3

* * * * *

Surely not.

As we stood outside the obstetrics clinic, I gulped hard. Even I couldn’t help but have a few base thoughts.

“If the president really is her partner, would he know about her being… About this?” Touka looked a little angry.

“I wonder… Considering he ran away, maybe not.”

“That’s so irresponsible!” She was in a huff. It was a natural response, but It felt like I was being reprimanded as well. I was worried that I might do the same, were I in his position.

About thirty minutes later, Furukita Sonoko came out, and we resumed our covert pursuit.

She entered a coffee shop and quietly began sipping on some tea. We sat down at a table in a fast food joint laid out like a cafeteria and watched as we ate our burgers. She then took some kind of book out of her handbag and began to read. She was intending to stay for a while, it seemed.

“Think she’s waiting for someone?” said Miyashita, holding a fry between her fingers.

“Unlikely. She hasn’t been looking at her watch at all.”

Peering through the viewfinder of my telescopic camera, I noticed that she seemed to be engrossed in her book. I quickly averted my gaze, before commuters would start getting suspicious.

“This is boring.”

“Stake-outs usually are.”

“Do you do this a lot, Nonomura-san?”

“Well, for work, this wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Huh. Did one of those times happen to involve your report on phantoms?” she asked, and I had to laugh.

“Not in the slightest! That’s my personal project,” I explained to Miyashita, who was looking incredulous. “So, here’s the deal—right now, I’m officially an in-house journalist, but that doesn’t stop me from taking on freelance jobs. That investigation is one of those.”

“And it’s about phantoms?”

“Well, more precisely, it’s supposed to be ‘an analysis of urban structures and interpersonal malformity in modern folklore’. It’s interesting. The things people say from one generation to another may be different, but you can always draw some parallels between them.”

Miyashita simply blinked at me for a moment, but eventually continued.

“I’m doing that too, naturally. Today’s my day off.”

“…You used your day off to do the same thing you do at work?” There was a tone of disbelief in her voice. “Weird.”

“I guess that’s about the only thing I’m good at.” I smiled wryly.

“Is that like, your dream?” she asked, this time with a strangely serious look in her eyes.

And then…

…Guess you can’t hang on to your dreams forever.

It was as if someone had whispered right next to my ear. For some reason, the voice sounded much like my own.

“Nah. Well, it’s nothing as grandiose as that.”

“………” Miyashita stared at me with upturned eyes, and finally sighed. “You’re just like him. You’re lucky, to have such a clear goal.”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” said Miyashita, turning away.

“Who’s ‘him’? Let me guess—your boyfriend.” I inquired jokingly, but she replied with a gloomy “Pretty much.”

“Sometimes I kind of feel a little pathetic, talking to him.” She sounded vacant.

“But you are dating, right?” I was finding it difficult to understand what she found disagreeable.

“That’s exactly my point. I figured you probably wouldn’t understand.” Miyashita sighed deeply once more.

“………” I didn’t know what else to say. Then, I realized that I still hadn’t asked her about any of the things I’d been planning to ask her. It seemed I’d gotten caught up in her pace.

“So, why phantoms?” And again, she dropped in another question. It was getting hard to tell just which one of us was involved in the media.

“Huh? What do you mean, why? Where did this come from?”

“Well, like, what did you call it again? Modern folklore? That’s sort of twisted? If that’s what you’re researching, it doesn’t all have to be about old-fashioned stuff like ghosts, does it? There must be plenty of other stuff.”

“Actually, that’s where you’re wrong. There happen to be an awful lot of fresh new ghost stories at the forefront of civilization. There are many gaps in our awareness as we progress, and there’s a sense that something lurks within them.”

“Is that how it is?”

“In a way, the fact that we’re still progressing means that we aren’t fully developed. And, in that sense, there’s not much that distinguishes our age from primitive times. Our feelings of deep-rooted anxiety are, in their rawest form—”

“…Yeah, I don’t get it.” Miyashita shook her head.

And, in my ear, I thought I heard the words, She says she doesn’t get it. I doubt there’s anything you could say now that’s going to make her listen… A vague unease began to well up within me. But then, as if to cut that feeling short…

“So basically, you’re searching for something, and these phantoms are kind of a clue to help you find whatever that is, right?” she asserted with a strange finality. I was a little taken aback.

“Searching, huh? …Heh. When you put it like that, you’re probably right.”

“I wonder what it is you’re searching for?” she whispered.

The question wasn’t meant for me. She was thinking to herself and had only voiced her thoughts aloud. That she kept talking without waiting for my reply was proof of that.

“Maybe it was the same for Kigawa Tosuke. He kept on making so much ice cream, but what did he hope to achieve with that? Maybe he thought he’d eventually come to an answer. Or maybe he wasn’t aware of anything, consciously…”

“………”

I went silent, finding myself unable to follow up. At that moment, Furukita Sonoko in the coffee shop began to move.

“Ah, she got up!”

“Think she’s going home? Or heading somewhere else?”

We resumed our pursuit.

* * * * *

* * * * *

It seemed Furukita Sonoko was on her way back home. She was headed for the city center, lined with rows upon rows of skyscrapers. Although the area was packed with people, very few of them actually lived there.

“Where could she be going?” inquired Miyashita, “She’s on her own. I’d get it if she was going out on a date or something.”

“I wonder…”

It was indeed unusual to see a girl going to the commercial district alone. There were restaurants there, sure, but she’d just been drinking tea in a cafe. It was very unlikely she’d be going to a restaurant after that.

“And if she does happen to be pregnant, it’s even stranger. She shouldn’t be travelling out and about so much without a good reason.”

She moved at a constant pace. It was clear that she had some destination in mind. I wondered if she had an appointment with someone.

…Suppose that someone was the missing Kigawa Tosuke?

As I grew anxious and further observed Furukita Sonoko, Miyashita’s eyes began to dart about her surroundings.

“Hey… You know what, I think I might have seen this place before. They showed it on TV. Yeah, it was somewhere around here,” she whispered nervously.

“I don’t see anything weird about the area.” I was determined not to lose sight of Furukita Sonoko.

“That’s not what I mean… It was on a news program. And the reason why they were showing it…” Her voice was trembling. “Don’t you remember? It was the vocalist of some rock band. And this was place that he…”

Then it struck me, and I took in my surroundings.

She was right.

Back then, this skyscraper was the place where a young artist at the peak of his popularity committed suicide by jumping off a roof: The Grand Centrale. It had become a famous spot, and for a while, there was a constant stream of high school girls who’d been stopped on the roof carrying their wills.

“D-don’t tell me…”

I felt a terrible chill as I looked at Furukita Sonoko’s back. While we’d been standing still, the distance between us had been growing.

“We’ve got to go after her!” Miyashita tugged on my sleeve, and I snapped to my senses.

“R-Right!”

We continued our pursuit, now with an altogether different tension.

Our prediction was correct. Furukita Sonoko, with no hesitation in her step, had walked through the front entrance of the Grand Centrale.

…I was naturally at a loss as to what to do.

It was too perfect to be coincidence.

The celebrity fallen from grace, supposedly fathering the child of a man of dubious origin, the presently missing Kigawa Tosuke, on her way back from the hospital, coming alone to a famous suicide spot…?

“We’ve gotta follow her, there’s no other way!” Miyashita dragged me along and we set foot in the towering building.

There were two tourist elevators specially provided for the various tenants within, a direct line to the viewing platform on the 62nd floor. Furukita Sonoko had, without any hesitation, taken one of them. We were too late to catch it, so our only option to wait impatiently as the other elevator descended.

“How slow can this stupid thing be…?!”

“Yeah—” As I said this, I realized that I may just have happened upon a scoop of unbelievable proportion.

Well so be it. If she wants to jump, let her jump. Then you can capture that so-called “irrefutable evidence” for yourself…

“………”

…but then I cast a sidelong glance at Miyashita beside me.

She was gritting her teeth, staring at the elevator display—one pointing up, the other down—looking ready to burst into tears at any moment. She was gripping her Spalding bag so tightly in both hands, they quivered slightly.

“…Looks like I have higher priorities right now,” I muttered to myself under my breath so that she wouldn’t hear.

“Hm? What did you say?”

She looked up, but I shook my head and told her it was nothing. Some first-rate reporter you are, I thought.

The elevator arrived, and we rushed inside frantically. It took only about a minute to reach the top, but to us, it felt like hours. The moment we arrived, Miyashita dashed out onto the floor with no regard for the other visitors, with me following quickly behind.

“…Ahh, she’s not here!” she cried out, scanning the area.

“Excuse me!” I started asking the people closest to us whether they’d seen a girl with so and so features.

“Oh yeah, there was a girl like that. She went that way,” one kind person explained. They pointed to the emergency exit, which led to the stairwell that ran the height of the building.

“Thank you!” I answered, and Miyashita and I flew down the route.

Normally, there shouldn’t have been anyone on those stairs, but now there were footsteps coming from above.

We tried calling out at the top of our lungs, but the owner of those footsteps had just opened another door and left the staircase. Even as we ran, we continued to yell, but there was no response—it seemed she hadn’t heard us. Under ordinary circumstances the door would have been locked, but for some reason it was now ajar. We went through and were met by a strong wind—where else but the open roof and its open sky.

“Shit. Why wasn’t the door—” I began to say, but something stopped me in my tracks. “…Oh.”

It was too late. Miyashita behind slammed into me with a thud.

“What gives?!” she shouted, visibly annoyed.

And then, the person on the roof turned toward us. We were so very late. I realized that we could no longer run away.

“Uh, uhm…” stammered Furukita Sonoko, looking our way.

The problem was, she wasn’t alone. And the other problem? This other person occupied the same space as her. In other words, the two of them…were locked in embrace.

“Wait…”

Miyashita’s eyes went wide as she assessed the two of them, who had evidently been kissing.

“W-who the hell are you two?” The man clinging to Furukita Sonoko was similarly surprised. “Huh? Nonomura-senpai, is that you?” he exclaimed in a goofy voice.

He’d been my kouhai in a media studies circle during my student years: Freelance photographer, Mamiya Kazuo. This was extremely bad.

“Ahh…sorry. We had no intention of peeping.”

There was nothing more I could do but bow my head and grin like an idiot.

“Suicide? Me?” After we’d explained, Sonoko burst out laughing. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“Uhm, well, that’s because… Uh, Nonomura-san?” Miyashita was floundering.

“Ah well, err… It looks like this was all a huge misunderstanding. We clearly read far too much into it,” I said, smoothing things over as best I could. “It seemed like a logical assumption to make, though. Why else would you come to such a place?”

“It’s because I’ve been here taking pictures here all day. Sonoko just came to bring me a little something to pep me up,” said Kazuo, grinning.

Kazuo was still working on his “Transforming City” photography series, something he’d begun back in his student days. Like the view from here, he had always longed for the kind of photography that had you looking down upon the world from above, and only recently had he received permission from the building’s superintendent.

“I had a lot of trouble trying to get them to let me do this, what with all the people jumping off and killing themselves. I was starting to become neurotic!”

Neurotic. Doesn’t that just sum this up, I thought to myself.

“But wow, you two were dating? I had no idea,” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s just that after she started getting so famous, it got kind of difficult to tell people around me… Not that it matters now. I just sort of missed the right window to say something.”

“Why doesn’t it matter now?”

“Oh, I retired from being a celebrity,” said Sonoko cheerfully, “so it doesn’t really matter if anyone finds out now.”

“Huh, is that so? … That would explain why you haven’t been on TV. But why?”

“That’s…” Sonoko’s face went red, and she began to fidget.

“You know, though, you’re absolutely right, senpai. She shouldn’t have been coming to a place like this. She needs to be taking more care of her body,” he said with a silly smile.

Miyashita and I exchanged glances.

“So then, the child she’s pregnant with…”

“Yeah. It’s ours,” said Kazuo proudly.

“Yup. So I thought, hey, maybe it’s time to quit the celebrity life,” Sonoko said with a nod.

“Hoo, boy…” Miyashita and I suddenly felt a sudden wave of exhaustion, and our shoulders slumped.

It appeared the two of them already had their name in the family register. They were married, but they hadn’t had a ceremony yet so only their close relatives knew right now.

“…That would make you Mamiya Sonoko-san, then? So you’re going to be a mother soon…” Idle remarks were all I could muster. “You’re quite young, too. Not that that’s anything unusual.”

“That’s amazing,” said Miyashita, with an obtuse sort of praise. “I kind of respect that.”

“It’s nothing special, really.” Sonoko blushed. She looked genuinely happy. I was starting to feel like a total fool for presuming such sordid business.

“But you know what, senpai, I’m glad.” Suddenly, Kazuo put a hand on my shoulder.

“About what?”

“Well, you seem to be doing just great. Looks like you’ve worked up the spirit for ‘phantoms’ again, eh?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you remember, senpai? Back when you were applying for jobs, you said something like ‘It’s just not worth pursuing my own goals anymore’. Honestly, it really hurt when you said that. But it looks like you didn’t lose that passion. I’ve changed my opinion of you,” he said, nodding up and down.

“Oh really?” Miyashita peered at my face.

“Ah, er… That’s…”

My head was starting to spin. Thinking back on it, it was true. When I was a student, every proposal I’d taken to the publishing agency had been curtly rejected time after time, and it had drained all the motivation from me.

…Huh? So, when exactly did I decide to pursue my own goals?

It felt that it must have begun…after I interviewed Kigawa Tosuke.

* * * * *

Furukita—rather, Mamiya Sonoko—was only too happy to help with my report.

“Kigawa-san? No, I don’t think he was an especially strange person at all.”

“You did taste testing for the ice cream, right? How did you come to end up there?”

“Umm… How did I again? Oh yeah, I remember! I was reporting on the company for my work, and that was when they invited me.”

“So they were relying on your taste expertise, were they?”

She laughed at my question. “Come on, now! I didn’t have any talent as an appraiser at all!”

“What then?”

“It was because I made connections with someone from the office. We sort of formed a tie-up. All I ever really did was treat myself to ice cream.”

“Oh, really? That’s not what others have told me…”

“If I’m being particularly frank, that’s because both sides were viewing it as a promotion. The truth is, I don’t really like sweet things myself,” she said with a carefree smile. I’d had the feeling that she was a little closer to the center of things, so this came as a surprise.

“So you were never engaged in any especially meaningful conversations with Mr. Kigawa?”

“I’m afraid not. But that didn’t mean I was on bad terms with him or anything. It was strictly business.”

“Business, eh… So, your relationship with the company must have been pretty dry then.”

“Yeah.” Sonoko nodded with a gentle, calming smile. I could already feel a sort of motherlike dignity that lay behind it.

“Huh, I see. I suppose you aren’t really all that familiar with Mr. Kigawa then…”

I had been hoping to learn more about him, but if she didn’t know anything, then I was at a loose end. Then Miyashita, sitting beside me, posed a question to Kazuo, who had also joined us.

“Were you dating Sonoko-san back then too, Mamiya-san?”

“Yep, sure was.”

“Did you hear anything to this effect at the time?”

“Oh, absolutely. She used to get so excited about it! Always going on about so insanely delicious it was.”

“What? Oh, come on. I never said anything like that!” Kazuo was amused at Sonoko’s anger.

“What are you talking about? It was just about the only thing you’d talk about back then.”

“It was not! Why are you making things up? He’s making this up,” she said towards me emphatically.

“I swear it’s true. It actually got to the point where I felt a little jealous. Any time I brought up something like ‘You and that young company boss get along pretty well, huh,’ she’d get in a huff and be like, ‘Give me a break, he’s got his own partner!’” said Kazuo, seemingly entertained. Sonoko, on the other hand, was pursing her lips ever tighter.

“I said nothing of the sort! This is getting ridiculous.” She pouted in a childlike manner unbefitting of her age. This tickled me, and I couldn’t help but laugh a little too.

“So, Sonoko-san?” inquired Miyashita.

“What?”

“You don’t remember, then? What the ice cream tasted like?” Her tone was strangely serious, or sober, and her way of speaking, oddly masculine.

“Why?”

“Well, she claims she was a big fan of that ice cream. That’s why she’s taken such an interest,” I said, following through, but Miyashita ignored me and continued to question Sonoko."

“Are you saying that you have no recollection of what the flavor was, or how you felt when you tasted it?”

“………”

Sonoko was momentarily lost for words, but despite that could still form an answer.

“…Umm, let me see.”

Miyashita continued to stare unbroken at Sonoko, who was slightly shaken, and spoke on.

“In which case, it would mean that the events surrounding the ice cream and Kigawa Tosuke—even so far as the details of his artistic capabilities—have been all but completely emptied from your mind?” Miyashita followed that with a nod and an “I see”. “Because no particular change had been observed, you no longer became a target… Is that how we’re to take this?”

“What are you talking about?” Sonoko looked perplexed.

In the next instant, Miyashita was grinning.

“I was just thinking how lucky you’ve got it. I’m taking entrance exams, so I don’t have time to reminisce about the past and stuff,” she said spiritedly. “I think I’m kind of jealous, actually. Sorry if I said something weird.”

“No, no, it’s quite alright.” Sonoko smiled back.

This complex exchange between the two women was utterly unintelligible to Kazuo and I. At best, all we could do was glance at each other and shrug.

[1] What I translate as ‘ghost’ and ‘phantom’ here is the same word in Japanese. What Nonomura is talking about involves more than just what we consider ghosts, so I use the word ‘phantom.’ However, at certain times here it makes more sense to translate it as ‘ghost.’