Chapter 34: The Second Target

What… what in the seven hells? Is this actually happening?

Kana watched the two figures walking ahead, side-by-side, actually engaged in a relaxed, smiling conversation. Yomikawa Tsuko and… Takada Shōji. She rubbed her eyes, a disorienting sense of unreality washing over her. She had to be hallucinating.

Takada, that simple-minded, muscle-bound jock, was somehow… bridging the gap? Getting closer to Senpai? This was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most profoundly shocking development of the entire year. The Takada she knew was a foolish, reckless show-off, all bluster and no substance. How could someone like that possibly capture the attention, let alone the favor, of the cool, intelligent, and impossibly beautiful Yomikawa-senpai?

If Senpai were to find someone she truly liked, Kana knew, with a pang of anticipatory loneliness, that she would be left adrift. With Ōgami Yōsuke and Junko now practically joined at the hip, and Takada being… well, Takada… Yomikawa was really the only one she had left. If Yomikawa entered into a relationship, she would be well and truly alone. And she hated that thought.

But if that someone was Takada... well, that was a different matter entirely. A comforting, almost laughable, impossibility. Senpai would never fall for someone like Takada. It simply wasn’t in the realm of conceivable outcomes. So, on that front, she had nothing to worry about.

Still… what on earth were they talking about so earnestly? A part of her was dying of curiosity. She thought about inching closer, trying to catch a few stray words, but the memory of what had happened back at the villa, of how Senpai had so swiftly and coldly shot down her own suggestion, made her hesitate. A cold weight settled in her stomach. Her pace slowed, her earlier good mood evaporating into the clear morning air.

“Since you’re such an encyclopedic source of gossip, Takada-kun,” Yomikawa said, her tone light and teasing, a casual, almost disarming smile playing on her lips, “allow me to test your knowledge.”

“Anytime, Senpai! Ask me anything you want to know about anyone! I’m your man!” Takada puffed out his chest, radiating a simple, earnest confidence.

Yomikawa Tsuko first posed two minor, irrelevant questions, which Takada answered with surprising accuracy. She then feigned a look of wide-eyed astonishment. “My, my, Takada-kun, you really are quite the expert. It’s almost unbelievable. Very well, then, one final, more challenging question for you. You certainly haven’t forgotten about our missing club member, Kagehara-kun, have you?”

“That guy? Of course I remember him,” Takada Shōji nodded, his expression turning more serious.

Yomikawa Tsuko clasped her hands behind her back, her posture deceptively relaxed. “Then perhaps you can tell me the name of the reporter who, a year ago, broke the story that the police suspected Kagehara-kun was a murderer?”

“Eh? That reporter?” Takada Shōji looked a bit surprised, clearly not expecting a question so specific, so… historical.

“What, you don’t know this one either?” Yomikawa asked, her expression a perfect mask of polite, unreadable curiosity.

“No, no, I know who you mean.” After organizing his thoughts for a moment, Takada Shōji began his account.

“That reporter… ah, I remember. His name was Katayama Kenji. Speaking of which, that guy was seriously audacious, wasn’t he? Daring to publish the news that Kagehara Tetsuya was a suspected murderer. He wasn’t even afraid of retaliation from that psycho Kagehara. And Kagehara was a minor; directly reporting his name like that was actually illegal.”

Murderer. Psycho. A cold, contemptuous sneer formed in Yomikawa’s mind, but her outward expression remained one of mild, scholarly interest. “Did Katayama Kenji have some special reason for being so… bold?”

Takada Shōji nodded sagely. “Of course, there was a reason. Since you’re asking, Senpai, let me start with Katayama’s family. Katayama Kenji has an older brother, a guy named Katayama Kenichi. He’s the owner of a major local construction company. I’ve heard whispers that he even has connections to some city council members, though I don’t know if that’s true. The point is, he’s a big shot. A mover and shaker in high society. With a powerful, well-connected brother like that watching his back, of course Katayama Kenji felt like he could act without fear of reprisal. And it wasn’t the first time he’d pulled a stunt like that.”

“Not the first time?”

“That’s right. Seventeen years ago, there was this huge, ugly scandal at our school. The long and short of it is, a girl was being systematically bullied and ostracized for a long time. In her last semester of her senior year, it escalated. There was even… a sexual assault. I don’t know all the grim details, but the end result was that the girl… died. Let me think… her name was… Onizuka… Kayako?”

“Onizuka Sayaka, wasn’t it?” Yomikawa corrected smoothly, her mind instantly accessing the data from Kishida’s case files. The girl Hasebe Koichi tormented to death. Yes.

“Right, right! Onizuka Sayaka! Man, that name still gives me the creeps. I always get it mixed up with the name of the ghost from that horror movie, The Grudge.”

“There are clear, established rules in the press, you know,” Takada continued, warming to his topic. “For sensitive cases involving minors like that, even if you report on them publicly, you’re not supposed to use the names of the suspects or the victims. It’s a measure to protect their reputation and privacy.”

“But, you know how it is. The more you’re told you can’t do something, the more certain people want to do it. Katayama Kenji was just a wet-behind-the-ears rookie reporter back then. He probably saw this as his golden opportunity to make a name for himself. So, he went for it. Boldly published the victim’s personal information in his report.”

Yomikawa Tsuko raised a delicate eyebrow. “The victim’s information? Not the suspects’?”

“And that,” Takada said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “is where Katayama showed how clever, and how completely ruthless he is. Onizuka Sayaka’s parents were both dead. She was an orphan, with no one in the world to look out for her except some greedy, distant relatives who only crawled out of the woodwork to fight over her inheritance. So, Katayama could splash her name, her photo, every sordid detail, all over the news, and he knew no one would raise a fuss. Dead girls can’t sue, right?”

“Of course, there was still the issue of the public prosecutor. I don’t know the exact legal maneuvering that took place, but in the end, Onizuka’s relatives, the same ones who were fighting over her house, accepted a formal apology on her behalf and signed some kind of letter of understanding. And that was that. Case closed.”

“I see.” Yomikawa nodded slowly, a new, more detailed picture of her target forming in her mind. This man was not just some pathetic, bottom-feeding journalist. He was cunning, well-connected, and had a long, established history of this kind of predatory reporting. A more challenging target than she had initially anticipated. Which, she had to admit, made the prospect of his eventual, systematic destruction all the more… interesting.

“After that incident, Katayama Kenji became something of a minor celebrity, a famous, hot-shot young journalist. He built his career on similar sensational topics – juvenile delinquents, student sexual assault cases, whatever would grab the most eyeballs, the most clicks. Of course, we don’t have that many major crimes around here. It wasn’t until the Makeup Hunter started their reign of terror that his fame got another significant boost.”

“He used the same playbook. Among the Makeup Hunter’s victims, there just so happened to be one girl in a situation very similar to Onizuka Sayaka’s. I think her father had passed away and her mother had remarried and moved away. The point is, she was one of those kids no one really cared about, easily exploitable. Katayama used pretty much the same tactic, buying off the victim’s remaining relatives, and then he published lurid photos of the crime scene and the victim’s personal information. He cloaked himself in the noble excuses of ‘hoping for a swift resolution to the case’ and ‘warning the general student population,’ and once again, he managed to dodge any serious legal repercussions.”

“Then, this guy probably decided that still wasn’t enough, and he continued to stir up trouble around the Makeup Hunter case. I don’t know how he got his information, who his source was, but last year, he targeted a certain police officer and managed to squeeze a lot of intel out of him. Probably the police’s internal theories, their reasons for suspecting Kagehara, the clues they were looking at, that kind of thing. Katayama Kenji packaged it all up, and then published his explosive report.”

“And after that?”

“After that, Katayama probably got a very stern, off-the-record warning. After all, things are different now than they were back then. Smartphones, social media… information spreads like wildfire. If what he did blew up into a major national incident, it would have definitely spiraled out of control, for him and his sources.”

“If you look at the news from the past year, you can see he’s toned it down a lot. Katayama’s reports have become more and more… ordinary. He reports less frequently, too. He’s practically no different from a regular, boring journalist now. As for the whole Kagehara incident, no one really pursued the matter legally, so it just… faded away.”

So, this man is still living in this city. His home, his life, is here.

Seventeen years ago, he was a rookie reporter. That means he’s not a young man anymore. He probably… he probably has a child.

At that thought, Yomikawa Tsuko’s eyes narrowed, a slow, predatory light beginning to dance in their depths, like a fox that has just spotted its unsuspecting prey. “Speaking of which, Takada-kun, how is it that you know all these sordid details so well? It’s almost as if you’ve read the man’s unauthorized, tell-all biography.”

Takada Shōji scratched his head, completely oblivious to the dangerous turn the conversation, and Yomikawa’s thoughts, had taken. “Oh, that’s easy. Because his son is in my class. Katayama Mao. All this stuff, I heard it from him. How much of it is exaggerated, how much is just him bragging about his famous dad, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Katayama… Mao?”

An unsuppressible, triumphant, and utterly chilling smile began to spread across Yomikawa Tsuko’s lips. It seemed her luck was almost… supernatural. Her second target wasn’t some distant, shadowy figure she would have to hunt down. He was right here. His life, his world, was within her immediate reach.

No. Control yourself. Do not smile. The thought was a sharp, internal command. To laugh now, over such a minor, fortunate coincidence, would be… unseemly. A loss of composure. Still, she had to admit, this Takada boy, for all his foolishness, was proving to be a surprisingly rich, and entirely unwitting source of valuable information.

After regaining her placid, neutral expression, she asked, her voice a model of casual curiosity, “What kind of person is this Katayama Mao?”

“Him…” Takada Shōji frowned in thought for a moment. “Well, we’re not exactly friends, so I don’t know what he’s like in private. But just from what I’ve seen at school, he’s a big mouth, just like his old man. Loves to brag, especially about his family and how important they are.”

“As for his personality, I guess he’s okay. He’s not the type to hold a grudge, I don’t think. One time, he was going on and on about something, bragging about some trip his family took, and I was getting really annoyed listening to him, so I called him out on some lie he told, right in front of everyone. It got really awkward, and he looked super pissed off at the time. But he never did anything to try and get back at me afterwards.”

From the sound of it, the boy was a colossal, almost pitiable idiot. A braggart whose boasts were so flimsy, so transparently false, that even someone with Takada Shōji’s limited intellectual firepower could pick them apart. Yomikawa Tsuko found it almost hard to believe someone that profoundly foolish could actually exist.

Takada, completely oblivious to the cold, dangerous calculations taking place behind Yomikawa’s serene facade, asked casually, “Why are you asking about Katayama, Senpai? Is something wrong?”

“Well, I just found it a little… strange, that’s all.” Yomikawa Tsuko paused, a new, insidious idea sparking in her mind, a way to test the waters, to plant a seed. “Logically, Kagehara-kun must have hated that man, Katayama Kenji, with an absolute passion, right? But why do you suppose he never… retaliated?”

“R-retaliate?” Takada Shōji was surprised at first, then nodded slowly, considering it. “Yeah, I guess so. If it weren’t for Katayama Kenji’s reckless, sensationalist reporting, Kagehara’s father probably wouldn’t have killed himself. But retaliation… thinking about it, a kid like Kagehara probably couldn’t have done anything, right?” After all, Katayama was an adult, a powerful and well-connected one at that. No matter how you looked at it, he wouldn’t have been afraid of a high school kid like Kagehara Tetsuya.

“You can’t be so certain of that,” Yomikawa Tsuko said, her tone deliberately casual, almost offhand. “After all, the police still suspect that Kagehara-kun was the one who murdered Hasebe Koichi and Ōshima Masaki. If we were to, hypothetically, add a Katayama Kenji, or perhaps, a Katayama Mao, to that list… it wouldn’t seem so strange, now, would it?”

Takada Shōji froze, his eyes widening, the color draining from his face. It was unclear what thoughts, what horrifying images, were suddenly racing through his mind, but he swallowed hard, a look of dawning, abject horror spreading across his features. “Y-you… you have a point.”