Surprisingly, his company car access hadn’t been suspended. When he arrived at work, he saw a bunch of crisis-management team members rushing around.
“We received a call from Mr. Takenaka saying that he couldn’t come to work,” one of the members told him. “We’re urgently coordinating who’ll replace him at his meetings with the other departments.”
In order to minimize the risk of data leaks, Crisis Management restricts information sharing and outsourcing as much as possible. As a result, when the man at the top was absent, it quickly became unclear who was in charge of what information. Takenaka’s policy was backfiring on them now, which was a relief to Mitsuhiro. He didn’t even wonder why Takenaka couldn’t come to work.
“Anything I can do to help?” he asked out of politeness, but as expected, no one took him up on the offer. He was still in Takenaka’s sights as a target, so no one wanted to touch him with a ten-foot pole at the moment.
But that didn’t matter. This was a lucky break. He could use that car all he wanted to while Takenaka was gone, and he was free from the meaningless busywork he was promised earlier. Mitsuhiro quickly turned his back on the office floor and made a beeline for the parking lot. He had a whole lot of Yoshikazu Haras he needed to find today.
As he climbed the hill up to the lot under the summer sun, his phone rang. The caller was Okuyama from Helping Hands. He had promised to share information about Yoshikazu Hara; maybe he had some new clues. Mitsuhiro didn’t hesitate to pick up.
“Matsunaga speaking.”
“Hi, this is Okuyama, head of Helping Hands Mutual Aid.”
“Yes. Thank you very much for your help earlier. Is this about Yoshikazu Hara?”
“It is, yes. The other day, someone who knows Yoshikazu Hara saw him at a soup kitchen in Yoyogi.”
Okuyama was referring to the one held regularly at the south gate of Yoyogi Park. This was unexpected. Mitsuhiro had taken him to the East Wing many times, so he’d expected to find him wandering around the Shibuya Station area again.
“Is he sleeping somewhere in Yoyogi?”
If so, that provided easy access to both Shinjuku and Shibuya. He might even be traveling between the two wards of Tokyo. Mitsuhiro cursed his bad luck as he entered the company lot. His search radius had just been expanded a great deal.
“I don’t know. He said he had work to do and went off somewhere, I’m told. I imagine he’ll show up at the Yoyogi soup kitchen again.”
Mitsuhiro held his phone between his shoulder and his ear, took the keys out of his bag, and opened the door. It was still sauna-like in there. He put his bag on the passenger seat, held the phone in his left hand, and got into the driver’s seat. His hand hardly hurt anymore. It was just a little itchy.
“Thank you very much. I’ll expand the search area to Yoyogi as well, then.”
He started the engine and turned on the AC, but the heat inside the car was so oppressive that he got out again. Just sitting there until the temperature dropped might be enough to give him heat stroke.
“By the way, I had another unrelated question.”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Matsunaga, have you been talking to the people who visit soup kitchens?”
“Yes, as part of the search for Yoshikazu Hara.”
“Are you taking them anywhere?”
He suddenly felt uneasy. Okuyama, it seemed, was wary of something. Mitsuhiro had to proceed with caution.
“I have brought them into my car for questioning at times,” he quickly replied. If he talked how about he kept taking them to this underground hole before losing him in the darkness, it might give the impression that he was forcing Yoshikazu Hara into becoming a human sacrifice or something. Considering Yoshikazu Hara’s illness, Okuyama might very well see it as coercion.
“You’re not bringing them to a support facility or anything like that, are you?”
“I wish I could do that for them, but…why do you ask?”
“Well, we’re seeing a significant number of people who left their possessions behind and haven’t returned to fetch them.”
“Oh?”
“It’s often the case that when people move into shelters, they sometimes leave their belongings behind in case they have to return to the streets later. If we’ve lost track of them, though, we usually report it to the police, in case they were involved in a crime of some sort…”
The way Okuyama’s voice trailed off seemed to indicate that he was gauging Mitsuhiro’s reaction. Maybe his reaction to the word police, specifically.
“Right,” he replied, allowing Okuyama to continue.
“Do you have any idea what might be going on with that, Mr. Matsunaga?”
“Me? No… All I’m looking for is Yoshikazu Hara. Someone tried to post photos of our site on the internet, but that’s been resolved.”
“Resolved.”
Okuyama repeated the word, and his tone was heavy with implication. He was starting to rub Mitsuhiro the wrong way.
The car was finally cool, so he hopped in and shut the door.
“Yes, that’s right,” Mitsuhiro said, halfway ready to just ask what this had to do with him.
“You’re not approaching people living on the streets and transporting them so they don’t get in the way of construction, are you?”
“Huh? Transporting?”
“I’ve heard that someone matching your description has been showing up multiple times a day at food distribution points, carrying a convenience-store bag.”
So what?! Mitsuhiro wanted to shout back, but he held it in.
“Certainly, when I’m discussing matters with them, I sometimes buy them something in exchange for their time. Ice cream and so on.”
“Ice cream?”
“Yes.”
“Any alcohol?”
“Well, I try my best to avoid that, but if they’re really insistent on it, then—”