“I wasn’t able to bring out your full talent. That’s my fault. Sadly, I think we’ve missed our moment as a band. If you want to find someone else to work with, I won’t stop you. I can help you if you need an introduction. For myself, though, I plan to retire from onstage performance.”
Rumi accepted what Niikura was saying, but that didn’t make her feel any less sad. She felt even worse that he was tying himself up in knots for her sake. He insisted that he was to blame, but Rumi knew full well that wasn’t true. It was down to deficiencies in her that the wonderful songs composed by Niikura had failed to get the recognition they deserved.
“I’m so sorry,” said Rumi, bursting into tears. “I let you down. I’m sorry. I can’t imagine working with anyone else. If you’re going to retire, then I’ll retire, too.”
That was when Niikura made his second proposal. It concerned their shared future. Would Rumi marry him?
Until then, their relationship hadn’t been romantic. Despite admiring Niikura and harboring feelings for him, Rumi had worked hard to conceal them. Niikura didn’t approve of romantic entanglements between band members.
On the one hand, she was sorry to retire from performing. On the other hand, the joy she felt at Niikura’s second proposal was more than enough to compensate. She accepted his proposal on the spot.
From that day on, she and Niikura became a tight-knit team. Niikura moved into the business of finding and nurturing young talent. Making money was never his primary goal — and his family was sufficiently well-off that he could safely take that approach. Rumi worked behind the scenes to support her husband. The second phase of their life was by no means a disappointment. Their inability to have children was the only thing that didn’t go according to plan. When, however, they sent the young artists they had discovered out into the world, they got a sense of quasi-parental satisfaction from watching their “children” making their own way.
Time passed. Eventually, they stumbled upon an extraordinary raw talent: Saori Namiki. Rumi would never forget the thrill of hearing Saori sing for the first time.
The glory of her voice and her technical skill as a singer were both overpowering. This girl’s talent is of a completely different order to mine. She is a born singer, Rumi told herself. At the same time, she was further excited by the enthusiasm she could feel coming off Niikura, who was sitting beside her.
“I want to manage that girl,” Niikura said, as they made their way home from the cultural festival where they had seen Saori perform. He spoke in a monotone, but Rumi could feel the extraordinary conviction behind what he was saying.
The passion Niikura devoted to training Saori was astonishing. Eager to elevate his new protégée’s abilities to the highest possible level, he put everything he had on the line for her. Inevitably, Rumi saw echoes of the past, when Niikura had been guiding her career. It was obvious that he was taking a second run at the dream that he had failed to realize with her.
Naturally, Rumi gave him her full support. She and Niikura were spending less time together, but that was only to be expected. Her husband’s single-minded obsession with Saori caused Rumi no unease. There was no reason for jealousy.
Under Niikura’s direction, Saori made steady progress. Her ability to learn was quite extraordinary. She could pick up techniques quickly that an ordinary person would need months to master. This is what genius looks like, thought Rumi in amazement.
They were almost there.
The gateway to success was right in front of them. All they had to do was push it open and a bright, shining road into the future would stretch out before them. They just needed to stay on track and single-mindedly put one foot in front of the other.
But, all of a sudden, their personal treasure was torn away from them. The road to the future was cut off. When Rumi recalled her sense of despair, even now she would start trembling uncontrollably. It was that bad—
“What’s wrong?” asked a voice.
The question brought Rumi back to herself. She found herself squatting down on the kitchen floor, the tin of jasmine tea still in her hand.
Niikura was standing over her with an anxious look on his face. “Are you all right?”
“Uh... I’m fine.” Rumi started sweeping up the tea leaves from the floor. “Finished your call?”
“Uh-huh.” There was something ominous in the brevity of his answer. “I got some slightly — no, some very worrying — news.”
“What is it?”
“You know that Yukawa guy? The one we’ve met a few times at Namiki-ya?”
Rumi stopped her sweeping and looked up at her husband. “Yes, I know who you mean.”
“He was at Namiki-ya tonight and he was asking Tojima all kinds of questions.”
“Him? But why?”
“Apparently, he’s got a friend on the police force.”
Rumi gasped.
“Tojima thinks the police may have seen through the trick with the helium tank and figured out how Hasunuma was really killed.”
Rumi swallowed and put her right hand to her chest. Her heart was beating painfully fast.
Niikura walked over to her. Rumi buried her head in his chest.
“It’ll be all right,” the husband said to the wife. “There’s no need to worry.”
30
When you revisit a street that you frequented as a child, it is often far smaller and narrower than you remembered it. This probably comes down to the change in one’s physical size. Typically, when, after the interval of a few years, you revisit a street you first saw as an adult, the impression hardly changes.
However, as Kusanagi walked along this particular street after almost two decades, it felt a great deal more cramped than he remembered. As he walked along and looked around him, he finally realized why.
Several big apartment blocks had been built where there had once been low-rise workshops and storehouses. They blocked the view, creating the sense that the already-narrow street had gotten even narrower.
Kusanagi came to a halt before a house. Back when it was surrounded by old, traditional Japanese houses, it had stood out for its elegance with its white façade and Western architecture. Now that it was surrounded by contemporary buildings, it felt more like an anachronism.
“This seems to be the place,” Utsumi said. She was standing beside him, looking at the engraved stone nameplate on the front gate. The name was Sawauchi. Nineteen years ago, it had been Motohashi.
“No doubt about it.”
Utsumi pressed the button on the intercom.
“Yes,” a woman’s voice answered almost immediately.
“This is Detective Sergeant Kaoru Utsumi. We spoke on the phone this morning.”
“Of course.”
Up at the far end of a little path, the front door of the house opened. A little woman with spectacles and silver hair came out. Kusanagi’s first impression was of dourness, so he was relieved to see the shadow of a smile playing around her lips.
The woman’s name was Sachie Sawauchi and she was the younger sister of Seiji Motohashi. Seiji Motohashi was fifty-two when his daughter Yuna’s remains were found. If he were still alive, he would be seventy-one.
Kusanagi got Utsumi to follow up and she found out that Seiji Motohashi had died six years ago. The family firm was now being run by a hired manager, and his sister and her husband had moved into the old Motohashi house over a decade ago.
Sachie Sawauchi showed Kusanagi and Utsumi into a living room furnished with a big leather sofa and armchairs.
Before sitting down, they presented the old woman with the box of candies they had brought for her. Motohashi. She waved her hands in a gesture of deprecation.