“Are you an acquaintance of the victim’s?”
“Yeah, more or less…”
“…Well, I’m very sorry to say this, sir, but I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do. The police are going to want to examine the scene, so please don’t go anywhere just yet,” the man explained politely before dialing the police department. Only about five minutes later, an officer from the Sodeshima substation showed up at the empty lot on a moped. He was an older policeman, and the superior of the friendly patrol officer I knew so well. I remembered the latter referring to this older man as a “sergeant” in the past.
The sergeant told me to stay put for a moment before he jogged over to take a look at the body. A little while later, my favorite patrol officer showed up behind him on a bicycle. This was the first time I’d ever seen him with a no-nonsense look on his face instead of his usual affable smile. After checking in with his superior officer for a bit, he came over and spoke to me.
“Well, I’d say it’s good to see you again, Funami, but I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances…” he said, his expression pained and full of worry. “Won’t be long before a crowd starts to form here. Let’s head over to the substation so we can talk in private, yeah?”
The officer turned and started pushing his bike in the direction of the Sodeshima substation. I raised the kickstand on Eri’s bike beside me and followed suit. When we got there about ten minutes later, the officer opened the door and indicated for me to sit down in a simple wooden chair over in the corner of the room.
“Okay, so I’m gonna have to ask you a lot of questions, but it’s all just basic police stuff. Gotta cover our bases, y’know? So don’t take it personally,” the officer explained as he sat down in a rolling office chair across from me.
He proceeded to ask me a bunch of very specific questions about how I’d found Akito’s body and what the scene was like when I got there. I answered each one completely honestly and in as much detail as I could. The only white lie I told the entire time was when he asked me why I’d been passing through that area near the empty lot—I told him it was purely a coincidence. In my defense, something told me that saying “I came back from the future so I knew where his body was gonna be” would be asking for trouble. When he was done questioning me about the discovery, he had me verify my current address and phone number, as well as what high school I was attending.
“Cool, so…are we done here?” I asked when that was over.
“’Fraid not. We’ve got a detective on his way over from the mainland right now. He’ll probably want to question you as well. Might grill you a little harder than I did, so it could take a while, just FYI.”
“In that case, do you mind if I call home real quick and let them know where I’m at?”
“Oh, by all means. Go right ahead, chief.”
With his permission, I called home, and my grandmother picked up. I gave her the rundown and let her know that I probably wouldn’t be home until late. She seemed pretty worried at first but appeared to calm down when I told her to make plenty of extra food at dinner because I’d be very hungry when I got back. Shortly after getting off the phone with her, a middle-aged man in a suit walked into the substation, and the patrol officer immediately stood up to greet him. I could only assume this was the aforementioned detective. He was a gaunt and gangly man, about a head taller than me. He seemed like he might not be in excellent health at a glance, but his eyes were undeniably sharp and discerning.
“Hey, folks.” he said. “You the kid who discovered the body?”
I nodded, and the detective briefly introduced himself, then sat down in a nearby chair and started asking me a lot of the same questions the patrol officer just got done asking. His tone of voice was equally casual too, yet there was something much more intimidating about him; it made me feel way more nervous. We traded questions and answers back and forth for a little while, until eventually he asked one that made me clam right up:
“And if I might ask, why were you passing through that specific part of town, exactly?”
I knew I couldn’t tell him about the Rollback, so my only option was to repeat the same lie I’d told the patrol officer.
“Kinda felt like riding my bike down that street, sir,” I said. “Only found him by pure coincidence.”
“But the body was pretty deep in there, behind a fair bit of undergrowth, no? You must have awfully good eyes to be able to spot something like that while passing by on a moving vehicle.”
“I mean, true… But I guess I was riding pretty slow.”
“Oh, you were, huh? Okay,” the detective said, his eyes narrowing quite a bit. “So you mentioned to my colleague that you knew Mr. Hoshina—is that correct? Was he a friend of yours? What was your overall opinion of him?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d say we were friends, but…I certainly had a very high opinion of him. I really looked up to him as a kid.”
“And yet you don’t seem very shaken up by his untimely demise. Why is that?”
“I am, sir. Believe me.”
“So you’re telling me that you were just randomly out on your bike, just randomly happened to ride by that empty lot, and just randomly happened to notice Mr. Hoshina’s body—do I have all that right?”
His beady black eyes peered down at me, suspicious. I felt a cold sweat beginning to form on my back. I was shaking internally, but I somehow managed to suppress it and nodded in affirmation.
“…That’s correct, sir.”
There was a long period of silence after that. Neither of us spoke a word. But I refused to incriminate myself anymore, and thankfully, the detective did relent and break the silence eventually.
“All right, moving on…”
He resumed questioning me as though nothing had happened. When the interrogation finally drew to a close, he asked me to explain what my plans were going forward and said that the police might stop by my house over the next couple of days, and I may even be asked to come and answer some questions over on the mainland if need be. I told him I understood, though in reality I wasn’t really paying attention anymore at that point. By the time I was allowed to leave the substation, it was already nine o’clock at night.