It was Saturday, and the open area in front of Akihabara station was filled with shoppers. Lately, it was common to see non-Japanese buying huge amounts of appliances and general household items. Japanese products were cheap, reliable, and if you were foreign, you didn’t have to pay taxes.
After World War II, Akihabara was filled with shops selling circuits, condensers, and other electronic parts, and when the economy started to grow, it developed fast. In addition to customers looking for normal appliances, there were places to buy radios, audio equipment, and remote-controlled toys. People came from all over Japan to buy things.
When electronic games started to appear, the city moved from selling hardware to software. Now it was a mecca for otaku culture, and there was very little left to remind anyone of the time when it was called “the Electric City.”
“Well, if this were a worldline where Faris-tan didn’t exist, then maybe it would still be selling electronics. If this were Steins;Gate, that is.” I grinned, thinking about the anime.
I looked around and saw signs everywhere covered with cute girls, hot boys, and lots of strange characters I didn’t understand. The giant TV on the UDX was playing anime videos all day long. Akihabara was like a 3D website, in a way. A portal site to otaku culture.
There were no windows on the buildings, and all of them were covered with ads, some of which were put up and taken down in the course of a single night. It really was just like a website.
“I love the chaos here. Or I would, if it weren’t for work. This is the best place to find good Vanguard cards, for one thing.” But as a place for the action and drama-filled life of a detective, it was somewhat lacking. “There’s no Castle of Cagliostro here, either.”
It wasn’t exactly good for hard-boiled noir stuff, either. There were rows of neon signs along the main drag. If they were only a little brighter and more obnoxious, it could give the place some atmosphere. But that was more of a Shinjuku or Kabukicho kind of thing.
The fact of the matter was that the place had become too famous overseas, and now it had changed to become more normal and touristy. Because of that, the unique sense of chaos and danger that the city offered was, compared to a place like Shinjuku, nowhere to be found—or if that was going too far, at least there was less of it.
In the past, there had been an atrocity here that had shaken the city to its foundation. But it had been sudden and random, with no politics and no conspiracies involved. In the end, all it left behind was a feeling of empty frustration.
I would never forget it. I wanted the person who ruined everyone’s treasured memories to spend the rest of their life in jail.
Crime didn’t suit this town. That much was clear.
“But the whole ‘underground’ thing is gone now, too...”
Twenty years ago, there were tons of shady junk parts shops, as well as lots of suspicious-looking foreigners selling things down side alleys, I’d been told. But at this point, most of those had been cleaned out.
That must be why you didn’t hear of a lot of TV crime shows set in Akihabara. You would see the occasional police car or uniformed officer, but they were usually dealing with shoplifters or handling traffic. That was an important job too, but...
Some places had an atmosphere that suggested a dark and dangerous world, that inspired an almost instinctual fear. You could still sense that atmosphere in Kabukicho, but in twenty-first-century Japan, it was gradually disappearing from the cities.
It wasn’t just Akihabara: Center Street in Shibuya and Ikebukuro Nishiguchi were a lot more peaceful than they used to be.
“I guess that goes for Kichijoji, too...”
Kichijoji was one of the areas under the jurisdiction of my station, the Musashino Police. You could head down the back alleys there and only get a mild sense that something strange might be going on.
Sometimes there would be minor incidents, but never any crimes. Even Harmonica Alley, the area near the station, was a lot safer than it was a few years ago. It was no longer an underground black market, but a spot with a lot of yummy hidden restaurants.
The people on the streets were always kind and cheerful. On the weekends, you could see families and couples going shopping and relaxing at any number of different stores and cafés. It was a wonderful place to have a good time.
There was a reason it always ranked first place in surveys of “Towns in Tokyo You’d Want to Live in.” It was a place your average person wanted to visit, and there were always lots of visitors from outside the city. And unlike Akihabara, there were a lot of old historical sites, like shrines. Stuff like that gave the locals a strange sense of peace. Maybe the temples protected the town with some kind of barrier that brought peace to the hearts of visitors?
...Okay, that was just being silly. But that image of a cool, wonderful city had only lasted until a week ago.
A famous professor who’d been on TV was murdered in his lab at his college. And then 256 bodies, victims of a mass drowning suicide, had been pulled up from the heart of Inokashira Park, the symbol of Kichijoji.
Ever since these two cases were reported, I’d seen fewer people traveling about the city, and no more lines at popular cafés and food stalls.
“Our station’s been in an uproar, too.”
We hadn’t ID’d all the bodies yet. The problem was, weirdly, that over half the victims were carrying nothing that would identify them. Because of this, we detectives were being sent around to help identify the bodies. But despite the fact that everyone was busy, here I was wandering around Akihabara. If my co-workers, Kozaki and Shinoyama, saw me here, I’d be in for one hell of a lecture.
“Well, they won’t be yelling at me when they see me anymore, probably.”
I was standing on the pedestrian bridge that connected to UDX. I was leaning up against the rails and looking down at the people below.
As I did, I thought about Shinoyama and Kozaki. I didn’t know if we had different values or they just didn’t like me, but those two had a habit of behaving really nastily towards me. But somehow I felt a little sad when I realized that I’d never be hearing their yelling again.
I thought back to what had happened just a few hours ago. I’d finished my morning work and come back to the station. Something had felt weird. The air was heavy, like it was hard to breathe. When I went to the floor where the detectives’ division was, it got worse.
Part of my trouble breathing might just have been that I’d run up four flights of stairs, though.