Miika returned to the intelligence division’s building several days after Okuma was released from his cell. Unsurprisingly, he was in the smoking room, although this time, he was alone. If he was comfortable in this cramped, disgusting chamber, then the cell had probably felt quite luxurious, Miika thought.
“You’re a free man again, and you’ve chosen to hang out in this tiny space, hiding from your work,” she commented. In fact, the cells were probably cleaner than this place, even if you subtracted the nasty smoke odor.
“As long as I can use my mind, it doesn’t matter if the place is big or small. You ever heard this saying? ‘Tokyo’s bigger than Kumamoto, Japan’s bigger than Tokyo, and your mind is bigger than Japan.’ ”
“Tokyo?”
“That was the old capital of Japan. It’s inside Yokohama Station now.”
“You mean Edo?”
“Yeah, it was called that once, too. But they called it Tokyo right at the end of the Gregorian calendar period.” Okuma shook his pack of cigarettes, but it was completely empty, so he crumpled the box and tossed it into the trash. He looked right at Miika. “Ah, right. I forgot about the bet.”
“Yes, about that,” Miika replied, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket. “This was our bet, I believe. You said that Instructor Yokoi’s killer was someone on the chemistry team, and if it wasn’t, you would quit smoking.”
“Yep. And I was right.”
“Please look at this,” she stated before unfolding a document and pressing it against the filthy window of the smoking room. Okuma squinted, reading it through the glass.
“It’s a copy of a notice of reassignment. Miss Kuroki has been moved to a different department. As of September twelfth, she’s been assigned to the refugee management bureau in Oita.”
“Ohhh.”
That was how the dead instructor did things. He used his personnel management privileges to send inconvenient employees away—Okuma had said as much himself. And that “inconvenience” was probably directly tied to Kuroki’s actions.
“In other words, at one forty five, the time of the crime, Miss Kuroki was no longer a member of the chemistry team.”
“…Uh-huh.”
“So I win. Please stop smoking.”
Okuma stubbed out his cigarette on the ashtray and said nothing for a while. He seemed to be considering his words very carefully.
Eventually, he opened his mouth and, in a voice that was barely audible, asked, “Did you always know?”
Miika said nothing.
Obviously, she hadn’t taken that into account for the bet. She hadn’t believed Kuroki was the culprit. However, if one was to use Okuma’s supposition as a foundation, then based on Yokoi’s typical patterns, one could have derived the possibility that the murderer had been reassigned before killing him.
Several days later, the company announced that Mr. Yokoi of the personnel division had died during an accident handling explosives. Employees were left to wonder why that would happen in Kumamoto rather than in Fukuoka, where anti-station weapons were common, but the general populace didn’t understand the difference. Naturally, there was no announcement about Kuroki’s treatment. Her employee e-mail address was no longer active, and she had not been sent to Oita, apparently.
With this, Miika was now the only woman in the chemistry office.
“If there’s anything you don’t understand, just ask the question,” her schoolteacher had said, but experience had taught Miika that most of the things she really wanted to know were still a mystery after posing the question. It seemed to the young woman that when you were an adult and didn’t know something, you just had to get by without that information.
Oh well. She would have to try to de-stress by enjoying the sight of Okuma struggling without his cigarettes. Undoubtedly, he’d find some reason to break the agreement before long. Or he might not even bother with a reason.
Miika’s expectations were proven incorrect, however. She didn’t get to see Okuma wrestle with his desire. He was reassigned shortly after the incident was resolved.
“To Kitakyushu,” he grumbled. “I’m getting sent right up to the station. After this latest incident, it seems clear that the conduct division really doesn’t like my attitude.”
Kitakyushu was the spot closest to Yokohama Station across the Kanmon Straits. The station’s attempts to shoot passageways across the water were getting fiercer every year, and there had been recent fatalities among the military division. It was treated like an honor on par with working at headquarters, but no one requested to go there.
“Why would they send an intelligence division member to Kitakyushu?”
“Suikanet info gathering, they said.”
“Is that a real thing?”
“I dunno if there’s genuine work in it. Maybe it’s just another way of giving me the runaround and hoping I quit.”
Okuma exhaled heavily, and Miika naturally leaned away.
“I’ll be honest with you. I think this is better for me. This Kumamoto job is a waste of time.”
“You were deciphering the JR Integrated Intelligence’s language, weren’t you? Is it that hard?”
“It’s not hard. It’s impossible. And it took four years to figure that out. The whole thing’s a waste of taxpayer money, a pointless jobs program. Keynesian economics.”
“But there are stories that JR North Japan succeeded in decoding it. That they have an excellent researcher.”
There was no way to know where those stories were coming from. At the very least, none from Kyushu could sail to Hokkaido without authorization. And it was hard to imagine anyone traveling here from Hokkaido. Resources were even scarcer up there.
“That’s impossible,” Okuma stated. He was utterly confident, the same way he had been when he’d decided that the culprit was from the chemistry team. “It’s not a matter of excellence or genius or anything. Mark my words: No human being could’ve done that. Say what you will, but at least I’m self-consciously human.”
“If you say so. I don’t put much trust in your diagnosis.”
Before, Miika had believed that life would probably be much easier if she could speak her mind as freely as this man. Now she was coming to realize that she was getting much better at it.