“And you die if you breathe it in?”
“If you breathe enough of it, sure.”
“That’s pretty scary. But what’s that got to do with cars?”
“Well,” Shigehiro said, wetting his lips before continuing. “Cars have tailpipes for exhaust, right? There’s carbon monoxide in the exhaust from cars.”
“Really?” Kyohei looked at Yukawa.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Yukawa said, nodding to Shigehiro.
The old man chuckled and shook his head. “I haven’t forgotten everything—not yet, at least.”
“However, I might’ve added one thing,” Yukawa said, looking back toward Kyohei. “That is, I think there was another reason, besides the exhaust, that the police were interested in cars.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, like your uncle said, carbon monoxide is generated when something burns badly. What’s meant by ‘badly’ here is something burning without sufficient oxygen. You’ve heard about not using gas heaters in a room for a long time without opening the doors every once in a while? Well, picture burning something like charcoal in an even smaller space, like the inside of the car. That would generate a lot of carbon monoxide. I think the police suspect that that’s how Mr. Tsukahara was poisoned.”
Kyohei nodded, but immediately another question popped into his head. “Wait, but if that’s how he died, how did he end up on the rocks?”
Yukawa’s eyes narrowed, but then he smiled and shrugged, giving Kyohei’s uncle a glance before saying, “That, unfortunately, I can’t explain.”
Shigehiro was silent, looking out the window. Kyohei looked over at him, but his uncle must’ve been grumpy about something, because he was frowning. He glanced over at his aunt and was surprised to see a deep frown crossing her face as well.
THIRTY-THREE
A pretty girl with a deep brown tan carrying a bowl filled with tropical fruit smiled out of the poster. She was framed by palm trees, and behind her, a pure blue sea stretched out to the horizon. Below her, a printed note read, “We will be closing for the season on August 31. Thanks, The Management.”
It said “closing for the season,” but everyone knew Hari Cove Pizza would never be opening its doors again.
Narumi and the rest of the group had come here after their tour of the DESMEC survey boat. Someone had suggested they get tea, but there really wasn’t any place in town like that, so they ended up here. Narumi remembered when the pizza shop first opened—a garishly painted new arrival in a sleepy town that hadn’t quite woken up to the tourist industry and the money it could bring. There were tables inside with views through plate-glass windows and more tables outside on a large deck where you could sit and enjoy your pizza and your beer while feeling the sea breeze on your face. When they first opened, the season ran from the day the beach opened in the early summer all the way through September. The operating season had gotten shorter every year since.
“They didn’t do it the right way,” Sawamura said, sitting down across from Narumi. He was looking up at the poster, too. “You can’t just build some fancy place in the middle of nowhere and expect people to come. If you want to get customers—regulars, I mean—you have to get the town involved.” He shook his head. “All this town has, the only thing that’ll last, is the ocean. The people at town hall don’t get that. If they’ve got time to court DESMEC’s business, you’d hope they’d spend a little more energy trying to develop our tourism industry.”
“With what?” asked one of the men, a social studies teacher at the local middle school. “I totally agree that the ocean here is a fantastic resource, but we can talk about it all we want and people still won’t come. There are too many other places just like this.”
“I don’t think other places are like Hari Cove,” Narumi said.
“Oh, I agree, but people who aren’t from here don’t understand that. And to someone from the city, one beautiful ocean view is the same as any other. What’s important is name value. Everyone goes to Okinawa because everyone wants to say they’ve been to Okinawa. No one gets jealous when you tell them you went to Hari Cove. It just doesn’t feel like a fabulous vacation without the name.”
Narumi frowned. “You’re awfully hard on your own hometown,” she said.
“I’m just trying to be analytical. When I came back to Hari Cove after spending a couple years away, I was surprised, and not in a good way. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t look like a tourist destination. Everything’s falling apart. The hotels look run down. Go to Okinawa, you’re treated to luxury. Here, you blame yourself for wasting your precious vacation time.”
“Hey—” Sawamura stood from his chair and grabbed the high school teacher by the collar of his shirt. “That’s enough of that.”
The teacher blanched but said, “I’m just telling the truth. What’s wrong with that?” His voice was a little high-pitched.
“Stop it,” Narumi said, standing up and putting a hand on Sawamura’s arm. “Calm down, Sawamura. You’ll get us kicked out.”
Sawamura shook his head and looked around the room. They were the only customers. The waitress was standing behind the counter, a worried look on her face.
Sawamura let go of the teacher’s collar and sat back down. The teacher gingerly drank his water. His face was pale.
“It’s good to talk about these things, but let’s keep our tempers down,” Narumi said.
The two men nodded.
“Sorry,” the teacher apologized first. “I could’ve chosen my words a little better.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Sawamura lowered his head. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”
An audible sigh of relief passed over the table, and the waitress, who had been standing frozen the whole time, went back to her cleaning.
“I understand what you’re saying,” Sawamura continued. “It’s true, the shops and the hotels are worse for wear. But nobody here thinks that’s okay. We want to rebuild, to renovate. We just don’t have the money. It’s hard enough making it day-to-day. Even up at Narumi’s place—”
The social studies teacher blinked and looked toward Narumi. “Oh, that’s right, your parents run a hotel. Sorry, I forgot. I didn’t mean any offense.”
“It’s okay. In fact, we’ve been talking about closing shop ourselves,” Narumi admitted.
The tension had gone out of the air, replaced now by a kind of sullen silence.
“Time to head out,” Sawamura said after a while, and everyone nodded.
Outside, Narumi got into Sawamura’s car—he was driving a hatchback today instead of his usual pickup.
“Sorry about that,” Sawamura said, pulling out of the parking lot. “I was out of line.”
“I’ve never seen you lose your temper like that,” Narumi said with a smile.
“I just didn’t like the way he was talking, to be honest. You know deep down he wants this undersea resource development deal to go through. His family owns a lot of land in town. But you saw the equipment on that survey boat. Let them loose on the ocean with that stuff, and you can kiss your pristine environment good-bye. And if they go on and build a refinery too, well, there’s your freshwater pollution. Makes me sick just thinking about it.”
“Yeah,” Narumi agreed, but inside, she was having a kind of awakening. Ever since talking with Yukawa, she’d been starting to see the value in a more neutral stance. If they could redirect the energy they’d spent on trying to find fault with the other side and put it toward finding a new direction that worked for everyone, they could all benefit.