“And did you tell anyone about this?”
“Naturally. I told Uchy—that is, Uchimura, the director, whom you just met—and also Shigemori.”
“Mr Shigemori?”
“He was the real founder of the company. Uchimura is actually our second leader.”
“Ah-ha. So how did Mr Shigemori react to your story?”
“He was playing mah-jongg at the time, but he was fascinated. He always did have a weakness for women, and it seemed he’d had his eye on her for a while, planning to make her his. Then that evening, after he’d had a few, he started talking crazy, saying ‘tonight I’m going to storm Sadako’s apartment’. We didn’t know what to do. It was just drunken babbling—we couldn’t take it too seriously, but we couldn’t go along with it, either. After a while, everybody went home, and Shigemori was left alone. And in the end we never knew if he actually went to Sadako’s apartment that night or not. Because the next day, when Shigemori showed up at the rehearsal space, he looked like a completely different person. He was pale and silent, and he just sat in his chair saying absolutely nothing. Then he died, right there, just like going to sleep.”
Startled, Yoshino looked up. “What was the cause of death?”
“Cardiac paralysis. Today they’d call it ‘sudden heart failure’, I guess. He was pushing himself pretty hard to get ready for a premiere, and I think he just overdid it.”
“So basically, nobody knows if something happened between Sadako and Shigemori.”
Yoshino pressed the point, and Arima gave a definite nod. No wonder she’d left such a strong impression, Yoshino thought.
“What happened to her after that?”
“She quit. I think she was only with us for a year or two.”
“And then what did she do, after she quit?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”
“What do most people do after they quit the troupe?”
“People who are really dedicated try to join another company.”
“Do you think Sadako Yamamura might have done that?”
“She was a bright girl, and her acting instincts weren’t bad at all. But she had such personality defects. I mean, this business is all about personal relationships. I don’t think she was really cut out for it.”
“So you’re saying there’s a possibility she left the theater world altogether?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Isn’t there anybody who might know what happened to her?”
“Maybe one of the other interns who was here at the time.”
“Would you happen to have any of their names and addresses?”
“Hold on.” Arima stood up and walked over to the shelves built into the wall. Bound files were lined up from one end of the shelf to the other; he took one down. It contained the portfolios applicants submitted when they took the entrance exam.
“Including her, there were eight interns who joined in 1965.” He waved their portfolios in the air.
“May I have a look?”
“Go right ahead.”
Each portfolio had two photos attached, a head shot and a full-body shot. Trying to remain calm, Yoshino pulled out Sadako Yamamura’s portfolio. He looked at her photos.
“Hey, didn’t you say she was ‘eerie’ a few minutes ago?” Yoshino was confused. There was too much of a gap between the Sadako he’d imagined from Arima’s description and the Sadako in the photos. “Eerie? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve never seen such a pretty face.”
Yoshino wondered why he had phrased it that way—why he’d said “pretty face” instead of “pretty girl”. Certainly her facial features were perfectly regular. But she lacked a certain womanly roundness. But looking at the full-body shot, he had to admit that her slender waist and ankles were strikingly feminine. She was beautiful—and yet, the passage of twenty-five years had corroded their impressions of her, until they remembered her as “eerie”, as “that creepy girl”. Normally they should have recalled her as “that wonderfully beautiful young woman”. Yoshino’s interest was piqued by this “eeriness” that seemed to elbow out the salient prettiness of her face.
October 17—Wednesday
Standing at the intersection of Omotesando and Aoyama-dori, Yoshino once more took out his notebook. 6-1 Minami Aoyama, Sugiyama Lodgings. That had been Sadako’s address twenty-five years before. The address had him worried. He followed Omotesando as it curved, and sure enough, 6-1 was the block opposite the Nezu Museum, one of the more upmarket districts in the city. Just as he’d feared, there were nothing but imposing red-brick condos where the cheap Sugiyama Lodgings should have been.
Who were you kidding anyway? How were you supposed to follow this woman’s tracks twenty-five years later?
His only remaining lead was the other kids who’d joined the theater group at the same time as Sadako. Of the seven who’d come in that year, he’d only been able to find contact information for four. If none of them knew anything about Sadako’s whereabouts, then the trail would have gone dead. And Yoshino had a feeling that was exactly what would happen. He looked at his watch: eleven in the morning. He dashed into a nearby stationery shop to send a fax to the Izu Oshima bureau. He might as well tell Asakawa everything he’d found out up to this point. At that very moment, Asakawa and Ryuji were at that “bureau”, Hayatsu’s home.
“Hey, Asakawa, calm down!” Ryuji yelled toward Asakawa, who was pacing around the room with his back turned. “Panicking won’t help, you know.”
The typhoon warnings flowed steadily from the radio: maximum wind velocity, barometric pressure near the eye of the storm, millibars, north-northeasterly winds, areas of violent winds and rain, heaving swells … It all rubbed Asakawa the wrong way.
At the moment, Typhoon No. 21 was centered on a point in the sea roughly a hundred and fifty kilometers south from Cape Omaezaki, advancing in a north-northeasterly direction at a speed of roughly twenty kilometers an hour, maintaining wind speeds of forty meters per second. At this rate it would hit the sea just south of Oshima by evening. It would probably be tomorrow—Thursday—before air and sea travel was restored. At least, that was Hayatsu’s forecast.
“Thursday, he says!” Asakawa was seething. My deadline is tomorrow night at ten! You damn typhoon, hurry up and blow through, or turn into a tropical depression, or something. “When the hell are we going to be able to catch a plane or a boat off this island?” Asakawa wanted to get angry at someone, but he didn’t even know who. I never should’ve come here. I’ll regret it forever. And that’s not all—I don’t even know where to begin regretting. I never should have watched that video. I never should have got curious about Tomoko Oishi and Shuichi Iwata’s deaths. I never should have taken a cab that day … Shit.
“Don’t you know how to relax? Complaining to Mr Hayatsu isn’t going to get you anywhere.” Ryuji grabbed Asakawa’s arm, with an unexpected gentleness. “Think about it this way. Maybe the charm is something that can only be carried out here on the island. It’s at least possible. Why didn’t those brats use the charm? Maybe they didn’t have the money to come to Oshima. It’s plausible. Maybe these stormclouds’ll have a silver lining—at least try to believe it, and maybe you’ll be able to calm down.”
“That’s if we can figure out what the charm is!” Asakawa brushed away Ryuji’s hand. Asakawa saw Hayatsu and