Today would be the seventh night since Nanaka heard the Haruko story. Aoyama and Rumi had been so busy that they’d barely had time to keep track of the days passing by. Of course, Haruko wouldn’t be showing up in the girl’s dreams anymore. That person had never existed, after all.
Finishing up work at the church, Aoyama made his way to the office. They were expecting a visit from a man who claimed his house had become haunted after he’d driven to a famous spiritual landmark. Aoyama opened the door to hear loud snoring. Rumi was splayed out on the sofa, sleeping soundly. All around her lay the remains of snacks, along with an empty ice cream tub. The TV was still on.
He sighed and bent down to Rumi’s level. He took her bracelet out of his pocket and slid it back onto her wrist, all without waking her up.
“Nanaka told me to ‘say thank you to the expert lady’ for her.”
Two days before, during the children’s English class, he’d told Nanaka that Haruko was gone. When she heard that, she’d bowed her head in thanks and given him Rumi’s bracelet to return to her.
“I think she wanted you to have this for keeps. Just in case, why don’t you hold on to it through to the seventh night?”
“No, it’s okay.”
Nanaka hadn’t backed down.
“She said she got this from her mom, right? In that case, it must be really important to her. I have to give it back.”
Aoyama couldn’t argue. He had a sweater his mother had knit for him back in middle school that looked absolutely terrible, but he still hadn’t been able to throw it away. Nanaka had thanked him over and over again, then gone home.
This case had concluded so peacefully that it almost felt anticlimactic. Cleaning up the office seemed more daunting than any exorcism right now. Aoyama set to work picking up the garbage Rumi had scattered about her. This was the time of year when bugs were more likely than ever to be attracted to scraps of food, but she didn’t seem to care.
“It’s starting to feel like you really are my mommy.”
Turning around, he saw Rumi, still recumbent, looking at him.
“If you ask me, cleaning up a mess is something any decent person would do, not just mothers. And I thought we were going to forget about that.”
Thinking about how he’d told her she could call him Mommy if she wanted caused his cheeks to flush with embarrassment. He’d been doing whatever he could to cheer her up back then, without really thinking about the consequences.
“Kidding. Well, mostly kidding. Sorry not sorry,” she sang out.
He had a feeling he hadn’t heard the end of this particular joke yet, but if Rumi was back to her old self, that was all that mattered.
“Anyway, most of the credit for solving this should go to you,” she said.
She hoisted herself up and sat on the sofa cross-legged.
“You gathered intel from the children, you performed an exorcism, and as the pièce de résistance, you came out with that wonderful insight at the end. I really have to tip my hat to you.”
“I’m glad I was able to do something more useful than making the tea for a change. What ‘insight’ are you talking about?”
“You know, all that stuff about abnormal parent-child relationships. It was outstanding. Even your deductive powers leading you up to that point were impressive. I was so convinced that Sayama really was possessed by the spirit of his mother, I’d only prepared for that eventuality.”
“Yeah, well… I took all that from a psychology book I just happened to read.”
Some time before, a young lady with an eating disorder had come to the church for advice. It was Aoyama’s father who did the counseling, but Aoyama had been worried, too. The girl had a warped perception of thinness and its value, but the root cause of her suffering was her relationship with her mother. Apparently, that was the case with a surprisingly high number of women who suffered from such disorders.
From there, Aoyama had briefly dived into literature covering the relationship dynamics between parents and children. It had been pure chance that this case provided him with an opportunity to put that knowledge to good use.
“I don’t think I did anything as fancy as deduction. It was just that I had Mononobe’s protection on me and had more time to think than you did. And it was really Toshihiko who resolved things, if you can even call it that.”
Aoyama felt that he understood where Sayama was coming from to an extent. He’d convinced himself that he’d been responsible for his mother’s death, and that guilt had caused him to see an illusory version of her. For better or worse, he possessed powers similar to Rumi and Mononobe, meaning he was able to manifest that illusion and make it real.
Just because Aoyama had been able to guess that much, it didn’t mean he could have done anything for Sayama’s emotional well-being. If Toshihiko hadn’t stepped in when he did, Sayama probably would have strangled him to death. In contrast, Toshihiko didn’t understand Sayama one bit. He’d even said so clearly and unambiguously in front of the man himself. But it was those easygoing—some might even say self-centered—words that had gotten through to him.
“Somehow, it doesn’t feel like he was really trying to save Sayama or to say anything particularly profound. It was more like the whole thing just fizzled out…”
“That’s how it is sometimes,” Rumi said, tossing a balled-up tissue into the trash. “All the righteous and well-reasoned arguments in the world can’t compete against a handful of words from the one you love. ‘A pinch of salt from a lover is still sweeter than a mountain of sugar from a stranger,’ to quote Nobuko Otowa.”
“You might be right.”