Regardless, it must be stated that arriving at a conclusion would be too premature. Period.
However, it is a fact that many have insistently objected to such. Period.
Irrespective of that, a conclusion has yet to be reached at this time—
“Unable to join the consensus” sounded kind of shaky. Maybe he should try to be more direct? “Conclusions cannot be drawn at this time.” Period. Okay, that sounded about right.
After carefully collecting the sheaf of papers that made up the report, Kitamura took a proper count of the pages again. He had three people’s worth of reports, with ten pages to each. Now he just had to put the cover sheets on, staple them together, and he would be done. That would be two thousand yen times three, or six thousand yen in total. He had been careful to vary the handwriting and used a 2B pencil, an HB 0.3 millimeter mechanical pencil, and a thick, blue ballpoint pen to write each of them, so they probably wouldn’t be arousing suspicions any time soon.
He pulled off the glasses digging into the bridge of his nose and rubbed his temples. When he put an effort into stretching his back, it made a loud cracking sound. He rotated his shoulders and neck, then groaned, “Ngaaaah.” He was painfully aware he sounded like an old geezer.
Kitamura turned off the fluorescent lamp on the desk he had been using since elementary school and piled the three reports to the side, trying to make sure he didn’t get them dirty. Even if he only had to make it seem like they did their readings, it was pretty difficult to come up with three people’s papers from one thesis. It wasn’t mentally tiring so much as a strain on his eyes and arm.
According to his older brother, it had apparently become less acceptable to use a word processor recently (though he was fuzzy on how many college students were actually using word processors in his brother’s generation.) Because there were more students simply turning in articles they had found on the internet, or that they copied and pasted from scanned material, some papers were assigned with the condition that they had to be handwritten. Kitamura, then in his second year of high school, had seen this as a business opportunity to him. Of course, when the subject material was a little too specialized, it went right over his head, but when it came to general topics, he was a mass-producing machine.
He had listed the “bookings” his older brother had acquired for him on the corkboard next to his desk. Kitamura put his glasses back on and looked at them. His older brother was well connected within the large, wide-reaching social circles of famous private colleges. This was the time of year when they did the best business; they had so many bookings that they could afford to charge five thousand yen per person. He had decided to take a break from softball club anyway, so he had time to spare.
“One thousand, five hundred, one thousand…that’s two—two thousand, so uhhh, up to now that’s twenty-eight thousand…”
He ticked them off on his fingers as he counted, but he was still far, far short of his goal. Kitamura pursed his lips. He still had to worry about fuel surcharges. Plus, his cheapskate brother would take a ten percent cut.
“Ten percent’s a lot. Damn, I need to fix that… What was that?”
He lifted his head at the loud sound of exhaust coming from outside his window. He remained seated in his cramped chair as he stretched out his arm to open the curtain.
“Whoa!”
He was surprised to see snow coming down. The countless flakes fell ceaselessly in the light of the streetlamps.
“Whoa…!” Kitamura exclaimed again without thinking. A pair of distinctive headlights crawled towards him from within the snow—the echoing sound of the engine was coming from a Porsche. Sports cars were rare in this suburb.
Shivering from the cold, he closed the curtains. He stood up to turn on the heat, and through the old heater’s groaning, noticed the engine suddenly go quiet. He heard a loud sound after it—probably the car door.
Maybe they were coming to his house? He didn’t know anyone who had a car like that, but—ding dong. He heard the doorbell, the sound of his mother’s footsteps, and then her formal, “Yes?” through the intercom.
He heard them talking about something for a while and, eventually, the footsteps coming up the stairs. There was a knock on the door, and his mother peeked her face in. She looked in with an indescribable, delicate expression.
“Could you come down for a bit?” Her tone was still half-formal—an ominous sign. He steeled himself.
“Me? What? Who is it?”
“She says she’s Aisaka-san’s mother. From your class—look, it’s that girl you went with as a group to Kawashima-san’s villa, right? It seems like… Well, she said she’s looking for her. She disappeared.”
Aisaka Taiga had disappeared—right when Takasu Ryuuji also went missing.
This is bad, he thought reflexively. The light bulb in his head lit instantly, and the pieces of the imaginary puzzle came together. It had been that phone call. Something must have happened since it had come.
Hey, Kitamura-kun, I can’t find Ryuu-chan anywhere, but do you know where he is? Ryuuji’s mother had asked him. Kitamura had been stupidly honest and answered her.
He knew something special was likely to happen between Aisaka Taiga and Takasu Ryuuji on that day. He wanted it to happen, which was why he wasn’t worried to hear they didn’t get home at the time they normally did, that was good. He unconsciously thought of Takasu Yasuko as parent and guardian to both Ryuuji and Taiga, and so he hadn’t lied about where they were.
Aisaka Taiga said her parents were divorced and she was living alone. So why was it that her mother was in town and coming to his house with such timing? If she was looking for Aisaka, then wasn’t the house she should have been paying a visit to Kushieda’s or Takasu’s—or maybe the phone call from earlier hadn’t been made just to find his best friend? Were they together? Had they disappeared somewhere together? Were they being searched for because they had disappeared? Had they disappeared because they were being searched for?
“I wonder what happened… You know anything about it?”
Instead of answering his mother’s lowered voice, Kitamura left his room. He was lost in thought as he went down the stairs.