Loups-Garous (17 page)

Ayumi nodded at Mio.

“Stop joking,” Mio answered.

“Look, would someone of a different gender and a different group come visit? This isn't twentieth century nymphomania. You think Yabe is having relations with boys now?”

“Who's this Nakamura?”

“He was in the same class as that kid who was killed, Ryu Kawabata. Nothing alarming in his public data profile. Average sixteen-year-old. He collects old paper magazines, apparently. And also…”

Mio took off the night-vision goggles that were hanging around her neck.

“Two nights ago, you said you ran into Yabe after she'd been attacked, right?”

“Right.”

“What if the person who attacked her was this Nakamura kid?”

Mio said horrible things so easily.

“Huh?”

Ayumi looked bothered. Then immediately, “I don't know.”

“You saw it, right?”

“I saw it but I didn't see who,” Ayumi responded. “I don't know who this Nakamura is.”

“But if you saw him you'd recognize him, right?” Mio asked.

“No, I wouldn't,” Ayumi responded curtly. “It was already a free-for-all by the time I saw it.”

“Free-for-all…Oh, you mean between the attacker and the girl in the Chinese clothes who was defending Yabe.”

“Yeah. She's the one that probably saved Yabe. That's how she was able to run away, and into me. But like I said yesterday, I didn't want to get mixed up with them, so I took Yabe to the other side of the street and sat her down in the shadows, then kept walking past the brouhaha.”

“Unbelievable,” Mio said, disgusted. “You couldn't panic a little? Anyway, the point is that you didn't see a whole lot. But you remember the girl in the Chinese clothes.”

“Only because the fabric was weird. It looked old.”

“Old fabric—is that something you'd know at just a glance from so far away?”

“Like, not a man-made synthetic fiber like our clothes. Old.”

“One of those anti-man-made fibers people, eh?”

“Older. It looked like it was made of animal skin. It looked like something my sister bought abroad.”

“I see. Then I was right.”

Mio chuckled to herself, crossed her arms, and then headed toward the building where the cat had gone.

“What do you mean, you were right? What are you saying I should have done? If that's it I'm going home.”

“Wait. I want you to confirm something.”

“What?”

“We're almost there. You can see a woman.” Mio pointed at an old-fashioned low-rise building. “I want you to look at her face. I think that's the woman with the Chinese clothes. As they used to say, we're gonna have you ID the suspect.”

“Hey!”

Ayumi looked at Mio's profile, then turned her back to Hazuki.

“This isn't some samurai movie. You could have sent me a picture of her. I could have confirmed this in two seconds.”

“If I could do that of course I would have,” Mio retorted.

“Why couldn't you? My monitor's not the one that's broken.”

“There's no image of her.”

“Then take one.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“She won't let me,” Mio said. “And I haven't been able to sneak a picture. There are no pictures of her.”

“That's impossible. We have to get pictures taken twice a year. The public data department requires us to take a picture of our face and our whole body, front, back, right, left. If this is indeed the girl I saw, she was right around our age.”

“That's true. She said she's fifteen.”

“Then?”

“She…doesn't have a family register,” Mio said, facing the building.

“She doesn't?”

“There are all kinds of people in this city. There are a lot of foreigners.”

“I know that. But a family register and nationality are unrelated. We learned that regardless of our nationality, everyone living in the country gets equal rights and duties. They all get ID cards.”

“Well, yeah,” Mio said. “If you do all the paperwork. I don't know if you don't.”

“What do you mean by paperwork?”

“Paperwork. It's not the case anymore, but back in the day there were a lot of undocumented and illegal residents. Until the laws loosened up for them, a lot of them had to hide. If they were found they'd be prosecuted or deported.”

“Not anymore,” Ayumi said.

“Right. There are even those who missed their chance to leave. How'd you like to be hiding so long you have grandkids who are still hiding? Data analysis today isn't slipshod like it used to be, and everything from A to Z is recorded. You can't just blend in, so you have no choice but to live in hiding. Those guys are the ghosts of the past. They couldn't go back to places that have been officialized. That's why they come to live in these ruined parts of the city—to blend in.”

“That sounds shady.”

“Yeah, totally shady,” Mio affirmed. “My parents run a business they can't be very proud of. They're not doing anything illegal, but nothing they'd allow in Section A. That's why I was raised in this dirty old redlight district. Actually, most of the people out here are legit in that sense. But there are a bunch of shady types mixed in.”

Mio looked around at the rubble.

“When I was a little kid, before I knew anything, I played with everyone because there wasn't any discrimination yet. There wasn't segregation. But one day I realized. I noticed that there were a bunch of kids who didn't need to go to communication sessions. That's when I realized they were different. These kids who'd been my friends until then were suddenly
people from the past.
”

“People from the past?”

“I don't really understand,” Ayumi said.

Hazuki thought she understood. Mio was probably referring to the same kind of kids that had been on her monitor the other day. The ones that looked like they came from another country.

In which case, she knew very well the look.

Just like scenery from the past looked like it could just be from another country, Hazuki thought this neighborhood looked like a foreign country. This was probably because of the distance from normal daily life. But to Mio who lived here, this
was
her daily life. As long as you lived in it, you had no distance from it. In which case, you had only the distance from time.

That was why they were people from the past.

Still…

It was harder for her to understand this bit about having been friends with them until a certain point.

“Her name's Rey Mao.”

Mio brushed her hair.

“I don't know if that's her real name. She acts like a cat. Her old Chinese clothes are for
gongfu.
She's strong.”

Ayumi turned on her heel and looked where Mio was looking.

“If this is the girl I saw…then what?”

“Look.” Mio leaned in. “If Rey Mao is the one who saved Yabe, she's probably still protecting her now.”

“Protecting?”

“She might have brought her here. Because it's not dangerous.”

“You think Yabe's still in danger?”

“Possibly. For example, what if Yabe's a substitute for Kawabata?”

“Substitute…”

Ayumi looked grave. Hazuki got nervous for some reason.

“That can't be. The victim was a boy.”

“But she was attacked the same day that kid was killed, and isn't the location nearby too?”

“Yeah, it is.” Ayumi said coolly. However, thinking about it, she was in serious danger there herself.

“But if that's the case, the police or the center would have been notified, normally.”

“What if the monitor was broken right then? Plus, Rey Mao doesn't have a monitor or ID card. If the police came, she'd be the first one in trouble.”

“Yabe's a normal person. She would have gone straight home. She has a main terminal there.”

“What if she was attacked on her way home? Rey Mao's existence in and of itself is illegal, so even if she did save Yabe, she couldn't have seen Yabe to her designated housing. It wouldn't be out of the question that Yabe didn't make it home from outside the city in one piece.”

“So you think Yabe asked Rey Mao to take her with her?”

“Because her parents weren't going to be home anyway. At the time the murder hadn't occurred yet, and neither the area patrol nor the prefectural police would have responded quickly. If Yabe was really attacked, she wouldn't want to be alone for even a minute.” Then, “Isn't that right, Makino?” Mio turned to say to Hazuki. “It's hard to press that emergency receiver button when it comes down to it, isn't it?”

Whatever the reason, Hazuki had in fact not pressed that emergency call button. On top of which, she learned that what was supposed to be a foolproof security system turned out to be full of holes.

“Plus, Nakamura actually went to Yabe's house the next day. This is consistent with my theory that Nakamura was targeting Yabe. Since it didn't seem he was going to be apprehended a full day after the first attack he probably thought he could do it to her again.”

“I see…” Ayumi was seeing Mio's point for some reason. “In other words, you just want me to confirm whether that woman I saw was this Mao character or not. And if she was, you think it's likely Yabe is still in this area. And you
really
want to get that piercing back to her, don't you.”

“We've gone past the point of no return, or something like that. You know the expression,” Mio said. “It just doesn't feel right if we leave it here. Right, Makino?”

“Huh?”

Was it really?

Hazuki had lost her bearings. Mio might have been right, but Hazuki felt like she could also just forget about this and not care. This had nothing to do with her. It was someone else's business.

Besides, she didn't think it likely someone would make such an aggressive effort and change things for the better. There was no reason to get involved.

Even if they were to return the piercing to Yuko Yabe, probably nothing would happen. She might be happy, but were she in Yabe's shoes Hazuki would not feel any different. First of all, she wouldn't necessarily want to have returned something she'd accidentally left behind in someone else's house while snooping around. In fact she might even be displeased that people would investigate her like this. No…

Definitely.

She'd definitely be displeased. Hazuki was sure of it. The fact that people who had nothing to do with Yuko Yabe were talking about Yuko Yabe in a place that had nothing to do with Yuko Yabe was plenty horrible already. If right now, somewhere far away, some group of people were speculating wildly about her, Hazuki'd be so pissed she'd want to die. Merely thinking about it made her nauseated.

“I don't necessarily…”

“Just ask her straight up.”

Ayumi spoke before Hazuki could finish her drawn-out sentence.

“Tsuzuki, you're acquainted with her, right? Since childhood? So just talk to her directly. That would be the quickest way. Why bring us into this?”

“I can't ask her,” Mio said.

The wind stroked the construction beams and blew through.

It smelled like something from childhood.

“I can't get her to listen to me. I haven't heard from her since the summer we were eight. Even though she lives right by me. Plus she doesn't have a monitor. And she's always moving. You can't catch her,” Mio said. “Looking at her is the easiest thing to do. She always comes out around now and collects food from over there to feed the cats. Section C's rapidly developing, so it's become harder for cats to survive. These days the sanitation department and the environmentalists are out here a lot, and if the cats are caught they get taken to an animal sanctuary, but cats that grow up around here can't survive in wild places like that. I don't know for sure, but they apparently can't take meals, and they're defenseless against their natural enemies, so only 3 percent of the animals brought to the sanctuary from the city survive. That's why—”

“That's normal,” Ayumi said indifferently, and turned her gaze toward the low-rise building.

“That just seems unnatural, ‘animal sanctuary.' I hate it.”

Then Ayumi poised herself.

Ayumi looked up at the sky and spoke.

“In the end, everyone who dies, dies. Those who live, live. Leave it be…That's nature. But we arrogantly claim to be protectors. We aren't protecting the environment or nature. Whether you like it or not, it's the earth that's protecting us. Protecting animals is no different from those twentieth century idiots keeping animals in their homes with stupid euphemisms like ‘pets' and ‘companion animals.'”

Who was she facing?

Who was Ayumi talking to?

Hazuki was suddenly worried.

“Living things live to live. If you give them food of course they'll get attached to you. There's a huge difference between making a pet out of an animal and respecting an animal. To have a pet is just to bribe animals with food so you can project your own selfish feelings onto them. Capturing animals and protecting them is the same as feeding animals in the wild. It's a narcissist's contradiction. I think.”

A long shadow slipped up onto the roof of the building.

Straight long hair. Protective leather spats. Red embroidered Chinese clothing. There were cats milling all around her; they began to meow.

The sound of the cats disgusted Hazuki.

CHAPTER
010

IT SMELLED OF
her mother.

For some reason the image of her mother's left shoulder came to Shizue's mind. Her eyes narrowed. In her contracted view sat one Hinako Sakura, wearing ghostly makeup.

“What…is this smell?” Shizue asked. Hinako eventually said
incense
, indifferently.