Dragon Slumber

Stories

## The Encounter

Chapter One: The Encounter

1

We met for the first time around half past ten on the night of September 23. He was crouched on the ground near the Sakura Industrial Park, his bicycle lying on its side by the road.

I remember the time and place with the precision of a criminal who had arranged an alibi in advance, because at that very hour a powerful typhoon was closing in on the Kanto region. I switched on the car radio and listened to the news bulletins that came every thirty minutes. Ordinary weather forecasts are often so wide of the mark they hardly deserve the name, but typhoon warnings are accurate enough to be irritating.

Just as forecast, from around seven in the evening the west wind steadily strengthened, and the storm grew with it. Even with the headlights on, I could see only about a meter ahead. Rain poured from the sky. When the wheels cut through the standing water, the spray rose higher than a small fountain. Once it struck the windshield, I could see nothing at all. I thought I ought to find somewhere safe and get clear of the storm's center first.

That was when I saw him.

If I had not slowed to less than a walking pace, we would have met in the worst possible way. I would have run him over, and then gone hunting for an emergency room with my jaw chattering. Driving through a raging storm was hard enough already. Who would imagine someone threading the rain on a bicycle? So when a figure loomed faintly ahead of the headlights, I took it for one of those warning signs you often see on suburban roads, printed with the silhouette of a police officer.

But the figure was waving at the car. The police would never leave something by the roadside fitted with...

## Ripples

Chapter Two: Ripples

1

A week had passed, and Daisuke Mochizuki's body still had not been found. There was no word of anyone turning themselves in at a police station, nor of the police closing in on a suspect.

Public opinion began to attack: that a manhole cover in the road could be opened by anyone at will was far too dangerous. The water bureau promised to deal with it properly. A man bearing the title of aide to the bureau chief, speaking for the leadership, said in a public statement, "We never imagined anyone would open it." The poor scapegoat was then flayed all over again.

Within a week of the incident, Tokyo saw two cases of manhole covers opened in the middle of the night, and Saitama Prefecture one. Fortunately none of them caused an accident, but they were plainly imitations of the Chiba case. The world, it seemed, was full of people with no sense of danger, and people who liked to take risks.

Yaro reported the case in the "Headlines" column that listed the week's major stories. I wrote the piece. Beside the title sat the photograph the photographer had rushed to the scene to take: the sewer, already sealed tight, under a vast clear sky.

From the license plate I tracked down the owner—Satoshi Miyanaga's older brother. He was a salesman at a first-rate securities firm, only twenty-four. I couldn't see how he could afford a car worth at least ten million yen, but after asking the dealer I learned it was a damaged wreck of an accident car, already five years old.

"I only sold it to him because he begged me over and over."

Satoshi Miyanaga had said at the time, "That's my big brother's car. It's new." So the older brother, for the sake of face, had told his younger brother...

## The Past

Chapter Three: The Past

1

Naoya Oda told me he worked at a gas station in the east of Tokyo, where office buildings and public housing stood packed together.

When I went looking for him, he was already gone. He had quit.

"He worked hard. I don't know why he quit so suddenly."

The station manager was a short middle-aged man. The moment I mentioned Naoya's name, that was how he answered. He wore a peaked cap of the same cloth as his uniform, tilted on his head, and was carefully hosing the detergent foam away.

"When did he quit?"

The short man frowned. "About a week ago."

So he had quit not long after coming to see me.

My unease outweighed the disappointment of missing him. What kind of coincidence was this? He was clearly running.

"What reason?"

"I'd like to know myself. He said it was unavoidable circumstances. I never thought a kid that age would talk about 'unavoidable circumstances.' His wording was quite roundabout."

"Did he say where he was going to work?"

"No."

I might have known.

"Had he worked here long?"

"Not really. About three months."

"Do you have his home address and phone number?"

"I do..." The man looked me over from my shoes upward. "Is it urgent?"

"Unavoidable circumstances."

He pretended to be sorting the mail, and Kanako grew even angrier.

Inamura Coffee occupied the ground floor of a white building by the road. At the entrance hung a small blackboard printed with the Coca-Cola logo, and on it...

## Omens

Chapter Four: Omens

1

At her feet lay a small whiteboard meant for children's drawings. She bent, picked it up, and wrote quickly: "My name is Nanae Mimura. I'm a teacher at Green Leaf Kindergarten nearby."

I nodded hard, twice, to show I understood, then asked, "Did you know Oda before?"

Nanae quickly erased what she had written and wrote again: "He moved here six months ago. Only in the last three months did we become friends."

"Were the two of you close?"

She considered. "You could say that."

Nanae Mimura seemed already used to conversing this way. However long the sentence, she could write it smoothly in a short time, and her hand was beautiful. She used katakana in place of characters with many strokes, probably to save time.

Each time I finished a question I had to stand beside her, watch her write, and only then ask the next. I couldn't quite catch the rhythm.

"I'm sorry to put you to so much trouble."

I hadn't thought it through. Seeing her write desperately to keep up with my rapid-fire questions, the words simply came out.

Nanae froze for a moment, then tilted her head slightly.

"Do you usually talk this way?"

Nanae nodded.

"Do you know sign language?"

She nodded.

"I wish I did too. Then it would be easier for you."

Nanae's eyes widened. She looked at me with curiosity, then wrote on the board, "Please don't mind. I'm used to it," and smiled at me.

When she smiled, fine lines gathered at the corners of her eyes. She looked about twenty-five...

## Blackout

Chapter Five: Blackout

1

The day of the funeral was overcast. The clouds hung low, as if the sky were about to drop onto our heads.

Satoshi Miyanaga's house was about a five-minute drive from Kaihin-Makuhari Station on the Keiyo Line. It was the weekend, and young people heading to events at Makuhari Messe were everywhere. There was no sun, but the temperature was still high, and they wore bright shirts and jackets. Scattered among them in mourning clothes were those on their way to pay their respects at the Miyanaga house.

They had had to wait for the police to finish the autopsy and the questioning, and the date happened to fall on a tomobiki day, so four days had passed between Satoshi's suicide and the funeral. For some people, over those four days, the shock slowly settled, while the grief would not settle at all and only grew worse, the way a bruise deepens after a blow.

Shinji Inamura came out of the station with his father, and that same bruise showed on his face. Father and son moved among laughing couples and young people, the only ones with no light in their faces. We had agreed to meet in front of the station, but the moment I saw the two of them I regretted having promised to come along.

Shinji wore his school uniform, the top button of the stand-up collar fastened tight. Above it his face was worn and pale as the moon; his cheeks were rough, almost bristly to look at. He couldn't have slept well.

"I think the two of you had better not go."

I said it to Tokuo Inamura, who had nodded to me in greeting. Shinji's head was lowered. I looked into his eyes.

"How things have come to this has nothing to do with you. The fault is mine. I should have reported them to the police. I misjudged."...

## The Incident

Chapter Six: The Incident

1

Half asleep, half awake, I had a dream.

An unfamiliar street, a light breeze. The sky was packed with dark cloud, and yet everything around me was strangely bright.

This is a dream, I thought, standing in the street.

A stainless-steel fence ran along a low stone wall, and I leaned against it. Beyond the fence was an open place like a park. Many small children in pale-blue smocks held hands in a circle. Nanae stood there in the same smock, beating time, singing with a face full of smiles.

She was singing.

It was the first time I had heard Nanae's voice, and yet it did not seem strange. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. In the dream she could sing, she could speak, she could laugh out loud.

I didn't know the song. It was a little like a nursery rhyme, and a little like a hymn. I had never listened all the way through a hymn, but that was the feeling. Yes.

Nanae had not noticed me. Even when I called her, she could not hear. It really was a dream... otherwise how could she fail to hear? So I called again, several times. If I kept at it, I would wake...

Then I realized it was not Nanae who was singing. The song was coming from outside.

Not far from the children, Naoya Oda stood in a white shirt. He watched them, watched Nanae, and sang on by himself.

It was his voice.

Naoya had not noticed me. I seemed not to exist. A smile at the corner of his mouth, he went on singing. The children hopped and skipped. Nanae was smiling too.

I tried calling to him.

Naoya slowly raised his head and looked at me.

He did not stop singing. He smiled...

## End

Final Chapter

In the hospital courtyard, flowers that looked for all the world like azaleas were blooming out of season, giving off a pleasant scent.

The last lunar month was more than half gone. The case had once taken up a good deal of space in the press; now newer topics had replaced it.

"Next time I won't fail—I've already decided how."

Shinji leaned back in his wheelchair, gazing into the distance, lost in thought.

Kaoru Murata had just been to see him. He had only just left when I arrived. Shinji looked as if he had cried, and as if that had lifted the weight from his shoulders.

"I can't drag ordinary people who don't have this kind of power into it the way I did in the manhole case. That only complicates things. Mr. Murata agrees. Going it alone was reckless, but at the time I truly couldn't think of any other way."

I knew what Shinji meant to say.

If Shinji had told me, or the police, what he had read out of those eight threatening letters—the ones Reiko Miyake sent—what would have happened?

The police would certainly not have believed him. Even if they half-credited it and went to the Kawasaki house to ask questions, it would have done no good.

That would only have put Kawasaki and Reiko on their guard. On the surface they would have shown outrage, or laughed it off, and then postponed carrying out the plan—which would have given them room to breathe, and time to rethink the whole scheme of murder.

And if he had told me?

The path might have had its turns, but in the end I would still have believed Shinji. And then what? Even if I told Saeko that her husband and her husband's mistress meant to kill her, would she have believed it?

"Only at the critical moment...