"Their deaths—were they just a coincidence?"
At the question, Yoshino's dread deepened, and Toyama saw that too.
First his friend Asakawa dies, and now a girl Asakawa knew. Neither death in itself terribly suspi-cious, but precisely because there was so little information, it was natural for an outsider to want to connect them.
Yoshino's eyes began darting around the room, as if he were desperately coming up with ideas and rejecting them.
"Yeah, right... Now, about Sadako Yamamura."
Yoshino changed the subject, but the way he said it made it seem almost as if Sadako had something to do with Asakawa's and Mai's deaths.
The last time Toyama and Yoshino had met, Toyama had simply answered the questions put to him.
That had been his role, and he'd played it to the hilt, but he had no intention of reprising it. This time he was determined to take the initiative and find out why a reporter was so interested in ascertaining what had happened to Sadako.
So he came right out and said it. "Don't you think it's about time you told me why you want to know what she was doing twenty-four years ago?"
Yoshino hung his head and looked beaten—it was the same look he'd had the last time they'd met.
"See, the thing is...I don't really know myself."
That was what he'd said last time, too. Toyama couldn't accept it. A reporter for a major news organiza-tion follows a woman's quarter-century-old trail through the nooks and crannies of the city, and he doesn't even know why?
"Don't give me that." Toyama's expression began to change.
Yoshino raised his hands and said, "Okay. I'll be honest with you. Kazuyuki Asakawa, a reporter in the main office, was investigating something, and Sadako Yamamura's name came up. He needed information. But he was tied up elsewhere at the time, so he asked me to help him out. He told me to find out whatever I could about what Sadako Yamamura was doing twenty-four years ago."
Toyama leaned forward. "What was he investigating?"
"That's the thing. He never told me. And then he got in a traffic accident and went into a coma. He died without ever regaining consciousness. I don't know why he was so insistent about finding out about her. I guess the truth is lost in a grove—like in that movie, you know?"
Toyama peered deep into Yoshino's eyes, trying to tell if he was lying. He didn't seem to be, at least about the big stuff. But he might be lying about the details.
Toyama deduced how Yoshino had been led to him.
First he would have gone to Theater Group Soaring's rehearsal space, where he would have found out who else had joined the troupe as an intern in February of 1965.
The resumes they'd all submitted together with their entrance exams were still stored in the troupe's offices. As far as Toyama could recall, there had been eight of them that year. No doubt Yoshino had thought he could trace Sadako's steps by speaking to all of them.
"Did you talk to the others?"
Toyama could only remember the names of two or three others, besides Sadako. He had no contact with any of them now—no idea where they were or what they were doing.
"Of the people who joined Soaring in 1965, I was able to track down four, including yourself."
"So you were able to contact the other three as well?"
Yoshino nodded. "I talked to them on the phone."
"Who?"
"Iino, Kitajima, and Kato."
As Yoshino said the names, Toyama was able to recall the faces. They'd been slumbering in the recesses of his memory; now he could feel them coming back to him, more clearly by the moment. Of course, in his mind, everyone still looked twenty.
Iino: he'd completely forgotten about Iino. Didn't speak much; a skilled mime. The older girls had liked him: they'd kind of adopted him.
Kitajima: small, not much stage presence, but he was good with his lines. He'd been used as a narrator, impressive for an intern. Toyama thought he'd had a slight crush on Sadako, too.
Kato: her first name was Keiko, he remembered now. Her name had been so ordinary that Shigemori, their director and head of the troupe, had given her a flashy stage name. "Yurako Tatsunomiya." She was quite beautiful, and she certainly wasn't aiming for comic roles, which was what such an overwrought name might have steered her toward. Still, the name was a direct gift from the troupe's founder-director, and she couldn't very well turn it down. Toyama remembered how hard a time she'd had hiding her mixed feelings.
They'd all be out drinking, and people would start mock-ing the name, which would leave her near tears as she tried to defend it.
In fact, it was Sadako who probably wanted a stage name most. Her real name was too old-fashioned for a modern beauty like hers. She should have received a stage name when she first went on stage, last-minute though it was. But Shigemori had sent her on under her real name.
All these things about people Toyama thought he'd forgotten came vividly back as Yoshino said their names.
He began to wax nostalgic. But just as he was on the point of losing himself in the feelings of his youth, he dug in his heels. He had another question to ask.
"So you only talked to Iino, Kitajima, and Kato on the phone?" Why was I the only one you met face-to-face?
"I called you first, too, you know."
"I know that. What I mean is, you let it go at a phone call for the other three, but you wanted to meet me in person. Why?"
Yoshino studied Toyama with a surprised look. His expression said, Do you even have to ask?
"I thought you knew. The other three all said the same thing, that you and Sadako had a special relationship back then."
A special relationship.
He felt his strength leave him, and he sank down into his seat again. From this position he could see stains on the ceiling.
"Is that it..."
It made sense now. No wonder Yoshino had wanted to meet him in person, instead of just talking on the phone like with the other three.
He'd always meant to hide his closeness to Sadako from the other interns, not to mention the troupe as a whole. But it now seemed that his fellow interns had seen right through him. So much so that they still remembered it twenty-four years later. He and Sadako must have made quite an impression. But Toyama couldn't believe there was anything all that memorable about himself, which meant it must have been Sadako's striking character that they remembered. Unless they'd really all been that in-trigued by their relationship.
"Would you be willing to tell me what happened?"
Toyama lowered his gaze to find Yoshino staring at him with eyes brimming with curiosity.
"What do you mean?"
"Sadako Yamamura disappeared all of a sudden after the spring production in 1966 finished its run. I think you know why."
Toyama realized what Yoshino was thinking: if anybody would know why Sadako had left, he would, even if he didn't know where she'd gone. Yoshino had a hungry-wolf glint in his eyes.
"You've got to be kidding."
Toyama had nothing to give this predator. If he'd known why she left him, without telling him where she was going, his life since age twenty-three wouldn't have been so dark and cheerless.
"Oh, right. Shall I show you something?"
Yoshino rummaged in his briefcase and came up with a script. The battered cover read:
THEATER GROUP SOARING
ELEVENTH PRODUCTION
GIRL IN BLACK
(TWO ACTS, FOUR SCENES)