Imaeda leaned forward. ‘How do you mean, attacked?’
‘Well, she was absent from school for days. They told us she’d been in a traffic accident, but I heard later that she’d been attacked on her way home from school one night and was resting to recover from the shock.’
‘How exactly was she attacked, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Kuniko shook her head. ‘I don’t know the details. Some people said she was raped, but there were others who said it didn’t go that far. All I know is something bad must have happened to her. Someone who lived nearby said the police were coming around and asking questions.’
Something tugged at the back of Imaeda’s mind. This was important, he was sure of it. ‘And this incident brought the girl and Yukiho together somehow?’
Kuniko nodded. ‘It was Yukiho who found her after it happened, apparently. And I guess she visited her at her house afterwards and brought her notes from class, that sort of thing.’
Imaeda’s mind started racing. He tried to act calm, but he could feel his skin prickle.
‘Do you know if Yukiho was alone when she found her?’
‘No, I heard she was with a friend.’
Imaeda nodded and swallowed. His throat was dry.
That night he stayed at a business hotel near Umeda Station in the heart of Osaka. Imaeda listened to the tape of his interview with Kuniko Motooka, taking notes. She had never noticed the tiny recorder in his jacket pocket and he had managed to keep it running the entire time.
He thought about Kuniko going out to the newsstand every week to buy the magazine she thought her story would be in. He felt a little bad about it, but decided that at least he had given her something to dream about. He reached for the phone on the bed stand, pressing the buttons as he read the number out of his notebook.
The phone rang three times before Kazunari picked up.
‘Hello? Mr Shinozuka? It’s Imaeda. I’m in Osaka… That’s right. I’m calling because there was somebody I wanted to meet and I thought you could help me with her address or number.’
The name of the woman he wanted to meet was Eriko Kawashima.
The doorbell rang just as Eriko was taking clothes out of the dryer. She tossed her handful of sheets and underwear into the basket.
The intercom for the front door was on the wall in the dining room. She went in, picked it up and said, ‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Tezuka? It’s Maeda from Tokyo.’
‘Oh, be right there.’
Eriko took off her apron and walked to the front door. They had just bought this old house and she was getting familiar with the way some of the floorboards in the hallway squeaked when she walked across them. She’d been on at her husband to fix them for a while, but he had yet to rise to the challenge.
She opened the door with the chain still attached. A man was standing outside wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a blue tie. He looked a little over thirty.
‘Sorry to drop in on you like this,’ the man said, bowing. His hair was perfectly combed. ‘Your mother mentioned I was coming, I hope?’
‘Yes, she called.’
‘That’s good,’ the man said with a relieved smile. He offered her his business card, which introduced him as Kazuro Maeda, an investigator with the Heart-to-Heart Marriage Counselling Centre.
She took the card, closed the door, and undid the chain before opening it again. Still she was reluctant to let him inside the house. ‘I’m sorry, the house is a bit of a mess,’ she said.
Maeda shook his head. ‘Here is fine, if you don’t mind.’ He pulled a small notebook out of his shirt pocket.
Her mother had told her on the phone that morning that an investigator from a place specialising in prenuptial background checks would be visiting to talk to her. Apparently, he had gone to her family’s home first.
‘He wants to know about Yukiho,’ her mother said over the phone.
‘Yukiho? But she’s divorced,’ Eriko had said.
‘Not for long, apparently.’
Her mother explained that someone interested in Yukiho had hired an investigator to look into her. ‘He wants to talk to some of her old friends. I told him you were married and didn’t live here any more, and he asked where you’d moved to. You don’t mind if I tell him, do you?’
‘No, it’s fine, go ahead.’
Apparently the man was still at her mother’s house, because she put down the phone for a while before returning to say, ‘OK. Mr Maeda says if it’s all right, he’ll drop by later today.’
‘OK, that’s fine. Whatever.’
Normally she would have turned down a meeting with someone she didn’t know. The only reason she didn’t was because it concerned Yukiho Karasawa. They hadn’t talked for years, and Eriko wanted to know how her old friend was doing.
Still, she was a little surprised that the investigator was asking about her so openly. She had always assumed that these investigations into potential partners happened under a veil of secrecy.
She gave him a general overview: how she and Yukiho had got to know each other in middle school, and gone to the same college and the investigator took notes.
‘Can I ask who it is that wants to marry her?’ Eriko asked during a pause in the questions.
Maeda looked surprised, then a wry smile came to his face. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s confidential for the time being.’
‘For the time being?’
‘Well, if all goes well, I’m sure you’ll hear about it directly. However, at the current stage, there’s always the possibility that things might not, er, get as far as that.’
‘You mean this man has other options for brides?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
Apparently this guy was some kind of high-roller if he was hiring investigators to look into a number of potentials.
‘I’m guessing I shouldn’t talk to Yukiho about this?’ Eriko asked.
‘It would be extremely helpful if you could keep this to yourself, yes,’ Maeda told her. ‘Not many people look favourably upon being investigated. Are you still in contact with Ms Karasawa, incidentally?’
‘Not really,’ she told him. ‘We send each other New Year’s cards, and that’s about it.’
‘I see. If you don’t mind me asking, when did you get married?’
‘Two years ago.’
‘Did Ms Karasawa attend the wedding?’
Eriko shook her head. ‘We had a ceremony, but we didn’t do a big reception. It was just a little family party. I sent her an announcement, of course, but no invitation. She’s all the way up in Tokyo, and the timing wasn’t so great, so I didn’t think it was appropriate…’
‘By timing, you mean…?’ Maeda asked, then it seemed that a light went off in his head and he nodded. ‘Of course. That was right after Ms Karasawa’s divorce, wasn’t it.’
‘Yes. She’d written about it on her New Year’s card.’
When she’d heard about the divorce, Eriko had wanted to call and ask what had happened. But then, she didn’t want to open any fresh wounds, and so in the end they never spoke. She still didn’t know the reasons for the divorce. All the New Year’s card had said was that Yukiho was ‘going back to the starting line, and beginning again’.
Eriko had spent a lot of time with Yukiho through their first two years in college, just as they had in middle and high school. They went shopping together, went to concerts together – they were practically attached at the hip. Eriko had clung to Yukiho even more after what happened to her as a freshman. She avoided dating anyone she didn’t know and was scared to make new friends. In many ways, Yukiho became her lifeline to the outside world.
It wasn’t a state of affairs that could go on for ever. Eriko knew that better than anyone. She couldn’t keep Yukiho from living her own life. Though she never said as much, she’d clearly begun dating Makoto from dance club. It was only natural that she would want to spend more time with him.
Yukiho and Makoto’s budding relationshi
p reminded Eriko of someone else she didn’t want to think about: Kazunari Shinozuka. When she thought of him, her heart sank into a deep, dark place.
Around halfway through sophomore year, Eriko began intentionally reducing the amount of time she spent with Yukiho. At first Yukiho seemed confused, but gradually she began to draw away, too. Maybe she thought that if they kept on the way they were, Eriko would never have a chance to find her own footing.
Of course, they were still friends and they kept in touch. They could talk for hours whenever they got together, and they occasionally called each other to chat on the phone, but no more than they talked with other friends.
After graduation the two of them grew even further apart. Eriko’s parents had got her a job at a local bank and Yukiho went up to Tokyo and married Makoto.
‘What sort of person would you say Yukiho is?’ Maeda asked. ‘Just your impressions are fine. Would you say she’s nervous, or withdrawn? Is she detail orientated? Does she like to win? Simple things like that.’
‘I’m not sure it’s that simple to sum a person up.’
‘Then maybe you could tell me about her in your own words.’
‘Well…’ Eriko paused a moment to think. ‘She’s a strong woman. Not the go-out-and-get-’em type. A quieter kind of strength. When you’re near her, you can feel her radiating a kind of power.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Well, she seemed to know everything, sometimes.’
‘I see,’ Maeda’s eyes opened a little wider. ‘That’s interesting. A woman who knows everything. Was she very erudite?’
‘No, it’s just that she seemed to know a lot about people’s true natures and the underside of the way the world worked. Talking with her sometimes, I…’ She hesitated a moment before continuing, ‘I learned a lot.’
‘I see. And yet this woman-who-knew-everything failed at marriage. What do you think about that?’ Maeda asked quickly.
Clearly, the investigator – and his client – wanted to know why Yukiho had got a divorce and whether the cause had lain with her.
‘It’s possible,’ Eriko said after a moment’s thought, ‘that she made a mistake getting married in the first place.’
‘How so?’
‘I feel like – and this is unusual for her – that she got caught up in the moment when she agreed to marry. I think that if she had thought about it more, she might not have gone through with it.’
‘You mean the man she married forced her hand?’
‘Not forced, no,’ Eriko said, careful to choose the right words. ‘I just think, when people get married, ideally, they have to reach a certain stable level in their feelings for each other – a balance. And I’m not sure they had that.’
‘You mean Ms Karasawa wasn’t as enthusiastic about the relationship as Mr Takamiya?’
‘It’s hard to express it exactly,’ Eriko said, frowning. ‘But I wouldn’t call him the love of her life.’
‘Interesting,’ Maeda said, his eyes widening slightly.
Eriko immediately regretted having said it. ‘I’m sorry, that’s entirely just my opinion. I’m probably completely off the mark.’
Maeda fell quiet, looking at her. Then, gradually, the smile returned to his face. ‘It’s all right. Like I said before, I’m interested in your impressions. I understand you weren’t directly involved.’
‘Even so, I think I should stop. I don’t want to cause any trouble for her. I think you should be able to find other people who know her far better than I do these days.’
Eriko reached for the doorknob.
‘Just one more question…’ Maeda lifted his index finger. ‘There was something I wanted to ask you about your time together in middle school.’
‘OK,’ Eriko said warily.
‘About a certain incident that happened in your last year of middle school, when one of your classmates was assaulted. Is it true that you were with Ms Karasawa when she discovered her?’
Eriko felt the blood drain from her face. ‘What does that have to do with —’
‘I was just wondering if you remembered anything about Ms Karasawa’s reaction, anything that might illuminate her character.’
Eriko had already started shaking her head violently before he finished talking. ‘No, nothing. I’m sorry, but I think we’re done here. I have things to do.’
Apparently, she had made her point. The investigator took a step back from her door. ‘I understand. Thanks for your time.’
Eriko closed the door without answering. She didn’t want him to see her shaking, and pretending she was fine wasn’t an option.
She sat down on the entrance hall mat. Dark memories filled her mind. It was incredible how many years had gone by and still the wound inside her felt raw. It had never healed. She’d just forgotten it was there.
It was only partially the investigator’s fault for bringing up Miyako Fujimura, the girl who had been assaulted. In truth, just talking about Yukiho had already started the memories surfacing in the back of her mind.
Eriko wasn’t sure what it was, but from a certain point she had started to imagine things about her old friend. At first she’d thought she was just obsessing about things, but gradually her suspicions and fears had coalesced into a story.
She never spoke about it to anyone. It was a horrible thing to think, so horrible she didn’t want anyone else to know she’d thought it. She tried to forget, but the story had settled in her mind, lurking, indelible. She hated herself for thinking it. When she thought about Yukiho’s kindness over the years, she felt like a beast by comparison.
And yet another part of her repeated the story over and over, like a mantra. Was it really just her imagination? Was there no kernel of truth to it?
Therein lay the true reason she had distanced herself from Yukiho back in college: she couldn’t stand the weight of the doubt and the self-loathing she felt inside whenever she saw her friend’s face.
Eriko put a hand on the wall to help her stand. She looked up and saw that she had left the front door unlocked. Reaching out, she turned the deadbolt and pulled the chain firmly shut.
ELEVEN
Imaeda made his way towards the café, a little place facing the main drag in Ginza. It was thirteen minutes to six in the evening. Shoppers and people on their way home from work crowded the street outside. A young couple was walking in front of him. Neither of them looked a year over twenty. The man was wearing a summer jacket – an Armani. He had seen them get out of a BMW parked down the street. Probably something he bought when the economy was good, Imaeda thought. He wouldn’t shed a tear when kids barely old enough to drive were no longer able to buy luxury cars as they’d been doing over the last decade.
The ground floor of the café was a pastry shop. He walked up the stairs, checking his watch. Five-fifty. He’d arrived a little later than he wanted to. Imaeda made it a policy to show up to appointments fifteen to thirty minutes early, for the psychological advantage it gave him over the person he was going to meet, if nothing else.
He scanned the patrons but, failing to see Kazunari Shinozuka anywhere, picked a seat where he could look out through the window at the street below. The café was about half full.