The table for four already had a cup of black tea sitting on it. The woman who’d been waiting rose smoothly to her feet and nodded to them. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Saori Toribeno. And you must be Shiroshi Saijou, correct?”
She was dressed in a suit, and her long hair was tied back. Seiji didn’t see a trace of the ghastliness he’d expected from her job title; she looked like a very serious office worker.
Giving them a classic customer-service smile, she offered them her card. After they’d finished their brief introductions, she said, “Thank you for your email yesterday. The story you submitted was very intriguing, and I’d love to hear the details.”
“I’m sorry. As it happens, I owe you an apology,” Shiroshi began honestly, giving a light bow. He confessed that the story he’d submitted had been a complete fiction: He’d actually arranged to meet with Saori because he’d wanted to ask her a few questions.
“I see…” Saori resettled herself in her chair, looking bewildered. After thinking in silence for a few moments, she said, “I did think that was too polished for a reader submission. No wonder. So it was bait to get me to meet with you, then?”
“I really am sorry. There were a few questions I needed to ask you regarding Satsuki Otose.”
Saori’s face went blank. “…Did something happen to her?”
“Are you aware of the malicious emails that were sent to her?”
He’d asked the question out of the blue, and the woman blinked as if she’d been caught off guard. “What? Yes, I know about those. Is that why you’re investigating? I don’t think Satsuki was all that concerned about them, though.”
“Oh, really?”
“When it comes down to it, she’s basically just bragging. ‘My blog’s big enough that I get nasty emails.’ Some people are like that, you know: They’ll come to you for help with a stalker, but all they really want is for you to know how popular they are.”
“My, that’s quite a scathing assessment.”
Seiji thought he knew what she meant, though. The various posts on that blog could easily have been written just to showcase how happy Satsuki was.
“So you’re a detective, then? Did Satsuki hire you personally?”
“No, it isn’t like that.”
“So that means it was someone else… Who? Her husband?”
“I’ll leave that up to your imagination.”
“Oh yeah? That’s pretty cagey of you.” Saori raised one eyebrow ironically, looking unamused.
But she didn’t reject Shiroshi outright. He looked like the high-born son of a distinguished family, and she probably wasn’t sure how she should treat him. Conversely, Seiji was used to getting treated more casually than a tissue.
“By the way, Saori, are you familiar with the content of those emails?”
“No, not at all. Satsuki didn’t really want to talk about that.”
Shiroshi described them to her.
“…Mirror writing?” she echoed. A thought suddenly seemed to occur to her. After a little hesitation, she said, “It might have been Junya.”
It sounded like she had a theory about the culprit.
“He’s Satsuki’s ex-fiancé. Junya Sakuma. The three of us were in the same seminar in college.”
“What makes you think it was him?”
“The mirror writing. Junya was particularly good at it; he used to do it for us at drinking parties. Satsuki would have thought of him, too, of course, but—”
“But she pretended she hadn’t. I see. So it’s almost like a signature.”
Since the message could be passed on to the police, he hadn’t been able to sign it, so he’d used mirror writing to hint at his identity instead.
“If you don’t mind, would you go into more detail about that?”
“Sure. I think you’d hear the same things no matter who told you.” Saori shrugged, speaking with surprising frankness. Taking a smartphone from her leather tote bag, she held it out to them across the table. “This is a photo from our class camping trip. We were at a campground in Nagano.”
The photo seemed like a textbook example of what a normal, happy group of people should look like. No matter how hard he tried, Seiji could never have joined that group. The man in the center had an arm around Satsuki’s shoulders, so he was probably Junya. He was handsome and seemed like he’d been brought up well, but there was a striking sense of loneliness about him.
“He’s quite an attractive young man.”
“To tell you the truth, lots of girls secretly had their sights set on him. Junya hadn’t had eyes for anyone but Satsuki since high school, though.”
“Oh, you’ve known each other that long?”
“Yes, it was a prep school that took boarders. Both Satsuki and Junya came from families that were less than ideal; that may have been what drew them to each other.”
They must have been a good match. The way they leaned into each other in the photo almost seemed like a symbol of happiness. In that case, the question that was suddenly on his mind was—
“What caused them to break up?”
“Well, it’s rather uncomfortable to talk about, but…” In contrast to what she was saying, Saori sounded quite cheerful. She leaned over the table slightly. “Junya got abusive.”
“My, that’s surprising.”
“He really doesn’t seem like the type, does he? It came on all of a sudden during our senior year.”
“Was there some sort of trigger?”
“I think the direct cause was stress over what he’d do after graduation. In May, Junya was informally offered a position at a major corporation, but he suddenly decided he wanted to go to graduate school instead. Publicly, Satsuki was supportive, but Junya felt pressured by the entrance exams and started taking it out on her…”
What an awful story.
“Junya denied it from start to finish, though. He said he’d been disciplined very harshly as a child; his parents had hit him, so he’d never do anything like that to anybody. As a matter of fact, he’d gone to boarding school specifically to get away from his parents. That meant nobody around them knew what to think at first.”
Saori had probably been one of the people who’d believed him. She seemed to be fighting the pain of an old wound.
“That changed when Satsuki ran into my apartment with a swollen cheek. She said Junya had been sleeping on the sofa, and when she’d tried to wake him, he’d told her to shut up and just hit her out of nowhere.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Yes, her left cheek was swollen, and there was a cut. When traces of blood were found on the silver ring Junya wore on his right hand, the abuse story got a lot more believable.”
“And what did Junya say?”
“That he didn’t remember. He’d worn himself out studying and dozed off.”
At that point, Seiji couldn’t help interrupting. “Are you sure he didn’t actually do it in his sleep?”
“But if someone isn’t violent as a rule, they couldn’t reflexively lash out at someone like that, could they?”
She had a point. That was probably why the people around him had started doubting him.
“So there was a time when even Satsuki wasn’t happy, huh.” Seiji’s murmur came out sounding oddly heartfelt. Everyone had a history. No matter how well someone’s life seemed to be going, there was hardship hidden in the shadows. However—
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Huh?”
Saori’s lips were tensed in an ironic smile. She held out her smartphone again.
The screen showed Satsuki in a wedding dress. She was nestled close to the white-suited groom, a clean-cut, good-looking guy who was slender yet still muscular.
Aha. So this was Ryousuke Otose.
“She said they met while Junya was abusing her. He was the rising star of a major design firm and made ten million yen a year. Last year, he won a prize for newcomers that’s considered the gateway to success for young designers.”
“Yeah, actually, that doesn’t sound like she’d be unhappy.”
To put it rather crudely, she’d traded up.
“To Satsuki, I suspect Junya was a convenient stepping stone.” Saori’s voice was cynical, and her words were prickly around the edges.
Seiji found himself wondering if she was the one behind the nasty emails, although he didn’t have a concrete reason why. He glanced at his employer, but Shiroshi was gazing steadily at the smartphone. “Would you mind if I looked at some more photographs?”
“That’s fine. They’re all in the same folder, so don’t mess with anything else, please.” Saori shrugged lightly, and Shiroshi took the smartphone from her.