How cold can a person be? Are you no different than the other people here?! Jerk! I’m so disappointed! You snake! You cretin! While whispering silent curses at him in her heart, Kaname released a deep sigh. Well, forget him for now. I’ve gotta clear out this trash.
It was a little after nine by the time she finished carrying it all, finishing the last loads even as the collection truck pulled in. Finally, soaked from the sweat and the rain, Kaname plodded wearily back to her apartment.
She entered the living room and found the old lady snoozing on the sofa. She stripped off her sweaty uniform, showered, and changed into her school track suit. By the time she’d settled in and started watching a morning show, the old woman finally woke up.
“Oh, dear... the recycling pickup...” the old woman said as she groggily tried to sit up.
Kaname quickly stopped her. “Ah, don’t. I took care of it. You can rest a while longer, okay?”
The woman looked at the clock in the room. Then she let out a sigh, lowered her eyes, and whispered, “Oh... you carried all that? That must have been hard.” She was sounding timid for the first time Kaname had ever heard.
“Oh, no. I was fine,” Kaname told her reassuringly. “I think the load was lighter than usual today.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, easy-peasy. My friend from the neighborhood also helped. You know, the guy I was with yesterday.” Kaname was happy to lie about things like this. She was a master of grinning and bearing.
“I’m very sorry... I’ve been a bit tired lately, it seems.”
“Well, that’s understandable, after everything that happened... Ah. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I know what the residents think of me,” said the cleaning lady, her tone curt but not especially judgmental.
“Was everything all right with the police?”
“Yes, they asked me all kinds of things, but I’m innocent, so I stuck to that and they let me go home.”
“Oh, really?” It must not have been as easy as she made it sound, since the landlord’s office was willing to fire her over those suspicions alone. Even so, Kaname strove to maintain a cheery tone. “R-Right! I knew it was strange. I don’t know who did it, but it’s really stupid. I’m sure they’ll get their just deserts. And gossip lasts just forty-nine days!”
“The saying is ‘seventy-five days,’” the woman said in the tone of a stern teacher.
“A-Ah ha ha... That’s right.”
“Are you paying attention in school? Honestly...”
“Oh, sorry...” Kaname rubbed the back of her head.
The old woman relaxed for the first time and burst out in a laugh. “Thank you, though. You really are a kind girl, Kaname-san.”
“Huh?” Kaname was surprised. She didn’t realize the woman knew her name. Her apartment’s door plate just said “Chidori.”
“I’m sure you don’t remember, but I’ve known you since you were a child,” the cleaning lady told her. “I’ve been working at this apartment for ten years now, after all.”
“Huh?”
“Your mother called to you frequently: ‘Kaname, you forgot your backpack’ and such.”
“Ah...” Kaname had lived there from ages four to nine before moving to New York with her family. Then three years ago, at age thirteen, she’d returned. To think the old woman had been working here from before they’d gone to the USA... She didn’t remember her at all.
“Rare to see a small child head off to school without their backpack,” the cleaning lady remarked. “You just flew out the door every morning, bursting with energy. You’d even say hello to me, but you were always going so fast you never really looked at me that closely.”
“Ah... ha ha ha. I might have done that,” Kaname confessed. “I’m sorry.”
“Then you moved away, but returned three years ago. You’ve grown up so beautifully, it shocked me! But I recognized you right away. ‘Ah, it’s the girl with the backpack.’”
“H-Hey... ‘beautifully’ is a little much...” said Kaname, who felt like her face was on fire.
“Oh, no. I said it, so it’s true. I have a good eye for people,” the cleaning lady confided. “I used to run a bar in Ginza, you see.”
“What? Really?!”
The old woman puffed out her chest. “Of course. I’m doing this grunt labor now, but I don’t look down on myself at all. I do it proudly to put food on the table. The women here could never do what I do. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Totally,” Kaname said genuinely, rubbing at her exhausted arm muscles.
“Good. You’re beautiful because you’re capable of learning those things. Remember that. Your mother was a wonderful person too, but... oh, I’m sorry.” The old woman lowered her voice a bit. She must have known Kaname’s mother died of illness.
“Oh, no, that’s okay.” Kaname forced a smile onto her face.
Seeing her smile, the old lady returned it. “Good. It seems you’ve cheered up quite a bit since then. You frequently seemed very gloomy in middle school.”
Kaname hesitated. “I was.”
“You’ve got good friends now, though?”
“Yes. Um... kind of. Very. I’m not sure which... heh.” There was something simultaneously comforting and embarrassing about being around someone who’d been watching her so closely since she was little. It was totally different from talking to someone her own age, like Kyoko. Kaname felt like she hadn’t talked to someone like this about herself in ages.
From there, Kaname talked and talked; about Kyoko and her other classmates, then Hayashimizu and the rest of the student council. She bad-mouthed the teachers she hated. She talked about the cake shop she went to with her friends, and about the movies she’d been watching lately. She said there was a boy she liked, but that he’d been cold recently and annoyed her...
Not even Kaname knew exactly why she was doing it, but she just kept talking and talking, like a dam had burst on her words. She talked and talked forever. It isn’t right. This woman isn’t my mother. She told herself that, but the words that had lost any other refuge just kept pouring out of her. In time, she even found tears in her eyes.
“Kaname-san?” The old woman’s voice snapped her back to attention.
“Huh? Oh... right. No, it’s nothing. It’s just... I haven’t talked to anyone like this in a while... ah ha ha...” Kaname turned away and wiped at her eyes.
“It seems that way.” The old woman smiled kindly at her. It was the first kind expression Kaname had ever seen from her. “But there’s one thing... I’m afraid I’m going to be fired for something I haven’t even done,” said the cleaning lady. “So, that friend of yours you were saying those awful things about before... your boyfriend. Treasure him.”
“Eh?”
“He’s really not as cold as all that,” the cleaning lady said wisely. “I said it before, remember? I have a real eye for people.”
●
The task itself was simple, but infiltrating a police station was still enervating, even in the morning before most of the officers had arrived. Wearing the uniform he’d secured in advance, Sousuke headed for the second-floor office. He passed a sleepy-looking patrolman on the way, but fortunately wasn’t recognized.
Is this it? he thought as he stepped into the empty traffic office and glanced at the seating chart on the wall. There—Wakana.
He found the desk in question right away, which was messily covered in gun magazines and cop drama DVDs.
The mission given to Sousuke by his mercenary organization was the protection of Kaname. Because of that, his squad had hidden cameras set up all around her apartment complex. They were so high-tech that even security professionals wouldn’t be able to spot them easily.
Naturally, they had recorded the suspicious intruder.
The footage would show a human figure on the morning in question breaking the glass door to apartment 103 from the garden. The figure was a middle school student from apartment 102, the son of the nosy woman who liked to lead movements to ban harmful books. It was a childish crime—maybe he’d just been after some spending money.
Even so, the matter was unrelated to Sousuke’s mission, and handing it over to the police did entail some risk. Sousuke had wanted to pretend he hadn’t seen the silly break-in, and he’d feigned indifference in front of Kaname as well, but...
He dropped the DVD case carelessly on his desk.
“I’ve gone so far as to break the rules... Now, do your job,” he whispered to himself.
He couldn’t afford to stay there long. He turned around and strode out of the traffic office.
[The End]