The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume6 Chapter 2

Status: Incomplete

5/16 parts completed

   

Chapter 2: Development@Uchimaku Hayabusa & Hachikawa Tomoe

Part 1 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

“Tarot Girls 22 here! First it was burgers, then it was gyudon, and now we have a brand new fast food revolution! The revolutionary restaurant Neko Manma is exactly what it sounds like! This bowl full of rice covered in exactly the kind of miso soup you want is a friend to the masses. And of course you can choose red miso, white miso, bonito broth, sea slug broth, pork broth, or seafood broth. As the Empress of the Major Arcana, I, Anemura Kaede, am rooting for this nostalgic yet new style of food!!”

An idol’s recorded announcement played on a loop to match the commercial playing on the restaurant’s TVs.

I copied the mascot’s cry of “Miso soup splash!” as I poured the shark broth on the steaming white rice in my bowl.

Ahhh!! Working out of the office is so hard!!

Investigation Department 1’s chief was shoving all the worst jobs on me to repay me for acting without permission so much lately. Food was the only thing I had to look forward to, which seemed like a major red flag from a mental health perspective.

“Eh, ah, ahem!! ‘Uchimaku, take this file and get investigating. A coroner’s autopsy isn’t enough to determine whether the old folks who died alone in their homes and then mummified really did die natural deaths or not. Go reinvestigate everything to see if there was a crime involved.’ Detective, your colleagues really do hate you, don’t they?”

“Why are you here, Miss Compulsory Education? And how can you do such a spot on impersonation of the chief from this morning!?”

“That’s. A. Secret☆ By the way, detective, if you’re gonna eat at Neko Manma, you need to get the famous Miyazaki cold miso. Honestly, don’t you know anything? That’s the #1 dish here.”

“You’re kidding. Wouldn’t that leave you with cold rice?”

The twintailed Mystery Freak was pretty much wearing a swimsuit around town again. She suddenly appeared in the seat next to me and took a bowl. The one thing that was appropriate for her age was the scarf modeled after a character with a really long body. It was midday, so the counter seats were packed full and she used that fact to press up against me more than absolutely necessary.

“You aren’t going to find any new evidence in this reinvestigation. How many years ago did the first investigation end? How many decades ago did those old people die? Unless the blunt weapon or blade reached the bone, not even an autopsy would find anything at this point. You aren’t going to find any new witnesses or a murder weapon. There’s just nothing there.”

“The chief probably knows that and wants me to waste my time. To hell with him.”

If you were willing to live with a corpse, it might be possible to commit the perfect crime without dumping the body in the forest or ocean. As long as you didn’t illegally take money from their pension, it would be treated as a natural death and no criminal case could be made. And as long as the family living in the same house “didn’t notice”, it didn’t count as abandonment of a corpse. Of course, it would take twenty or thirty years of living with the stench of death to receive the benefits of mummification, so it was simply too frightening to imagine.

“What are you doing, Mystery Freak?”

“Well, my actions might overlap with yours, so I thought I should pop in to say hello.”

“?”

“Hey, hey. If you’re investigating the mystery of the old mummies, why not go on a date with me☆? Splitting up would be inefficient, so if we’re both going after the Ubasute Apartments, we might as well flirt along the way☆”

“Ubasute…Apartments?”

That unexpected term left me in shock.

“Uba” was rarely used to mean “old woman” in modern times, but it could still be seen in the name of a Youkai called a Yamanba.

Ubasute was the act of abandoning one’s parents in the mountains because you didn’t have enough money to support them or were sick of taking care of them. And the fate of an old person abandoned in the dark mountains was obvious. People argued about the ethics of euthanasia in modern times, but the concept of Ubasute made it hard to say the past was always better. The topic made my food seem completely flavorless.

I didn’t know what exactly this was about, but I knew where the name Ubasute Apartments had to have come from.

Meanwhile, the Mystery Freak spoke up while rubbing her head on my shoulder.

“Its official name is different of course, but over fifty old people have died alone there in the last three years and they were all immediately deemed natural deaths. Don’t they seem oddly unwilling to call it a crime? Are you feeling a little more motivated now?”

Part 2 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

Sugamo was known as the Old Lady’s Harajuku, but it was slowly changing. Trees had been planted here and there to add a little more green to the scenery and residential areas were popping up for old people who wanted a peaceful life. Of course, land was always at a premium, so the apartments tended to be in high-rise buildings.

Ikebukuro was nearby, so it might have been something like Daikanyama was to central Shibuya.

“That’s not an apartment building. These days, graveyards are built in high rise buildings too.”

“Seriously? Well, at least I can’t imagine any ghosts or offering thieves showing up there.”

“And that tree over there is a grave tree. They get a whopping fifteen applications for every open spot. …But I feel like a lone tree standing in the middle of a park would end up withering away from all the things people would do to it.”

We spoke back and forth as we made our way to the investigation site on foot.

The Ubasute Apartments in question were outside the aforementioned residential area.

Around twenty identical buildings were squeezed in together like bookcases in a library. The buildings themselves looked old, but they seemed properly maintained and didn’t feel unclean. Still, their overall atmosphere was somehow different from the other places. The area had a lot more trees than elsewhere, so the apartment buildings seemed to poke out from a thick forest. Just by blocking the view and the road gave the entire place a sense of rejection.

“Is this really the only way in?”

“It certainly is inconvenient.”

The brick-paved road was narrower than a farm road and it meandered back and forth. The road itself was quite bumpy because tree roots were pushing it up from below.

I doubted you could get a scooter through, much less a car.

We continued down the awful road for two or three hundred meters as if going for a picnic…no, for a light hike. If the path had been straight, it wouldn’t have been half that long.

Finally, the manmade forest cleared up and an impressive form stood in our way.

We had reached the Ubasute Apartments.

The closest building’s entrance was a lot like a school’s main entrance or a hospital’s visitor’s entrance. According to the plate set up there, the official name was Wankashi Camp Apartments.

As I read that name, I heard a slamming. I looked up at the six or seven story building and saw one of the many windows slam shut.

No, it wasn’t just one.

After that first one, that sound of rejection continued from all over. It was just like when a meeting had fallen silent and someone cleared their throat.

“Now that’s what I call a warm reception.”

“I don’t care as long as they don’t drop a flower pot on us from the balcony. …Anyway, what are these?”

Several metal buckets were sitting around here and there. They were dented and filled with dirty water. Were they full of rainwater?

Then I noticed an old man in a track suit watering a flower garden with a watering can. After using up the water in the watering can, he grabbed one of the buckets from the ground and poured its contents into the watering can. Filled with that much water, the bucket had to be quite heavy.

The Mystery Freak immediately jumped at this chance.

“Hey, mister.”

“What?”

The old man sounded incredibly suspicious, but he didn’t refuse to talk altogether.

Enbi used that to her advantage and pushed further.

“That looks tough. Why do you collect the water in buckets?”

“The buckets gather rainwater. This is the most efficient way.”

…What?

“Mister, but wouldn’t it be easier to use the faucet?”

“Water is valuable. Kids these days might not get that, though.”

He then asked us a question with the refilled watering can in hand.

“What are you two doing here? I didn’t think door-to-door salesmen would visit a place like this.”

Let’s see. Where did I put my police badge?

I checked through my pockets and finally pulled my ID from my back pants pocket.

“I’m from the police. I’m here today for, well, additional investigation on some people who died alone.”

“You’re a police officer?”

He clearly frowned and gave me an even more skeptical look.

“Don’t the police normally work in groups of two?”

“Not always.”

Police officers in dramas were sometimes mocked for acting alone, but it was pretty common in reality. If there was a rule forcing us to work in pairs, we’d be spotted right away if we tried to tail someone. It would completely undermine the concept of a plainclothes officer.

“But it certainly isn’t normal for one to be working with a teenage girl.”

“That is very true. I am well aware of that fact and I have nothing to say in my defense.”

“I don’t care how kids dress, but at least cover up your midriff. You’re only hurting yourself doing that.”

After spitting out those words, the old man started toward the building with the empty watering can in hand.

“Um, uh…”

“My name is Tayama Sunao. You can check around the apartments if you want.”

“I’d like to speak with the manager, so do you know where they might be?”

“No. In fact, haven’t seen them in a while.”

Tayama-san didn’t even turn back our way.

“Oh, and while I don’t care what you do, don’t use the elevator.”

With that, he really did vanish into the building.

The Mystery Freak and I exchanged a glance.

“What should we do?”

“Whatever we can. We don’t really need his permission.”

I pulled out a cellphone equipped with a police SIM and called up the file for this job. I decided to check the rooms of the deceased old people and then ask around at the neighboring rooms.

I walked through the large apartment grounds based on the file.

As we made our way through the closely packed buildings, the windows slammed shut around us. They were rejecting outsiders, but they weren’t ignoring them. The buildings were filled with countless eyes and I could tell they were all focused on us.

These were the Wankashi Camp Apartments, aka the Ubasute Apartments. According to the Mystery Freak, more than fifty people had died alone here in three years, but the closest such room was on the sixth floor of Building 3.

The building had nothing as fancy as automatically locking doors, so we walked right in. The first floor was not part of the living area. Instead, it seemed to be focused on recreation. A lobby for chatting was filled with benches and a large room was lined with health equipment. We passed through that area and climbed the stairs.

“Hey, Mystery Freak, why’s this place known as the Ubasute Apartments anyway?”

“I’m sure you can guess. It’s an inexpensive option for old folks to live alone. It made waves online for being so incredibly cheap in the city center. The problem is no one knows how to contact the real estate agency.”

“…?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m only repeating the rumors.”

We discussed the case as we climbed the stairs, but the Mystery Freak was already worn out by the third floor.

“Wait, detective… I’m tired…”

“How!? You have to climb three or four flights of stairs at school, don’t you!?”

“My school has elevators. So how about we use the ones here? That old man’s not looking.”

It was true the apartments had seven stories. And twenty buildings, too. If we had to go up and down the stairs that many times, it would be about as much effort as some light mountain climbing.

The Mystery Freak walked right past the next flight of stairs and entered the hallway. There, she pressed the button to one of the four elevators.

“Look, it isn’t even malfunctioning or anything. The light came on, so…”

But Enbi was cut off by another voice.

“Hold iiiiit!! Didn’t anyone tell you not to use the elevator!?”

The roaring voice sounded like a nearby lightning strike.

“Hyah!”

The Mystery Freak jumped and I looked over to find an old lady in an apron poking her head out from a door and giving Enbi a devilish glare. She stomped over, grabbed the Mystery Freak’s hand, and pulled her away.

It almost looked like she was moving her away from the elevator door.

“Honestly. Don’t you give any thought to your safety? …And what kind of outfit is that!? A young girl shouldn’t be walking around in public with her midriff showing!!”

“If that dense man would finally give in and have his way with me, I wouldn’t have to dress like this to seduce him! And it’s already October, you know!? Even I know wearing a swimsuit now is weird!! This scarf is a decoration! This is the surefire sexy swimsuit scarf! Tah dah!!”

“If you know it’s weird, then why don’t you stop!?”

I shouted back with my skin crawling, but no one was listening.

At any rate, the old lady seemed to have taken that conversation at face value.

“Hm? The population has grown to 150 million, but there are still traces of the Immoral Ten Year Project meant to increase the birthrate? How sad. If that scarf is fur, I might faint.”

The apron old lady sounded angry, but she didn’t seem to have all that bad an impression of us. It may have been that she was scolding us instead of angry with us. And her issues with the Mystery Freak’s clothing seemed grounded in worry for the girl’s safety, not her own displeasure.

Tayama-san from the flower garden may have been the same.

In that case, why were they telling us not to use the elevator? I had initially thought it was a way of telling us we were uninvited guests, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

“So what are you two doing here?”

“This doesn’t explain her, but I am a police officer. …Um, this is hard to say, but I’m performing some additional investigation into the death of some people who died alone.”

“Oh.” She readily answered without seeming displeased. “You mean Akasabi-san. That isn’t entirely unrelated to me.”

“?”

Akasabi-san?

I was confused, but the old lady also seemed confused.

“Is that not it?”

“Well, the investigation has only just begun, so I don’t know any of the details yet. But if you’re willing, could you tell me about this Akasabi-san?”

“That’s fine. Besides, whoever you ask, you’ll end up talking about Akasabi-san. That’s just how well-known the story is.”

Part 3 (Hachikawa Tomoe)

I had completely forgotten we had school off after the midterm exams, so I had no real plans despite the day off. With nothing else to do, I decided to visit “his” grave since I’d been putting it off for quite a while.

That was because my mom had gotten remarried. My new dad was nice and I had no real complaints about our new family, but it was still hard to talk about “him”.

Well, since I was able to dig up those old memories, maybe I had finally managed to come to terms with that incident involving a Jinmensou and my friend Mio.

I left home on the pretext of going shopping and boarded the train to Sugamo. I had to wonder what my mom thought when I left in my beige blazer-style winter uniform despite having the day off. I chose some random flowers at the florist by the train station and walked to the graveyard with the bouquet. It was a weekday, so it must have been a strange sight to anyone who didn’t know about our post-exam day off. Still, I wasn’t stopped by a police officer. The big city really could be cold.

On the way, I spotted a middle-aged man and woman arguing at the main gate of what seemed to be an elementary school.

The man looks like a teacher, but who’s the woman?

“Please calm down, ma’am. Just calm down a little, okay?”

“Shut up!! I know they did it! Who else could have? You suspect them deep down too, don’t you!?”

“Like I’ve been saying, there’s no way to be sure.”

“But they brought a weapon to the school that other time… If you aren’t going to report this, I’ll do it myself. But if I do it, you might just be found complicit in this!!”

…What in the world is going on?

The woman returned my curious look with a sharp glare, so I made a rapid exit. I had no concrete dreams for the future, but I had a few clear ideas of what I didn’t what to be. A housewife who only caused trouble without doing any housework was one of those. If you didn’t do any housework and didn’t have a job, you were just a grown-up shut-in.

I regathered my thoughts and continued toward the graveyard.

High-rise graveyard buildings and grave trees had become common in recent times, but “he” had prepared himself a stone grave on the grounds of a Buddhist temple. And he had done it long before he died. He had pretentiously said a policeman never knew when he was going to die so he had dealt with that ahead of time, but I doubted that was the real reason.

The buildings and grave trees had people to look after them, so the family didn’t have to maintain the grave. I was pretty sure he hadn’t liked the sound of that.

He tried to keep a composed appearance, but he could actually get pretty lonely.

I set foot in the temple’s graveyard while messing with my cellphone, but I found someone was already there.

The man was a police officer just like “him”.

I was pretty sure his name was Sotobori Gaku. His most noticeable features were the solid build of a judo ace and an extremely intimidating face. He also had plenty of scars. Of course, he was a professional who fought day and night against large criminal organizations, so he had probably given himself that look on purpose.

He had arrived ahead of me, so the grave was already clean and the withered flower and old offering had been replaced with new ones.

He smiled bitterly when he saw me.

“What’s this, Tomoe-chan? Are middle school girls so attached to their electronics that they can’t put them down in a graveyard?”

“I’m playing this for ‘him’. It’s Tarot Girls 22’s new song. …Honestly, can you believe a man of his age was supporting some teenage idols behind his daughter’s back? That man really loved his fads.”

“Eh? What? Really!? I’ll never be able to think about him the same way again!!”

“Ah ha ha. And he’s not going to drink that sake you brought as an offering. He would act cool and go along when his colleagues went out drinking, but when he got home, he’d start vomiting into the toilet.”

But despite what I said, I wasn’t confident I knew who he really was either.

He had lost his life during the Jinmensou incident involving my friend Mio, but I hadn’t noticed a villain had taken his place until the very, very end.

If the detective named Uchimaku hadn’t saved me, that villain probably would have killed me.

I separated my bouquet’s flowers and placed them around the grave as offerings. Then I held my hands together in front of the grave.

Thanks to my mom’s remarriage, I was now part of the Hachikawa family, so I didn’t know if I would end up in this grave engraved with the name “Toujou”. Still, I thought I should at least be allowed to pray for the deceased.

After I reopened my eyes, I asked Sotobori-san a question.

“Hey, what kind of person was ‘he’ to you?”

“A detective.”

His answer came without a moment’s delay, but he must have thought that wasn’t enough because he scratched his head and said more.

“Being a police officer is an occupation. If they didn’t pay you, no one would do it. But once you keep at it for five or ten years, it starts soaking into every part of you. That’s what I mean when I say he had brought being a detective to the level of a lifestyle. Even if he had been fired for some reason, I doubt he ever could have escaped that way of living.”

“…”

“That’s just how it is. You may not like to hear it since he was always neglecting you, but Toujou Miyabi lived the life of a detective to the very end. If he didn’t have steadfast convictions, he would have stopped before he was killed.”

Honestly. Does that mean he grew up or that he never grew up?

Sotobori-san here and Uchimaku-san who had saved me may have been the same.

And speaking of Uchimaku-san…

“H-hey. You know Uchimaku-san, right? What’s he doing now? He seemed a lot like ‘him’, so is he doing well?”

“Ohhhh, I see.”

“Wh-what?”

“That guy only seems to attract the ones who ‘aren’t quite there yet’. If they just had another ten…no, even just five more years, he would have had a man’s idea of heaven waiting for him.”

“Wh-what are you trying to say!?”

“Let me ask you something instead, Tomoe-chan.”

Sotobori-san grinned as he pulled a cellphone from his pocket.

“I know Uchimaku, so I naturally have his phone number and email address. So what are you going to do, Tomoe-chan? This is the perfect chance if you want his address.”

They really are kids! The police are nothing but children!!

“Wh-what? What are you-… I don’t, um, want…”

“This might be your one and only chance, you know? Over thirty million people move through Tokyo every day, so surely you aren’t thinking you’ll just so happen to miraculously bump into him again without putting any work into it yourself.”

“Uuh…”

I looked away from him.

Damn, I can feel the heat in my cheeks. I know what this means, so why can’t I stop myself from holding out my cellphone!?

My voice was barely audible as I announced my surrender.

“Please…give it to me.”

“Sure thing. …Y’know, this means I’m giving a grown man’s address to a man’s daughter right in front of his grave. I hope he doesn’t start haunting me.”

“Sh-shut up. That isn’t what this is about! And I don’t care if he does show up as a ghost! That would probably make things a little livelier around here!!”

My argument was losing any coherence as I held the cellphone close to my chest.

I-I have it.

But what am I supposed to do with it!?

Sotobori-san then turned his head as if he had noticed something.

“Now, then. I can’t intrude any longer, so I’ll be going. It’s probably been a while for you, so take your time.”

“?”

I gave him a puzzled look as he waved and left, but I soon realized what this was about. Someone else was approaching through the graveyard.

Toujou…Midori-san.

She was ‘his’ younger sister. That made her my aunt.

“Long time no see, Tomoe-chan.”

I didn’t know what to call her, but I finally smiled and called her the same thing I had the last time we had met.

“It's nice seeing you again, Aunt Midori.”

Part 4 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

The old lady in an apron we met in the Ubasute Apartments was apparently named Nezu Yuki. We didn’t want to stand around and talk, so she showed us to her apartment.

It seemed to have been designed with a family in mind because it had a fair number of rooms. It was all well-maintained, so it looked old yet clean. However, the size of the apartment made it feel a little lonely for an old woman to be living their alone.

Also, the lighting was oddly dim, but it wasn’t enough to make reading difficult. She probably just wanted to save electricity.

“I won’t serve you any tea. I’m out of tea leaves.”

She was also incredibly blunt.

“Well, this topic will kill your appetite anyway, so it may be better this way. Anyone who could eat while discussing Akasabi-san couldn’t be human.”

“So who is this Akasabi-san?”

“Probably one of the people you’re investigating.”

Nezu-san sat at the kitchen table with a groan of effort. The Mystery Freak and I decided to sit in the opposite seats.

“Akasabi-san was one of those who died alone, but the situation was a little different from the bedridden folks without anyone looking after them who dried up, collapsed from a sudden illness, and weren’t found by anyone. Asakabi-san was trapped inside.”

“Trapped inside?”

In where? And by who?

If a third party was involved, it wouldn’t be a natural death. That was more than enough to be a crime.

But when she saw the sharp look in my eyes, Nezu-san waved her hands in front of her face.

“Hear me out first. I’m talking about the bath door. It had apparently already been old and rattling in its frame, but at some point the door seems to have soaked up enough water to expand. That kept it from moving at all. Akasabi-san was trapped inside the bath.”

“Oh, I get it. So they were trapped inside all on their own.”

Nezu-san nodded at the Mystery Freak’s comment.

“Regardless, they couldn’t get out. At first, they apparently didn’t feel much danger since they were still inside their own house. …But that doesn’t change the fact that they were trapped inside. And people die if they don’t have anything to eat. After realizing the danger, they banged on the door, but it was no use. They couldn’t use the phone and no one showed up after they shouted from the small window.”

“You mean…?”

How would that have felt?

No one ever thought of their own home as a dangerous or deadly place. The trapped person might laugh at what had happened, but as soon as they realized it’s no laughing matter, everything they thought they knew would be turned on its head.

“There was some bathwater left in the bathtub. Drinking that was enough to stay alive, but only stay alive. Their strength faded as the days passed and they lost the strength needed to break down the door or even shout out the window. This continued for a week or two. …They couldn’t even die. They knew they were going to run out of strength eventually, but they extended their suffering. They probably wished they hadn’t had that lifeline so they could have just given up. I heard the bathtub plug had been pulled out by the time the body was found.”

It was an unimaginable story.

Had their thoughts on life and death been turned upside down along with everything else?

In that small world, living had become suffering and death had become a salvation.

“But apparently the dampness of the bath hadn’t completely vanished. Finding a naked corpse would be disturbing enough, but the group that found Akasabi-san apparently saw a pile of bright colored mold covering the entire bath. The corpse was curled up in the center of it all and I hear the mold had turned it to mush like severe athlete’s foot covering the entire body.”

She was right about this not being a topic to discuss over tea.

I was a detective and seeing crime scenes was a part of the job, so I was fairly accustomed to seeing corpses. But this was different. There was no malicious trick yet someone’s life had been carelessly lost. It felt so empty because the only solution was to accept that these things happened.

“Everyone in the apartments started talking about how we didn’t want the same thing to happen to us, so we started worrying about how the bath doors fit in their frames.”

But if this woman’s story was true, there was no crime involved. It wasn’t something a police officer like me needed to investigate any further. …If it was true no one else was involved, that is.

A drowning could be disguised by letting the corpse mummify or decay. Strangling them could leave a rope mark around the neck or break their neck, but nothing of the sort remained if they were drowned. The mold would have caused the corpse to decay in an extremely short time, so what if someone had intentionally set the room temperature and humidity to promote its growth?

I pulled out my cellphone to find this Akasabi-san on the list of those who had died alone, but then the Mystery Freak spoke to Nezu-san.

“Hey, ma’am, I have one question about this famous Akasabi-san.”

“What is it?”

“Which room did they live in?”

It was an obvious question and the old Nezu Yuki-san gave a clear answer in a tone that seemed to ask why we were asking something so silly.

“That’s the thing. Everyone will point to a different room if you ask them. Well, I’m sure one of them is the real one.”

Part 5 (Hachikawa Tomoe)

It had truly been a long time since I had visited a relative’s house for fun.

Toujou Midori-san’s house was near the graveyard. It was a small house, but I thought it was amazing enough to have your own home in Tokyo when the country’s population had grown to 150 million.

“Sorry. Takkun would have wanted to play with you, but she’s still at school. She’s probably only just getting back from her field trip. Would you mind killing some time with your aunt instead?”

“Takkun, hm?”

Despite the “kun”, Takkun wasn’t a boy. The girl’s name was Toujou Takumi-chan and that had been shortened to Takkun. I couldn’t quite remember how old she would be, but I was pretty sure she would still be in elementary school.

We watched TV in the living room and I had a meaningless chat with Midori-san. She would complain about how the beautiful had all the luck since the Tarot Girls 22 could have a scandal but come out of it more popular because it made them seem “more human”.

At some point, Midori-san changed the subject.

“Come to think of it, Tomoe-chan, did you see anyone strange on your way here?”

“Strange?”

I remembered the woman throwing a fit at the elementary school, but that didn’t seem to be what she was talking about.

“There’s an apartment complex just outside of this area and the old people that live there, well…”

“What about them?”

“I guess you could say they get angry easily and, well, they’ve been causing a lot of trouble in the area lately. But as long as you weren’t caught up in it, it doesn’t matter.”

She seemed hesitant to speak, so she was clearly choosing a softer way of putting this.

Hmm…

It might have been forcing my own image or role onto them, but I felt like old men and women should be living in big rural houses. The old folks who would snap angrily at anyone and got so obsessed with the horse races honestly seemed to be wasting their time and it felt kind of sad. It was too painful to watch when they started shoplifting because they wanted attention or started stalking any young woman who so much as smiled their way.

Of course, old people were human too, so there were good ones and bad ones. They had their own thoughts and some would always be filled with shallow desires no matter how long they lived. That was probably all it was.

“Anyway, I’m glad to hear you didn’t see anything like that, Tomoe-chan.”

That was all Midori-san said.

We watched TV for a while longer and she commented that they got the seasoning wrong on the cooking show and told me how many times a certain actress had been married. At some point, I realized quite a bit of time had passed.

Toujou Midori-san checked the clock and tilted her head.

“Oh? She should have been back by now.”

“Maybe she went to a friend’s house.”

“I tell her to send an email when she does that.”

I decided not to mention how restrictive that rule sounded to me.

I stood up from the table.

“Then I’ll go check at her school.”

“Eh? You don’t have to do that. It would be meaningless if you just missed each other.”

“Ah ha ha. To be honest, I just wanted an excuse to go jogging. You’ve been having me eat so much that I can’t even calculate out how many calories I’ve had.”

With that said, I put my shoes on in the entrance, but my aunt still looked troubled.

“Tomoe-chan, I know you’re on a diet, but don’t force yourself. They said on TV some female athletes get irregular periods.”

“I’m not working myself that hard, so don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.”

I opened the front door with a bitter smile.

As I did so, question marks danced inside my heart.

I know they might be causing trouble, but was Midori-san really the type to bad mouth people like that?

Part 16

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