Morimine set the box down on the floor and, looking apprehensive, he opened the lid. Inside, the box was filled with personal belongings: a school uniform, a bag, and other things.
“These are the clothes Mai was supposed to be wearing when she went missing …”
But that wasn’t all.
“There’s … bones. And hair …”
Is that her? The bones and hair were in a plastic bag. Morimine started checking each of the other boxes on the shelves.
“And this one … And this one, too. They’re all names of girls who went missing.”
Then, suddenly, as if he’d realized something, he started running to the farthest shelves. He pulled the boxes down roughly, looked at the names on them and stopped moving.
“Morimine?”
The way he was behaving was completely different than anything Amon had seen from him before. His hands were shaking as he opened the box and looked inside. Seeing the bones, hair, school uniform, and notebook inside, his face twisted up.
He screamed, “Haruka!”
Haruka. That name also sounded familiar to Amon. No, it was familiar. The letters of her name, the girl who had disappeared eighteen years ago, appeared in his mind: Haruka Seta.
“Morimine …”
He was clutching her personal belongings to his chest, his head hanging.
That handmade flier for Haruka Seta. All this time, Morimine has had a burning obsession with this case, even as he condemned the police. And when I showed him the flier, he said: ‘That takes me back.’”
All of this led Amon to one answer.
Morimine opened a cute, girlish notebook he’d found in the box, and a photograph fell out. It was an old photo but there was no doubt: the photograph was of Haruka Seta and Morimine, standing close together.
“Amon! Morimine!”
Investigators and police officers burst into the Utsumi house, which was suddenly chaotic.
When Yanagi finally rushed in and found Tojo, he ran over and gave him a slap on the head without breaking his stride.
“What is wrong with you?!”
“S-sorry …”
Tojo was almost in tears. Morimine cut in between them.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he said. “We only came in here because of Tojo, and what’s more, he’s the one who finished this Ghoul off. Right, Tojo?”
“Uh … yeah.”
“Huh? Did you say Tojo did this?”
Morimine had offered Tojo a lifeline. And he wasn’t lying, either. Amon gave a nod in agreement to Yanagi, who was torn between belief and doubt. His expression was complicated, and he sighed.
“But what happened, Tojo? Your Quinque is broken. It doesn’t look like you’ll ever be able to use it again,” Yanagi said.
Knowing he couldn’t tell Yanagi that a Ghoul had used his Quinque as a shield, Tojo’s face looked drawn.
“Forget that, Yanagi. We don’t know the whereabouts of Otokaze, the lady in her fifties who was the housekeeper here. She looked after Koharu Utsumi, who was a Ghoul, so there’s a strong possibility that she’s a Ghoul too.”
“Right, got it. I’ll get an emergency search going.”
“And we also need to investigate Koharu’s adoptive father.”
“Okay, okay. To think that … she was a Ghoul. And I didn’t see it at all. I’ve still got a lot to learn.”
Then, asking Yanagi to take over, Amon and Morimine left the scene.
“I’ll take you back to the CCG,” Morimine said, but when they got into his car they both went silent.
As he drove, Morimine’s expression was the same as always. But the look of pain on his face earlier was burned into Amon’s mind.
“What the hell are you staring at?”
Amon had been looking at him without realizing it. “Sorry,” he said, looking away.
“She was my girlfriend,” Morimine said with a little smile. “We went together that night to watch the fireworks. It was a long way home for her, so I offered to take her home, but she told me she’d be fine … That was the last time I saw her.”
Amon didn’t know what to say.
“The police barely investigated it. That’s why I became a policeman. I thought that once I was a cop I’d find out what happened to her. A childish idea. I wanted to find the guy who did this and kill them.”
I wonder if he feels like he did that today. If it might give him a measure of peace. But there’s nothing gleeful about the way he looks right now.
“But, you know, when I got to be a cop, I realized something. Vengeance or revenge or whatever is for idiots. There are just so many reasons why people commit crimes. And if you go way back, maybe they were hurt by someone, maybe they were tormented, you know, it all goes back to reasons like that. Those kinds of negative emotions become a driving force and it just causes more pain for those around them.”
Morimine gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“When I saw that the hatred I had might drive me to hurt someone one day, it scared me. I thought I had to catch criminals in order to break the cycle of evil. But now, I …” He went quiet. After a long silence, he spoke again, putting emphasis on every word. “Now, I can’t help but pity them. Even her.”
Amon looked at him again.
“I mean, if I’d been born a Ghoul, what would I do?” Morimine said. Then he apologized. “Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t say that to a Ghoul investigator,” he added, and stopped talking.
Amon thought to himself. About whether they had seen all of the personal effects of the girls that Koharu had taken. He wondered if Morimine had remembered that notebook that had belonged to Haruka Seta, the one that the photograph had fallen out of.
Perhaps, when Morimine had taken her statement that time, Koharu had realized that this guilt-tormented man was the right age, and maybe that’s why she put that barrette in front of the police station. Maybe she wanted him to catch her, to break the cycle of evil.