‘Online anime?’ Kusanagi prompted.
‘Something we had up on our home page until about three years ago. Would you like to see it?’
‘Very much,’ Kusanagi said, not entirely facetiously.
They went into an office where Ms Yamamoto began opening files on the computer until the screen was filled with the opening titles to the Internet anime Beetron, Go! She pressed play, and the anime ran for about a minute. The show featured the Beetron character stepping through the paces of a largely forgettable story.
‘So this isn’t online anymore?’ Kishitani asked.
‘It was popular for a bit – thus that stuffed toy – but sales weren’t so good, and eventually it was cancelled.’
‘Did one of your employees design the character?’ Kusanagi asked.
‘No, actually. The designer posted some illustrations of Beetron on a blog and developed a small following, so we commissioned the anime.’
‘Was the designer a professional illustrator?’
‘No, a schoolteacher, actually. Not even an art teacher.’
‘Huh.’
This was starting to sound like a definite possibility to Kusanagi. Tatsuhiko Ikai had insisted that Mashiba would never have let work relationships develop into romance, but he could see it working the other way around.
‘Ah,’ Kishitani said, as he typed on the computer. ‘Looks like another dead end, Detective. This isn’t her.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because it’s a him. Look at the artist’s profile.’
Kusanagi stared at the screen and frowned.
‘Guess we should’ve asked ahead of time,’ Kishitani said. ‘I guess guys draw cute designs, too.’
‘Yeah, I assumed it was a girl myself,’ Kusanagi said, scratching his head.
‘Excuse me,’ Ms Yamamoto said, inserting herself into the conversation. ‘Is there some problem with the artist being a man?’
‘No, it has to do with our investigation,’ Kusanagi explained. ‘We’re looking for someone who might provide us with the lead we need to close the case – and that someone had to be a woman.’
‘By “case”, you are talking about Mr Mashiba’s murder, yes?’
‘Of course.’
‘And the Internet anime has something to do with that?’
‘I can’t go into the details, but suffice to say that if the creator of the anime were a woman, it might have had something to do with Mr Mashiba’s death … but since this gentleman is clearly not a woman …’ Kusanagi sighed and looked over at his partner. ‘I think we’re done here for today.’
‘Yep,’ Kishitani agreed, his shoulders sagging.
Ms Yamamoto saw them to the front door, where Kusanagi turned and thanked her. ‘Sorry to interrupt your day – and apologies in advance if we need to come back for anything.’
‘Not at all. You’re welcome anytime,’ she said, a curious look on her face, one markedly different from her cold demeanour when they first arrived.
The detectives started to walk away; but they had only taken a couple of steps when Ms Yamamoto called after them. ‘Detective?’
Kusanagi looked around. ‘Yes?’
She trotted over to them and whispered, ‘There’s a lounge on the first floor of the building – could you wait there for just a moment? There is something I wanted to talk to you about, but not here.’
‘Does this concern the case?’
‘I’m not sure. It has to do with the beetroot alien, actually. About the creator.’
Kusanagi and Kishitani exchanged glances. ‘Of course.’
‘I’ll be down as soon as I can,’ she told them, then disappeared back inside the office.
The lounge on the first floor was spacious. Kusanagi drank coffee and glared at the no smoking sign on the wall.
‘What do you think she wants to talk to us about?’ Kishitani asked.
‘Who knows? I can’t imagine some amateur illustrator – a guy – having anything to do with anything, but we’ll see.’
Ms Yamamoto arrived quickly. She glanced around before holding up an envelope about half the size of a standard sheet of paper.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said, sitting down across from them. The waitress came over but Ms Yamamoto waved her off.
Clearly not planning on staying long, Kusanagi thought. ‘What did you want to talk to us about?’
She looked around again, then leaned forward. ‘You have to understand, I really can’t have this released to the public. If for some reason you have to let it out … please don’t tell anyone you heard it from me.’
Kusanagi peered at her intently. He wanted to tell her that whether or not it became public knowledge depended on the nature of the information, but he also didn’t want to jeopardize their chances of hearing about a possible lead. So he kept quiet. It wouldn’t be his first time breaking a promise, and he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
He nodded. ‘Okay, the word stays here.’
Ms Yamamoto wet her lips. ‘That beetroot alien you were looking at before? Well, the designer was a woman.’
‘Huh?’ Kusanagi said, his eyes widening. ‘Really?’ He straightened in his chair. This might actually be something worth hearing.
‘Yes. For various reasons, we had to lie on the web page.’
Kishitani nodded, beginning to take notes. ‘That’s not so unusual. People’s names, ages, and genders are often falsified online.’
‘Was the bit about him being a teacher also not true?’ Kusanagi asked.
‘No – or rather, the teacher we have featured on our site does actually exist. He was the one writing the blog. But someone else designed the character. She had nothing to do with him at all.’
Wrinkles formed between Kusanagi’s eyebrows, and he rested his elbows on the table. ‘So why all the subterfuge?’
Ms Yamamoto hesitated before saying, ‘Actually, everything was prearranged.’
‘Can you elaborate?’
‘The story I gave you before, about the alien becoming popular on the teacher’s blog, and us making an anime – in fact, it happened the other way around. We planned on producing a character-driven Internet anime first, and as part of our PR strategy, we decided to start the character out on a private blog. Then we started doing things online, search engine optimization and the like, to make sure people saw the blog. Once the character started gaining popularity, we published the story that we had contracted with the blogger to make our show.’
Kusanagi crossed his arms and grunted. ‘Sounds like an awful lot of trouble to go through, if you ask me.’
‘People online respond better to things that seem organic. It was our CEO’s idea.’
Kishitani looked over towards Kusanagi and nodded. ‘She’s right. Everyone likes it when something created by a nobody goes viral like that.’
‘So ultimately,’ Kusanagi said, ‘the designer was one of your employees?’
‘No. We started with a search of relatively unknown manga artists and illustrators. Then we had them submit ideas for character designs, and we picked one we liked: the beetroot alien you saw. We wrote up a nondisclosure agreement with the designer, to keep it a secret, and we had her draw some illustrations to put on our teacher’s blog. She did all the initial work, though we switched to another artist about halfway through. I’m sure it’s obvious by now, but we were also paying the teacher to write his blog.’
‘Quite the show,’ Kusanagi muttered. ‘You weren’t kidding when you said everything had been prearranged.’
‘It takes a real strategy to introduce a new character these days,’ Ms Yamamoto said with a light laugh. ‘Not that ours worked very well.’
‘So who was this illustrator you ended up using?’
‘A children’s book illustrator, originally. She’s had a few books published,’ Ms Yamamoto said, producing a slim volume from the envelope on her lap.