For now. I didn’t want to think about what was lurking in those words. This was undoubtedly a realm I shouldn’t wander into. “Then at the very least, there won’t be any more slashing incidents on the streets of Kyoto?”
“Exactly. If it hadn’t been for your cooperation, it never would’ve come to this conclusion, so I suppose I ought to express my gratitude,” Aikawa intoned a bit theatrically.
“Really you don’t say that’s great let’s go get Kunagisa─”
“Hold it right there,” she cut off my attempt to duck out of the tête-â-tête. “You know, I had a nice little chat with Hitoshiki…”
“You did?”
“I did.” She scooted over on her knees to close the distance between us. “We discussed various things about you, and you, and you.”
“How creepy…”
That bastard. What had he gone and blabbed about to this woman, of all people? Then again, I’d done the same thing. Maybe this was what he meant about having a few ideas up his sleeve.
“But you know,” Aikawa marveled, looking truly impressed, “that was some smart detective work you did. Even I’m stunned. Who would’ve thought that Mikoko Aoii had killed Tomoe Emoto before you even left her apartment, and that her own death was a suicide? I didn’t see that coming at all.”
“Drop the act, Jun.”
“Don’t be so serious. I’m not trying to antagonize you. I wanna be your friend, Iichan, really. But you know, I thought I might as well clarify things.”
“What things?”
As if she were silently reading my response, she didn’t answer right away. Eventually she said, “This whole case.”
“You’re not satisfied with my reasoning this time, either?”
“That’s not it. I’ve got no problem with it. It’s you I’m not satisfied with. At all.”
“…”
“It sounds like you weaseled your way out of explaining a few things to Zerozaki, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But they’re all little details. Just trivial stuff you could explain however you want, or conversely that I can’t even imagine an explanation for. So it─”
“For example, the reason Mikoko Aoii killed Tomoe Emoto.”
“Well…”
That was something I hadn’t told Zerozaki.
Something I’d left unexplained.
“What about the reason that neck strap was taken from the scene of the crime?” demanded Aikawa.
“Who knows?”
“And why would an apathetic boy like you go to all the trouble of making Mikoko Aoii’s suicide look like a homicide, even if it was requested in her suicide note? No, what I really want to know most is just how long you knew about everything.”
“…”
“You made it sound like you only realized the truth upon reading Mikoko Aoii’s suicide note…but well, that just can’t be,” Aikawa said with a grin. “So when?”
I couldn’t muster an answer.
“As much as I underestimate people, I know you’re pretty hot stuff. I certainly don’t believe you didn’t realize the truth at all until you looked at that suicide note.”
“You’re overestimating me. I’m not that─”
“Okay, shall I provide some concrete proof? For example, you told Zerozaki something like, ‘Seeing the dead body of someone I know isn’t enough to make me feel sick,’ but it seems to me that that’s not the only part of the story that wasn’t very you.”
“What else is there?” I knew where she was going with this, but I posed the question anyway. “I don’t have a clue what you mean.”
“Go back to when you first heard the facts from Sasaki. She asked you about the phone call you got from Emoto, and what did you say? That it was ‘definitely Emoto’s voice.’ That you ‘never forget a voice once heard.’ Or something to that effect. You’ve brought up your terrible memory any number of times. So how could you be so sure?” She patted me a couple times on the shoulder teasingly. “How could that busted memory of yours possibly ascertain such a thing? You had only met the girl one time, and this was over the phone, no less. There is no way you could’ve confirmed such a thing. Don’t you think that’s why Mikoko Aoii resorted to the gimmick in the first place? She was counting on your lousy memory. At the very least, there’s no way you could say it was ‘definitely’ her voice.”
“And?”
“And that means you lied to Sasaki deliberately. Now why would you do a thing like that? Well, here’s what I think─you can’t fake something you don’t know about to begin with, but you can about something when you do. The moment Sasaki told you about Emoto’s death, you realized the truth─about Aoii’s gimmick and who killed Tomoe Emoto─no?”
The cat was essentially out of the bag. There was no point in keeping mum any longer. Before the eyes of this scarlet, jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-all wonder, such a course of action was more worthless than worthlessness itself.
“I didn’t really have everything figured out at that point,” I answered relatively honestly. “I didn’t have any evidence or anything at that point. It was just a guess. It was just a vague idea I had, like, It could have happened like this. You certainly couldn’t call it a solid conclusion. But Jun, supposing that was true, that I had figured everything out at that point… Is there some problem with that?”
“There is. A freaking huge problem. Now, if you told me you were just lying to cover up for a friend, I’d be fine with that. Anybody would tell a lie if it meant saving a friend. But the problem here is that you and Mikoko Aoii weren’t friends. Regardless of how she felt toward you, you didn’t feel anything toward her. She was just an acquaintance, a classmate. Simply put─you weren’t covering for her. You were stalling.”
Stalling.
And for what purpose did I need that extra time?
To reach a decision.
To give, or to take?
“And then on that day, you impeached her. ‘Can you forgive your own existence?’ Or something like that.”
“You talk as if you were there, Jun. Were you watching us, by any chance?”
Come to think of it, hadn’t Aikawa said something about spotting Mikoko and me that Saturday? What if she had followed us? I may be able to detect the deadly Zerozaki or a rank amateur like Muimi, but I doubted I would’ve noticed if Aikawa had been on our tail.
Yet she denied it. “No, I wasn’t watching you. But I can at least guess what you would’ve said. I share Zerozaki’s opinion─I don’t believe for a second that a character capable of murder would let her conscience drive her to suicide. Anyone likely to hold regrets wouldn’t kill anyone in the first place.”
“But statistically speaking, a fair percentage of murderers do commit suicide.”
“Statistically speaking? You’ve been around for nearly twenty years and statistics is the best retort you can come up with?” Aikawa raised a scoffing eyebrow and snorted at me. “Don’t tell me you believe in something that stupid. Something that only happens once in a hundred thousand tries happens on the very first try. The first person you ever meet is one in a million. The lower the probability, the more you see it happen. Statistics. What a joke. Miracles are a dime a dozen.”
“…”
It was an outrageously wild view on the subject, but there was no arguing with the Jun Aikawa. When it came to experience, she was entirely out of my league.
“But I digress. At any rate, Mikoko Aoii didn’t commit suicide out of guilt. She did it because you indicted her─or rather, interrogated her. After that, she had no choice other than death.”
Can you forgive your own existence?
I’ll be back tomorrow. Around noon. You’ll have your answer then.
You’ll have your answer then.
“Because I indicted her? If that alone was enough to activate your conscience, you wouldn’t kill anyone in the first place,” I retraced Aikawa’s line. “Committing suicide over a thing like that─”
“Don’t you see? Aoii murdered Emoto over you.”
“…”
“Eh, I guess saying it was ‘over you’ is going a little too far. Aoii made the decision to do it on her own, and you’re not responsible for anything. Basically it came down to a matter of jealousy. To put it simply.”
I didn’t answer.
Aikawa continued. “Tomoe Emoto never opened herself up to anybody, never got any closer than she absolutely had to. And yet she spoke quite candidly with you on the very first night you met.”
A fatal wound. A defective product.
Similar but different.
What if Mikoko had been half-awake during that conversation? What if she had been conscious at that time, just as she had been during my conversation with Miiko?