Yamaji parked his personal car, a vintage white Toyota Crown, on the edge of Shinonome in Koto Ward. The single-story house we were headed for had a handsome wood exterior that exuded warmth and style. The building was a little off of the main drag, but for a single-story building surrounded by residential high-rises, it was a pretty luxurious structure.
I got out of the car and took a quick look at the area around the building. Lush trees lined the street in neat rows, and a well-appointed black table had been set up on the terrace. The minimalist sheet-copper door stood out, and all in all the exterior of the building was nicely designed.
“This is crazy!” I cried, awed. “Pretty ritzy café you got here, Yamaji. I thought you were one of those guys who only goes to grungy mahjong parlors!”
“Café?” Yamaji said. “What the hell are you talking about? Read the damn sign! This is Higano Mental Clinic. It’s a psychiatry clinic.”
“What? A hospital?”
I looked at the sign near the entrance and saw that it was exactly as Yamaji said. I couldn’t believe such a fashionable space was a hospital. It had to be some kind of joke.
The sign read “By Appointment Only.” Underneath, the hours noted that it was open until 6:00 P.M. Currently, it was 6:30. If it really was a hospital of some sort, it was already closed.
“And Princess, what was that you said?” Yamaji asked. “Grungy or something rude like that?”
That had been what I’d said, but now wasn’t the time to deal with it, so I ignored him and changed the subject. “So, you’re going to teach me the secret to solving cases, right? You mentioned there’s a secret detective or something?”
Detective.
The character in TV shows and mystery novels who was somehow always pulled into a murder case, had rare powers of insight and deduction, and solved the case without the help of the police. It was a line of work that, in reality, mostly investigated cheating partners, in which the detective acquired personal information through methods of dubious legality, and used that information in fishy ways. That was my image of a detective.
“Don’t get so worked up,” he said. Yamaji gave the copper door a pull, which was locked, so he rang the doorbell.
After a moment, the door opened.
“Hello, Yamaji,” a voice with a nasal twang sounded. A woman stepped out.
She had brown hair which paired well with her fair complexion, done up in an impressive updo that had probably taken hours. Her large eyes were downturned at the ends, and were bright and adorable. Overall, she was so cute people probably wanted to take care of her instinctively. Her makeup was stylish and perfect, but her face was really well balanced and would’ve looked great even without makeup. She seemed to be in her early twenties.
She was a looker from head to toe, and I could tell she knew it. Ninety percent of women probably yelled out, “My God, you’re precious!” the first time they met her. When we looked at each other, she gave me a sweet and subtle smile.
“Ugh,” I muttered. I didn’t have much in terms of feminine charm myself, so I sometimes scowled without realizing it when I was around such perfect tens and had to face my own inferiority. To top it off, next to me my unshaven, middle-aged old man of a partner was openly ogling her. It pissed me off that he’d never looked at me that way.
“You’re not telling me that this woman is the detective?” I sniffed.
“Obviously not,” Yamaji retorted. “She’s the receptionist here.”
“This isn’t really a hospital, is it? Where’s the detective?” Was Yamaji messing with me?
“Dr. Higano is still finishing his paperwork,” the woman said. “Please wait inside.” She looked directly at Yamaji and smiled. Which caused him to blush and avert his eyes like he was a teenager. I was totally confused. The stock in Yamaji I’d bought into earlier had peaked and was rapidly plummeting past my stop-loss price.
“So, Yamaji, who is this woman?” she asked and looked deep into my eyes boldly. She wouldn’t have been able to pull this off unless she was seriously self-confident. I wanted to run away.
“This is Uguisu, one of the rookies,” Yamaji introduced me.
“Actually,” I broke in, “I’m Sergeant Yuri Uguisu, with the Tokyo Bay 1st Investigative Unit.”
“Well, well,” she said. “So I see.” She gave my whole body a long, careful, unrestrained look. Suddenly, her expression, which had been relaxed to that point, stiffened into a hard mask.
Her gaze stopped on my right hand, the one that Reina Myoko had complimented.
“Umm, what are you looking at?”
Her smile quickly reappeared, and she giggled. “Just try not to flatter the doctor.”
“What?”
She revealed her name was Erika Shirasu. She gave off a disturbing hostility that only other women would sense as she guided us into the clinic. I noticed her shiny pink nails.
I asked Yamaji, “So this Dr. Higano, is he the detective you’re talking about?”
“That’s correct,” he affirmed. “He’s a psychiatrist as a day job, and a detective on the side. He doesn’t advertise it, but supposedly he’s submitted all the paperwork to be a detective.”
“He gets clients without advertising?”
“He makes enough as a doctor without any clientele as a detective, so he doesn’t seem to mind. That said, he’s got talent, so I think he gets a lot of detective work through word of mouth.”
I took another look around the waiting room to try and get a sense of what kind of person this doctor might be.
Like the exterior, the interior was also a fashionable café incarnate. I had trouble believing it was a hospital, or a detective agency, for that matter. In addition to the leafy-green couch we were sitting on, there were two other stylish sofas, a modern-looking ceiling fan hanging from the white ceiling, and spotlight-style lighting installed evenly throughout. Jazz flowed from the speakers at a perfect volume.
The design alone made it a very strange hospital. But even that was a minor detail compared to the aroma wafting through the waiting room.
The waiting room was rich with the smell of coffee. Behind the reception desk there was a shelf lined with bottles filled with coffee beans, a coffee siphon, and a coffee mill.
Dr. Higano was definitely not your ordinary psychiatrist. I guess that should’ve gone without saying the moment I learned he also moonlighted as a detective.
“Please, have some coffee while you wait,” Erika offered.
She had just finished elegantly preparing pour-overs (I wondered about the unused siphon) and put the mugs on coasters for us. I carefully brought the coffee to my mouth and was overwhelmed by the rich aroma and delicate acidity. I was really more of a tea drinker, but I did love the flavor of coffee. And this was far more delicious than anything a coffee chain could produce.
The flavor was impressive, but I wasn’t in a café. I was in a hospital. The disjunction of the atmosphere and the setting made me unable to enjoy the coffee Erika had gone out of the way to make.
“Excuse me, Erika, do you ever have any patients who have trouble relaxing in a hospital like this?”
“We definitely do,” she said. “But those patients choose to go somewhere else, so it’s fine. There are psychiatric practices everywhere these days. Patients should choose the hospital for them. Dr. Higano always says that we should provide our services for patients who enjoy them and find them relaxing.”
I might’ve been biased, but that didn’t seem like a good management policy for a hospital.
“But most of the patients really like Dr. Higano,” she continued. “We’re doing so well that we’re basically unable to see new patients.”
To be honest, I was starting to get pretty interested in the Doctor myself.
So I jumped when his deep, booming voice echoed from his exam room: “Sorry to make you wait, Yamaji,” he said. “You can come on in. Erika, you can head out if you like.”
“Ah,” she replied in a sweet voice, instinctively touching her hand to her cheek. “It’s no trouble. I’ll wait until you finish.” She took a fashion magazine from a rack and perched herself on one of the sofas. She undid the bun on her head, put a piece of gum in her mouth, and deftly put her hair into a pony tail on one side of her head. I could almost see the pheromones emanating from the nape of her neck.
Damn, I was impressed. Her feminine wiles were flawless. It was as though she were constantly under observation by some organization dedicated to the assessment of feminine charm.
“Time to go, Princess,” Yamaji called me. He ignored me, still fawning over Erika, stood, and knocked on the wooden door. “Doc, thanks for making time.”
I gulped and repeated weakly, “Thanks for seeing us.”
The aroma of coffee grew more intense right as the office door cracked open. The room behind the door was decorated in a monochrome style, and was almost obnoxiously well put together. A black bookshelf contained documents and dense-looking academic tomes. On top of the shelf was an SLR camera and lens, maybe one of his hobbies, and a silver puzzle of some sort. He had a coffee mill and bottles filled with coffee beans in here, too.
On the other side of the black desk sat the one and only Dr. Higano. I could feel the anticipation building in my chest.
My stomach felt tight and I blurted out, “Ah.”
The man sat in an Aeron office chair manipulating a glass cube puzzle. He was unlike anyone I’d ever seen before. He was so tall and slender it seemed like he might snap in half, and he had ghostly white skin. But he gave off a sense of vitality rather than of weakness. He was like a reed made of steel. He wore an Armani suit underneath his white doctor’s coat. It looked like he’d been born in that outfit.
Blue irises filled the center of his narrow eyes, and he had a handsome face with a well-defined nose, but his face was bereft of emotion or warmth. It was all intense pressure.
Nevertheless, there was nothing uncomfortable or off-putting about him. He was cold enough that you could’ve convinced me he was an android, but he also made me feel strangely at ease.
Dr. Higano set down the glass cube puzzle with his long, bony fingers, and raised his shoulders as though taken off guard. He narrowed his eyes, looked at me with a glance as sharp as an icepick, and then said, “Beautiful.”
My entire body went numb.
“Your right hand,” he said. “It’s absolutely stunning.”
“Ah.” I instinctively hid my hand behind my back. I was embarrassed and unable to stay composed when it came to physical attraction.