So that’s what this is all about. It all started to fall into place. Hasunuma had occasionally mentioned the ‘cute little sexpot’ who worked in a restaurant he sometimes went to. He must have attacked her, killed her, hidden the body, and then gone AWOL to avoid being caught. He’d been calling Masumura to find out what the police were up to.
Not long after that, Masumura heard the news that Hasunuma had been arrested.
He felt mixed emotions. Surely this time — this time — Hasunuma wouldn’t get away with it. Surely this time he would get the punishment he deserved. Whatever punishment he got, though, it wouldn’t be for the crime of killing Yuna. And if he ended up in jail, he would be out of Masumura’s reach.
That wasn’t how things played out. With his route to revenge cut off, he was at a loss what to do: Sticking with his present job was futile, but he had nowhere else to go. One day, to his surprise, he got a call from Hasunuma.
“You? I thought you were under arrest?”
“I was. But they let me go.”
“Let you go...?”
“It’s like I told you. The confession is the king of evidence. And without the king, the cops can’t do a thing.”
Masumura was dumbstruck. Had Hasunuma used his strategy of remaining silent to elude justice for a second time?
“You still living in Kikuno?” Hasunuma asked, when Masumura said nothing.
“I am, yeah...”
“In that case, I may drop by to see you any day now. Look forward to it.”
“Uh, okay.”
Hasunuma hung up. Masumura stared at his phone, stupefied.
He couldn’t believe it. Hasunuma had now killed two people — and was still not going to be brought to justice?
He didn’t know the Namikis, but his heart ached at the thought of the pain they must be going through. None of this would have happened if I had killed Hasunuma earlier.
Sometime later, Masumura went around to have a look at the restaurant. It was closed. You could hardly expect the family to keep operating their restaurant at a time like this.
Masumura racked his brains. What should he do? He couldn’t let things go on as they were. He had to make sure that Hasunuma got the punishment he deserved. But he had no idea how to proceed.
In this impotent state, every day was torture. The more time that passed, the more desperate he became.
One day, he got a call from a number he didn’t recognize. It was Hasunuma. It was almost three months since he had last called.
“I’ve got a favor I want to ask,” Hasunuma said. “Can I crash at your place for a while?”
“My place? Why?”
“My bastard landlord didn’t renew my contract. I kind of expected it. No big surprise. I thought maybe you could put me up at yours. I’ll pay a decent rate.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“Going to take my time finding myself a new place. Anyway, how about it? Can I come stay?”
It was a one-in-a-million chance. If Masumura wanted his revenge, he was going to have to seize it right now and with both hands.
“Uh, yeah, sure you can. It’ll be cramped, though.”
“No problem. As long as there’s enough space to lie down.”
Hasunuma came by soon after. They hadn’t seen each other for a long time. Hasunuma’s face was as cruel and brutal as ever.
“This area’s not changed a bit,” said Hasunuma, kicking off his shoes and sitting down cross-legged on the floor. “The shopping district’s still a total shithole. God, what a dump.”
Hasunuma snickered quietly.
“What’s the joke?”
“Just that I popped in to pay my respects — to the victim’s family.”
“You what? The victim’s family? You mean—?”
“That Namiki-ya place. I went and put the screws to the owner. ‘You’re the reason I got arrested. It’s your fault no one trusts me anymore. I want compensation.’”
“What did he say about that?”
“Some bs. The guy’s a loser. I was like ‘screw you’ and I walked out.”
As he looked at the triumphant expression on Hasunuma’s face, Masumura tried to imagine how the Namiki family must be feeling. Gloom swallowed him up. This man isn’t even human; he’s a devil in human skin, he thought.
Nonetheless, Masumura donned the mask of an old friend and spent the evening drinking with Hasunuma to celebrate their reunion. Hasunuma, who was in high spirits, made endless gibes about the police and the prosecutor.
What did he plan to do if the indictment went ahead? Masumura asked.
“I’ll think about it, when the time comes,” Hasunuma said nonchalantly. “I’ll do the exact same thing I did before. It’ll mean spending a year or more in detention, which is a bummer, but then I’ll have the compensation payment to look forward to for my trouble. Overall, not a bad deal.”
“What if you’re found guilty?”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Hasunuma fired back. “I was found not guilty in the previous case and there’s even less circumstantial evidence this time around. No, provided I keep my mouth shut, the prosecutor can’t do jack.”
“About the previous case...,” said Masumura. “Why did you kill the girl? You’ve got your not-guilty verdict, so there’s no danger in coming clean. Come on, tell me.”
Hasunuma’s drunken face contorted into the most hideous expression Masumura had ever seen: a smile charged with malevolence.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” he said, holding his teacup full of shochu. “It’s like, there was this cute kitten; I tried to give it a stroke; it bit back; I taught it a lesson and the silly thing went and died on me. I couldn’t leave the thing like that, so I burned the body, said a few words, and buried what was left. End of story.”
Masumura could almost hear the blood draining out of his body. Hasunuma had come out and admitted to murdering Yuna Motohashi. And to add insult to injury, he had likened her to an animal.
“Humph. So that’s what happened, is it?” Masumura responded. His voice was flat and affectless. He wasn’t playacting. When the shock to the emotions is too great, he realized, people can no longer show their reactions.
That night, Masumura was unable to sleep. He could hear Hasunuma, wrapped up in his blanket, breathing in his sleep in the next room over. His breathing sounded unsuspecting, unguarded. I could easily kill the guy now, Masumura thought.
He got up and picked up the kitchen knife from inside the sink. He glared down disgustedly at Hasunuma’s sleeping face. He raised the knife high above his head.
But he didn’t deliver the fatal blow.
He had realized something: He wasn’t the only person who wanted revenge.
42
It was three days after Yutaro Namiki heard about Naoki Niikura confessing that a couple of detectives turned up at Namiki-ya and asked him to accompany them to the station for questioning. Namiki was busy cooking for that evening, but the detectives assured him that, if all went well, he would be back in time to open the restaurant. What exactly did “if all went well” mean? Presumably it meant them not finding any grounds to arrest him. In that case, maybe I won’t make it home tonight, he thought.
Machiko and Natsumi both looked on anxiously as he was escorted off the premises. He was expecting them to be summoned to the station at some point, too. He’d already told them the truth.
Nothing was going according to plan, Namiki thought. Things hadn’t just gone slightly awry, they had veered wildly off course — and destroyed Naoki Niikura’s life in the process. You could argue that it was Niikura who had made the fatal choice, but Namiki was the one who had put him in a position to do so.