The Local Surveyor
Morning sunlight streamed through the window. By the time Chidori Kaname woke up, it was already 7:41 a.m. Not much time before the opening bell... At this rate, she’d be late.
Even so, it took her another five minutes to get out of bed.
“Guh...” She’d fallen asleep the night before just after her bath, wearing only a pair of cheap underwear and a blouse.
Kaname had been living alone for a year and a half now. She’d grown sloppy with her lifestyle recently. It wasn’t as if there was anyone to see her, after all. And her mother, who had always been the one to wake her up in the morning, was now gone.
Kaname decided to skip her morning shower, as well as breakfast. She just got dressed, washed her face, and brushed her hair. Her long, beautiful hair was such an annoyance at times like this.
The hands of the clock now read 8:01. The train would arrive at the closest station in six minutes. She had to hurry!
With her school bag in her right hand and the bag of noncombustible trash in her left, Kaname flew out of the room. As she headed for the apartment complex’s dump site, she passed a neighbor. It was a junior high boy dressed in a blazer uniform.
“Good morning,” she greeted him, but the boy didn’t even acknowledge her. As rude as it was, it wasn’t exactly rare. Tokyo apartment life was just like that.
The other residents had already piled up their garbage at the dump site. She threw her own bag onto the pile and had just turned to run for the station, when—
“Hey, wait! Hang on a minute!” came a voice.
She stopped and looked back to see the apartment’s cleaning lady step out from behind a pillar. She was significantly shorter than Kaname, and wearing a green tracksuit, a rubber apron, gloves, and boots. She was a familiar sight around the apartments. On weekday mornings, she tidied up the dump site and cleaned the communal areas.
“Yes?” Kaname asked back.
“You can’t mix noncombustible and combustible garbage!”
She pointed at one of the bags in the pile. Amidst the translucent city-endorsed noncombustible trash bags sat a moist, dripping bag full of kitchen waste. It wasn’t the bag that Kaname had set out.
“Um, that isn’t my bag,” Kaname protested.
“Liar! I just saw you!”
“There must be some kind of misunderstanding. My bag is—”
“No excuses! Come on!” The old woman cut her off, grabbed the garbage bag and thrust it at Kaname.
“Now, hang on a minute here!” said Kaname. “I’m in kind of a hurry—”
“No, no, no! You have to separate your waste and take the combustibles back to your apartment!” said the cleaning lady, who then thrust her dingy pair of tongs into Kaname’s face, glaring at her viciously. She looked like a militiaman in some destabilized country, sticking a rifle into her opponent’s face. A pungent smell stung Kaname’s nose, impossible to describe.
“I’m telling you, I—” Kaname looked at her watch. The second hand was ticking away. The train would arrive in three minutes. She didn’t have time to argue, but she didn’t have time to go back to her room, either. “Aargh!” Left with no other choice. Kaname gritted her teeth, snatched the bag, and ran towards the station with it still in her hand.
“That old hag pisses me off so bad!” Kaname shouted after her first period class ended. She had made it just in time. “Didn’t even listen... so humiliating...” she grumbled to herself resentfully. “Thinks she’s right about everything...” She opened up the garbage bag she had stored with her personal belongings in the back of the room, and began separating them briskly. Her classmates who had been gagging for fifty minutes from the stench watched her with scowls.
One classmate, Tokiwa Kyoko, watched Kaname work. “You really brought that trash bag all the way here on a packed train?”
“I didn’t have a choice! If I’d just dumped it on the way here, I would’ve been as bad as the vandal. It would be like admitting the old hag was right! I won’t subject myself to that humiliation!”
“You’ve got integrity about the weirdest things...” Kyoko said, pinching her nose.
“You refer to the custodian of your apartment complex?” asked Sagara Sousuke, who stood there quite calmly, by contrast.
“Yeah,” Kaname fumed. “That old hag with the twisted sense of justice, who never listens to anybody!”
Sousuke folded his arms and listened with a frown. “The custodian is a serious and industrious person,” he remarked. “The fault must be yours somehow.”
“Is not! I separated my garbage! But she just— Wait, how do you know her?!” Kaname demanded.
“I jog around the neighborhood every morning,” said Sousuke. “We sometimes exchange pleasantries.”
“I see. Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Well, either way, she’s the worst. She treated me like a criminal even though I’m completely innocent! This won’t stand!” said Kaname, slamming the two plastic bags into the bins where they belonged.
One evening, several days later...
Kaname returned home, her uniform covered in soot. As was typical by now, Sousuke had caused an explosion and chaos had resulted... but that wasn’t the important part of this story. After taking a shower and changing into her street clothes, thinking about what she could make with what was in her refrigerator, she heard the intercom for her apartment beep.
“Yes?” she called.
“Excuse me, I’m from the police. Special armed detective Wakana with the Sengawa violent crimes unit. Could I ask you a few questions?”
“Violent crimes unit? Special armed detective?” Kaname asked suspiciously. The female voice sounded vaguely familiar, and there was no such division or rank in all of the Japanese police force.
“Oh, sorry. I was just trying to explain my duties in civilian-friendly terms. Anyway, can I ask you a few questions?”
“Um...”
“I can come back with a warrant and a SWAT team if I have to,” Wakana offered.
“Fine, fine, fine! Just a minute! I’m coming!” Kaname walked to the front door and opened it. As expected, the person standing in the communal hallway was a familiar face: Wakana Yoko, from the Sengawa Police Department. They’d met each other over the course of a few incidents, and Kaname had learned that this officer was a loose cannon, in some ways as troublesome and lacking in common sense as Sousuke.
Wakana was pretty, provided she didn’t open her mouth. She was dressed in plainclothes—jeans and a baseball jacket. She held up her police ID in the manner of an FBI investigator in a movie.
As she looked into Kaname’s face, Wakana Yoko frowned suspiciously. “Oh, hello again. What are you doing here?”
“This is my apartment,” Kaname told her, “I live here.”
“Really? What a coincidence,” Yoko said flatly, looking suspiciously around her entryway.
“Um... so, what can I help you with?”
“I have a few questions for you. There was a burglary in your apartment complex this morning.”
“A burglary? Aren’t you in the traffic division—”
“There’s a patrolman who acts as a gofer for the regional division,” said Wakana, cutting her off midway. “I stole the job he was assigned.”
“You really just take whatever you want, don’t you?” asked Kaname, who was beginning to have doubts about the professionalism of the Sengawa Police Department, given the free rein they seemed to give this cop drama-obsessed maniac.
“It’s fine,” Wakana said confidently. “Questioning goes much smoother with a beautiful woman like me handling it. Incidentally, a scriptwriter named Shimo ****hiko got involved in a murder case and a real big-shot detective in our precinct thinks he’s behind it. He even had his fingerprints taken. This is nothing compared to that.”
“That’s a lot to throw on a person out of nowhere...” muttered Kaname.
“Let’s talk about the burglary,” said Wakana. “The Yamadas in apartment 103 had a break-in while they were out for their morning tennis game. They were gone for two and a half hours, between 7:00 and 9:30. In that time, their savings of 50,000 yen in the dresser and 150,000 yen worth of jewelry were stolen.”
“A first-floor apartment, huh?”
“Yeah. Perp came in through the garden and broke the glass door. You see anyone suspicious?”
“I don’t think so,” said Kaname. “I just threw out my trash and went to school, like always.”
“Did you run into anyone on the way? A big guy with a striped sack and a hanky wrapped around his face, or a phantom thief-type in a mask and a tuxedo?”
“I wish criminals were that easy to identify...”
“So, you didn’t see anyone at all?” Wakana asked.
“Nobody suspicious, at least,” said Kaname. “I shared the elevator with a standard middle-aged white-collar type I see around now and then. That’s about it.”
“You know which is his apartment?”
“No idea. I think he came from the fifth floor or higher.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you said he wore a brown tie?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Police officers often asked for confirmation of things they knew to be false when dealing with someone they had suspicions about. Someone with something to hide would just agree to whatever the officer said. This was one such leading question.
“Why do you suspect me, anyway?” Kaname asked.
“It’s nothing personal. It’s just part of the investigation. So? You said he lived in apartment 302?”
“You’re really getting on my nerves now...”
“I’m just kidding.” Yoko shrugged. “One way or another, it seems like it was an inside job.”
“What makes you think that?”
“There’s a security perimeter around the first-floor garden. The only way to get in without triggering the alarm would be to go around the fire escape from inside the complex.”
They were in a relatively safe residential district in the Tokyo suburbs, but things had been getting a little more dangerous lately. Kaname’s apartment, too, had undergone construction a little while ago and had anti-theft devices installed at that time. It was now much more difficult for criminals to enter than before.
“So the culprit would first have to enter the apartment’s communal areas without being suspected,” Wakana said.
“I see.”
“Good. Incidentally... you haven’t been hard up for money lately, have you? Not incurring debts from your friends at school, or gaining a taste for expensive brands...”
“Well, I did borrow five hundred yen from Kyoko...” Kaname admitted, then realized what she was doing. “Hey, I told you to cut it out!”
Yoko looked very disappointed. “I see. I guess you’re not involved, then.”
“Of course I’m not!” Kaname exclaimed. “And while I’m at it, I really doubt anyone living here would need to pull off a small-potatoes robbery like that.” The people in her apartment complex had a pretty high standard of living. The place had been built twelve years ago, it was close to the station, and it had all the amenities. All of the cars in the parking lot were relatively expensive brands, as well. In other words, there were a lot of rather well-off families living there.
Surprisingly enough, Yoko agreed pretty readily with Kaname. “Yeah, that’s the issue. Which means that this is our obvious suspect.”
“Hmm?”
Yoko held out a picture of a pair of dirty tongs lying next to a dresser.
“Is that...”
“Our sole piece of evidence. A tool used by the complex’s cleaning lady.”
“That old lady?” asked Kaname. “I doubt she’d leave behind such an obvious piece of—”
“I thought it was suspicious too,” Wakana admitted. But it was all she had to go on. It wasn’t actually a violent crime, so they hadn’t done any proper crime scene investigation. It turned out that the cleaning lady had been questioned and taken off to the station that morning while Kaname was at school. “We also contacted the apartment’s management agency and insurance company for her papers and such. They sent a few of their suits by the precinct.”
“Is she still at the precinct?”
“I’m not sure,” Wakana told her. “She’s not cooperating, though, so I decided to do some investigating on my own. I wanted to get the credit, after all... ha ha ha.” Yoko laughed confidently and then left.
Kaname was concerned about the burglary, but it seemed unlikely that the culprit would target the same building twice. Still, she was worried about the cleaning lady. The old woman might be irritating, but Kaname couldn’t imagine her being a thief.
“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding...” Kaname whispered to herself. But then, it didn’t directly concern her, anyway.
Afterwards, Kaname threw all of the leftovers in her refrigerator together, seasoned the mix heavily with chili pepper and garlic, and made spaghetti. It was a little too much for one person, though, so she gave Sousuke a call.
He picked up and said, “Sorry, I’m eating at the moment.” Apparently, he was meeting up with an old battle colleague at Yokota Air Base.
Kaname said, “Fine. Later,” and hung up.
She ate dinner alone while watching TV. Maybe I should have invited Wakana-san, she thought. The spaghetti tasted all right for being such an improvised meal, but there was nobody to brag about her good instincts to. With no other choice, she just whispered, “Yes. It’s good,” out loud.
But there was nobody to agree with her.
The next morning was trash day, but Kaname didn’t see the old cleaning lady anywhere. A small group of crows skulked among the garbage bags strewn haphazardly around the dump site, picking at them and casting their contents onto the street.
Kaname heard three housewives talking near the elevator hall. They were discussing the burglary.
“Did you hear? They say it was that old cleaning lady.”
“It’s not proven yet, is it?”
“But wouldn’t it be awful if it was her?”
“I hear she had to quit her last job because she stirred up trouble there, too.”
“You think it’s really true?”
“Yes, that’s what I heard. Though she certainly puts on a kind face to the residents here...”
The malicious gossip was being led by a slightly chubby housewife in her early forties. Kaname recognized her; she had served on the apartment residents’ superintendent board several times. She had also apparently participated in movements to ban harmful books, having come to Kaname’s apartment to collect signatures before.
“They’re just making baseless assumptions...” Kaname muttered to herself, but chose not to intervene as she passed them by on her hurried way to school.
That day, after class, Sousuke and Tsubaki Issei had a fight that left three windows and a classroom door broken. Other than that, it was an ordinary day. On her way home that evening, Kaname gave Sousuke a thorough lecture, then invited him over for dinner. He followed her loyally, tail wagging.
They went shopping at the fishmonger on the shopping street, but as they returned to her apartment, they saw a figure near the dumping site, spraying the street with a hose. It was the cleaning lady. Had she been released? No, given what Wakana Yoko had said, it didn’t seem like she had actually been arrested...
“Oh, hello...” Kaname decided to take a neutral attitude towards the cleaning lady despite their unpleasant interaction the other day. Sousuke gave her a silent nod as well.
The cleaning lady turned back with a neutral frown. Kaname had assumed she would be depressed about her trip to the police, but that didn’t appear to be the case. Still, she did look exhausted.
“Dinner?” the old lady asked.
Kaname remembered she had a plastic shopping bag hanging from her arm. “Yeah. The fishmonger had cheap saury today.”
“How wonderful. You cook for yourself?”
“Yeah, but daikon radishes have been expensive lately. It’s a real problem,” Kaname laughed.
The other woman let out a speculative hum, then went back to hosing down the road.
“It’s unusual to see you out at this hour,” Kaname added. She’d only ever seen the old woman in the mornings.
“I was worried about the filth, since I missed this morning.”
“Really?”
“And it’s in as bad shape as I imagined. Even though I’m always telling them to put nets over the trash. Honestly...” Muttering to herself, the old woman went on spraying the trash on the road into the gutters.
“Ah... I’m sorry,” said Kaname. “I did see the crows picking at it this morning, but...”
“It’s fine. You had school, right?”
“Oh... yes.”
“I realized what happened after you left. You were in a hurry because you were late, right?” The old woman said indifferently.
“Yes. Well...”
“I see. Next time, make sure you sort your garbage properly, all right?”
“But, seriously, that wasn’t my—”
“All right, all right. Just be more careful next time.”
“Grr...” There was no talking to her; she was as stubborn as ever. But at the very least, the flippant way she’d spoken suggested she didn’t hold a grudge. This issue is behind us, she seemed to be saying.
Well, all right, Kaname thought as she bade her goodbye, then entered the building’s front hall with Sousuke.
“You were more amicable than I thought. The other day, at school, you spoke so poorly of her,” said Sousuke, who had been quiet through the whole interaction.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” she told him. “I was just annoyed, with it being first thing in the morning and all.”
“I see.”
They entered the front hall just as a young man in a suit was posting a notice on the residents’ message board. It was probably someone from the management agency. Kaname peeked over his shoulder and saw that the notice was about the recent burglary, with a reminder to residents to lock their doors.
“Hey... did they catch the thief?” Kaname asked.
The man from the agency shook his head. “No. At least... not yet. They might. It’s hard to say.” With that, he cast a glance in the direction of the dump site. “The police took in a person of interest... They were apparently kept for questioning overnight, but continued to deny it. I guess the police don’t have decisive proof, so they sent her home.”
“A person of interest?” Kaname echoed. “That cleaning lady?”
“Ah, well, yes. You can see she’s still at work. We told her to take some time off, but she’s very stubborn. Nevertheless, I’m monitoring her. You can rest easy.”
The part about him monitoring the cleaning lady got on her nerves. “That doesn’t seem right, does it? Treating her like a criminal over one stupid piece of evidence? Hasn’t she been working here for a long time? Aren’t you going to defend her?”
The man made an expression as if to say, “I only work here.” “Well... I’ll take your opinion into account. But a lot of people are nervous, and I’m getting complaints. So... no matter how the police investigation goes, I think we’re going to ask her to quit at the end of the week.”
Kaname stared at him in surprise. “You’re firing her?”
“Yes.”
“Just based on suspicions?”
“Regrettably, yes.”
Kaname felt her face turn hot. “What the heck?! That’s stupid! You can’t do this! There’s no way she would rob someone’s apartment while carrying a work tool that would immediately incriminate her! And just leaving it behind like that? It’s ridiculous!”
“It’s possible it was a spur of the moment thing,” he pointed out.
“Like hell! Nobody really believes that!”
“Stop it, Chidori.” Sousuke held back Kaname as she began to grow heated.
Even so, she continued taking the man to task. “Are you guys even trying to find the real culprit?! You’re just going to declare a random criminal and sweep it under the rug? That’s disgusting. It’s awful!”
“Chidori,” Sousuke said again. “Calm down.”
At last, the elevator door opened.
“This ‘don’t rock the boat’ bullshit sucks! You’re worse than garbage! Hang on! I’m not done yet! Let me go! Come on!” As Kaname continued trying to lay into the man, Sousuke dragged her away. The man from the management agency simply stood there in shock and watched them leave.
Once they were in her apartment, the still-angry Kaname laid out to Sousuke everything that had happened.
“I see,” he said afterwards. “That’s quite ridiculous.”
“Right?! It’s so wrong! She might be an annoying old lady, but I can’t let them do this to her!” said Kaname, while she chopped the saury in half and slapped it on the grill.
“But the fact remains that there’s no evidence to the contrary,” Sousuke continued. “And I can understand the residents’ feelings of insecurity. Unless she can prove her innocence, the management agency’s response is understandable.”
“How can you be so cold?”
“My temperature is irrelevant. I’m merely evaluating the facts of the matter,” Sousuke said, grating the daikon radish.
“But you can’t be okay with it, right?” Kaname insisted. “You know that old lady too, don’t you?”
“Affirmative.”
“And you don’t feel bad for her?”
“I can express my sympathy and concern, but it won’t improve the situation.”
“Still, I can’t stand it. If this were a detective manga, we’d find the true culprit and end everything happily, but...”
“Yes, but that likely won’t happen here,” Sousuke told her.
Everything he’d said was on target. Kaname was a total outsider, and she didn’t have any useful proof or leads. If the old woman wasn’t behind the burglary, then who was? It wasn’t as if Kaname knew everyone who lived in the apartment complex. It could even be a completely unrelated team of thieves.
A long silence fell. The only sounds were the grill burner and Sousuke grating radish.
“Still,” she said, “it gets on my nerves.”
“Just let it go. There’s nothing you can do. It’s finished,” Sousuke said at last, holding out a small bowl of grated daikon.
“I’ll handle the rest, then. You can go watch TV or something.”
“Understood.”
That was the end of their talk about the burglaries.
In addition to the fried saury, the meal ended up consisting of hot daikon miso soup, freshly steamed rice, okara, and reheated Japanese yam stew. Sousuke had seconds of both rice and miso, and they watched a nature documentary on TV together while drinking their after-dinner tea. When the show was over, he thanked her and returned to his nearby apartment.
Suddenly, Kaname’s apartment was empty again. She’d be on her own until morning. If her mother were alive and with her right now, they’d probably talk about Sousuke. “Boys really do eat a lot, don’t they?” or “If you keep bossing him around like a big sister, he won’t ever like you.” It sometimes felt unsatisfying to not have someone to laugh about these things with.
No, she told herself. This is enough. Living alone is easy. I’m not lonely at all. She then lay down on the sofa and stared blankly at the TV.
A comedian on the screen said something silly. Kaname laughed her head off for a while. Then she let out a small sigh.
One morning, a few days later...
The weather was bad, raining on and off. Kaname woke up a little earlier than usual and headed for the dump site with a heavy bundle of newspapers. While there, she noticed something was off: the cleaning lady had collapsed. More precisely, she was crouched on the ground, leaning limply against a pillar a few meters from the site.
“Um... A-Are you all right?” Kaname asked nervously.
When the lady didn’t respond, Kaname began to look around in panic. A young woman, seemingly also a resident there, threw out her garbage and was about to head back to the entrance. She didn’t seem to have noticed what had happened.
No... that isn’t it, Kaname realized. She’s pretending not to see so she doesn’t have to get involved. Given how fast she was walking, that had to be it.
Kaname was taken aback, but quickly snapped back to reality and checked the older woman out. “H-Hang on a minute, okay? I’ll call the ambulance!” She pulled her phone from her pocket, but the old lady stopped her.
“Don’t. I’m fine.”
“But—”
“Just a little lightheaded,” she insisted. “Really. I’ll rest a while and feel right as rain.”
Kaname said nothing.
“I’ve made enough trouble already, right? So... I don’t want an ambulance.”
“B-But...”
“Really, just leave me alone!” Despite the bad condition she was in, the old lady remained dauntless. She really was a strong-willed woman.
“Fine,” Kaname agreed after a pause. “But you really shouldn’t be sitting here. Come to my place.”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t need your help. I’m not so far gone as to need pity from a stranger while I’m already being accused of burglary. Just leave me alone!” It seemed the investigation had affected her after all, which was entirely understandable.
But despite all that, the cleaning lady continued to reject Kaname’s offers. She must have hated being pitied. Her pride was honestly kind of stunning. Could it be that this old cleaning lady actually had a greater sense of dignity than those gossipy housewives?
Still, Kaname couldn’t just leave her there. She used the strength of her youth to compel the woman’s obedience. “Just come on,” she insisted. “You can’t stay out in this cold!”
“W-Wait! Hang on...”
“Can you get up?! Take my shoulder!” Kaname held the cleaning lady’s hand, which was covered in a wet rubber glove, and forced it over her shoulder. The old woman was far lighter than she’d expected.
Despite her slightness, moving her to the living room in her apartment had proved to be quite a task. The woman had kept insisting that she let go, not to worry about her, that she had to work—but Kaname had eventually forced her onto the sofa. She’d almost felt tempted to restrain her with the handcuffs she’d confiscated from Sousuke.
The old woman had also been worried about the state she’d left the dump site in, so Kaname had eventually ordered her to lie down, then took her umbrella and left her apartment.
As expected, in just that brief amount of time, the dump had come to overflow with old newspapers, old magazines, and glass bottles. She decided to tidy up the pile. The truck that picked up the recycling only came as far as the road, so she’d have to move the garbage to that spot, eight meters away, before collection time.
That massive pile of garbage, all by herself...
“Ah, dammit,” said Kaname. She started by carrying the newspaper bundles out one at a time, so that she could keep her umbrella in her other hand. She soon realized that doing it that way was going to take forever, though, so she gave up, dropped the umbrella, and began carrying as much as she could in both arms at once.
Some might be inclined to wonder why a girl in a high school uniform would be carrying newspapers from the dump site to the road in the pouring rain. But the residents just kept piling on the trash as if they didn’t even see her there.
Her breathing grew heavy. She began sweating. Her arms and her fingers went numb.
A stack of magazines that hadn’t been bundled properly fell apart and spilled out onto the ground. Who the hell did that? She cursed as she gathered them back up. The newspapers were growing heavy from the rain they’d absorbed. Like the weight of a human life. That little old lady does this every week? she marveled.
One of the residents tossed a bag of combustible waste on the pile and tried to leave. Even though it’s recyclables day!
“Hey, wait a minute!” Kaname shouted at her before she could think, stalking up to the woman.
The young housewife stood there in confusion.
“You can’t do that! It’s recyclables day!” Kaname laid into her. “Combustible waste is another day!”
“Oh? I... er...”
“You can’t fool me, okay? Take it back! Go on!” She shoved the bag back at her with a glare.
The woman took the bag and ran away.
“Darn it!” Kaname said with a snort. There was no way she’d make it in time for homeroom now, but she didn’t have a choice. She still had plenty of time before first period, at least...
“Chidori. What are you doing?” came a voice.
Kaname turned around and saw Sousuke standing there. He was holding an umbrella and carrying a large bag under his arm. “Well... isn’t it obvious? Some stuff happened, and... Darn it...” she said, spitting out the words.
“That looks hard.”
“It sure is. Think you might help me out?” That she was asking for his help was a sign of how exhausted she was.
But Sousuke just looked at his watch, hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m sorry. I have business to take care of. I have to go.”
“Huh? What could you possibly have to take care of before scho—”
“Best of luck.” With that, Sousuke left, expressionless.
“You... unfeeling creep!” she shouted after him.
How cold can a person be? Are you no different than the other people here?! Jerk! I’m so disappointed! You snake! You cretin! While whispering silent curses at him in her heart, Kaname released a deep sigh. Well, forget him for now. I’ve gotta clear out this trash.
It was a little after nine by the time she finished carrying it all, finishing the last loads even as the collection truck pulled in. Finally, soaked from the sweat and the rain, Kaname plodded wearily back to her apartment.
She entered the living room and found the old lady snoozing on the sofa. She stripped off her sweaty uniform, showered, and changed into her school track suit. By the time she’d settled in and started watching a morning show, the old woman finally woke up.
“Oh, dear... the recycling pickup...” the old woman said as she groggily tried to sit up.
Kaname quickly stopped her. “Ah, don’t. I took care of it. You can rest a while longer, okay?”
The woman looked at the clock in the room. Then she let out a sigh, lowered her eyes, and whispered, “Oh... you carried all that? That must have been hard.” She was sounding timid for the first time Kaname had ever heard.
“Oh, no. I was fine,” Kaname told her reassuringly. “I think the load was lighter than usual today.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, easy-peasy. My friend from the neighborhood also helped. You know, the guy I was with yesterday.” Kaname was happy to lie about things like this. She was a master of grinning and bearing.
“I’m very sorry... I’ve been a bit tired lately, it seems.”
“Well, that’s understandable, after everything that happened... Ah. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I know what the residents think of me,” said the cleaning lady, her tone curt but not especially judgmental.
“Was everything all right with the police?”
“Yes, they asked me all kinds of things, but I’m innocent, so I stuck to that and they let me go home.”
“Oh, really?” It must not have been as easy as she made it sound, since the landlord’s office was willing to fire her over those suspicions alone. Even so, Kaname strove to maintain a cheery tone. “R-Right! I knew it was strange. I don’t know who did it, but it’s really stupid. I’m sure they’ll get their just deserts. And gossip lasts just forty-nine days!”
“The saying is ‘seventy-five days,’” the woman said in the tone of a stern teacher.
“A-Ah ha ha... That’s right.”
“Are you paying attention in school? Honestly...”
“Oh, sorry...” Kaname rubbed the back of her head.
The old woman relaxed for the first time and burst out in a laugh. “Thank you, though. You really are a kind girl, Kaname-san.”
“Huh?” Kaname was surprised. She didn’t realize the woman knew her name. Her apartment’s door plate just said “Chidori.”
“I’m sure you don’t remember, but I’ve known you since you were a child,” the cleaning lady told her. “I’ve been working at this apartment for ten years now, after all.”
“Huh?”
“Your mother called to you frequently: ‘Kaname, you forgot your backpack’ and such.”
“Ah...” Kaname had lived there from ages four to nine before moving to New York with her family. Then three years ago, at age thirteen, she’d returned. To think the old woman had been working here from before they’d gone to the USA... She didn’t remember her at all.
“Rare to see a small child head off to school without their backpack,” the cleaning lady remarked. “You just flew out the door every morning, bursting with energy. You’d even say hello to me, but you were always going so fast you never really looked at me that closely.”
“Ah... ha ha ha. I might have done that,” Kaname confessed. “I’m sorry.”
“Then you moved away, but returned three years ago. You’ve grown up so beautifully, it shocked me! But I recognized you right away. ‘Ah, it’s the girl with the backpack.’”
“H-Hey... ‘beautifully’ is a little much...” said Kaname, who felt like her face was on fire.
“Oh, no. I said it, so it’s true. I have a good eye for people,” the cleaning lady confided. “I used to run a bar in Ginza, you see.”
“What? Really?!”
The old woman puffed out her chest. “Of course. I’m doing this grunt labor now, but I don’t look down on myself at all. I do it proudly to put food on the table. The women here could never do what I do. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Totally,” Kaname said genuinely, rubbing at her exhausted arm muscles.
“Good. You’re beautiful because you’re capable of learning those things. Remember that. Your mother was a wonderful person too, but... oh, I’m sorry.” The old woman lowered her voice a bit. She must have known Kaname’s mother died of illness.
“Oh, no, that’s okay.” Kaname forced a smile onto her face.
Seeing her smile, the old lady returned it. “Good. It seems you’ve cheered up quite a bit since then. You frequently seemed very gloomy in middle school.”
Kaname hesitated. “I was.”
“You’ve got good friends now, though?”
“Yes. Um... kind of. Very. I’m not sure which... heh.” There was something simultaneously comforting and embarrassing about being around someone who’d been watching her so closely since she was little. It was totally different from talking to someone her own age, like Kyoko. Kaname felt like she hadn’t talked to someone like this about herself in ages.
From there, Kaname talked and talked; about Kyoko and her other classmates, then Hayashimizu and the rest of the student council. She bad-mouthed the teachers she hated. She talked about the cake shop she went to with her friends, and about the movies she’d been watching lately. She said there was a boy she liked, but that he’d been cold recently and annoyed her...
Not even Kaname knew exactly why she was doing it, but she just kept talking and talking, like a dam had burst on her words. She talked and talked forever. It isn’t right. This woman isn’t my mother. She told herself that, but the words that had lost any other refuge just kept pouring out of her. In time, she even found tears in her eyes.
“Kaname-san?” The old woman’s voice snapped her back to attention.
“Huh? Oh... right. No, it’s nothing. It’s just... I haven’t talked to anyone like this in a while... ah ha ha...” Kaname turned away and wiped at her eyes.
“It seems that way.” The old woman smiled kindly at her. It was the first kind expression Kaname had ever seen from her. “But there’s one thing... I’m afraid I’m going to be fired for something I haven’t even done,” said the cleaning lady. “So, that friend of yours you were saying those awful things about before... your boyfriend. Treasure him.”
“Eh?”
“He’s really not as cold as all that,” the cleaning lady said wisely. “I said it before, remember? I have a real eye for people.”
●
The task itself was simple, but infiltrating a police station was still enervating, even in the morning before most of the officers had arrived. Wearing the uniform he’d secured in advance, Sousuke headed for the second-floor office. He passed a sleepy-looking patrolman on the way, but fortunately wasn’t recognized.
Is this it? he thought as he stepped into the empty traffic office and glanced at the seating chart on the wall. There—Wakana.
He found the desk in question right away, which was messily covered in gun magazines and cop drama DVDs.
The mission given to Sousuke by his mercenary organization was the protection of Kaname. Because of that, his squad had hidden cameras set up all around her apartment complex. They were so high-tech that even security professionals wouldn’t be able to spot them easily.
Naturally, they had recorded the suspicious intruder.
The footage would show a human figure on the morning in question breaking the glass door to apartment 103 from the garden. The figure was a middle school student from apartment 102, the son of the nosy woman who liked to lead movements to ban harmful books. It was a childish crime—maybe he’d just been after some spending money.
Even so, the matter was unrelated to Sousuke’s mission, and handing it over to the police did entail some risk. Sousuke had wanted to pretend he hadn’t seen the silly break-in, and he’d feigned indifference in front of Kaname as well, but...
He dropped the DVD case carelessly on his desk.
“I’ve gone so far as to break the rules... Now, do your job,” he whispered to himself.
He couldn’t afford to stay there long. He turned around and strode out of the traffic office.
[The End]
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