Chapter 203 Two Names

Chapter 203: Chapter 203: Two Names

Haruki opened the envelope at the table below the lantern shop, with Hirose on one side and Sugiura on the other. He read the first name three times before he understood why Ishikawa had warned him.

Inside was a single sheet of paper folded once, with two lines written in thin red ink. Paper-clipped behind it was a photocopy of an expense report.

The second line said Ishimura Reiko.

That didn’t surprise him. It hadn’t surprised anyone since a café in Setagaya in August, when Kagawa put his face in his hands and said I watched her type it.

The first line said Saito Kenji.

Haruki stared at it.

He knew the name. He had heard it in the first spring, in a conversation he barely remembered, about where Kuroda Ryu’s print volumes were published. Iidabashi. My editor there is Saito Kenji. He had seen it in small type on the copyright page of Blade Campus Rebellion Volume 3, which Kuroda had given him at the yakitori place eighteen months ago. Under it was a scrawled note: Read the rooftop Chapter. Saito-san made me redraw it four times.

Kuroda had mentioned him perhaps a dozen times. Saito-san says the fight’s too long. Saito-san says three countries now. Saito-san took me for dinner after the tournament. He mentioned him the way Haruki mentioned Mizuno, as someone who had believed in him early and stayed.

Haruki looked up at Ishikawa.

"Kuroda’s editor," he said.

"Yes."

"In Iidabashi. The one who publishes his print volumes."

"Yes," Ishikawa said quietly. "And before that, for six years, a junior associate at Theseus Partners. Then two years at Ariadne, under Ishimura Reiko, before Iidabashi hired him." He folded his hands on the table. "He was very good at both jobs. He was very good at being polite in cafés."

The small basement room was completely silent. Upstairs, the lantern shop’s bell rang once and stopped.

Hirose had taken the photocopy out from behind the paper clip and was reading it with his glasses pushed down his nose. Sugiura sat very still beside him, with her hand flat on her closed notebook. Her face had gone pale.

"Saito Kenji," she said slowly. "I wrote him down. In the green notebook. Twelve years ago." Her voice was very even. "Theseus associate, brought the contract to Kōda Mei at a café in Shimokitazawa. Very polite." She looked at Ishikawa. "I never knew where he went after."

"Iidabashi," said Ishikawa. "Where he edits the most successful rookie of his generation and takes him to dinner after tournaments." He paused. "And where, according to the paper Hirose-sensei is holding, he claimed travel expenses from an Osaka property company for a return trip to Fukuoka on the sixteenth of June. Client meeting, Hakata."

Hirose laid the photocopy flat on the table.

It was an expense claim on the letterhead of the Osaka property company, the one that had offered the Kinoshita brothers three times the value of their building. It listed a Shinkansen ticket from Shin-Osaka to Hakata and back on the sixteenth of June, and a receipt from a café near Hakata Station for two coffees.

The claimant’s name was Saito K.

It was approved by I. Reiko, Representative Director.

"June sixteenth," Hirose said quietly. "One week after the second access at 3:14 in the morning. Morikawa-san’s statement says the outline was handed to her at a café near Hakata Station in mid-June." He took off his glasses. "Two coffees."

"How did you get this?" Haruki asked.

Ishikawa looked at him for a long moment.

"The fund’s advisory board reviews the expenses of every company it holds a stake in," he said. "Quarterly. It’s very boring. Nobody reads them." He almost smiled. "I read everything."

"You’ll be in breach of your board’s confidentiality," said Hirose.

"Yes," said Ishikawa. "I’ve thought about that." He looked at the photocopy. "It isn’t confidential business information when it records a crime. You’d know that better than I would, Hirose-sensei. You read page six for a living."

Sugiura spoke at last. She hadn’t said a word since she read the name.

"Why?" she said. "Why now? Why this?" She looked at Ishikawa across the table. "You built Project Horizon. You approved fourteen series for partner weighting from an account that should never have existed. You changed may have to has in red ink on a letter to a seventeen-year-old’s mother." Her voice didn’t rise, but her hand had tightened on the notebook. "Why would you give us the one thing that hurts the fund you sit on?"

Ishikawa didn’t answer for a long time.

When he finally spoke, his voice was very quiet, and he wasn’t looking at any of them. He was looking at the sketchbook on the table, closed, with its worn corners.

"Because she used Kagawa’s date," he said.

Nobody understood.

"Kagawa’s password," Ishikawa said. "It was the date I hired him. The day I called a twenty-four-year-old into my office and told him he’d be the best editor in the country." He was quiet for a moment. "Whatever I did to him afterward, that date was mine. Mine to regret, and mine to answer for. Not hers to use at three in the morning to steal a boy’s next Chapter." His hands had tightened on the table. "She took the one thing I’d ever given anyone that I meant, and used it as a key."

The small room was very still.

"And because of the garden," Ishikawa said, more quietly. "I wrote don’t let anyone cut it on a note under a pen. Then a fund I sit on paid five people to cut someone else’s story into a shape with a sword." He looked at Haruki. "I’m many things, Amamiya-kun. I don’t think I’m that."

He stood up from the table and picked up the jacket he had hung on the back of his chair.

"I won’t come to Tokyo," he said. "I won’t give a statement to the court, or to the police. Not yet. I’m not brave enough for that, and I’d be arrested at Narita if I tried." He buttoned his jacket. "But the names are true. The expense report is real. Hirose-sensei will know how to make a court ask for the original." He paused at the foot of the stairs. "Saito Kenji will deny it. He’s very good at being polite."

He looked back once, at Sugiura.

"Write that down," he said. "In the new notebook. He gave them the names." A pause. "Nobody else will."

He climbed the stairs into the red and gold light of the lantern shop, and the bell rang once behind him.

For a long time after he had gone, none of them moved.

The old man with the towel over his shoulder came down the stairs, collected four cups of cold coffee without a word, and went back up among his lanterns. Upstairs, the bell rang and rang as the morning went on and people bought paper lanterns of every colour.

Sugiura opened her new notebook to the fourth page, which was blank. She took a fountain pen from her bag, uncapped it, and wrote a single line in small, precise, near-black blue ink.

Singapore, November 24. He gave them the names.

She looked at it for a long moment. Then she capped the pen and closed the notebook.

"Eighteen years," she said quietly, to nobody in particular. "That’s the first thing I’ve ever written about him that he asked me to."

Hirose had folded the photocopy and the sheet with two names back into their envelope. He sat with his hand flat on top of it.

"The court can order the original," he said. "From the Osaka company’s accounts, or from the fund’s board records. Shirai-sensei will know how to phrase the request so nobody can say where we learned to ask." He was quiet for a moment. "It closes the gap. The courier and the employer, with a receipt for two coffees." He looked at Haruki. "But you understand who else this touches."

Haruki did.

He was thinking about a yakitori table and a creased shirt, and Kuroda Ryu reading six Chapters of Crownless in forty minutes without a word. He was thinking about a volume of Blade Campus Rebellion with a scrawled note: Saito-san made me redraw it four times. Kuroda’s print volumes were selling in three countries, in Japanese and Korean, under an editor who had once been very polite in a café in Shimokitazawa.

"Kuroda," he said.

"Kuroda-kun," Hirose agreed quietly. "His editor’s name will be in a court filing in Tokyo within two weeks. In the newspapers soon after." He paused. "He should hear it first. From someone who matters. Not from a reporter outside the court."

Haruki looked down at his sketchbook on the table, closed, with its worn corners.

He had learned that from a man who had just climbed the stairs into a lantern shop and gone.

"I’ll tell him," he said. "As soon as we land. In person."

[Envelope opened. Courier: Saito Kenji (Kuroda Ryu’s print editor, Iidabashi; formerly Theseus Partners, Ariadne). Employer: Ishimura Reiko.]

[Evidence: Expense claim (Osaka property company) — Shinkansen Shin-Osaka ? Hakata, June 16; café receipt, 2 coffees. Claimant: Saito K. Approved: I. Reiko.]

[Ishikawa Kōji — Will not testify. Reason given: "Because she used Kagawa’s date."]