“And sometimes people who should’ve returned never do,” Odajima went on.
Sora was caught off guard by how much the comment affected him. He felt as if Odajima was talking about him.
“It can’t be helped. You know, it’s like our plans changing from one day to the next. That’s just how it is, living life. It’s nothing terrible,” he explained to Sora, slowly spinning his fountain pen.
“…Very true,” murmured Tamuramaro, lost in his own memories.
Natsuki had brought Sora here because Odajima was supposedly doing something wrong. But, for some reason, the chairman reminded Sora of a tribal leader. A leader, for Sora, was someone who was right. Someone just and reliable.
“When you’re working on big buildings, that’s just something that comes with the job. Sometimes, by the time you finish the project, there’s no one there to use it. I didn’t mind things like that, back in the old days. Once something’s done, you go on to the next and the next.”
Sora could easily imagine the vigor and energy of his youth—his speech still had a bounce to it.
“And laws change, too. Around when we’d been working in the northeast for ten years, there was a moment when I could see how everyone had been running on empty. When you’re working too hard, there comes a time when you just…break. Some of us passed away.”
For Sora, who had come on a long journey, it was very difficult to picture how people’s emotions could fluctuate so much in a mere ten years from the crash—first tense, then relaxed, then fatigued.
“Right when I wanted to say, ‘This is it. This is where we start,’ I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to them anymore.”
Perhaps Odajima was a leader who supported a multitude of people, more than Sora could imagine. Meanwhile, Tamuramaro was watching Odajima and seemed to understand how he felt as a leader—feelings that Sora couldn’t fathom.
“Just when the cogs were starting to turn, they told us that we need highly specialized technicians. There were fewer and fewer jobs I could pass on to our subsidiary company.”
A leader was just, and a just person didn’t make mistakes. Sora’s leader had been betrayed and killed by the man in front of him. It was extremely difficult to make all instances of what was “just” fully consistent. As he listened to Odajima, Sora wondered vaguely whether justice itself was inconsistent by nature.
“But…,” Sora began. He understood where Odajima was going. He’d read about it in the papers. If he wanted to eradicate the concerns that led to harmful rumors of nuclear waste contamination, it was dangerous not to have expert technicians. “Isn’t that what restoration is?”
As soon as he said it, he hated himself for his choice of words. There was no word of sympathy he could find in his excessively coherent view of justice.
“…!”
Before he could kick himself for the remark, Natsuki stomped on Sora’s foot.
“You’re quite right,” Odajima answered. “If we put a name to it, that’s what it is. In reports and newspapers, they call it restoration. But what’s needed is immediate work.”
Sora thought Odajima was trying to mislead them by leaving out the agent in that sentence, though he couldn’t fathom why—it should be Odajima Construction that needed the work.
“I haven’t grown my company this big by playing clean. We can stay afloat for a while using some tricks.”
Odajima was clearly refusing their investigation, demanding they leave the company alone. A heavy silence fell over the room, and Sora glanced at Natsuki beside him. She was the one who’d brought him to Odajima, but her expression showed that she wasn’t ready to step in any further at present. Sora decided to follow her lead, since she was his employer for the time being. He was making choices he would never have been able to make before, but now he was fumbling in the dark and finding his way to them, one by one.
“Why did you choose your profession, Sora?” Odajima asked, putting down his fountain pen and looking at Sora’s business card. “You don’t see many certified fraud examiners.”
Though Odajima may have meant to change the subject to something safe, it actually touched on the heart of all this.
“Um…” Sora was at a loss for an answer. The only answer he could think of would be relinquishing something that he had finally been able to grasp just now. But he couldn’t help it—the core of his nature stirred into life again when he was asked. He had chosen and longed to follow another path, and yet…
Sora opened his mouth, hoping that maybe, somehow, saying the answer out loud might still change something. “When I was a prosecutor, this area was what I considered to be the most pointless crimes, so I thought I wouldn’t have to hesitate to pass judgment.”
“What area?”
“Embezzlement, corruption, misappropriation, illicit donations, bid rigging. Profitless and useless crimes.”
One form of hope was to seek a kind of justice that didn’t break down on itself; everything he’d said was the honest truth. He found himself wishing that, if Odajima was involved in any of the activities he’d just named, he would stop immediately. Even though they’d only been talking for a short time, Sora could understand why Natsuki was so fond of Odajima. It was an emotion he’d never experienced before. He recalled perfectly that he had never felt a trace of sympathy for anyone who might deserve punishment for a crime.
“Profitless and useless, eh?” Odajima was still smiling.
This time, Natsuki didn’t stomp on Sora’s foot, but she was leaning back on the sofa, her eyes closed.
Tamuramaro’s expression remained unchanged.
Sora couldn’t let go of the idea of an invulnerable justice so readily, and he was once again hoping it would right the wrong.
“Your eyes look red, Sora,” Odajima observed.
“What?” Sora sucked in his breath in surprise. The one who had red eyes was Fuuka, when he killed without hesitation.
“It’s like there’s a fire burning in you. You must be keeping a righteous anger inside you.”