Chapter 201: Asking Properly

Chapter 201: Chapter 201: Asking Properly

Haruki spent three days deciding whether to ask the man who had once tried to own his story for the one name that could save it. He didn’t make the decision alone. He had learned, over two and a half years, that the decisions he made alone were usually the wrong ones.

He asked Morikawa Sayo first, because it was her name on the court record and her face on the evening news, and her café in Hakata where a man in a grey suit had handed her an envelope.

He called her on the evening of the third of November. She was in her apartment with its walls full of flowers. There were new ones in the window now, blue, bought from a shop two streets away.

He read her the postcard, all three lines.

I know his name.

I didn’t send him. I’d like you to know that, whatever else you think of me.

If you want it, ask me properly. In person. — I.K.

She was quiet for a very long time.

"He drew the café," she said at last. "The rainy one. Near Hakata Station. With two cups." Her voice was unsteady. "I never told anyone it was raining that day. Not the police or Hirose-sensei. I forgot it was raining until I saw his drawing."

"Then he’s telling the truth about knowing."

"Or he was there," said Morikawa. "Watching."

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

"It’s your decision as much as mine," Haruki said. "It’s your testimony that needs the name. If you’d rather we didn’t ask him—"

"Ask him," Morikawa said immediately. Then, more slowly: "No. Wait." She took a breath. "Ask him. But don’t ask him for me. Ask him for the other four. Mizutani-kun hasn’t slept properly since the court. Sano-san cries in her sleep, her mother told me." She was quiet for a moment. "If the court decides it was planted, they’ll have lost five months and their names for nothing."

Hirose was more careful.

"There’s nothing unlawful about asking a man for a name," the old lawyer said on the phone that night. "And nothing unlawful about his giving it. But you need to understand what you’d be doing, Amamiya-kun." A pause. "Ishikawa Kōji has been referred to prosecutors and has never once answered a question. If he gives you the courier’s name, he’ll be helping a case against the fund he sits on the board of. He’ll be doing it from outside Japan, where nobody can compel him." Another pause. "Men like that don’t give anything without deciding what it’s worth to them."

"What would it be worth to him?"

"I don’t know," Hirose said honestly. "That’s what frightens me." He was quiet for a moment. "And there’s the other thing. In person. He’s in Singapore. Unless you mean to ask him to come here, where prosecutors could—"

"He was here in June," Haruki said. "In Koenji. In a grey coat. He signed his name on a paper sheet in red ink."

The line was very quiet.

"Then he’s braver or more foolish than I thought," said Hirose. "Or both." He sighed. "Ask him, if you want to. Properly, as he says. But don’t go alone, and don’t promise him anything. Not even silence."

He told Yui on Sunday, at seven exactly, because it was number one on a list in a pocket notebook: Tell me when things are hard, while they’re happening.

She listened from the bench by the canal in Helsinki, with the swans and the November dark already coming down at four in the afternoon there. When he finished, she was quiet for a long time.

"You’re going to go," she said at last. It wasn’t a question.

"I don’t know yet."

"You are," Yui said. "You decided when Morikawa-san said the other four. I can hear it." She was quiet for a moment. "Where?"

"He said in person. He didn’t say where."

"Then ask him where," said Yui. "And tell me the date before you go. Not after." Her voice was steady. "Number one. And number four. I need to know where you are."

"I’ll tell you."

"And Haruki." She hesitated. "He sent you three postcards. A bus stop, a crown, a café. Every one of them was a drawing of someone waiting." She was quiet for a moment. "I don’t know what that means. I just noticed."

He wrote the letter on Monday night, sitting on the crate in front of his desk, on a single sheet of plain paper. He wrote it by hand, because every postcard he had received had been handwritten, and he thought that mattered.

He didn’t write much.

Ishikawa-san,

I’m asking.

Five artists drew a story they were told was licensed. They didn’t know. A court will hear their evidence on December 12th. The only thing they don’t have is the name of the man in the grey suit.

I’m not asking for myself. I’m asking for a nineteen-year-old who nearly didn’t climb the stairs at Sakuradamon, and a girl who cries in her sleep, and three others whose names have been in the newspapers since September, and a florist who said "we didn’t know" on the steps of a court.

Tell me where, and I’ll come.

I won’t promise you anything. Not even silence. I’m told that’s what asking properly means.

— Amamiya Haruki

He addressed it to the Singapore office of the fund, as he had once addressed a small book with a card inside it. Aya had given him the full address in September, typed on a slip of paper she had kept in her desk since the day she found a sealed envelope in red ink.

He posted it on Tuesday morning from the small post office by Koenji Station. The same clerk weighed it, stamped it, and put it in the international tray without looking up.

The reply came eleven days later, on the eighteenth of November. It wasn’t a postcard this time.

It was a single sheet of heavy cream paper, folded once, in a plain envelope with a Singapore stamp and no return address. The handwriting was the same thin red ink.

Amamiya-kun,

Thank you for asking properly. Nobody else has, in twenty-three years.

Not in Tokyo. I won’t put you in the position of having to decide whether to tell anyone you’ve seen me.

Singapore. November 24th. 10:00. A coffee shop on Keong Saik Road, in Chinatown. Downstairs, below a shop that sells paper lanterns. The owner will know you.

Come with whoever you trust. I’ll be alone.

Bring your sketchbook.

— I.K.

Haruki read it three times, standing in his doorway in the November cold, with the letter in one hand and the envelope in the other.

Downstairs, below a shop that sells paper lanterns.

Come with whoever you trust.

He didn’t have to think about it for long.

He called Hirose that night. The old lawyer listened to the letter read aloud, twice, and was quiet for a long moment.

"Singapore," he said at last. "I’m seventy-two, and I haven’t been on an aeroplane since my wife died." A pause. "I’ll need a new passport. Mine expired in 1994." Another pause. "I’ll go to the ward office tomorrow morning. You’ll need a witness who reads contracts four times, and I’d like to hear him say whatever he says with my own ears."

Then Haruki called Nerima.

Sugiura Chie answered on the second ring. He read her the letter. When he reached nobody else has, in twenty-three years, he heard her set her teacup down very carefully on its saucer.

"You want me to come," she said. It wasn’t a question.

"You watched him for eighteen years," Haruki said. "You wrote down every step. You saw the memo on his desk nine years ago, and nobody believed you." He hesitated. "You told me once you’d always thought that at the end you’d see him sit across a table and answer for it. I thought you should be at the table."

The line was quiet for a very long time. He could hear the clock above her sink, and the faint hiss of a kettle.

"I’ve never been to Singapore," Sugiura said at last. Her voice was very even. "I’ve never been anywhere. I went to Osaka once for a conference in 1991 and didn’t leave the hotel." She paused. "I’ll have to buy a suitcase."

"Is that a yes?"

"It’s a yes," said Sugiura. "Eighteen years, Amamiya-kun. I’d go to the moon." A pause. "Downstairs, below a shop that sells paper lanterns." Her voice changed very slightly. "He chose that on purpose. You know that."

"I know."

"Then he’s been reading my comments too," said Sugiura quietly. "For eight years. Under a name with lantern in it." She was quiet for a moment. "I’ll bring the notebook. Not the green one. The Commission has that. I started a new one in December." Another pause. "It has three pages so far. They’re all about him."

He told Yui the date that Sunday, as he had promised: November 24th. Singapore. Ten in the morning. Sugiura-san and Hirose-sensei are coming.

She wrote back from the bench by the canal, in the four o’clock dark.

Thank you for telling me before.

Bring your sketchbook. He asked for it. I think he wants to read it the way he reads first Chapters on Tuesday nights.

And look back when you go through the gate. I won’t be there. Look anyway.

The blue screen opened quietly.

PART FIVE: GHOST PROJECT. Invitation received: Ishikawa Kōji. Location: Singapore (Keong Saik Road). Date: Nov 24, 10:00. Condition: "Come with whoever you trust." — Hirose Kenzō, Sugiura Chie. Court hearing: Dec 12 (18 days after meeting).