Editing Hyouka:Volume 6 1 (section)

=== 5. ===



As we left the shop, the lukewarm breeze of a June night blew by, gently rocking the red paper lantern back and forth. Satoshi had tried to pay for my meal, calling it a consultation fee, but I shot down his attempt. A consultation fee... can you believe it?! The nerve of this guy sometimes. This part of him wasn't good in the slightest. It was a good thing I had the foresight to stash away a couple thousand yen notes before coming.

The loose change in my shirt pocket clinked delicately together with every movement I made. Satoshi looked all around him and then peered down at his watch.

"It's gotten pretty late. I guess we should head home soon. Sorry for calling you out at a time like this."

"I don't mind. I mean, all I have to do at home is wash all the dishes and the entire bathroom."

"You're mad, aren't you..."

"Not at all. If we're going back, could you walk me home? It's too scary to go alone."

This joke went over surprisingly well with him.

This last April, Satoshi found himself visiting my house due to an unexpected series of events. It wasn't like he made any more visits after that, so I imagine he wouldn't remember the exact streets to take in order to get there, but I'm sure he knew the approximate direction.

"Okay, let's go, then," he said, starting to walk before I did.

It looked like it'd be a pretty easy walk to my house from the ramen shop using the sidewalk along the wide road. The soft glow of the streetlights brought the vivid lights of winter to my mind and caused me to remember the ever encroaching summer. A small police car drove by along the traffic-less street, and although it gave me a small scare, it continued by without stopping to reprimand us for being out so late.

"I've been thinking," I started to say, "no matter how much I try to imagine when it was possible for someone to put in the illegitimate votes, I always find myself at a dead end. Due to the fact that the boxes were examined, I can't possibly imagine that the ballots were set there in advance. Besides, any box that had forty more ballots added to it would easily stand out from the rest and splitting that across ten ballot boxes would require a lot of help."

Although I was merely repeating what Satoshi had told me earlier, he nodded back in earnest.

"Exactly. I can't get any further than that."

"Then we have no choice but to change our approach."

From where did the votes that exceeded the total student body count come from?

At what point were they mixed in?

Suddenly, Satoshi blurted out, "I see."

"This is just a guess, but what if the ballots were on the table from the very beginning?"

"Really?"

That theory of mine was all it took to tragically deflate Satoshi's enthusiasm.

"No, that'd be impossible," he continued. "Of course, that's as long as if there weren't any unseen ballots on the publicly scrutinized table."

"I doubt there were any unseen ballots. What if there was an unseen committee member, however?"

Satoshi scrunched his eyes.

"You mind if I ask what the heck you're talking about?"

"Not at all."

The sidewalk crossed in the front of an abandoned gas station. The desolate appearance of the concrete structure's unoccupied vastness invited a strange feeling of unease.

"From what I've heard so far about the election process, there are two big flaws. If I took advantage of them, I'm pretty sure even I'd be able to mix in some illegitimate votes."

Although I assumed he was going to say something, Satoshi was dead silent. Maybe he was trying not to interrupt. Whatever the case, I continued.

"The first one was the checkpoint for the committee members who were bringing back their ballot boxes from the classrooms. After that was the confirmation by multiple people to make sure that the boxes were empty and that the ballots were bundled in exact groups of twenty. However, the verification for each returning member's 'grade and class' wasn't done in the same way. If what you said was correct, then that part of the process was done by the individual."

According to Satoshi, <i>the committee members trickle back into the room and check off their grade and class on a list to show who had already returned.</i>

"The paper they marked likely only listed the class names with a circle or cross or whatever next to them. Although it's the same election administration committee, I doubt they all remember each other's faces. Had even I, hypothetically speaking, gone to the council room with the Class 2-A box and checked off my class, I probably wouldn't attract much suspicion."

Satoshi's low mumbling voice seemed stuck in his throat.

"You might be right about that, Houtarou... Sure enough, no one confirmed that the person who left with a certain box was the same person who arrived with it."

"The ballots are the important part, however. Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter who carries the boxes; that has no bearing on the election. The class list was also only for the express purpose of making sure that all of the boxes had returned."

"That's true," Satoshi nodded, deep in thought. "The ballots are the important part. This flaw that you pointed out is by no means minor, but it still doesn't answer the question behind when someone could have added the illegitimate votes."

"That's when the second flaw becomes important."

I tried to imagine what took place today after school, when, before the elections, the election committee members received their boxes—sturdily constructed boxes made of worn, amber-colored wood.

"You said that the boxes weren't assigned to any class in particular before handing them out."

"Yeah, I did."

Earlier, he had told me <i>they were each handed out to whoever was closest in line.</i>

"Is that a problem?" he continued.

"Distributing the boxes randomly isn't a problem in and of itself. The same thing goes for having the committee members check themselves in after returning to the council room. If you combine the two, however, what do you think would happen?"

Satoshi crossed his arms and stared up at the cloudy sky as he silently walked. He was about to collide with a telephone pole, so I tugged on his sleeve to move him out of the way.

"So what you're saying, Houtarou, is that one of the students who returned to the council room with a box might not have been an election committee member? I'm not so sure that has anything to do with the boxes being randomly distributed, though..."

"You're a little off. That's not what I meant to say."

It wasn't like I was trying to quiz Satoshi or anything, so there was no point in withholding the answer. The reason I repeated my question was so I could say everything properly in order without having it end up convoluted in my head.

"What I meant was: the election system wouldn't be able to account for the votes, <i>even if a student who wasn't an election committee member carried in a box that wasn't assigned to any classes.</i>"

After a moment of bewilderment, Satoshi's eyes grew wide.

"Unbelievable, Houtarou, that's not simple to pull off, you know?"

According to my understanding of the Kamiyama High School student council president elections as Satoshi had explained it, there were countless measures in place to prevent the mismanagement and incorrect counting of the ballots. If you assume, however, that a fake election committee member brought a fake ballot box, there were no countermeasures to stand in his way.

"Wait, hold on." Satoshi threw out his opened hand, palm facing me. "Isn't that a little strange? It's true that the election committee members don't have armbands or anything like that, so it'd be pretty easy to pose as one, but what would they do about a box? I don't know how long they've been in use, but I know for certain that they're old. They're not the kind of thing you could whip up overnight. If a student came in with some generic, old box, it'd be difficult not to notice."

He paused for a little and then continued.

"Moreover, it'd also be bad to assume that the culprit stealthily carried his ballot box into the room, added the illegitimate votes into the mix, and then left as if it didn't concern him. After they're completely emptied, the ballot boxes are collected and then piled up in the council room. It's impossible to get away with something like that unless you have a proper box."

"That's right. Essentially, as long as there was a box aside from the twenty-four used in this year's election—an amber-colored box with a lock and the words "ballot box" written along its side—it'd be possible."

"Where would you find a box like that?"

Where? Well...

"Probably in the storage room on the first floor of the special wing."

After all, that's where the ballot boxes were supposedly kept.

Wearing a visibly irritated expression, Satoshi stamped his feet on the ground with every step he took.

"That's where we had the boxes for this year's election—not your supposed ones."

I also grew irritated. Who's to say that there were only exactly twenty-four ballot boxes in the storage room? Why wasn't it getting through to him? As I thought this, it suddenly dawned on me. I see. It wasn't Satoshi's fault he didn't understand. These were family matters.

"A postcard came for my sister."

"Wha—" Satoshi stared at me, dumbfounded by the sudden change in conversation. "Oh, yeah. Uh, how's she been doing?"

"Good. Thanks for asking. She went back to college, so she's not home at the moment, and yet a postcard arrived at the house for her. What a hassle. I'm going to have to leave it in a place I remember until she gets back."

"Why don't you just forward it to her...?"

The shock convulsed throughout my entire body. Of course, it was all so simple. Why don't I just forward it to her? How did I not see it before?

"Houtarou?"

"Oh, sorry. I was just a bit surprised. Getting back to the subject at hand, that postcard was a notice about her class reunion."

Satoshi looked unsatisfied, as if wanting to ask how mentioning that was getting back to the subject at hand.

"Um, listen..."

"It was for class 3-I."

A large RV, blasting energetic hip hop from its windows, drove past us. Satoshi opened up both of his hands in front of him and started to fold his fingers down one-by-one. A, B, C, D...

"So that's what it was. Nine classes..."

I nodded.

"Kamiyama High School having eight classes per grade is something that's only the case right now. Previously, it had nine classes, and possibly at some other point, it even had ten. It's possible that next year it'll have seven classes, and eventually six after that."

"I see. It was so obvious. The number of students... number of children is changing, but the school continues to exist as is."

We recognized ourselves as existing in Kamiyama High School. That wasn't incorrect, strictly speaking, but the thing was, however, the school continued to exist without a single regard for our existences. There was a point at which there were nine classes in a single grade, and that time had student council elections as well. Judging by the ballot box's worn state, it'd be safe to assume they've used those boxes all the way since then.

I can’t imagine they'd throw away the extra box. It was possible, after all, that Kamiyama would once again enter an age of nine classes per grade.

"In the storage room on the first floor of the special wing sleep the ballot boxes from an age when there more students than there are now. The culprit knew that, took one of the boxes, put the illegitimate votes in it, posed as an election committee member, and then carried it to the council room."

"He didn't write anything on the list of class names. Although the box should've been locked, and it had to have been opened by the key the election committee member was in charge of."

"There's only one key after all. It makes sense that all the boxes would be opened by the same one. Check the pile of ballot boxes in the council room first thing tomorrow, and if there are indeed twenty-five, that'll be your proof. There was no time to return it, after all."

If you were to realize that extra ballot boxes existed as a relic of Kamiyama's past, it wasn't all that difficult to see through the trick behind the illegitimate votes. Because I had an older sister who came from the same school, I was able to see Kamiyama High School as yet another thing in within the flow of time, however for Satoshi, who only had a younger sister, he was late to realize that fact. That's all there was to it, but even then, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Even though I thought I would've been already all too familiar with the passage of time, it was almost as if I were being told, "Maybe you don't truly understand the meaning behind it after all."

"I was too fixated on what was in the box... Something was missing,” Satoshi muttered under his breath.

I shrugged in response to his strangely contemplative comment, and the movement caused the coins in my shirt pocket to clink delicately together.