Even though it was all a game in her private thoughts, it seemed as elaborate as if she was drafting an actual law. Sora’s words about Odajima “harming the public interest” seemed to give rise to a familiar, sharp pang in her heart as well.
By his own colossal effort, Sora had come to a realization through the course of this case. Now that he was working with a woman one-on-one, he had suspected he wasn’t very comfortable with women, but he’d been mistaken—Natsuki was quite a warrior. He wanted to apologize to women as well as to Natsuki for making assumptions.
“Your work must be really demanding. I don’t know what to say.”
She took things in stride with a smile on her face and a joke up her sleeve, but now that Sora knew the legal code she was writing in her head—he could tell how rough the waves were that she had to fight through in her work.
“As for Mr. Odajima,” she began in a wavering voice, “I’ll take responsibility for locking him up. Just…please, Sora, do something.”
Hearing her voice break with emotion for the first time—as she called him by his first name, just as Odajima had done—Sora thought he could finally understand why Natsuki was so distressed by Odajima’s refusal.
Even though ten years had passed since her father’s death, the office still held her father’s name.
“Ms. Natsuki’s always going on about it.”
Sora remembered how gentle Hiraga had sounded, lending an ear to Natsuki’s woes, and that Hiraga had been her father’s business partner. She was probably seeing a shadow of the father she’d lost in Odajima.
“You’re a rather fierce and devoted daughter.”
“Whoever hands down a judgment on Mr. Odajima, I’ll forgive them.”
Sora looked up at her as she sat leaning on the edge of the computer desk. He peered at her profile, trying to fathom how she felt as she tried to protect a man she cared for as a father figure from his own misdeeds.
It wasn’t as if Sora himself had no parents. Someone must have brought him into this world. For 1,200 years, he’d tried not to dwell on them as much as possible, but now that he lived with Tamuramaro and Fuuka was developing his own self, fragments of memory were rising to the surface in his mind, day by day, whether or not he wanted to think about them.
When he met Odajima, Sora could guess that he was probably doing something wrong, but he’d also reminded Sora of Aterui.
He thought of Fuuka, who might not have existed before, and himself, an orphan who was raised by Aterui’s clan. Who was Aterui, really? Who was the leader who had resolutely stood with the people, the justice for the people, the kind of justice to which Sora himself was probably still blind?
“Even if I were a devoted son, I’d cook him all the way to well-done.”
He felt as if he’d already figured out the answer to that question long ago, and he was taken aback by the chill in his own voice.
“But not while he was alive,” he concluded. He would show that much mercy, at least, but he would still burn him, even if the man in question was his own real father.
“…I wish he’d never gotten involved in the post-disaster work,” she murmured tearfully. “He’s old enough to retire and enjoy himself. But he started on the work because of the subsidy from the government under a special measures law.”
“A special measures law… Was that for removing the debris and raising the banks? That part is finished, isn’t it?”
“He was at it to the very end. Restoration is still there as a term, but like he said himself, there’s nothing left now that Odajima Construction can do.” Her hoarse voice didn’t sound like her anymore. “Why does he do it?”
If he were still his old self, Sora would have begun to persuade her to alert the Public Prosecutors’ Office.
He’d only had one answer for everything, always. No matter what twists and turns there were in a situation, no matter what conversations occurred, he always arrived at the same answer. It was the only goal in his journey. And so he’d never hesitated to cast aside any less direct routes as a waste of time, a source of unhappiness.
“I wonder why there’s not much profit.”
He turned his attention back to the accounts on the computer screen and noticed one significant point that he would have missed had he been bent on that single answer.
“Well, as I said. Ill-gotten, ill-spent.”
“I’ve heard of other cases where companies participated under the special measures law and were later prosecuted for malpractice. They found a new route toward profit, and they pooled money from bribery, formed corrupt relationships to receive certain commissions, and more. In all these cases, the profit was what attracted them to remain in a region where work opportunities were destroyed and to engage in illegal operations.”
“…What are you saying?”
Sora couldn’t answer just by looking at the orderly numbers in the records.
“Money gained from bribery wouldn’t appear in the books, of course, but it doesn’t connect to loss of profit. In fact, they would normally line up the numbers with their records from the previous year to make it look more natural. If there was some corruption, profits should be rising.”
The records that had attracted Natsuki’s attention showed many orders for constructions, purchases of building materials, and costs for staff, but the source of the funds that paid for these were ambiguous. The numbers looked chaotic because they were trying too hard to balance the books, but in the end, profit was plummeting.
“I’ve never heard of fraudulent activity that doesn’t result in profit. I’ll take these records home and reinvestigate.”
“Really?!”
“Ms. Natsuki,” Sora began.
He’d always stuck to a single answer in the past, but now that he was open to other possibilities, he was finding that answer might not necessarily be the only one.