Was there some secret about Yuki’s condo that she didn’t want to share with me? But what sort of secret necessitated not even allowing me to go to the building?
At that point, I tried questioning the fundamentals of the situation. Did Yuki’s condo actually exist? No, to begin with, was this friend, Yuki, real?
Juri had given that name when the game had only just started. She had confessed to calling her friend and leaving a message on the answering machine. When I proposed canceling the whole plan, Juri had said we could just go to the room and erase the message. So we’d gone all the way to Yokosuka.
If Yuki was an imaginary person, that meant the answering machine story was also a lie. Why tell that particular lie?
There was just one thing I could think of. She simply wanted to take me to Yokosuka. What would have been the point, though? Going there had served the tactical use of misdirecting the police as to the location of the culprits’ hideout. But that was my idea and not Juri’s suggestion. To grasp at straws, the only suggestion she did make was to go to a hill where you could see the stars. What was that about? What had that done?
No matter how I thought about it, the Yuki part didn’t seem like a made-up story. Then why had Juri made up a lie about the condo? At that point my thoughts went in circles. I felt like I was wandering in a labyrinth far away from the goal.
There was one more cause for my anxiety. It was Katsutoshi Katsuragi.
According to the people involved in the new Nissei Automobile car release, Katsuragi hadn’t attended meetings at all since last weekend. There were rumors that he hadn’t been coming to work either. Why had that man, who hadn’t let his style suffer even as I inflicted my kidnapping game on him, started taking time off from work now that it was over?
The faces of the father and daughter pair, Katsutoshi and Juri Katsuragi, alternately drifted through my mind. I didn’t know what the two of them were thinking. I couldn’t begin to guess where they were now and what they were up to. That fact harried me to no end.
—
“Excuse me, could you please lift your left hand a little more? Ah, that’s right. That’s perfect.” The bearded cameraman clicked the shutter in succession.
The person being photographed was a popular pro golfer who had recently become active outside of Japan as well. He held a putter and made a pose as though he’d just gotten the ball in the hole. He seemed accustomed to being photographed, and there was little awkwardness in his expression. I took comfort in knowing that the shoot probably wouldn’t take long.
It was for a magazine promo for a wristwatch made by a German company. Because they wanted to highlight its impact- and vibration-resistance, we had a golfer promote it. We were showing how, even with his powerful swing, the watch was invulnerable.
After the shoot was the interview. Beforehand, we had the pro-golfer put on the watch and hit some balls. We would ask about how that felt. Of course, it wasn’t me who would ask; the assigned writer would also conduct the interview. While that happened in a tearoom in the studio, I attended to the wristwatch-only shoot. A junior coworker of mine named Yamamoto would be there for the interview.
It seemed around the time our shoot was done, the interview had ended. After seeing the pro golfer off to the entrance, I had a meeting with the writer about the content. He was a young man with long hair. After we had spoken for a bit, I feared that he might be missing the point, so I instructed him in detail about what aspects to emphasize. The writer seemed dissatisfied, but an article meant to showcase his own literary sensibilities was worthless.
“Mr. Sakuma, you’re as harsh as ever. That writer was hoping to delve into a pro golfer’s true face and was focusing his questions on that,” Yamamoto divulged bemusedly in the car on the way back to the office. He was driving.
“We’re not letting a guy like him tamper with our precious ad. I bet he wants to make it as a nonfiction writer one day, but if he can’t grasp the point of an assignment, no wonder he hasn’t gotten there yet.”
“Haha, I guess you could say that.” Yamamoto laughed like it was the funniest thing, then lowered his voice a little and added, “By the way, Mr. Sakuma, did you hear about Mr. Katsuragi?”
“Mr. Katsuragi? The executive vice president?” I asked with a start.
“Yes, of course. It seems that something happened to his daughter.”
Now my heart skipped a beat. “Like what?”
“I don’t really know, but it seems she’s gone missing.”
I faced Yamamoto. If he had been looking at me, he might have noticed that I’d gone pale. Luckily, his eyes were on the street.
“Missing?” My voice sounded an octave too high.
“I don’t know the details. I only heard about it from someone else, and he told me it was just a rumor at Nissei Automobile. But it seems like a concrete story, and they’re saying that’s why Mr. Katsuragi hasn’t been showing up to work lately. He did or didn’t put in a missing person report, and so on.”
“Why would that become a rumor? Did Mr. Katsuragi tell someone?”
“He must have. Assuming the rumors are true.”
“When did you hear about this?”
“This morning. Before setting out for this job. I wanted to see if you’d heard about it but didn’t get the chance. The way you’re acting now, I suppose you hadn’t.”
“I didn’t know at all.”
“I see. It’s just a rumor though.” Yamamoto continued to drive unaware of the importance of what had come out of his mouth.
I was lucky he hadn’t asked me before the shoot. If he’d told me, I wouldn’t have been in any state to work and wouldn’t have possessed the judgment to tell off that incompetent writer.
Yamamoto was talking about something else. Contributing to the conversation as necessary, I thought about Juri. She was missing? So she really hadn’t gone home. Then where was she?
The scene of our parting near Shinagawa station revived in my mind. Where had she gone from there? Had she been snatched away by someone? Impossible. Getting abducted right after a staged kidnapping was a story too tall even for TV dramas.
She had to have disappeared of her own volition. Where to? At that point, the words “Yuki’s condo” grabbed me again.
What if Juri had planned this scenario from the start?
She had gotten on board with my kidnapping game. However, she hadn’t been interested in becoming my puppet. She’d meant to disappear somewhere instead of going home once she’d gotten the money. But until she could find a permanent destination, she needed a place to hide away. She chose her friend’s condo. That was why its location had to be concealed from me. She thought that if I knew, I would come looking for her when I found out that she hadn’t gone home. Indeed, I went to Yokosuka.
With this theory, I at least had an explanation. But there was one point that still didn’t make sense.
If the theory was correct, she didn’t have to tell me about the existence of Yuki’s condo. Or was the part that she’d left a message on the answering machine true? No, even then, she wouldn’t have had to rush there. She could erase it at her leisure if she meant to use it as a hiding place later.
I must have been grunting noncommittally because Yamamoto stopped talking.
When I got back to the office and arrived at our floor, I was taken aback. No one was there.
“Huh, what happened?” Yamamoto said, also sounding confused.