“You know the 23rd Ward is terrifying, right, Chie?” Ikuma fretted. It was the next day, and he’d come bearing plastic supermarket bags in both hands. Chie had asked him to look into things, and also to pick up some food, supplies, and other daily necessities. It seemed, however, that having to set foot in the 23rd Ward while it was on special alert was something of a tribulation for a Ghoul like him. He continued to look around restlessly.
“Thanks! This is a big help,” Chie said. “So what do you think?”
“Well, it looks like you might be onto something with regard to that thing you had me look into.”
“Aha. I thought as much. Do you think you’d be able to get in touch with someone for me next?” Chie asked, handing Ikuma some notes she’d written down for what to do next.
The conflicted look on Ikuma’s face was quite unlike anything Chie had seen from Tsukiyama. “Chie, I’m not really that good at this sort of thing. I might be a Ghoul, but I’m really just a normal guy.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you could pull it off.”
“Sheesh, no pressure or anything. I mean, I guess I’ll see what I can do,” Ikuma uttered meekly. “Besides, that poor girl must have it really rough,” he added. At least he seemed worried for Mitsuba. “I never should’ve told you about that Idol Fest …”
With that, Ikuma hurried away from the condominium, a distant look in his eyes. He clearly felt like he alone bore responsibility for this whole mess.
Chie had Ikuma helping her out as she spent day and night at the 23rd Ward condo gathering information. Before she knew it a week had passed, and it was dawning on her that she might well be in for a long haul here.
“Hmmm … This is taking a while.” Chie had actually made contact with someone who could turn this whole thing around at the drop of a hat, but given her own position and not wanting to put her contact too on edge, she hadn’t been able to make much forward progress.
She hadn’t heard from her contact today, either, and it was already past sunset. Well, not much I can do about it now, Chie thought as she took her gaze away from her computer screen and began to fiddle with her camera.
“Hm?” She heard a quiet voice, singing. Straining to make it out, she recognized it as an idol song that had been popular a long while back. Mitsuba was singing, apparently. Chie headed to the back room and poked her head in to check on Mitsuba.
“I’m sorry. Was I being too loud?”
Chie shook her head. “It’s all right,” she said. “You have fond memories of that song?”
“My sister used to sing it a lot. Back when my mom and dad used to listen to her, smiles on their faces, and tell her how good she was.” Mitsuba’s eyes narrowed with visible nostalgia. “I think my sister was really happy for all that. Even after she grew up, she’d always carry around her old toy microphone in her bag …”
The look of reminiscence on her face then grew tinged with sadness. “I guess people need to learn to let go of the past,” she laughed, trying to cover that up. “But how are you doing, Miss Hori?”
“No real progress. We might need to move to a new base of operations soon so that Tsukiyama doesn’t find us,” Chie said, and as she ran through a mental checklist of where their next safe house might be, the intercom chimed. She padded over to the front door and opened it.
There stood Ikuma, a rather serious look on his face. “Chie, I think I’ve got something,” he said, quietly enough for Mitsuba not to overhear as he showed Chie a picture.
Chie took a good look at it, then nodded. “Got it. I hate to bother you, but do you mind coming inside?”
Every other time, Ikuma and Chie had done their business by the door, and he’d gone home as soon as things finished up. Mitsuba’s eyes widened to see him actually come into the room. “Good evening,” he said.
“Oh! Thank you so much for all you help.” Mitsuba hadn’t been informed that Ikuma was a Ghoul. Probably she just thought he was a nice, helpful young man. Today, however, she appeared to sense that something else was going on with him and Chie, and her expression stiffened.
“Mitsuba, could you come here for a sec?” Chie said, sitting down on the floor. Ikuma sat down alongside her. Mitsuba sat across from them, her eyes attentive.
Chie decided to cut straight to the point. “Mitsuba, we’ve tracked down your mother and your sister.”
Mitsuba let out a quick, sharp gasp at the sudden news. “My … my mother and my sister?”
“Yes. I won’t beat around the bush: your sister is already dead. Your mother stabbed someone and then attempted suicide, and is in critical condition.”
“Ah …” That probably wasn’t anything like the answer Mitsuba had been expecting. She was visibly stricken, and began to tremble as she took in Chie’s words.
“Chie, did you really need to put it like that?” Ikuma said, his sympathy for Mitsuba plain.
Ignoring him, Chie kept her gaze on Mitsuba. “Do you still want to know?” she asked.
There was a long pause before Mitsuba replied, in a shaky whisper, “I … I do.”
“No matter what the details are?”
Mitsuba swallowed hard, then nodded. “No matter what the details are!”
“Hmm. All right,” Chie said. She took out the note paper she’d had Mitsuba write her family’s names down on a week before and showed it to her. “Your mother is Kazene Mitsuba, and your sister is Kiyone Mitsuba, correct?” Mitsuba nodded yes. “On the day of the Idol Fest, there was an incident in an 8th Ward hospital where a terminally ill patient named Yujiro Utsumi was stabbed by his housekeeper. Afterward, the housekeeper tried to kill herself.”
The day she’d first brought Mitsuba to this condo, Chie had inadvertently come across the incident while browsing news stories online. It had recently come to light that the perpetrator behind a string of incidents involving missing high school girls had been a Ghoul: Yujiro Utsumi’s adopted daughter, Koharu Utsumi. These incidents apparently went back as far as eighteen years ago, with high school girls being abducted mainly from the 8th Ward and the wards neighboring it—including the 23rd, where Mitsuba had said she used to live.
“The housekeeper who stabbed Yujiro Utsumi was apparently named ‘Otokaze.’ ” Mitsuba’s mother’s name was Kazene. If you switched the kanji around and changed their readings, you got “Otokaze.”
“Thanks to the detective who rushed to the scene, Yujiro Utsumi survived the attack and is still alive, at least for the time being. The same detective was apparently quick enough to deal with Otokaze after she tried to kill herself; he wound up saving her life. Probably lucky that this all happened in a hospital. Anyhow, I had Ikuma get in touch with this detective for me. They discussed things behind the scenes, and he managed to get this photo of Otokaze.” Chie slid the photo she’d gotten from Ikuma over to Mitsuba.