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"I'm looking for the person who killed my husband, and for my husband's body."
She announced her missing person and lost "item" with a smile, as if it were nothing at all.
Even in my line of work, I don't handle information this carelessly.
"I was told the culprit who killed my husband was here, so I came to check."
As if pondering, Which one should it be?, her index finger moved back and forth between the three of our foreheads.
"Could it be... one of you?"
"Absolutely not," the old man and I shook our heads simultaneously, as if by prior agreement.
The woman paused, adopting a pose of deep thought or perhaps trying to recall something, then fixed her aim on the old man's daughter.
"You, what's your name?"
"Sh-Shiina Natsumi."
"Oh, then it seems you're not the one."
"Oh dear," she said, as if laughing off a mistake, trying to smooth things over.
"Never mind that! What do you mean Mom is d-dead?! I haven't heard anything about this! Wh-what is this?!"
The daughter screamed hysterically, demanding an explanation from her father about the body in the bathroom. Her confusion found its voice, and then she clung to the old man's arm. The old man let out a deep sigh, ran a hand through his messy bangs, and began to mumble the sequence of events.
"Two days ago, I came home from work, and my wife, who should have always been there, was gone. There was no note whatsoever. She didn't come back even late at night and didn't answer her phone. Just when I was about to report it to the police, this cell phone rang. And when I answered, they had the gall to say, 'We've found your wife's body.'"
The old man, standing in the bathroom doorway as if to protect his wife's body from anyone and everyone, spun his words reluctantly, a cynical smile on his face.
The daughter, as if having a convulsion, trembled and shook her head side to side, "No, no."
"...that's what they said."
"I pressed him, 'Did you kill her?!' but he just kept insisting he'd only found her. I wasn't getting anywhere. What's more, he demanded money for her return. He even threatened that if I told the police, he'd 'beat the corpse to a pulp until it lost its original form.' I don't know about other guys, but I wished for the body's safety, and if money could solve it, I agreed to the exchange."
"The money's packed in there," he said, pointing to a Boston bag lying near the refrigerator. It seemed I was the only one in the room whose interest was piqued by the words "large sum of money"; the women showed no reaction.
Well, the daughter, I suppose, was in no state to care about such things.
"Messing with a corpse is pure blasphemy. Unlike the living, they don't react, you know? To defile them despite that... it's the worst kind of perversion. There's nothing I find more repulsive than toying with a dead body."
He spat out the words as if utterly disgusted, cursing this other person's "hobby."
My own perversions are probably being similarly denigrated somewhere in the world, too.
Influenced by her father's state, the daughter's lips trembled as they parted. Her voice, when it came out, was shaky too.
"You should have... told me."
"I wanted to give your mother a normal funeral. And I wanted you to attend a normal funeral, one not reeking of blood. That's why, if possible, I didn't want to involve the police... Besides, if I told you, you might have been put in danger."
"That's why I kept quiet. Or rather, I wasn't planning on telling you at all. I'm sorry."
As the old man apologized, his face tear-streaked, the daughter simply burst into tears. Her face was a terrible mess.
When she finished crying, her makeup would be completely ruined, and her face would be unwatchable.
Am I the only one who thinks it wouldn't matter if makeup disappeared from this world?
Adornment mixes two desires: 'to look better' and 'to hide flaws.' I dislike things where the latter proportion is larger. It's an inconvenient fixation for living in human society, though.
"More importantly, where's my husband? Are there any other bodies in this room?"
The woman, ignoring the somber atmosphere entirely, asked me, as I seemed like someone with whom a conversation could proceed smoothly.
I owed her for picking up my hat, so I answered honestly.
"Unfortunately, no. More importantly, about this cell phone..."
I showed her the LCD screen of the cell phone I'd "borrowed" from the room, for confirmation.
The corners of the woman's eyes softened, and she grinned openly at the man's picture.
"Is this your husband?"
"Yes, that's right. This is my husband's cell phone."
As she spoke, she snatched the phone from my hand and started rubbing her cheek against its body.
"So he really was staying here."
"It would seem so."
"Pardon?"
"Eh?"
The cell phone let out a sharp crack, a scream quite unlike its ringtone.
"My husband, in a room for two. With someone else, someone other than me."
.........This woman is sick, I realized, a bit too late. She seemed more suited to murder than that man in blue. Or maybe, with her madness so openly on display, people would be wary, making her more prone to failure?
"No, it's fine. It's just the two of us inside me now."
"There's no need to rush. Yes, that's right, darling..."
She was turned to the wall, carrying on a monologue. I wanted to pretend I hadn't seen it, but I'm bad at lying, so I'll state clearly: I saw it, but I wanted to look away. Mmm, terrifying.
If this woman was the murderer and I, the detective, was ordered to confront her, I'd raise the white flag immediately. Anyway, the father and daughter are still crying together, so maybe I should step out for a bit. If someone like me, who's practically a supervisor, were to leave, the three people involved in the case might make a move.
There was a part of me that heartlessly thought, "This is noisy." And I wanted to put some distance between myself and the woman.
One doesn't want to be near a balloon inflated with poison gas.
I stepped out into the hallway to check if there were any visitors or observers around, when from the next room, a young couple—linked, in a manner of speaking—appeared. "Hey," I greeted them, silently praying they wouldn't come this way. The boy glanced at the door of Room 1701, but just nodded with a "Hello" and headed off towards the elevator.
"...Right. A normal couple."
As she—her name was probably Eko—said earlier, the rooms on this floor are twins, so it wouldn't be strange if there was another guest. In fact, that would be more natural. If you're undertaking the major task of carrying a body to this room, you wouldn't want to make a strong impression on anyone.
Staying alone in a room on this floor would be unnatural, more memorable.
An eccentric or a crank might stay in a large room just because it's spacious, or perhaps there are people who count their cats as guests, but excluding such exceptions, there was no need for this woman's husband to book a twin room if he was the only one using it this time. So, where is the woman who accompanied him now?
Could she have been killed? By that criminal in blue, perhaps?
Then where was her body hidden? No, even if that were the case, would that blue-suited man be the mastermind?
That doesn't sit right with me. Most of it, anyway.
"Um, what have you been doing all this time?"
A cleaning staff member, pushing a cart and looking as if her day's cleaning was done, called out to me suspiciously. The top of her cart was piled high, as if she'd finished collecting sheets and bath towels from all the rooms. "No, it's just that the room has been quite noisy for a while, so I was wondering what was going on."
"Ah, maybe we got a little too rowdy with friends..."
The cleaning staff member moved with her cart to the front of the room door. She peeked inside, confirmed the people within, and then remarked in a cold tone, "None of you seem to be the guests registered for this room, nor do I see their companions." People with a strong sense of professionalism are such a pain.
As I struggled for words, the cleaner let out a sigh, "Haaah...", audibly expressing her feelings. The impression was, "Don't make more work for me." She briskly entered and began to "clean" the room.
Though what she was "cleaning out" was people.
The woman named Eko, muttering to herself, and the father and daughter, still crying and unable to move, were ushered out of the room, and the door was closed. The father brought the Boston bag out of the room, but he just left the crucial dead body behind. Is that really okay, you two?
"Why do you, who are not the guests of this room, have the card key?"
"Well, it's kind of how things turned out..." There was no way she'd believe me if I explained a cat gave it to me. The card key was also confiscated. "If you find a card key, please bring it to the front desk."
For some reason, I was the one who got scolded, as if I were their representative. She spoke to me like she was warning an elementary schooler about shoplifting, which irked me a little, but I meekly apologized, "I'm sorry." Since the others were too unresponsive, it was an unavoidable outcome.
"When the guests for that room return, I will inform them about this matter," she declared in a stern tone, making it clear she wouldn't overlook our minor offense.
Well, it would hurt the hotel's reputation if rumors spread about people entering rooms without permission. I guess my detective game ends here. I got a bit too carried away.
The world is trying to fade to black before the story's curtain can fall.
There's still not enough information.
Just one more person, and it feels like everything could be over.
"Someone..." I shook my head vigorously.
Without fully understanding what I'd even wanted to say.
The sound of an elevator stopping echoed faintly from far down the hall.
In the end...
I guess it means I missed my chance.
Tanetorii Hibiki (College Student)
5:00 PM
I stretch my body.
Well, whether I got dumped or not is currently under deliberation. Running into her dad on our first hotel stay together... no one could have predicted that, surely. "Aaargh," I groaned, arching my back. Either way, it's going to be kind of awkward to face her at university. This vague, unresolved atmosphere is painful.
I was sitting on a long bench on the hotel's lobby floor, vaguely watching the flow of people. I thought about going outside, but I was so listless that this was as far as I could manage for an "outing."
I observed that this hotel has a lot of foreign guests. That's why, when I occasionally spot a Japanese person walking amongst them, my unfocused eyes regain some vitality.
A little while ago, that young couple with their pinkies tied by a string wandered off towards the escalator. It's a bit early, but I wonder if they're going to get dinner. Besides them, there was the man in a short-sleeved shirt whose flip-flops were conspicuous, and the woman who was sharing a room with Natsumi's dad also toddled off.
Looking back from a distance, it's part of an everyday scene, but when I got involved, this hotel was full of strange guests. The seventeenth floor, especially, seemed to have its floors and walls constructed from fateful encounters and bizarre connections.
The man with the weird hat and suspicious-looking bag; the little girl who asked me if I liked mushrooms; the woman about my age who walked with a limp; the self-proclaimed detective, a shifty older girl. The father of the girl who invited me to the hotel, and the girl herself. Oh, and though I don't know who owns it, a cat strolling leisurely through a hotel that prohibits pets.
Every last one of them seemed like characters whose personalities were so strong, everything else about them was overshadowed.
It was strange to think that I was one of those guests.
Ah, come to think of it, there was also that shoe with a wad of cash peeking out. If I had the guts to sneakily steal that and make my future living expenses abundant... I wouldn't be moping around like this.
"Now, what should I eat today...?"
I muttered, trying to drum up my faint appetite while watching the back of the hotel staff lady handling foreign guests in English. Maybe curry at that coffee shop over there? No, no, I had that for lunch. I have no intention of grasping a spoon and becoming a naturalized Curry Alien. It sounds like a name that would get me exterminated by those guys who receive weapons from a black sphere. Aaargh, I'm an empty shell. My insides feel dead. It's the backlash from all the tension.
I'll just pick something random. Right, I saw a flyer in the room at lunchtime, so let's go for Chinese food.
Maybe, besides the food, there might be a wonderful encounter (with a Chinese beauty) or something. Not likely, though.
Is it about five o'clock now? Feels a bit early, but well, I don't have anything else to do.
I felt so drained, like I was about to slide off the chair and lie down on the coldly polished floor at any moment.
"I'm totally wiped..."
My jaw trembled, bobbing up and down lightly as if it had lost its axis. My back muscles felt like they'd been severed, so I longed for a backrest. The light leaking from the nearby internet-use PC was harsh on my eyes, and when I turned my face away, pebbles of light swarming on the window jumped into view.
Outside the window, the road below showed a line of red dots moving back and forth in the fading light. Sunlight reflected off the windows of skyscrapers, searing into my eyes. Still, I stared blankly for a while.
An inexplicable sentimentality swirled within me. Looking down from a high place at the scenery of people coming and going.
When I realize how many things are in motion, I'm usually struck by an indescribable emotion. So many people, breathing, looking ahead, gripping steering wheels, moving their feet.
They're alive. Unrelated to me, yet connected to someone, forming bonds somewhere.
More than half the day is over. Looking down at the townscape as the setting sun approaches, I wonder: Is there any meaning to me coming here today, sitting here now?
Was it for her sake? Or for someone else's? For the family of a friend's acquaintance? Even if the last one's unlikely.
For a lover I haven't met yet? Could this be a stepping stone to acquiring a child bride?
As long as it's "something." I've lived a bland, odorless college life, anxious that my days might be ending without meaning. If I, of all people, have managed to undertake a meaningful act, then I'm genuinely happy.
Well, if I got dumped, it's meaningless, though, really. I want insurance, from fate.
A short "Hih!" cry entered my ears, and I turned from the window back towards the hotel interior.
A woman with a child was looking at me, extremely surprised. Her hand covered her mouth, and her eyes seemed to hold fear. "Yes?" I pre-emptively tilted my head, and the little girl, about kindergarten age, holding her mother's hand, energetically tilted her head, mimicking me with a "Yes!" But sensing her mother's mood, she quickly straightened her head and stood bolt upright. I don't have any special proclivities, but her behavior was a little endearing.
"No, no... Ah, that's right, it wouldn't be strange for you to be here, would it?"
The mother shook her head and pressed a hand to her forehead, like someone whose soul, which shouldn't assert itself with things like "memories of a shrine maiden passed down since ancient times are stirring," had been shaken. "Mommy?" the little girl asked, tugging her mother's hand and looking up at her face, concerned. "It's nothing," the mother said, stroking her daughter's head, then looked me up and down and sighed deeply. "Ahh, that surprised me," she said, patting her chest.
"Have we... met before?"
Seeing this woman, whom I had no recollection of, look so relieved yet troubled, I asked, warily. The woman said, "Ah, you... No, well, I somewhat know of you, who are a stranger's look-alike... or rather... Ah, I'm not crazy or anything."
"For now," she mumbled, adding that last part as she sat down on the long bench. The little girl also hopped up next to her mother with a "Hup!" and dangled her feet.
Does she have some business here? Surely she didn't come to see me.
"Huh?"
"...I mean."
"...so just let it slide."
"Well, let's just conclude with 'I've forgotten all about such old things.'"
"Was that Chaplin?"
"What are you talking about? It's Humphrey Bogart."
"Oh, was it?"
"Weren't you the one who told me?"
"Ah, no, no. Just kidding."
"Over there?"
She waved her hand dismissively, as if to say, "My interest has gone that way." No, seriously, could you please stop hinting so elaborately at some complicated past relationship? Doubting my own memory is a real pain.
Like drinking too much, blacking out, and then finding yourself in your apartment room. That stuff is scary.
"But I was surprised. I thought you'd gone 'over there' again, my heart was pounding like crazy."
"It's nothing. Just think of it as some unfamiliar foreign language and let it go in one ear and out the other, okay?"
She's been making a lot of suggestive remarks from the start. Is she really 'normal' now?
Even checking her profile, there's no match in my mental photo album. I can say for sure, this is the first time I've met this person.
"We haven't met before, right?"
I pressed again, more firmly, about whether we'd met. The woman nodded slightly, tucking her chin. "You haven't met me. So you don't need to be confused; your memory is correct."
"But you know me?"
"That expression... yes."
"...A stalker?"
"How rude. Raising a child is busy work, you know. I don't have time for such games."
The woman looked indignant, giving me a deadpan stare, so I tried apologizing with, "My bad." Just tried. Inwardly, I was thinking, 'It's always the people who say they're busy who are bad at managing their time.'
The little girl, perhaps bored, got off the chair and started pacing back and forth in front of her mother and me. She was clearly radiating "pay attention to me" beams from her eyes and the hand covering her mouth. Her mother gave a perfunctory "Grrrrowl" and smiled faintly at the girl.
"I wonder if this is fate."
"Eh?" I regarded her sudden topic with suspicion.
"This is just a hypothetical, okay?"
Like her daughter earlier, the woman looked up at the ceiling, swinging her legs like a pendulum.
".................."
"If you redid your life twice, and even without memories of the previous time, don't you think the probability of meeting someone twice who doesn't even live nearby is almost nil?"
"Unless it's intentional, probably."
"Right, if we're talking probability. But human connections, maybe they don't branch off based on possibilities, but are made that way from the very beginning." That's what I sometimes think.
When I conveyed "I don't understand" with my gaze, the woman, without looking away from the ceiling, responded with a smile.
"Like maybe the future determines the past. Normally, it's the other way around, right? It's normal to think that the past accumulates to become the future. But if present time is producing the future on the same axis, then doesn't that mean the future is all decided? If the ending is unshakeable, then the process leading to it must also be all arranged. When you run a 100-meter race, is the starting point created because the goal is decided first, or is it the other way around? I end up agonizing over it. And then I get all tangled up and don't understand anymore."
"...Yeah, I really have no idea what you're trying to say, it's too jumbled."
"When my head gets mixed up like that, I touch upon my truth and hit reset."
"It's that no matter how many times I'm reborn, I want this child to be my daughter!"
"What the, so you're just a doting parent?" That was a roundabout self-introduction.
"That's right. I'm not trying to hit on you, you know."
"I'm not that conceited."
I gave a wry smile. After all, I'd just had my heart broken.
The daughter stopped and tilted her head, "Nya?" Approaching her mother, she lisped, "Adult talk?" Her mother stroked her daughter's cheek with a finger, "I was just bragging." "Nya-nya," the daughter giggled, squirming because it tickled.
"Hey, are you down about something?"
"What's with the sudden question?"
"You don't seem like your usual self. Though, I guess I don't know you that well. After all..."
She let out an unladylike "Dehehehe" laugh, mulling over some memory.
Spitting it out like gum, she then turned to me with a smile, urging me to vent. "Well... I failed at going to a room with a girl. After coming all the way to the hotel, too."
Lured in, I confessed honestly. Did I want someone's sympathy?
"Hmm, with a girl..." The woman made a show of thinking. "No, I don't know if I was dumped or not, but things kind of got interfered with and became all vague," a justification next slipped out of my mouth. After saying it, I regretted it – it was the kind of thing I wished I hadn't said.
The little girl also put a hand to her face in a detective pose, "Mmmm." Her face, devoid of any worry lines, made you think she definitely wasn't thinking about anything at all.
"Hmm," the woman mused lightly for a moment, then her face brightened with a smile.
"It's like this: sure, you might have gotten dumped in this world, but you just have to think that somewhere in a parallel timeline, there's a world where you and that girl are dating, or even end up getting married."
"This is the first time I've been taught a life philosophy that uses an SF perspective..."
This person must really love parallel world stuff.
Well, I decided to interpret it as her trying to comfort me, at least.
The little girl, abandoning her detective pose, scampered over with a tot-tot-tot sound of dry shoes. She stood in front of me, her lips twitching. "What is it?" I prompted.
"España!"
"Huh?"
The girl shouted "Ei-yaaah!" raising her right hand high. I should probably interpret it not in its original meaning, but as "Cheer up!" It's kind of endearing, though I'm not a lolicon.
"Flexible!"
I tried to return the favor. Of course, this too was meant differently from its original meaning, serving as a reply of "I've cheered up!" The little girl giggled, her face beaming, and raised her remaining left hand, "Fu-ha, flexible!" She seemed to like it, as she hummed "flexible" several more times after that.
It seems I was able to help expand her vocabulary, which is vaguely pleasing.
Watching this, I couldn't maintain my dejected expression, and my cheeks inadvertently relaxed. In addition, as I tried to shift my posture, I remembered there was something in my pocket pressing against my thigh.
"What was that again?" I reached into my pocket.
What came out was a pack of cigarettes. "Ah." It had been in my pocket the whole time, so the surface was badly dented. I opened it to find three cigarettes inside, and of course, the photo was gone.
I suddenly remembered my old man, took out a cigarette, and put it in my mouth. Is this a non-smoking area? Well, in any case, where there's no fire, there's no smoke. Whenever I saw a deep fog of purple smoke drifting around the entrance of a lecture building at university, I'd always felt a faint curiosity, wondering if it really tasted that engrossing.
When my old man declared he was quitting smoking, he threw out all the lighters in the house and then started the bizarre habit of putting an unlit cigarette in his mouth to distract himself. Apparently, just having something in his mouth calmed him down. I tried to imitate him, hoping for similar luck, but... Mmm, not really anything special— "Here."
A hand suddenly jutted out from beside me, fire burning between its fingers. A vertically flickering flame. It was a lighter. While I was still confused, it lit the tip of my cigarette, and a color like a gentle sunset transferred to the tobacco.
When I inhaled what spread into my mouth, I choked violently.
"Geho, goho-gaho!" Seeing me cough, the woman broke into a wide grin.
"Oh, don't tell me you're not a smoker?"
"This is... my first time."
"Heeh, heeeeh... I see, I see. That's a relief."
"A relief about what?" Even if I asked, I probably wouldn't get a clear answer I could understand. I'd already figured that much out.
The woman craned her neck in the opposite direction from me and the window, her eyes following the flow of a group of foreigners as she murmured something. I thought it would be drowned out by the cacophony of the crowd, but her words reached my ears.
"I'm glad I could meet you here, on this side."
"There you go again, saying incomprehensible things." The smoke still lingered behind my teeth.
The story isn't going to start anymore, so please don't sow any more seeds.
The woman put a hand to her mouth. "Oops," she said, looking as if she rather enjoyed her slip of the tongue.
"Alright, shall we head back to the room soon?"
She called to the little girl, who had been stuck to the window, pressing her cheeks against the glass to stave off boredom. The girl reacted quickly, like a puppy, and scampered over to her mother. She slid to a stop in front of her mother with a "Zooosh!" and then they clasped each other's right hands tightly, "Squeeze, squeeze."
The mother watched this whole exchange with a face that looked like she was about to cry. Then she stood up and readjusted her bag on her shoulder. When I looked up, her youthful face offered me a smile tinged with loneliness.
"Well then, goodbye. Say hello to Anjou-san for me, okay?"
Leaving those words behind, she departed with light steps.
Drawn by her words, I could have immediately chased after her, but I hastily inhaled the cigarette smoke, choked, and doubled over. Goho, goho. The air I coughed out seemed to have a color to it, like winter.
Covering my mouth, I watched the two backs walking away side-by-side companionably. They were a mother and child I couldn't recall ever seeing before, right to the very end.
"'Say hello to Anjou-san for me.'" I tried saying it like a certain manga title.
Is she really an acquaintance of mine? Was there someone like that among the apartment residents? Someone like her...
Don't tell me she's my eternal lover, bound to me by fate in a past life, still carrying that destiny over after reincarnation!
"............No way."
I'm not cut out for that kind of thing. I'm no Warrior of Light. I didn't fight the ruler of Mars a hundred years ago. Last New Year's, I was just rolling a moldy tangerine around for fun. "...Aaargh."
I scratched the back of my head. Who was that woman, anyway?