Toko had told me she had something she wanted to talk to me about, so I headed to Café☆Blue Moon. As I walked through the hotel section on the way from the station to the café, Sarai called out to me from behind.
He walked up alongside me. “Where did you go yesterday?”
If he meant after we met at Daiseiji, I’d gone home and cried... but I couldn’t tell Sarai that. So I said nothing.
Oh, but maybe I should tell him about Asunyan. Before I could decide what to say, he began to talk.
“I looked to see if there was anyone else we knew at Daiseiji.”
“Huh? Seriously? Man, you’re tough. Or are you some kind of monster?”
“Are you insulting me?”
“I just... I just don’t know how you could do that and stay calm.”
“It wasn’t easy, even for me. But panicking won’t help solve anything.”
Man, maybe he really was tough...
“And?”
“I found Aikawa.”
“...Yeah.”
“And the mistress of the House of Crimson.”
“Aria Kurenaino? I see...”
The incident at Enmeiji was after the 256 incident. We’d been able to talk with Aria when she visited Blue Moon, so it made sense that she was dead.
“Also, I don’t know if it’s the same person... but there was also the body of a girl named Ririka Nishizono.”
“Huh, really?!” Ririka Nishizono, the one who’d drawn that manga that had foretold what happened?
“If I remember right, I met her once at school. We didn’t really talk, though.”
“If she’s dead, does that mean she doesn’t have anything to do with Dr. Hashigami’s death?”
“I don’t know. There’s no way to be sure it’s even the same Ririka Nishizono who drew the manga.”
“Y-You’re right...”
Even so, a lot of people I knew were dead. Two hundred fifty-six people who either lived, worked, or went to school in Kichijoji... It felt like the odds of me knowing anybody would be pretty low.
Was it just a coincidence that so many names I knew were included? Or... was there some reason?
Asunyan said that my father was involved somehow in the 256 incident, and so was I. Was something happening around me?
“By the way, Narusawa wasn’t there,” Sarai added.
“Huh? Really?” Did that mean Ryotasu wasn’t dead? Then that meant that just like Asunyan, she could see and talk to me even though she was alive, huh? “What about Master Izumin?”
“I don’t even know his real name. There was no way to look.”
“Oh, I see. But you should be able to tell once you see his body, right? He’s so creepy— I mean, distinctive.”
“You’re right. I didn’t see any bodies like that.”
In other words, Ryotasu and Master Izumin weren’t victims of the 256 incident. Both were alive.
“I see. They’re... alive.”
I didn’t care so much about Master Izumin, but I wanted to be happy that Ryotasu was alive... yet somehow, it wasn’t that easy. After all, I was dead.
“It may be too early to be sure. All we know for a fact is that her body wasn’t there.”
“What about the list of victims? Shouldn’t they have everybody ID’d by now?”
If Ryotasu’s name wasn’t on it, that would settle it.
“There are still about twenty people who haven’t been identified. We should look again.”
And then the conversation cut off.
Sarai and I headed to the café, walking side-by-side. Walking like this with Sarai was somehow kind of...
“I’d rather walk next to a pretty girl.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” I fell silent again.
There was probably no reason I had to force myself to talk to Sarai, but...
When I was with Ryotasu, I had no trouble talking, so what was different now?
“Hey Sarai, what do you think about psychometers?”
“Psychometers?”
“Um, there’s a type of psychic power where you can touch something and read the memories it has—”
“I know that. It’s stupid. Memories, in objects? How are objects going to have memories when they don’t have an organ that functions like a brain? The ‘memories’ are just a fantasy dreamed up by the psychometer.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
“So why are you asking?”
“W-Well, I met this girl who’s a (hot) Japanese high school girl who’s also a psychometer FBI agent...”
If I introduced her to Sarai, they’d probably have a big fight. Would Sarai win? Or would Asunyan use her powers to prove him wrong?
...Damn. That would be really interesting. It would be like those TV programs they used to do where they’d test psychics. If I put together something like that on Kirikiri Basara, it would be a big hit.
“If you want to talk about manga, talk to Narusawa, not me.” Sarai said.
Grr... Just you wait. Soon I’ll introduce you to Asunyan, and you’ll see who’s boss!
Eventually, we reached Café☆Blue Moon. Toko was there, and she told us what happened at the Mumuu office.
“My dad... Dr. Hashigami... had another essay?”
“Yes. And it was finished on February eleventh.”
“That’s the day my dad went missing!” Sarai gasped.
“It’s possible my editor-in-chief is involved with his murder, isn’t it?” Toko took off her glasses and rubbed her eyelids with her thumbs. She wore a subdued expression. “There was one time he went to get a draft from the doctor without saying anything to me. I did think that was strange.”
“What do you mean?”
“Going to get the draft was my job. That was the only time he ever did it.”
“When was this?”
“I just checked in my notebook. February sixteenth.”
“That’s after my dad had gone missing.”
Dr. Hashigami had died on February twenty-fourth. That’s the day I’d gone to his lab. And—
“My dad died on the twenty-fourth. On that day, somebody raided his study.”
“So it was possible the editor-in-chief got into the study before then and took the draft.” Toko snapped her fingers. “It was probably something different than he planned to run in the magazine. It was way too big to fit his column length.”
“Maybe it was the culmination of my father’s research, then?” Sarai shivered a little.