“…Uh?”
I was standing on the right street, but there were no apartment buildings, only houses.
I checked the address again and again, but I was clearly in the right place.
But I couldn’t find any house with the name “Kirima” on the gate. Checking the directory again, I noticed that it had “Taniguchi” written in very small characters next to it. She must live there.
(…must be that guardian with the different name.)
There was a house with “Taniguchi” on the gate, and the numbers seemed to match.
It was a really normal-looking home, a ready-built house like any other. A little on the wealthy side, but normally so.
Unable to connect it with Nagi’s bizarre appearance during our earlier encounter, I hesitated, debating for a long time before I pushed the buzzer.
When I finally did, it made a half-hearted, ultra normal ding-dong sound.
“Who is it?” the voice from the intercom said, surprising me. It wasn’t Nagi’s voice, but rather that of a boy.
“Um, is, uh… Is Kirima-san…?” I stuttered, all flustered.
“You’re Nagi’s friend?” the voice said quite cheerfully.
A moment later, the door swung open. The cheery boy stood in the doorway. He was taller than either Nagi or me, but younger, probably in Junior High. And that smile—it was friendly and warm.
“Come on in. But Nagi’s not home yet, I’m afraid.”
“O-oh, um…”
“Come in and wait. She should be back soon.”
He led me to the guest room.
The inside was normal too.
There was even a set of little dolls in the shape of the zodiac signs sitting on top of the cabinet.
“Here,” the boy said, putting a cup of tea and a plate of cookies in front of me.
“Uh, thanks.” It was really good. I know nothing about tea, but I’m pretty sure this was what they called good tea.
“Gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever met a friend of Nagi’s before,” the boy said airily.
“Y-you are…?” I asked.
“Her brother,” he replied. They looked nothing alike.
“Um, I’d heard Kirima-san lived alone, so…”
“Yeah, I got here about six months ago. I lived abroad with my parents until last spring, but I’ve got entrance tests for high school next year, so I thought that I ought to get used to Japan first.”
“Your parents…”
Nagi had parents after all. But why was their name Taniguchi?
At this point, we heard a voice call out, “I’m home,” from the entrance. It was Nagi.
“In here,” her brother said as he stood up and went to meet her.
“You brought another girl home?” Nagi said.
Her brother laughed. “This one’s yours. She’s been waiting for you.”
I nearly yelped when Nagi came in.
She had changed into her school uniform, like she’d just come home from school.
“Oh, it’s you,” Nagi said quietly as I stood there speechless. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Following her lead, we went upstairs to her bedroom.
The polar opposite of downstairs, her room was free of decoration; nothing but computers and books. One bed, two desks. One was for studying, apparently, since the surface was empty. The other desk was for her computer—or, should I say, computers. It was kind of hard to tell just how many she had. There were multiple boxy computer towers and an assortment of other machines attached to them. She had three different monitors, all lined up next to each other. At first, I assumed two of them might’ve been televisions, but the screen savers were a dead giveaway. Worse, the pile of machinery spilled out onto the floor, filling nearly half of the ten-mat room. It felt less like a girl’s bedroom and more like some mad hacker’s secret lair. Much to my surprise, there were no signs of any black magic books at all. All the books that lined Nagi’s shelves were merely an assortment of reference books and difficult looking hardcover tomes. Still, Nagi’s collection of computer software boxes looked to have her book collection beat.
Nagi pulled the chair out from the study desk, and offered it to me. “Sit.”
“Okay,” I said, and did.
“Surprised?” Nagi grinned.
“Hm?”
“By Masaki. Everyone thinks I live alone.”
“Um, yeah. I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“He’s not my brother. We’re not related,” Nagi replied, shaking her head. “He’s my mom’s second husband’s son from a previous marriage. He’s a good kid, but a bit too good at manipulating me. Gonna grow up to be a real Don Juan. Sad.”
“So, that’s why his name’s…?”
“Right, my mom’s husband’s name. I kept the old one.”
“Hmm… Why?”
“‘Cause I’ve got a father complex,” Nagi replied. I couldn’t tell if she was joking.
“Your father is…?”
“I thought you’d know. Kirima Seiichi. Wrote a lot of books.”
“Ehhhh?!” I interrupted rather loudly. “You’re kidding!”
“Nope.”
“But…the writer, Kirima Seiichi?!”
Of course, I knew him. I’d learned most of what I knew about criminal psychology or depth psychology from his books. The Scream Inside—Multiple Personality Disorder, or When a Man Kills a Man, or Where the Killer’s Mind Changes, or A Nightmare of Boredom, or The Proliferation of “Dunno,” or VS Imaginator, and so on. He’d written far more summaries, essays and commentaries than novels. In fact, I’d never read any of his actual novels, just his scientific writings. He called himself a modern day enlightenment thinker, which is kind of hokey, but he did write an incredible number of books.
“That’s my dad. He’s dead now, though.”
“Yeah, I knew that…but really? No, I mean really, really?”
“Why would I lie?”
“I know… But still…”
“You didn’t think I had a strange name?”
“Never occurred to me. Wonder why not?”
Even as I asked, I knew the answer. I had unconsciously convinced myself that Kirima Seiichi or any other writer was hardly likely to live near me. Perhaps I wanted the people that I admired so much to live in some higher realm of existence than I did.