Uncomplicated.
I’ve never tried a Swiss roll before.
I like cod roe rice balls. I haven’t had any for a while.
Lots of people are lined up at the school store.
✦ ✦ ✦
And at the bottom was that same drawing—a fluffy body and a bald face looking forward. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth that connected to its nose.
Miss Hitsujimoto…
Kuchina’s house in Motomachi was one of the properties owned by Great Lord Furuhiko Kagemiya under his various names. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Hitsujimoto had lived there in the past. Great Lord Kagemiya had frozen them in the basement and told Kuchina she could use the house freely as a base for communications. However, this was that man she was dealing with. Any order he gave was likely half a trap. Kuchina had found dozens of surveillance cameras, listening devices, infrared sensors, and noise detectors, and she removed all of them. She’d checked many times since then but hadn’t found any signs of new devices having been installed. That man hadn’t brought the matter up, either—but that didn’t mean Kuchina could relax. It would definitely be a mistake to let her guard down. If he felt it was necessary, that man would put Kuchina under close observation.
He demanded loyalty from the people in his faction. They had to demonstrate and prove their loyalty by completing the jobs they were assigned.
“Nothing…” Kuchina looked absentmindedly at the black rotary-dial telephone on the kitchen counter. “I can’t find any listening devices, cameras, or sensors.”
She’d known that man was going to call, and she still hadn’t answered. That had been a very dangerous thing to do. She knew that, yet she’d still crossed that deadly bridge.
Even if she ignored the ringing a few times, Kuchina knew she’d probably pick up eventually. She had anticipated that. She couldn’t rebel against him in the end. If she did, that man would harm Mr. and Mrs. Hitsujimoto, and they wouldn’t be able to come back to life. They’d die for real.
However, that man wouldn’t overlook Kuchina’s offense. He would find some way to punish her, most likely by restricting her freedom.
I was prepared for that.
Maybe Kuchina had even hoped for it to happen.
It might be better for her not to have this temporary freedom.
I can’t do anything as long as that man is around…
It was hard to imagine that Great Lord Furuhiko Kagemiya had any sense of morals whatsoever. While Kuchina might not be in any position to comment on other people, that man was, without a doubt, abnormal. He wasn’t someone who killed for pleasure, but murder wasn’t a taboo to him. For that same reason, he didn’t find any joy in it, either. If it was necessary, he could kill anyone, anytime, anywhere, as often as needed. And if not, he wouldn’t go out of his way to kill anyone.
If it became necessary, that man would even mobilize his people and have them eliminate innocent high school students.
That’s why it’s better they don’t get involved with me…
As Kuchina Hitsujimoto had always thought, she couldn’t let herself associate with anyone. Not even if she wished she could. Maybe she’d wanted it to be that way. Don’t do anything weird. Don’t think any more than you have to. If that man threatened her, even indirectly, she’d just put up with it.
Is that man…not monitoring me…?
Kuchina bit her bottom lip and shook her head. She was jumping to conclusions. Even without a device, he might be keeping an eye on Kuchina’s movements through some other means. He’d gathered people with unique talents like Kuchina and Ruran Hinoura, so maybe he had someone helping him who could see from far away or read people’s thoughts.
She was concerned about the woman in sunglasses. Had she been following her? Kuchina had been considering that possibility for a long time. On school days, she tried to spend as long as possible on the school grounds. School was the only ordinary part of her life—which in and of itself made it an out-of-the-ordinary experience that was difficult for her to obtain. It let her forget the stench of blood that surrounded her work. Surely that man’s influence didn’t reach inside the school, too.
There might be a spy…
Kuchina had tried not to be suspicious up until now. If she started doubting people, she’d never stop. Everyone would start looking like that man’s spy.
Even if I assume Takarai is the only person it couldn’t really be…
He was a fellow assassin. It was clear he belonged to a different group than Great Lord Furuhiko Kagemiya’s faction, which Kuchina was a part of. In fact, he was probably a business rival.
In which case, how about the other students?
Say, for example…Hayashi.
He’d spoken to her in the hallway. Kuchina had instantly come to the conclusion that she couldn’t kill him. He’d stood there like a scarecrow, smiling pleasantly with no body odor and not allowing anyone else to sense him.
Is he just a normal high school student…?
It might just be a coincidence, but Yukisada Hayashi had been close to Sousei Takarai from the start. And Sousei had turned out to be a fellow assassin. Due to his connection to Sousei, Yukisada had also participated in the potato chip party that day. Perhaps it had been pure chance, but he’d spoken to her in the hallway.
“—You’re running away again?” Yukisada had said to Kuchina.
He’d said “again.”
…Is Hayashi…monitoring me? Is he a spy planted by that man…?
If that hypothesis was correct, he would know almost everything Kuchina did. That man would know about her behavior at the potato chip party and what she’d written in the exchange diary. She knew what it would mean.
But what about other people?
The reason Kuchina had for suspecting Hayashi was trivial, so she might already be reaching. In fact, a total lack of suspicious qualities might actually make a person seem more suspicious. A spy who was suspicious would be useless. What Kuchina should be wary of were spies who didn’t seem like spies at all.
In that case, there would be no end to the list of suspects. She couldn’t even say with absolute certainty that Sousei Takarai was innocent. He was a fellow assassin in her class, and their targets had overlapped by chance. What if that wasn’t the case, though, and that man had set it all up? Had Sousei been sent to the same high school that Kuchina had enrolled in? Had he been monitoring her all along? Deceiving her under that man’s orders?
There’s no way—
Could she be certain of that?
I saved…Takarai.
Concerned about him, Kuchina had followed Sousei to an elementary school clock tower, where she’d found him backed into a corner. He’d been trying to take down a target and encountered more difficulty than expected, or so she’d believed. Had that all been an act?
…I’m becoming paranoid. Everything seems suspicious. Maybe that’s exactly what he intended.
Kuchina didn’t believe that man. There was no way she could. She didn’t have any loyalty to him. However, if she had obediently done what he said, Mr. and Mrs. Hitsujimoto wouldn’t have met that horrible fate. The three of them would have been able to live together.
Carrot and stick…
Kuchina had wanted a family. That man had given her Mr. and Mrs. Hitsujimoto.
Why had Kuchina said she wanted to quit her job? She shouldn’t have been having such thoughts. If she hadn’t gone against that man, they would still be alive.
Alive— No, Mom and Dad…aren’t dead…
Right. She should apologize to that man. She would never disobey him again. She’d work hard, bow down in front of him and swear it—anything. If she demonstrated loyalty, that man might reward her, and he’d probably give her something she wanted.
I might be able to see Mom and Dad again.
They weren’t dead.
That man had guaranteed it. He’d said they had been perfectly frozen and were just asleep.
She didn’t believe it. There was no way she could believe it. She just wanted to.
She wanted to believe that man.
“I’ll do my job properly,” Kuchina murmured.
That man was listening somewhere. She had searched around quite a lot, and there weren’t any listening devices, but even if that man couldn’t hear her voice, she got the feeling he was still listening. She wanted to be heard.
“I’ll do my job.”
Kuchina took her bag from the corner of the living room and went out the door. Her house in Motomachi was in a high-end residential area called Yamanote. Doing her best to avoid the glow of the streetlights, she went down the gentle decline of the hill and arrived at the shopping district around the subway station. The corner in front of it had a row of old mixed-use buildings and dilapidated apartment complexes.
Kuchina went into a café called Poppy on the first floor of one of the buildings. The doorbell rang when she entered, but the hunched-over elderly shop owner didn’t even look at her. Kuchina was the only customer. There was music playing, but all Kuchina could tell was that it was a foreign song. She sat at a table in the back. The elderly owner hadn’t moved an inch, and he was wearing thick glasses. His eyesight must be really bad. Kuchina wondered if he might be hard of hearing as well, but when she said, “Coffee, please,” he replied with a simple “All right” after a few seconds. He began to grind the beans with a creaking, hand-cranked coffee grinder.
Kuchina took the notebook and her pencil case out of her bag. She knew it would take quite a while before the elderly shop owner brought her coffee over. The café was open both late at night and early in the morning, and it was sometimes closed during the day. Whenever she visited, there were only ever one or two customers, if any, and all of them were about as old as the elderly shop owner. Yet despite the passage of time, the inside of the store was free of dust.
Kuchina opened the notebook.