Revenge, huh? I stared down at my glove-covered hands.
Oliver was right. I owed my life to Moritsuka. Right now, I just barely had control over my psychometry. But before I’d met Moritsuka at the FBI, my power had been more or less running wild. Since I couldn’t control it, the memories of anything I touched would come flooding into me. I couldn’t even live my daily life, and all my efforts had been devoted to “not touching anything.”
“You can’t control your power, can you? If you don’t figure out a way, eventually it’ll kill you.”
After I’d already talked with Moritsuka several times, I’d had a heart attack one day. It had never happened when I was little, but a while after I joined the FBI, I learned that my heart was in awful shape. The FBI’s doctors took a look at me, but all they could tell me was that they didn’t know why it was happening. But for some reason, Moritsuka was able to tell instantly that my heart attack was due to overusing my psychometry.
“Your psychometry puts a pretty big strain on your body, I think,” he’d told me. “The FBI doesn’t want you quitting, so they’re hiding that from you. That’s just how all big organizations are, you know. Terrible, just terrible.”
When he told me this, I’d felt betrayed by the FBI. I was so shocked that I hadn’t slept a wink that night. I could tell that my whole body was screaming. But since the bureau needed my power, I couldn’t stop using it.
The next day, Moritsuka came to me and said, “Here, I brought you a present.” Then, he put a pair of black gloves on me. “These are magic cat-paw gloves that can temporarily seal away your psychometry.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Sure, they definitely weren’t normal gloves. The palm and fingers were covered with shock absorber pads that looked like a cat’s paw. But I knew that it would take more than some fabric and fake paws to seal away my power. I knew that better than anyone. I’d had this power since I was a kid. I’d tried all kinds of things to seal it away. Wearing gloves to stop it was the first thing I’d tried, and of course, it hadn’t worked at all.
But when I told him that, Moritsuka just laughed. “Did you know that sometimes, people can get better just because they believe something? The trick is to believe that those gloves can temporarily seal away your power.”
That was impossible. But when I told him that...
“But you were already able to protect your mind by making a movie theater, weren’t you? So why can’t you believe that these gloves are magic?”
His words were enough to make me understand. After that, I was able to learn to temporarily seal my power with the gloves. As long as I wore them, my powers wouldn’t activate when I touched something. And because of that, the stress on my body was reduced. It was thanks to Moritsuka that I was still alive.
The cat-paw gloves that Moritsuka had given me were still at my house. They were my treasure. So when I heard he was dead, it was natural for me to want revenge. But what did the FBI want with me? I’d been out of there for a while. Why would they want me to take over for Moritsuka?
“Do you think I’m capable of this?”
“You’re the only one who is.”
In other words, they were counting on my psychometry. I thought it over silently. If I went back to being an agent, I’d have to use my power a lot. But if I did that, my heart would...
“We’re willing to pay for all your mother’s medical expenses. We’ll also provide somebody to take care of her needs.”
Why was he bringing that up now?
“That sounds like a threat to me.” If I quit, or started to slack off, one of my mother’s caregivers could turn from a nurse into an assassin.
But Oliver just ignored me. “We’re also willing to make accommodations for your health.”
That was the reason I’d quit the FBI. My body hadn’t recovered. It hadn’t improved... No, it was slowly getting worse.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: A disease where the muscles of the heart enlarge to the point where they can’t send blood to the rest of the body. The positioning of the enlargement in my heart meant that the Batista procedure wasn’t an option. The only thing that could save me right now was a heart transplant. It was a difficult procedure, but without it, my heart’s muscles would eventually lose the ability to contract. I had two years left, at best. If I was lucky, I might live to see twenty, but no better than that.
I wanted to spend the rest of my short life in peace. That’s why I’d come back to Japan.
“I...” I grit my teeth and gently put my hand against my chest, which constantly hurt with a dull ache.
Oliver’s “accommodations” were probably a reference to a heart transplant in America. If that was possible, it would add years to my life.
“I don’t think it’s a bad deal,” he said.
I knew Oliver didn’t like me. In the same way that the girls at Seimei High avoided me, he kept his distance, too. I understood why he wouldn’t like me: I could find in thirty minutes what would take him a week of difficult investigations. And yet he’d come all the way to Japan personally to ask for me to join the bureau again.
The FBI must have really had its back against the wall. What had Moritsuka been looking into?
“...Moritsuka.”
He was dead. He was gone. Whenever I ran into him at the FBI’s offices, he would always smile that innocent smile of his and offer me a piece of the candy he kept in his pocket. He was almost like Santa Claus.
But now he was gone.
I took another deep breath and stared hard into Oliver’s eyes. “I’ll do it. Tell me about the case Moritsuka was working on.”
I wasn’t doing this for the FBI. I was going back to being an FBI agent for Moritsuka’s sake.