“You’re too kind.”
“But I wonder about being able to wear a mask during crucial moments. It might be a useful item for socially awkward youth, but there are times when suffering a setback serves you well. You could even say it’s necessary.”
“But this is a game.”
“Even if it’s a game, making them accept that they weren’t up to it is important,” Katsutoshi Katsuragi said, leaning back in his chair. He locked his fingers on his knees and looked up at my face. “There’s one thing I’d like to ask you.”
“What might that be?”
“Are you responsible for yours?”
I drew a blank for a moment. It was because I didn’t understand his question. “I try to be,” I said.
“So the mask you’d wear to win happiness is precisely the face you have now?”
“Maybe. It’s hard to say.” I faked a smile.
After scrutinizing my mask, Katsutoshi Katsuragi transferred his gaze to Kozuka. “Thank you. Next, please.”
Chapter 7
When I got home, Juri was cooking something in the kitchen. I tried to guess what she was making based on the smell.
“Did I have the ingredients to make cream stew?” I asked standing at the kitchen entrance.
Juri was in a shirt and sweats with a t-shirt wrapped around her hips in place of an apron. She was stirring the pot in that getup. “I scrounged through your fridge. Your vegetables were going bad, but I got to them in time.”
I remembered I had bought them intending to make gratin. “You didn’t meet anyone or talk on the phone?”
“Nope. I thought about how I couldn’t let any of your neighbors know I was here, so I even kept the TV volume really low. I even paid attention to the sound of my footsteps. And the phone rang in the afternoon, but I didn’t pick up.”
That must have been my call. For now, it seemed Juri hadn’t messed up.
She was paying attention to the stove’s heat level. I had only used the big pot she was boiling the stew in twice.
“I didn’t know you were a good cook.”
“I’m not good. I was just bored. Are you hungry?”
“I already ate. I got this for you though.” I lifted up a paper bag.
“What’s inside?”
“A boxed meal.”
She looked into the bag and then at me. “A bento from Yasuman. Wow. The chef there sometimes goes on TV. Then I’ll have this instead.”
“What about the stew?”
“Who cares now?” Juri returned to the pot and turned off the burner.
By the time I had gone into the bedroom, changed, and returned to the living room, she was starting to eat the bento. She admired each part, lecturing me. Working on a can of beer, I listened to her.
“By the way, I met your dad today,” I said.
Her chopsticks halted. “Where?”
“He came to our company. I wonder what he’s thinking when his daughter’s been kidnapped. I think he’s taking the police’s advice, but if he wants to pretend to be calm, he could have done that at his own office.”
“He doesn’t care what happens to me.” Juri resumed her meal.
“Regardless of what he really thinks, he knows that something’s up. It seems he’s seen the ransom letter. There was a reply.”
“Really? On the internet?”
I turned on the computer. I connected to the internet and accessed the website. “Oh, there’s another post.”
In addition to the one I’d read in the afternoon was the following:
I’d like to see the quality (Julie)
I’m Julie, the newbie. I’m planning on having someone turn over their CPT to me, but I really need to see it with my own eyes, don’t I? I want to check if it’s damaged and I’d like to hear the sound of the engine. I feel like I shouldn’t pay before I do. What do you think, everybody?
Juri had stopped eating again and was staring at the screen. I said to her profile, “So, ‘what do you think,’ Juri?”
“This means…”
“They need to confirm that you’re safe, the deal will follow—that’s the only interpretation there can be.”
“What do you plan on doing?”
“Hmm, I wonder.” I sat down on the sofa and stretched out my legs. I gulped down some beer. Juri was looking at me.
There were two reasons for our enemy to be saying this. One was indeed to confirm the hostage’s status. The other was to obtain some clues about the culprits. What the enemy, that is to say, the police, wanted most was surely a call from the perpetrators. They would have Juri come on the phone, trace the call, and moreover try to obtain information. Right around now, the Katsuragis’ phone probably had a glorified recording device attached to it, while detectives were waiting headsets in hand.
It was a mandatory scene in any novel or movie dealing with a kidnapping. The victim’s family would insist on confirming the wellbeing of the hostage, and the kidnapper would exercise his wits to allow it without giving the investigators anything. You could say it was the opening skirmish between the investigators and the criminal. There was even a mystery novel where, daringly enough, the victim’s state is broadcast live on TV.
It was odd, come to think of it. No reason existed for the kidnappers to grant the victim’s family’s request. The kidnapper only needed to keep making demands. If the deal were canceled, the victim’s side had everything to lose. Hence, even in this case, I could just ignore the request. You can confirm the hostage’s safety by paying the money because she will be returned unharmed—I could even tell them that. I thought about sending an email using those exact words. The “Julie” who wrote to the bulletin board came with an email address. Undoubtedly it was because they thought our side might email them.
“We can’t call them, can we?” Juri said.
“That’d probably be fatal.”
“Right.”
“Do you want to call?”
She shook her head, “That’s not it.”
“Nowadays, I don’t think even a complete idiot of a criminal would. Well, that’s what I think, but actually doing something that idiotic might be fun.”
“Fun…”
“Because this is a game. If it’s not fun, it’s not worth it. But simply making a call would be reckless.”
If I were going to, I wanted it to aid us. What I wanted was to mess with the investigation. How might I do that?
“Um,” Juri’s lips moved slightly as I tried to puzzle it out.
“What?”
“I remembered because of the phone, but I may have done something terrible.”
She sounded uncharacteristically apprehensive and timid. It gave me a bad feeling. I watched her, aware that my own gaze was sharpening.
“Yesterday, you asked me, right? After I ran away from home, whether I talked to anyone over the phone.”
“Yeah. Hey, don’t tell me you did.” I couldn’t help lifting myself from the sofa.
“I didn’t talk. But I did make a call.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a friend named Yuki. Anyway, I thought I might be able to stay at her place and called her. Don’t stare at me with that face. At the time, I didn’t think that something like this would happen.”
“All right. Keep going.” My head was beginning to hurt. Young women were always like this.
“But she wasn’t home. Then I remembered. Yuki was going to America starting this month. So no one came to the phone, and the answering machine message came on.”
“You didn’t speak into that answering machine, did you?”