Chapter 3: After the Crime

It was nearly one in the morning when Ikeda ran home, drenched in cold sweat. He had been in a daze the whole way and only calmed down a little at the sight of his familiar front door.

There was a light on inside. His father must have come home drunk.

He crept into the house and ventured, “I'm home.”

No answer. Only his own heavy breathing.

Ikeda went to the room with the light on and slid the door halfway open. What he saw made him sigh with relief. His father lay asleep under the kotatsu, dead drunk, with several empty bottles scattered around him.

“Comes home in the middle of the night, finds his son missing, and just goes to sleep without a care.” Muttering under his breath, Ikeda turned off the light for his father and slid the door shut.

He took a shower and went back to his room, but though he lay down on the bed, he couldn't sleep at all. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the body dangling from the rope and Matsuo's ghastly face, again and again.

Even as the sky outside began to lighten, Ikeda was still staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes.

He had spent all night thinking and figured out nothing. All he had to show for it was a muddled head, a splitting headache, and utter exhaustion.

Why would Matsuo kill himself? And why insist on hanging himself in the staff office? Did that mean something? What was going on with that strange bookshop? Who exactly was its owner? Why had he specifically told me to go to Matsuo's office at midnight to steal something? Could he have something to do with Matsuo's death?

After tossing and turning a while longer, Ikeda checked the clock. It was almost time to get ready for school. Exhausted as he was, he didn't dare take the day off. Perhaps it was his guilty conscience, but he felt that being absent on the very day a body was discovered at school would look suspicious.

He took the bus that day, so he didn't pass Tian Yi's bookshop. In fact, even if he had chosen to walk to school, Ikeda knew the owner wouldn't open that early. One look at him told you he was the sort who would never crawl out of bed before ten in the morning, so going past the shop would have been pointless anyway.

Things at school were much as Ikeda had imagined. The man on night duty had discovered the body around four. He hadn't bothered calling an ambulance and had gone straight to the police, presumably because Matsuo's pose already said “I'm beyond saving” quite clearly.

By daybreak, the police had sealed off the entire third floor of the school building. The investigation and evidence collection proceeded at a leisurely pace, and quite a few teachers and even students were questioned. No one questioned Ikeda, though. Perhaps he was too unremarkable, or perhaps he struck people as introverted and difficult to talk to.

All morning, the students whispered among themselves, naturally discussing Matsuo's death. The teachers seemed distracted during their lessons too, and let classroom discipline slide.

“Ah... Matsuo. He really was the worst! A nasty, sleazy middle-aged man, still unmarried in his forties, always getting handsy with some of the female teachers. I hear he'd even harassed a female student. But he never left much evidence of his misdeeds, had good connections with the school board, and knew how to suck up to parents, so even the principal couldn't fire him. We all just had to watch that smug little creep swagger around school every day, making an eyesore of himself.

“It's wonderful that a man like that killed himself. He finally did the world some good. Hey, officer, don't look at me like that. I'm just a straight talker. I'm only saying what everyone else is too reluctant to say.”

The person saying this to the police was Ms. Kurosawa. A teacher of Japanese language and literature, past menopause and nearing retirement, she was a fiery older woman with no filter. A personality like hers made it difficult to move into management, but neither colleagues nor students could dislike someone like her. Except Matsuo...

If Matsuo was slippery, filthy water, Kurosawa was boiling oil. The snobbish Matsuo switched expertly between groveling and arrogance depending on whom he was dealing with, but when it came to old Kurosawa, his only option was to keep well away. The reason was simple. Put a petty man beside an ordinary person, and he's merely an unpleasant fellow; compare him with someone exceptionally upright, and he's nothing but scum.

The police would naturally sift through and analyze the statements they collected, but everyone seemed to agree about Matsuo's character. The general impression was that he thoroughly deserved to die.

Yet that was precisely what made the matter even more puzzling.

Would someone like that kill himself? And he lived alone, so why go out of his way to sneak into school in the middle of the night to do it? Couldn't he hang himself at home?

Near noon, the school finally announced that afternoon classes were canceled. Students could go home after lunch.

This was undoubtedly good news for Ikeda. He couldn't wait to get to that bookshop; there were far too many questions he needed answered. Still, he calmly finished his lunch in the cafeteria and filed out with most of the other students.

Ikeda told himself he had to be extremely cautious and do nothing out of the ordinary. Even if no one was likely to pay him any attention, he still had to be as careful as possible.

He walked for an hour to get home, looking perfectly calm the whole way. He didn't even glance inside Tian Yi's bookshop as he passed.

“I'm home.” Ikeda shut the door behind him and sat in the entryway to change his shoes.

He went into the living room. His father was sitting under the kotatsu watching television, a cigarette between his lips. Hearing Ikeda slide the door open, he asked without turning around, “Home this early? Skipping class?”

Ikeda sat down at the kotatsu too and began taking his homework out of his schoolbag. “Mr. Matsuo killed himself at school last night, so afternoon classes are canceled.”

His dad frowned slightly. “Ah... that guy. Your homeroom teacher. I remember him. Came for a home visit once last year. Walked in looking disgusted, then acted all high and mighty when he spoke to me. What was his problem?” He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “How'd he die? Jump off the school roof? Hang himself or something?”

His face expressionless, Ikeda pushed up his thick glasses. “He hanged himself. I heard he sneaked into school at night and did it in his own office. I don't really know the details.”

“Oh, right.” Ikeda's dad reached for the remote on the table. The movement brought on a belch that reeked of alcohol, but Ikeda paid little attention. He was used to it anyway.

“Maybe it'll be on the news.” His dad flipped through a few channels, found one showing the news, and stopped.

“With the New Year approaching, public safety in Hokkaido continues to deteriorate, once again ranking last among all districts in the prefecture. In addition to frequent burglaries, violent crime is also on the rise. A police spokesman declined to comment on these figures. Today, our correspondent and several invited experts will...”

The news followed its usual routine, reporting depressing stories and then bringing in a few so-called experts to offer useless opinions after the fact.

“If what happened at your school makes the news, maybe you'll be on TV too.” As he spoke, his dad turned up the volume.

Ikeda replied indifferently, “I don't remember any reporters or anyone like that coming this morning.”

Time passed quickly. Ikeda sat there doing homework for two hours, while his old man had a few cups of liquor and fell asleep again watching the boring news.

After packing up his things and turning off the television, Ikeda went back to his room and took a pen from beneath his pillow. It was the one he had taken from Matsuo's desk last night, an ordinary rollerball pen.

The pen reminded Ikeda that the events of last night had been no dream, no hallucination, no figment of his imagination. It had all really happened.

December 11, four in the afternoon.

Ikeda returned to Tian Yi's bookshop. When he pushed open the door and stepped inside, the scene was almost exactly the same as yesterday.

Today, however, Tian Yi didn't ignore him. He immediately put down his book and coffee and spoke first. “Come over. Sit wherever you like.”

Ikeda walked up to Tian Yi's desk, only to discover there were no chairs or anything of the sort. The shop's owner occupied the room's only armchair, so all he could say was, “I'll stand.”

Tian Yi opened the drawer beside him, took out a black-covered book, and placed it on the desk. “All Miura Kazuya's secrets are in here.” He kept his hand pressed on the book, showing no intention of moving it. “Where's the thing you brought?”

“Since you have my book too, you must already know I did what you told me to do,” Ikeda countered. “Why bother asking?” As he spoke, he placed Matsuo's pen on Tian Yi's desk.

Tian Yi yawned, his expression disdainful. “It's precisely because I know far more than you imagine that I can't let you read Miura's book just yet.”

“You're going back on your word?!” Ikeda raised his voice, shock and anger welling up.

But Tian Yi quickly put out that fire. “You want to read this book to get revenge on Miura, to vent the resentment you've built up over two years of being bullied by him. Hmm... perhaps you're planning to take out all the resentment of your short life on him. Whatever. I'm all for it, but I think you may have something more urgent to do at the moment.” He changed tack. “There was a police officer at your school this morning. He's very good, exceptionally astute, you might even say. At five this morning, he was the first officer to arrive at the scene of Matsuo's ‘suicide.’ He immediately spotted something suspicious and reached the correct conclusion—Matsuo was murdered.”

Ikeda turned ashen and involuntarily stepped back. “What did you say...”