn’t arouse their suspicions.
As an interim solution, Hiromi was packed off to a short-term shelter for children. Naemura came to visit her soon after. She begged him to keep her father’s death a secret.
“I don’t want my friends to know that we had to run away in the middle of the night. Don’t tell anyone that my father’s dead. Or if you have to, at least don’t tell them that he died like that.”
“I won’t.” Naemura was very understanding. He promised Hiromi that she had nothing to worry about. He would figure out a way to keep the details secret from everyone at school.
Hiromi and her father had been lucky: their big gamble worked out. That didn’t mean, however, that all their difficulties were over. Now they would just have to face a different kind of hardship.
As Tadao had predicted, Hiromi was placed in an orphanage. Life there was far from easy. It was a large institution, meaning that it was permanently understaffed and offered little personalized care. There was no sense of family. Getting any privacy was difficult. As a newcomer, Hiromi was subjected to some nasty bullying by her contemporaries. She was able to put up with it because she had the support of people like Seizo Naemura and Motoko Yoshino. She knew it was thanks to her father that she could have the life she had. She often cried herself to sleep, but knowing that things were even harder for Tadao gave her the strength to go on.
Tadao’s first letter reached her after she’d been at the orphanage for a month. As they had agreed, the sender’s name was Kyoko Kondo and the address was somewhere in Fukushima Prefecture.
Dear Hiromi,
It’s been a while since we were last in touch. We had to move because of my father’s job. I now live up in Fukushima Prefecture. My father’s working at the nuclear power plant here. His main job is cleaning up radiation. He’s not yet got the hang of it, so he’s finding it quite tough, but he says he’s coping okay. No need to worry about him then! Daddy and I are both doing fine.
How are things your end? Have you got used to your new living arrangements? I really hope you can write back to me. We’re in a company dormitory so receiving letters isn’t a problem. You’ll need to address them to “Kazutoshi Yokoyama.”
After she read the letter, Hiromi felt a sense of relief. Her father was safe and sound and getting on with his life. He was obviously passing himself off as Kazutoshi Yokoyama, the man Hiromi had killed. It was a name that had horrible associations for her, but she assumed that Tadao had no choice.
Hiromi immediately composed a reply. “I hope you’re well and I look forward to seeing you soon,” she wrote.
They settled into a routine, exchanging one letter every month. But they never got the chance to meet face-to-face. Not only were they quite a distance from one another, Tadao’s work provided no opportunity for him to get away. And if they ever did meet, they’d need to find a place where they wouldn’t bump into anyone who knew them.
Tadao never telephoned the orphanage. It was too risky. The staff would get suspicious if Hiromi got phone calls from an unknown man.
Time passed. It was the summer of her seventeenth year when Hiromi first encountered the theater. Until then she hadn’t given any thought to her future; now she had a clear vision of the path in life she wanted to take.
She relayed the news of her decision to Tadao. He wrote back expressing strong support.
I’m quite sure you will make a wonderful actress. I wish you the very best of luck and look forward to seeing you on the stage.
At the time, Tadao was at Ohi Nuclear Power Station doing routine inspection and maintenance. Although it was not that far from the orphanage, the two of them still never got to meet.