Index:
Before leaving the karaoke box, Kunikida had assured his friend that the police would keep a ‘tight watch’ over the crime scene, but he completely underestimated the resources they would be willing to devote to the task.
Simply put, it had turned into a circus out of a crime drama.
The segment of street in front of the car lot was now roadblocked at both ends—closed off just before the crosswalks at the nearest one—and the entirety of its length occupied by several dozens of law enforcement and emergency personnel.
Most of the former were police officers in their uniforms accompanied by a few plain clothed detectives with large I.D. cards hanging from their necks and dressed similarly to Agent Akasaka and her partner, however Kunikida spotted neither among them. There was also a few firemen, three teams of EMTs and what it looked like a group forensic specialists carrying photographic cameras fitted with oversized lens and tube flashes and other assorted equipment.
Likewise, there was a number of non-civilian vehicles of all types and sizes seemingly randomly parked next to and on both sidewalks, but leaving the central portion of the road unobstructed for the ambulances.
One of them was just leaving the enclosure and Kunikida observed that soon after turning in the direction he and Taniguchi intended to take, a squad of four police officers in three motorcycles joined the emergency van. They formed a small convoy around the ambulance with one bike at the front, one at the rear and the last to the right.
Kunikida pondered carefully about all what he saw and particularly about the reasoning behind the apparently excessive escort for a medical vehicle. Soon enough his thoughts focused on the sole police officer among them riding on a passenger seat. That man was wearing high-visibility clothing like the others, but it fitted him differently. Tighter, maybe, which was an absurd notion considering that a safety apparel like a sleeveless—
And then it hit him, all the pieces of the scene falling into place.
He turned back to tell his friend that they needed to leave as inconspicuously and quickly as possible before realizing that Taniguchi wasn’t just a few steps behind him as he had assumed.
Kunikida glanced in every direction, hoping that his behavior wouldn’t draw any suspicion to himself. It didn’t took him long to find the back of the T-shirt with the eye-catching—and therefore memorable—cartoonish design at a distance and just a little behind a small but growing group of onlookers standing right outside the guarded perimeter.
Remembering that discretion was the best part of valor, Kunikida ambled towards Taniguchi without increasing his speed in the slightest. Retracing his steps like that made him nervous, his blood pressure surging and his pulse resonating loudly in his ears and, imagined or not, he could just feel the stare of a couple of police officers assessing him as he went.
It took him exactly 59 steps—he counted—and probably at least thrice as many heartbeats to get within conversational distance from his friend.
By then, Kunikida had decided on a simple approach to deal with the situation: Get Taniguchi’s attention genially without calling out his real name, then gesture him to follow him to the train station and, once they had put enough distance between themselves and the premises, demand a reasonable explanation as to why he just stopped right in front of the roadblock when it was still possible that someone could have reported their descriptions to the police.
He just hoped that Taniguchi had exercised utmost caution so far.
“…So,” the taller boy spoke to someone at his side, “it was a shootout, then? I mean, cops everyone, lots of paramedics. It has to be big, right? Like, Capone vs. Moran big.”
Kunikida felt like taking a page from Kyon’s book and palming his face.
“Nah,” a young man around their age, standing just a few inches shorter than Taniguchi and dressed in a black gakuran, answered in a rough voice and a very self-assured manner. “The ambulances, Greasy. Remember the sirens?”
The unflattering nickname gave Kunikida a pause, but the so-addressed boy didn’t seem to mind.
“No sirens, I see. They weren’t in a hurry.” Taniguchi scratched his chin thoughtfully. “No bodies, either,” he added after a minute.
The other young man turned to stare Taniguchi with a half curious, half appraising look. “How so?”
Kunikida considered barging into the conversation, but he finally opted for remaining quiet and only observe for the time being. He stood by the group of onlookers and easily blended in with them—one of the few perks of possessing a less than average stature for his age group, he noticed bitterly—, but his attention remained discreetly fixed on the two boys, especially the unknown one.
By appearances alone, he looked like a high school delinquent, but not overly so. He wore his uniform in a casual manner—open jacket and untucked shirt—, but he stayed away from the typical ‘yankii’ looks or paraphernalia such as dyed blond hair or piercings.
It was something more subtle about him what worried Kunikida, some indeterminate quality that he knew intuitively it should be a lot easier to put his finger on and yet he couldn’t. It was frustrating situation similar to having a word on the tip of the tongue.
“Well, do you ever watch late night TV, Tanaka?” Taniguchi replied with a grin. “You know, the typical ‘this is a crime scene now, nobody moves the body until our M.E. arrives.’” He said the last bit as if impersonating some authoritarian character from a police procedural show.
“Some things really don’t change with you, Taniguchi,” Tanaka chuckled, his stance relaxing and Kunikida finally realized what was the impression he was getting from the boy. It was simple enough in hindsight: his bearing. Tanaka’s body language seemed designed to convey confidence and strength but not in an obviously dominating way. Like a warning saying ‘I won’t get in your way if you leave alone, and you better leave me alone.’
How come do Taniguchi and someone like that know each other? Kunikida wondered. And then he felt like slapping the back of his own head for thinking something as idiotic as that. After all, he and Taniguchi had spent a lot of time in oblivious company of someone who was evidently dangerous enough to warrant the involvement of the National Police Agency.
“You’re probably right, though,” Tanaka finally agreed. He looked down and thrust his chin out, pointing at the large object resting beside Taniguchi’s feet. “Laundry bag? Do you live around here now?”
“Nah, that’s not it. Just my school uniform and stuff. We had a half-day in Kitago today and I didn’t feel like wearing the team spirit for longer than necessary.”
That much wasn’t exactly a lie, Kunikida knew. In order to prevent potential witnesses from identifying them from the restaurant or the car lot, both North High students decided to change clothes. Of course, that left them with the problem of carrying their belongings without bringing any attention to themselves that way.
Luckily for them, there was a coin laundry service close by the karaoke place and they went in and bought two heavy-duty laundry bags conveniently at a discount, one large for Taniguchi and Kyon’s satchels and another medium-sized for Kunikida’s, both displaying a proportionally large and easily recognizable franchise logo on the side for good measure.
“What, did you have a date or something?” the young man in the black gakuran asked, raising both eyebrows and giving Taniguchi’s stamped T-shirt and sweatpants an incredulous once-over.
Taniguchi shrugged. “Only with a hamburger,” he sighed, “but it was cutie.”
“Ah,” Tanaka conceded and a single beep chirping in his clothes caught his attention. He produced a cell phone, frowned at the screen and pocketed it. “Nice catching up with you, Taniguchi, but I gotta go now.”
“Train station?”
“Yeah. You too?”
“Going home. Wanna talk some more on the way there?” Taniguchi suggested.
“Sure, why not,” Tanaka agreed and begun walking.
As Taniguchi turned to follow his acquaintance, he gave Kunikida a pointed stare and urgently gestured him to follow them with his facial expressions alone. Kunikida found himself at a loss, caught unprepared by the sudden seriousness in Taniguchi’s demeanor, completely at odds with the casual way he interacted with the other boy.
Kunikida decided to follow his friend’s lead, but he debated with himself for a moment about how to go about it. That’s it, whether to follow them as closely as possible and risk revealing his presence to Tanaka, or instead keep his distance and lose track of their conversation.
Fortune smiled upon him and answered the question for him.
A housewife in her fifties dressed pragmatically for comfort walked at a somewhat brisk pace and unwittingly managed to remain just a few steps behind Taniguchi and Tanaka. She was holding a phone to her ear with her right hand and, more importantly, carrying exactly the same kind of laundry bag than him in the other.
Kunikida quickly fell into step at her right side without any of them noticing a thing and he hoped that the two of them would look just as he intended: Like mother and son going home after picking up the laundry.
“… well, it’s not like there aren’t any,” Tanaka said, “but the few girls that get sent to Hikami tend to be more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Even the hot ones?” Taniguchi asked, seemingly unconvinced.
“Especially the hot ones. We aren’t called ‘the delinquent capital of Nishinomiya’ for nothing.”
Kunikida felt his eyes widen, his free hand unconsciously reaching for his school satchel currently in his laundry bag.
“You know what they said,” Taniguchi intoned solemnly, as if he was preaching words of profound wisdom. “The hotter they are, the crazier they are. The crazier they are, they hotter they seem.”
Tanaka laughed. “Ain’t that the truth,” he allowed and chuckled some more, but mostly to himself the second time. “Speaking of crazy tail, didn’t that classmate of yours go to Kitago too? That Suzumiya chick?”
The taller boy grimaced comically. “Five years in a row in the same classroom with her and counting. Is it just me or does it sound like a sentence to you too?”
“Must be something you did in a past life,” Tanaka said, his grin flashing wider.
“Or the payment I must make in this one for my dashing looks and charming personality.”
“Ask for a refund.”
Taniguchi snorted. “Suzumiya kinda mellowed out after middle school, you know.”
“Really?” Tanaka sounded very sceptical. “So, less crazy?”
“Different kind of crazy. Picture what you remember of her, turn down the bitchy and amp the genki up to eleven.”
“Wait. A happy Suzumiya? How the hell did that happen?”
“Beats me. Nobody is complaining, smiles suit that pretty face a lot better.”
Tanaka seemed to muse over something for a short while and asked, “And she’s still hot?”
“I think the consensus is ‘smoking hot,’” the taller boy confirmed, raising an index finger for emphasis.
“You should ask her out again,” Tanaka suggested teasingly. “Who knows? Maybe she will date you for more than five minutes this time.”
Taniguchi made an annoyed, almost guttural sound. “How many times do I have to tell you guys,” he complained. “That was that musclehead, Teshiga-something-or-another. Absolupositively not me.”
“Sure, sure. I believe you, Quickie,” the other guy picked. “You’re more like a six-minutes kind of guy, after all.”
“Whatever,” Taniguchi sighed the sigh of the unfortunate souls who truly know better than fighting a lost battle against popular opinion. It reminded Kunikida of Kyon for some reason. “It wouldn’t work, by the way. I’m not her type.”
“Suzumiya has a type? She struck me as too fickle for that.”
“Not at all. She…, er, how do I put this gently…?” Taniguchi trailed off, sounding troubled.
A traffic light signaled the boys to stop. Tanaka took to opportunity to look at Taniguchi face-to-face, crossed his arms and raised both eyebrows at him. “Political correctness? From you? My god, should I be worried? Is this a sign of the apocalypse or was it just something you ate?” he deadpanned.
Taniguchi stared impassibly at Tanaka for a moment without moving a muscle. Before five seconds could pass by, he put his bag on the ground, pantomimed opening a coat he wasn’t wearing with his left hand, took something that didn’t exist out from some imaginary inner pocket with the other.
The ‘object’ turned out to be some sort of made-up ‘book’ that he opened with both hands, leafed through the ‘pages’ right and left a little and, once he apparently found the one he was looking for, he held the book open in place by pressing his left thumb firmly on the lower portion of the hinge between pages.
Finally, he seemed to produce an equally nonexistent pen from some receptacle in the book’s spine and begun to jot down.
“Dear diary,” he stage-whispered in a sickly sweet girly voice as he mock-wrote, “why do I only hang out with snarkers?—.”
Tanaka snorted and shook his head. Kunikida was sorely tempted to do the same.
“—I mean,” Taniguchi continued, making a point of using female-only speech patterns for added effect, “am I some sort of wiseass magnet or I just suck a picking them? Sure, I won’t say I quite swim in smartassery every day, but I do have to listen to a lot of ‘jerkinese’, if you know what I mean. Today, I ran into Jirou-kun from middle school and he was the—”
“Alright, I got it,” Tanaka interrupted him and raised his arms in surrender. “You made your freaking point, Anne Frank.”
Taniguchi smirked triumphantly and picked up his bag. “Anne Frank?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I’ve been paying more attention in class,” the other boy admitted, somewhat uncomfortably. “Still, how the hell you can pitch your tone so high? There are women with deeper voices than that.”
“It’s kinda tricky. Ever hear of ‘falsetto’?”
Kunikida’s turn to raise an eyebrow came next.
“A faru-what?” Tanaka stumbled with the unfamiliar term.
“Never mind then,” Taniguchi dismissed the point and motioned to the green traffic light with a movement of his head before resuming his walking. “Er… What we were talking about again?”
The boy in the military-styled school uniform matched his pace a step later. “Suzumiya’s strike zone,” he reminded.
“Gotta love baseball metaphors,” the taller boy commented, sounding vindicated. “Let me put it this way: Remember when we used to wonder during breaks what the hell was Suzumiya looking for in a guy right after he heard rumors she just dumped a new one?”
“Well, not exactly. It was just lunchtime small talk, but the gist of it, sure. I remember.”
“Long story short, we’ve been asking the wrong question the whole time,” Taniguchi finished with a grin, as if that explained everything.
Tanaka looked confused for a while, his facial expression prompting the other boy to elaborate, but Taniguchi simply kept his grin flashing wide in return. A minute went by when realization seemed to dawn in the Hikami Gakuen student, his eyes widening and an honest-to-god blush appeared on his face.
“Er, that’s… S-So, she’s like that?”
Taniguchi looked completely surprised by his ex-schoolmate’s reaction, but it only took him a few seconds to gather the wherewithal to break into a hearty laugh. “Dammit, Tanaka! I never expect it from you, but did anyone ever tell you how cute you’re when you’re flustered?”
As soon as the word ‘cute’ left Taniguchi’s lips, Tanaka twisted his face into a scowl that would have been intimidating at any other time or level of embarrassment.
“Sorry, man. My bad,” Taniguchi apologized, making a placating gesture with his free hand and doing his best to conjure a straight face. “As you put it, yes, she’s ‘like that‘,” he confirmed. “Or rather, she’s also like that unless I’m missing my mark.”
Tanaka seemed to lose track of Taniguchi’s words as he put an effort to collect his wits about him. Later he commented, “That does explain more than a few odd things about her.”
“But never too many,” the taller boy corrected.
“How can you be so sure she’s…, you know?”
Letting the opportunity for some more teasing pass, Taniguchi simply said, “How else? She’s openly dating the most adorable little thing in the A-minus rank you can think of. They have this Sempai/Kohai vibe about them even I think is more cute than hot.” He shrugged. “Well, most of the time,” he amended shamelessly.
“So…, Is it ‘Suzumiya-onee-sama’ now?” Tanaka commented in disbelief.
“I think I’ve heard a ‘Suzumiya-sempai’ from time to time instead, but you’ve got the right idea.” Taniguchi fell silent and his expression suddenly turned serious. “Say, Tanaka. Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did, but I’m feeling generous,” Tanaka agreed, seemingly missing Taniguchi’s change of mood.
The taller boy asked his question. Kunikida almost tripped on flat ground after hearing it.
Tanaka froze in his tracks and put a hand on Taniguchi’s shoulder to make him stop and turn around. “What did you just say?” he asked back, his tone flat, his body language tense from head to toe.
Taniguchi met his stare and after a moment of charged silence he repeated the question.
Any good humor between the two of them remained effectively gone and forgotten for a while.
As they left the self-service laundry, a nagging possibility begun gnawing at Taniguchi’s thoughts:
What if the whole thing was some sort of elaborated hoax at his expense.
Granted, no sane person would ever come up with a joke like this, but it was something right up Suzumiya‘s alley. After all, Taniguchi knew from his experience last year as an unpaid extra in The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00 how bad the Ultra Director could get with enough motivation.
It didn’t come to mind before, but it did make certain amount of sense. Or rather, with Suzumiya involved, he was willing to give his incipient theory the benefit of the doubt.
But, how come would anyone set up something like this in the first place, Taniguchi wondered.
The invitation to lunch, Kyon’s reaction, the waitresses, the whole scene at the car lot with the supposedly unconscious kidnappers, the policewoman, Kunikida’s explanations, etc. That was a lot of work, money and some award-worthy performances. Akasaka and Yukari could have been old pros hired for the occasion, but what about Kyon and Kunikida?
There was also the thing with the van. Taniguchi shuddered at the memory of what he saw—and smelled—inside the vehicle, but what if it was faked?
The high school student was barely aware of himself walking mechanically, one step after the other, as he racked his brain trying to think up a way how he would have gone about engineering a scene taken right out from a splatter film.
Taniguchi doubted his knowledge of movies would help him there, after all, cameras and microphones don’t have a sense of smell to fool, but then he remembered about the so-called Enforced Method Acting. He’d heard stories of film directors tricking the actors to provoke genuine reactions out of them and getting it all recorded on tape, like that disgusting scene from that Monty Python movie with the fat guy in a French restaurant.
A scenario slowly took form in Taniguchi’s mind as he walked: It started with an empty cargo van. Then a welder went inside and assembled the restraining rig he saw on the floor with chains, handcuffs and shackles gotten from a costume and props store, sex shop or maybe just a plain old hardware supplier.
Later, someone painted the interior walls of the vehicle with real bloody stains—he didn’t have any doubts about that part. Human blood had to be difficult to come by unless someone was willing to literally bleed in the name of tasteless humor. However, animal blood probably was just slaughterhouse’s byproduct or perhaps a butcher’s specialty item.
And the odor? Simply enough: Take the contains of the waste tank of a travel trailer or a portable toilet from a construction site and set your pooh-throwing inner monkey free.
Thinking of the Enforced Method Acting, Taniguchi was able to figure out another important piece of the puzzle: Kunikida and Kyon’s reactions. There weren’t in the joke. They were victims of it, just like him.
His train of thought stumbled with a problem right there: if Kyon wasn’t willing part of it, then the whole joke hinged on him taking whatever bait in that manila envelope and following the waitress outside. That was one big gamble right in the middle of the scheme. A more natural reaction would be picking the phone without anyone noticing, pressing 1-1-0 and let the cops…
“Holy Batman Gambits, Batman,” Taniguchi realized aloud.
How could anyone know that Kyon would react just like that in such a situation? Easy enough: he did it before. Taniguchi himself was right there—together with the whole class 2-5 and including his best suspect for the mastermind behind the prank—when some unseen punk went to Kitago’s front door to challenge Kyon, calling him out for the entire school to hear, and Kyon bolted right out of the classroom to face him and returned the next day like all that was just another Tuesday for him.
Now, if you show the guy something like, let’s say, pictures of his fiancée looking beaten up thanks to the magic of a half-decent make-up artist, then Taniguchi could just totally see the hypothetic unsuspecting kidnappers getting an instant home delivery of a five-course punitive meal consisting of tranquil-fury appetizer, dynamic entrée to the face, a main dish of broken ribs and stomp-tenderized ‘lamb fries’ with a side of smashed mook pride, hospital jello served through a straw for just desserts and an optional cheesy one-liners course at some point or—
Taniguchi stopped walking, closed his eyes and reined in his imagination before it could get any more colorful or, worse, punny. Since the moment he started entertaining the possibility of everything being a lie, he was getting strangely too worked up. Why? he asked himself.
The answer came as if spoken by a mocking little laugher in his right ear: He just wanted it to be a lie.
Denial. Plain and simple. He didn’t want Kyon to be a yakuza. He didn’t want his classmate to be chased down by mob and cop alike.
Above all else, he didn’t want his friend to be just the carefully crafted persona worn by some ruthless gangster willing to play with everything and everyone for fun and profit.
Taniguchi took a deep calming breath and opened his eyes. As soon as he did, he was presented with a scene he couldn’t make heads or tails of at first.
It was bad news, that much was obvious. Like leaving for school one morning and discovering that someone had painted an amazing wildstyle graffiti on his house’s outer wall during the night. He knew it was going to be a pain later when his parents saw it and assumed he had something to do with it, but before thinking on how to deal with that, he just admired the sight for what it was.
The respite didn’t last long and, once again, Occam’s razor cut the deepest.
There was simply no way someone like Haruhi could ever have enough clout to roadblock a public street in the middle of the day and fill it with enough LEOs and EMS people and their respective rides to make most disaster movies look low-budget. He wasn’t too sure about it, but he could almost swear he just caught a glimpse of a helicopter leaving the area.
“Maybe this wasn’t part of the plan,” Taniguchi found himself muttering. Hoping again. Denying.
Maybe a neighbor heard the car alarms and called the cops to complain about the noise and they arrived before the pranksters could clean up. Then a pair of policemen found the fake guns and the creepy van and radioed in for reinforcements without touching anything to avoid compromising the evidence and missed the fact that all was just smoke and mirrors.
Firearms in a crime scene might may or may not be par for the course overseas, but with the gun control laws being like they’re in Japan, it becomes an instant Big Deal—capitalization intended—and prime front page material. For example, just the night before during dinner, Taniguchi had distractedly heard yet another special news report on TV still milking that cow of a story about a big shipment of guns seized by the NPA in a raid last May.
Add the DungeonMobile to the twitchy cauldron and then the idea of some big hats freaking out and mobilizing the uniforms en masse just to be on the safe side of things didn’t sound too far-fetched to Taniguchi’s ears anymore.
The crux of the matter was, needless to say, what did it really happen at the car lot? Which one was the truth? Hoax or crime? Misdemeanor or felony? Either case was about to end in a lot of pissed off authorities demanding answers.
And witnesses and suspects.
Taniguchi had heard the sayings, clean-cut aphorism such as ‘Information is Power,’ or ‘Ignorance is Bliss.’ In his opinion, what people should really take to heart is ‘Half-Knowledge is freaking Scary.’ Knowing just enough to realize there is something to be worried about, yet too little to have any idea of what to do about it, is the stuff nervous breakdowns are made of.
He took another calming breath.
Now, if what he needed to progress was information, then the obvious problem to solve was how to get it. Asking the cops directly was out of the question, even assuming he could gather the chutzpah for it. Even at a distance, he could tell that during the short time he had stood there simply watching, two different people had already approached the police asking for an explanation to no avail.
Perhaps if he told Kunikida about his—
Suddenly a voice spoke into his ear and demanded his attention. Somewhat loudly given the proximity.
“Hey, Pomade-boy! Are you deaf or you smeared your ears with the stuff too?!”
Caught off guard and acting on reflex, Taniguchi took two shaky steps away from the sound, but he managed to keep himself on his feet and his laundry bag from hitting the ground. “W-What?” he uttered dazedly.
“Yo, Taniguchi. Back from bystander-land?” an unapologetic male voice asked.
“Tanaka?” Taniguchi said as he took in the sight of the young man in front of him, whom he recognized as his former schoolmate and friend.
Tanaka Jirou simply flashed a lopsided smile in return and Taniguchi found himself answering in kind despite of everything. Such was the power of emotional memory and Taniguchi wasn’t complaining. In that moment, he really needed something to smile about.
Tanaka and Taniguchi, just like Suzumiya Haruhi, were East Junior High alumni, but whereas the latter two always ended up sharing a classroom, the boys never had that chance. That didn’t keep them from meeting and, since then, hanging out together whenever they could and felt like it.
Among the innumerable differences between men and women, or more specifically between thirteen-years-old boys and girls, one of them is that guys don’t need much of a reason to make friends with each other.
It helped to have something obvious in common, like supporting the same baseball team, playing the same collective card game or hating the same girls anime. But more often than not, sitting next to each other in class was enough motivation to strike up a friendship
And other times the reasons can be truly silly and otherwise insignificant. Taniguchi personally knew of two boys in middle school who became ‘bestest’ friends because one cold winter day one of them went to school wearing red gloves with white stripes and noticed that the other boy had a pair white mittens with red stripes and they both thought it was the funniest thing ever.
In Taniguchi and Tanaka’s case, it was because they both came up with the same trick to break into East Jr.’s dressing room when they wanted some privacy during recess.
Thinking some more on the subject, Taniguchi realized that friendship between girls had always been a big mystery for him.
For example, he knew Suzumiya had had it bad for Kyon for more than a year, yet she remained BFF with his fiancée. Awkward. Adorable underclassman Michikyuu Kanae had been so into the same dude that it was a painful thing to see, but once news of said engagement came to light, she confessed her feelings for Suzumiya-sempai instead—the love letter was a nice and very ‘aww’-worthy touch, by the way—which the latter decided to reciprocate. Weird. Also kinda hot.
Now, when it came down to it, Taniguchi was willing to bet his dear and tastefully-customized scooter that even after becoming an item neither Suzumiya nor Michikyuu had truly gotten over the clueless guy. Or rather, not at all.
It was the kind of thing that he, as Kyon’s Bro and follower of the Code, would have been obligated to inform him in a prompt and insisting manner—together with the sexy, sexy implications—were not for the fact that Kyon was actually very serious about his girl, his Hime. It was a freaking engagement after all and one oughta respect the sacred institution of marriage.
Therefore Taniguchi was willing to wait until Kyon’s bachelor party to grant enlightenment upon his oblivious friend on such enviable matters.
Assuming that Kyon was really someone he could call a friend.
Taniguchi clung to his new-found cheer before it could leave him completely and said, “How’s tricks, Tanaka? How is Osaka treating you?”
The other boy’s smile disappeared with a wince before his mouth settled into a flat line. “… That was the last thing I said to you on Graduation Day, wasn’t it?” Tanaka sighed. “Osaka turned out great for Aniki, but not so much for me. I’m back to Obaa-chan’s now,” he explained, aiming for a nonchalant tone but not quite getting there. “Good memory, by the way.”
Great going, Tani-baka, the taller boy thought sarcastically, Not even ten words in and you already stepped on a landmine.
Taking a closer look this time, Taniguchi realized that Tanaka was wearing a school uniform and he recognized whose high school was the insignia that decorated the buttons of his gakuran. If half of the rumors about Hikami Gakuen were true, then the only reason why anyone would attend there was because of they rejected you from everywhere else and you didn’t have the kind of money to make them believe in second chances.
“That’s not what my grades say about me, though. Kitago didn’t turn out to be the breeze I expected, but eye-candy makes for it,” Taniguchi said, waggling his eyebrows up and down.
Humor seemed to have a positive effect on Tanaka, if his somewhat more relaxed expression was any indication. “Some things don’t change, I see.” He paused as he seemed to ponder something. “You looked very tense before I talked to you,” he observed. “Something’s wrong?”
Suppressing a wince of his own, Taniguchi put his laundry bag on the ground to buy a few seconds to school his expression. “Just trying to figure out what all the commotion was about. Looks pretty serious.”
“Something went out in a rent-a-car down there,” Tanaka explained easily, but taking care of keeping his voice low enough for only Taniguchi to hear. “Word says it was an accident, something about a bunch of car alarms going off at the same time, but one of my own got up to one of those rooftops, binoculars in hand, and swears that some serious reckoning left half a dozen on the ground.”
Wait, what? It was only because he had his game face on that Taniguchi didn’t visibly react. It wasn’t just because Tanaka apparently had the information he sorely wanted, but also because his friend didn’t seem to be quite the same person he remembered from middle school. The ‘one of my own’ and ‘reckoning’ bits were more than a little unsettling.
“Still, it doesn’t add up,” Tanaka commented, his confidence returning with each spoken word.
“What doesn’t?” the taller boy asked, sotto voce as well.
“Too many cops. If the deal was over when they got here, they didn’t need to call in that many. Something set them on edge.”
“Like a bunch of guns,” Taniguchi’s mouth said before he could stop it.
“That…,” Tanaka trailed off, giving Taniguchi an oddly approving look as he nodded slowly, “… makes a lot of sense here. Excuse me for a second.” He pulled out a cell phone from his pocket—one of those old, cheap and apparently indestructible models—, pushed a few buttons and put it away.
“I was just saying, dude,” Taniguchi amended, putting more aplomb in his voice than what he actually felt. The fact that Tanaka was being so frank about that sort of thing with him was quickly getting into his nerves. “You know I like movies a lot, right?”
“Still, I think you nail it.” The guy in the gakuran smiled at him and added, “Never considered it before, but maybe you have what it takes.”
Well, crap.
As the rest of his being freaked out, a small portion of Taniguchi’s brain idly wondered if a misunderstanding like this was how Kyon got involved with the yakuza in the first place. His imagination provided him with the image of a cinema marquee announcing the premiere of ‘Kyon: The Saiko-komon Who Knew Too Little.’
It was then when the idea occurred to him. A long shot for sure. A crazy and potentially dangerous gamble, but one that, if successful, could give him what he was looking for.
Before anything else, Taniguchi needed to assess the risks involved—otherwise nobody would blame Yanagimoto for dumping his sorry ass after this if he didn’t put at least that little effort to protect his own skin—and here and now that translated into finding out how much of his old friend was still in Tanaka.
For that, the conversation had to first veer into familiar territory, one where he could be in more control of the flow and in a more comfortable position to glean Tanaka, and in Taniguchi’s case that meant one thing and one thing only:
He had to play the fool, obfuscating cheekiness for the win.
“Well, the tin on my new hair products says it’s a more nutritious formula, maybe that helped…” Taniguchi said and waited for Tanaka to roll his eyes at the bad joke before proceeding. “…So, it was a shootout, then? I mean, cops everyone, lots of paramedics. It has to be big, right? Like, Capone vs. Moran big.”
Perhaps Suzumiya was onto something and that Hamlet guy wasn’t such a poor casting choice for him after all.
The moment Tanaka’s face blanched, Taniguchi knew he had just struck gold.
Contrary to expectation, getting his bet to pay off turned out to be a bittersweet feeling at best. First, because he genuinely enjoyed hanging out and reconnecting with his friend. For all that to be reduced to a mere preamble to put Tanaka on the spot didn’t sit well with his conscience and left a bad taste in his mouth.
Secondly, because the usual outcome of a successful risky gamble is the opportunity to make a new, likely riskier one.
“What did you just say?” Tanaka asked in a level voice. His eyes half reevaluating him, half urging him to take back the question.
He certainly could do just that, Taniguchi realized. As painful as it was to have some of his hopes dashed, Tanaka’s reaction alone was confirmation enough of the truth and the result of beating some already crappy chances. Reaching out for more would be simply asking for troubles, but…
“I said, what can you tell me about a guy known as ‘Kowa-Keigo Kyon’?” Taniguchi asked again.
In the end, the question driving him crazy wasn’t if the whole thing was a hoax or whether Kyon was really a yakuza or not. The crucial doubt pushing him for answers was his inability to decide between what his gut was telling him about the last he saw of Kyon at the restaurant and everything that happened afterwards.
He’d heard shame in his voice, meaning he didn’t want them to see that part of his life. There was resignation in his eyes, meaning Kyon had already come to terms with it on some level. He also showed concern for him and Kunikida, given that his parting words to them were the reassurance that they would be just fine if they just stayed put for the moment—which, looking back, was totally on the money.
However, how could any of the above come from a feared criminal who was evidently dangerous enough on his own to defeat half a dozen of well-armed hired guns probably planning to kidnap him, without killing anyone, rescuing the hostage they used as bait and disappearing with a very badly injured person to worry about and all in the short time it took Taniguchi to get to the car lot?
That was so many levels of badass above what he had already suspected of Kyon that it went beyond what Taniguchi would call impressive and fell right into shounen manga territory. He’d joked before that Kyon was like the protagonist of his own fighting series, but what worked on the inked pages tended to have nasty implications in real life.
After all, what normal person would want to make himself the target of an endless stream of vicious characters looking to take him down?
His mind could only come up with two possible explanations: One, he was right about his friend and Kyon was somehow being forced into the role of a big-shot criminal, impossibly excelling at it. Or two, Kyon was just as bad as his enemies, if not worse, and Taniguchi just too dumb or stubborn to accept it.
No prizes for guessing which one he wanted to believe.
That was why he wanted to find Kyon as soon as possible and tell him about the NPA’s proposal while it was still on the table. As far as he knew, it might as well be the only real chance for Kyon was going to get to leave that kind of life behind and in one piece.
The problem was that there was no guaranties that Kyon would take up the offer, much less coming from ‘Tani-baka’ the unofficial class clown—he was under no illusions of how people usually thought of him.
Taniguchi needed some sort of angle to get Kyon to at least consider calling Akasaka and leave the rest in her hands. But where was he going to find that kind of leverage if he knew next to nothing about the ‘underworld’ he only had seen in movies until today?
And then a link that he didn’t know he had to that world went right up and spoke to him. Taniguchi never really believed in fate before, but that kind of thing couldn’t be just a coincidence.
Tanaka Jirou took in his surroundings and then fixed Taniguchi with a serious stare. “This is no place for that kind of talk,” he said. “Follow me,” he instructed and pointed to an alley maybe ten meters in front of them. Kunikida turned to give him his very best are-you-out-of-your-mind look as he passed behind Tanaka’s back without the latter noticing.
“Let not the rest be silence,” Taniguchi recited in an old fashioned way and followed the other boy who had already begun walking.
Without breaking stride, Tanaka turned to look at him oddly and asked, “Isn’t that from an old book?”
“Probably,” the taller boy said and shook his head. “It’s just something that got stuck in my mind from this morning.”
Tanaka made a noncommittal sound and stepped into the alley.
A second later both young men disappeared into the buildings’ shadows.
§