Even so, it took her another five minutes to get out of bed.
“Guh...” She’d fallen asleep the night before just after her bath, wearing only a pair of cheap underwear and a blouse.
Kaname had been living alone for a year and a half now. She’d grown sloppy with her lifestyle recently. It wasn’t as if there was anyone to see her, after all. And her mother, who had always been the one to wake her up in the morning, was now gone.
Kaname decided to skip her morning shower, as well as breakfast. She just got dressed, washed her face, and brushed her hair. Her long, beautiful hair was such an annoyance at times like this.
The hands of the clock now read 8:01. The train would arrive at the closest station in six minutes. She had to hurry!
With her school bag in her right hand and the bag of noncombustible trash in her left, Kaname flew out of the room. As she headed for the apartment complex’s dump site, she passed a neighbor. It was a junior high boy dressed in a blazer uniform.
“Good morning,” she greeted him, but the boy didn’t even acknowledge her. As rude as it was, it wasn’t exactly rare. Tokyo apartment life was just like that.
The other residents had already piled up their garbage at the dump site. She threw her own bag onto the pile and had just turned to run for the station, when—
“Hey, wait! Hang on a minute!” came a voice.
She stopped and looked back to see the apartment’s cleaning lady step out from behind a pillar. She was significantly shorter than Kaname, and wearing a green tracksuit, a rubber apron, gloves, and boots. She was a familiar sight around the apartments. On weekday mornings, she tidied up the dump site and cleaned the communal areas.
“Yes?” Kaname asked back.
“You can’t mix noncombustible and combustible garbage!”
She pointed at one of the bags in the pile. Amidst the translucent city-endorsed noncombustible trash bags sat a moist, dripping bag full of kitchen waste. It wasn’t the bag that Kaname had set out.
“Um, that isn’t my bag,” Kaname protested.
“Liar! I just saw you!”
“There must be some kind of misunderstanding. My bag is—”
“No excuses! Come on!” The old woman cut her off, grabbed the garbage bag and thrust it at Kaname.
“Now, hang on a minute here!” said Kaname. “I’m in kind of a hurry—”
“No, no, no! You have to separate your waste and take the combustibles back to your apartment!” said the cleaning lady, who then thrust her dingy pair of tongs into Kaname’s face, glaring at her viciously. She looked like a militiaman in some destabilized country, sticking a rifle into her opponent’s face. A pungent smell stung Kaname’s nose, impossible to describe.
“I’m telling you, I—” Kaname looked at her watch. The second hand was ticking away. The train would arrive in three minutes. She didn’t have time to argue, but she didn’t have time to go back to her room, either. “Aargh!” Left with no other choice. Kaname gritted her teeth, snatched the bag, and ran towards the station with it still in her hand.
“That old hag pisses me off so bad!” Kaname shouted after her first period class ended. She had made it just in time. “Didn’t even listen... so humiliating...” she grumbled to herself resentfully. “Thinks she’s right about everything...” She opened up the garbage bag she had stored with her personal belongings in the back of the room, and began separating them briskly. Her classmates who had been gagging for fifty minutes from the stench watched her with scowls.
One classmate, Tokiwa Kyoko, watched Kaname work. “You really brought that trash bag all the way here on a packed train?”
“I didn’t have a choice! If I’d just dumped it on the way here, I would’ve been as bad as the vandal. It would be like admitting the old hag was right! I won’t subject myself to that humiliation!”
“You’ve got integrity about the weirdest things...” Kyoko said, pinching her nose.
“You refer to the custodian of your apartment complex?” asked Sagara Sousuke, who stood there quite calmly, by contrast.
“Yeah,” Kaname fumed. “That old hag with the twisted sense of justice, who never listens to anybody!”
Sousuke folded his arms and listened with a frown. “The custodian is a serious and industrious person,” he remarked. “The fault must be yours somehow.”
“Is not! I separated my garbage! But she just— Wait, how do you know her?!” Kaname demanded.
“I jog around the neighborhood every morning,” said Sousuke. “We sometimes exchange pleasantries.”
“I see. Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Well, either way, she’s the worst. She treated me like a criminal even though I’m completely innocent! This won’t stand!” said Kaname, slamming the two plastic bags into the bins where they belonged.
One evening, several days later...
Kaname returned home, her uniform covered in soot. As was typical by now, Sousuke had caused an explosion and chaos had resulted... but that wasn’t the important part of this story. After taking a shower and changing into her street clothes, thinking about what she could make with what was in her refrigerator, she heard the intercom for her apartment beep.
“Yes?” she called.
“Excuse me, I’m from the police. Special armed detective Wakana with the Sengawa violent crimes unit. Could I ask you a few questions?”
“Violent crimes unit? Special armed detective?” Kaname asked suspiciously. The female voice sounded vaguely familiar, and there was no such division or rank in all of the Japanese police force.
“Oh, sorry. I was just trying to explain my duties in civilian-friendly terms. Anyway, can I ask you a few questions?”
“Um...”
“I can come back with a warrant and a SWAT team if I have to,” Wakana offered.
“Fine, fine, fine! Just a minute! I’m coming!” Kaname walked to the front door and opened it. As expected, the person standing in the communal hallway was a familiar face: Wakana Yoko, from the Sengawa Police Department. They’d met each other over the course of a few incidents, and Kaname had learned that this officer was a loose cannon, in some ways as troublesome and lacking in common sense as Sousuke.
Wakana was pretty, provided she didn’t open her mouth. She was dressed in plainclothes—jeans and a baseball jacket. She held up her police ID in the manner of an FBI investigator in a movie.