“Damn it, which way did she go?!” We looked around the landing, but there was no sound of anyone climbing the emergency stairs, nor sight of anyone descending them.
“Oh, Aniki, there!”
Oginome Ringo walked along the edge of the building. Her skirt rippled in the wind, and some of the concrete that she was barely managing to balance on crumbled out from under her feet.
She dripped with a cold sweat, and her face was pale. But she continued sidling along.
“What is she doing over there?”
I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking, creeping along practically on tiptoe. A strong wind blew her hair into her face, and she looked like she was about to misstep.
“What do we do, Aniki?” I leaned over the fence.
“Now’s the time for these guys.” His gaze fell to the penguins.
“I wonder.” The anxiety in my heart was clear in my voice.
Now, just when had they ended up this way? No. 1 had a pair of panties on its head, or rather, its face, and No. 2 wore a brassiere on top of its head, the two cups just like two ears. Were these guys even stupider than we assumed?
The two penguins, now adorned with underwear along with their cameras and transceivers, began walking along the ledge.
“Oi, keep up the pace!” Kanba called. Though the penguins shivered at his scolding, they dripped with a cold sweat, and could not reach Oginome Ringo. All that we could see on the camera feed was the pocked and dirty wall of the building.
“I knew they couldn’t do it,” I said.
“Yeah, no hope here,” Kanba agreed.
I watched as a gust sent the underwear adorning the penguins flying, and was filled with a deep sense of regret.
“Hm?”
Several meters from the penguins, Oginome Ringo stopped. She took out her phone from the pocket of her uniform.
“Found iiit!” she said cheerily, standing up as high on tiptoe as she could and holding the phone aloft.
“Was that a shutter sound?” I looked at Kanba.
“Is she taking a picture?” He looked back at me equally perplexed.
With her objective apparently having been accomplished, Oginome Ringo began to make her way back.
“Oi, hurry up and get back here.” As soon as the penguins heard my brother’s voice, they began to totter back. It seemed we would not be returning home yet.
We followed Oginome Ringo back to the train, and then to Ogikubo. She now sat by a flower box in front of the station and began flicking through her phone, looking up now and then as if waiting for someone. We blended in with a group of high school boys who were gathered in front of a nearby vending machine, trying not to draw attention to ourselves.
“Wonder if she’s got a date with someone?” said Kanba. “The sun’s already nearly set, though.”
“Yeah, though given how weird she acted earlier, it might be with someone who has something to do with the Penguindrum.”
“Seriously though, what’s so important that she’d go to all that trouble to get a picture of it?” I still could not believe this Oginome Ringo was so important that she might hold Himari’s life in her hands.
“Who knows? Could even be that picture itself is the Penguindrum. Oh, she’s moving!” Kanba, who leaned on the vending machine, righted himself.
She stood up and waved as she caught sight of a man coming out of the station gate.
“Tabuki-san!” A smile leapt to her face, her cheeks pinking.
“Oh, Ringo-chan!” replied a familiar voice, smiling back at her as if it was completely normal.
He had slightly longish black hair, and totally unattractive thin-framed silver spectacles. A slightly crooked tie around his neck. And a plain-looking backpack. There was no doubt that this man was our homeroom teacher Tabuki Keiju in the flesh.
“Aniki, isn’t that our homeroom teacher? That definitely is, right?” I asked. Somehow this felt anticlimactic.
“Yeah, that’s Tabuki for sure.” A grimace crept to his face as well.
“On your way home from cram school again today? We seem to be running into each other a lot lately. You’re a hard worker,” Tabuki said peacefully. He really was a carefree guy.
“Yes, well…” Oginome Ringo looked down bashfully, though she still shot glances back up at Tabuki.
“O-ohh! This is perfect! I’ve got something that you’ll want to see!” she said, pulling out her phone at once, turning the screen so that they could both see. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? This was at that building in Ikebukuro you told me about the other day.”
“The red-rumped swallow’s nest?” He gazed into the phone screen, deeply interested. Oginome Ringo’s face reddened happily as Tabuki stepped up right beside her.
“Yep! I just got a photo!”
“Wow, this is super rare! But, how did you get this photo?”
“A swallow’s nest?” I thought of the luxury ingredient used in Chinese cuisine, but I knew this was something different.
Oginome Ringo tittered and said, “That’s a secret.” She was so endearing now; she seemed like a completely different person.
Kanba and I looked at one another. Just who exactly was Oginome Ringo? Kanba looked as though he realized something, but I still didn’t have the faintest clue what was going on.
Their conversation seemed to be drying up. “Anyway. Give my regards to your mother. Take care getting home!” he said with a vacant smile, waving.
“I will, thank you very much!” She gave him a nod, then suddenly said, “Um!”
Tabuki, however, had already nearly vanished back into the crowd. “I’m really looking forward to going birdwatching,” she added, very softly.
She remained there for a short while after, a bit wistfully, as if lingering in the echo of her words. Then she suddenly grinned, and began following Tabuki.
“Huh? Aren’t they done, though?” I asked vapidly.
It was now thoroughly night time. The moon hung in the cold, clear sky. It would be dreadful for Himari if we weren’t home soon. There was no doubt she would be angry with us.
Oginome Ringo followed Tabuki, who held a bag from a bento shop, and behind both of them were Kanba and I, along with the penguins. This was a thoroughly strange affair. It helped that it was dark out now, but following someone through a residential district was difficult. All the more so if that person knew your face. Oginome Ringo walked boldly on, however, never imagining that she herself was being tailed.
Finally, Tabuki arrived at an apartment building and entered a first floor flat. This was obviously where Tabuki lived.
Oginome Ringo peered at him from the shade of a nearby wall. We stood watching her from the shadow of a telephone pole, even farther away.
“Why do you think she’s following after him?”
“That chick’s in love with him,” Kanba said at once.
“Huh? No way!” I tried to keep my voice down, but shouted louder than I meant to. Kanba quickly covered my mouth.
“You really are dense,” he said, looking deeply and truly exasperated.
Suddenly self-conscious, I could only smile foolishly. Now that I thought about it, I supposed that did seem like an obvious conclusion, but frankly, had Kanba not said anything, it would have been a while before I realized.
“Hm?” Penguin No. 1 tugged on Kanba’s shirt sleeve. I looked to see that the pair of them had taken it upon themselves to fix their cameras, lights, and duct tape, and were puffing out their chests.
Oginome Ringo was just about to enter the building’s perimeter.
“Okay, time to redeem yourselves. Go,” said Kanba, and the penguins started waddling across the dark asphalt, following after the girl.
We leaned back against the guard rail, once more furtively opening up the laptop, and peered at the screen.
The image was dark, of course, but it was enough to tell that Oginome Ringo was no longer by the front of the building, with its rows of old doors. The penguins swiftly rounded the building to the back.
“She’s gone,” I muttered. All we could see was the light flooding down from the balcony, along with a few weeds.
However, as No. 1 looked all around, we could see that below the balcony, the grate to the underground ventilation system had been removed. It had been placed to the side, and there were slight traces of something scraping against the dirt.
“Hm? What’s that? Okay, get in there,” Kanba directed.
It was even darker underground. We could see nothing on either of the penguin’s feeds. Just as I thought this, however, a hazy shape of something moving appeared on No. 1’s feed.
As I stared at it, I soon realized that it was the slender thighs of Oginome Ringo, who crawled ahead on all fours.
“Wah! Those again!” It goes without saying what lay beyond her thighs. I quickly covered my face with the bag I was holding.
“That’s the second triple-laced pair of the day. Must be her fighting panties,” said my brother nonchalantly.
“Don’t say that so casually! And stop staring!”
“Yo.” The tone of his voice shifted.
I slowly peeked out from behind the bag, looking at the screen again.
Oginome Ringo twisted her body, lying faceup in the vent. She seemed to be holding a small flashlight in her mouth. In a practiced movement, she shuffled something out of the commuter bag she dragged along.
“What’s that?” Kanba focused on her hands.
“That looks kind of like the ones on the penguins, doesn’t it?” My mouth opened dumbly.
“A microphone?” Once more, he said something dreadful without any hesitation.
I scowled, but stared at the girl on the screen, my mouth still hanging open. She twisted a knob on the side of the small black device, adjusting it. As she did, there was a faint noise, and then the sound of a television show drifted faintly through the penguin’s microphones.
“No way, is she…?”
“Seems like she’s doing the same thing to Tabuki that we’re doing to her.”
“In other words, that makes Oginome Ringo…”
Apparently, Oginome Ringo was Tabuki Keiju’s stalker.
“Ah, gotta love a soda after work.” Tabuki’s nebbish voice felt even more ineffectual, filtered through the two microphones. You would think that he’d at least crack open a beer at home.
Oginome Ringo lay down in the dirt, a look of contentment on her face, as though she was listening to a lullaby, straining her ears for the sound of Tabuki going about his daily life. Seeing the dampness in her barely open eyes, I felt a shiver run down my spine.
“Don’t you worry. Soon, you won’t have to eat dinner alone anymore. After all, from now on, I’ll always be with you. I’ll never let you feel lonely. I believe in fate.” There was a deep sincerity to her whisper. “In destiny.”