Chapter 38: Interrogation

Yomikawa Tsuko, of course, was not late. On the contrary, she had arrived a full ten minutes before Kishida Masayoshi, a predator arriving at the hunting ground before its prey.

Thirty minutes after sending the curt, commanding text message, she had positioned herself in the ramen shop directly across the street from the Weekend Café. From her seat by the window, nursing a bowl of noodles she had no intention of finishing, she waited, her eyes fixed on the café’s entrance.

Before the meeting, she had decided, a period of detached observation was tactically essential. A preliminary assessment, not of him, but of herself. A test to ensure her own new, volatile emotions didn’t flare up unexpectedly, that she didn’t betray herself with some out-of-character reaction before the game had even properly begun.

This was, in fact, the very reason she had chosen this specific café. Its large, clean, plate-glass windows offered an almost unobstructed, panoptic view of the interior. Even Kishida’s predictable choice of a secluded corner table did not shield him from her calculating, almost contemptuous gaze.

When she saw his car screech to a halt, when she watched him hurry, frantically out of the driver’s seat and into the café, Yomikawa Tsuko felt a familiar, unwelcome jolt in her chest, her heart beginning to pound with a strange, dark, and thrilling energy.

A powerful, almost overwhelming impulse surged through her. A desire to march across the street, to slam her hands down on his table, to confront him, to demand to know why. Why had he been so profoundly, criminally, incompetent? Why was he so irredeemably foolish? Why, after his blundering had directly and undeniably led to Kagehara Kenta’s death, was he still allowed to walk the earth, to live his mundane, carefree life?

You call yourself a police officer, she thought, a cold, venomous rage beginning to bubble up from the depths of her soul, yet you don’t even comprehend the most basic concept of atonement?

“For the revenge plan to succeed,” she whispered to the steam rising from her untouched ramen, her hands clenching into tight, white-knuckled fists under the table, “a direct confrontation at this stage is… suboptimal.” Control. Restraint. Patience. The hunt has just begun.

“To lose my composure at the mere sight of him… that would make me no better than a drooling dog lunging for a bone.”

“Damn it, damn it, damn it, you pathetic, worthless bastard…”

She found herself, almost involuntarily painting a vivid, satisfying picture in her mind: the final scene, the successful culmination of her meticulously crafted plan. In her fantasy, she would be standing, looking down at Kishida Masayoshi as he knelt on the floor, a broken, sobbing wreck, like a villain in some cheap cartoon, finally confessing his myriad sins under the weight of the hero’s righteous sermon. She would, in that final, glorious moment, reveal the entire, unvarnished truth to him. She would make him understand, with absolute, soul-crushing clarity, the precise reasons for his downfall. She would make him see, in the shattered fragments of his own life, the full, devastating extent of his own stupidity, his own incompetence.

“There is, however, a minor tactical point to consider,” she mused, a flicker of her old, cold, analytical self momentarily reasserting control. “In that final moment, should I reveal my true identity first, to heighten the dramatic tension? Or should I save it for the very end, as the final, devastating blow, to see if his feeble, grief-addled intellect can piece it together on its own?”

And so, for nearly half an hour, she sat, letting the violent, chaotic waves of her own internal storm crash and break against the cold, hard shores of her carefully envisioned revenge. When she finally felt a semblance of calm, of icy control, return, she paid her bill and prepared to step onto the stage.

……

The diary is in her hands. She holds all the cards. She can claim it says whatever she wants. Kishida Masayoshi had, by now, become almost depressingly accustomed to her utterly insincere, almost mocking, apologies. He let out a quiet, weary sigh, then offered a polite, if equally insincere, lie of his own. “It’s no problem. I only just arrived myself.”

“Oh, really?” Yomikawa Tsuko slid gracefully into the chair opposite him, her gaze flicking down for a fraction of a second to his nearly empty coffee cup. She propped her chin on her hand, a small, knowing, and intensely irritating smile playing on her lips. “How very… disingenuous… of you, Officer Kishida.”

Her attacks, her little psychological jabs, they’re even more pointed today. And here I was, waiting for her like an idiot for nearly forty-five minutes. Kishida decided it was best not to engage, not to take the bait. He glanced at the young woman opposite him, and a new, more practical concern surfaced. He frowned. “You said you had something urgent to discuss with me?”

Yomikawa Tsuko was dressed as she had been at the cemetery – simple capri jeans, a plain white t-shirt. She wasn’t carrying a bag. And there was certainly nowhere on her slender body large enough to conceal a physical diary.

Don’t tell me… she played me? This was all just some kind of game to her?

As if reading his thoughts, a talent she seemed to possess to an unnerving degree, Yomikawa produced a small, silver USB drive from her pocket. She began to idly toss it from hand to hand, a faint, contemptuous smile touching her lips. “What’s the matter, Officer? Did I, perhaps, interrupt your rigorous training schedule at the climbing gym?”

The aggression, he noted with a growing sense of dread, is definitely escalating.

“I only go there… occasionally,” Kishida replied, his rebuttal weak, almost pathetic. His attention, however, was now completely,  hypnotically fixed on the small, silver object dancing in Yomikawa’s hand.

Seeing his rapt, desperate focus, Yomikawa’s smile widened, her eyes glinting with a predatory light. She dangled the USB drive from its thin black lanyard, swinging it back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch. “Does this little thing interest you so much, Officer? You look almost like…”

A starving dog, she thought, catching the scent of a raw, bloody bone.

Hearing her trail off, Kishida finally looked up from the drive, his expression slightly bewildered. “Like what?”

“Nothing.” Yomikawa Tsuko’s smile tightened. At that moment, a waitress arrived with her coffee. After a polite, almost musical, nod of thanks, she began to stir the dark, fragrant liquid with a small silver spoon, her gaze lifting to settle on Kishida’s hair, on the premature, sorrowful salt-and-pepper that dusted his temples. “Well, we’ve known each other for a little while now, haven’t we? And I must confess, I’ve been terribly curious about something. Your hair, Officer. Were you born with it like that?”

“My hair?” Kishida instinctively, reflexively touched his head, a flicker of something – pain? sadness? guilt? – in his eyes before it was quickly, expertly, suppressed. He was silent for a long, uncomfortable moment. “I’ve had a few gray hairs since I was in school,” he said, his voice a little too casual, a little too bright. “It wasn’t so bad back then. But after I became a detective… well, the stress of the job… it gradually got to be like this. I’ve always kept my hair short, and it grows fast. It would be too much of a hassle, too time-consuming, to keep dyeing it black.”

More likely, she thought, her internal voice a cold, sharp whisper, it became this severe after Kagehara Kenta’s suicide, didn’t it? She remembered seeing him back then, a younger, less haunted version of the man who now sat before her. And she was surprised, not that he would lie about such a thing, but that he would lie so… clumsily. Why not just tell the truth? she wondered, a flicker of genuine, scientific curiosity piercing through her contempt. Is it… guilt? Or is it shame?

Seeing her silence, Kishida pressed on, clearly anxious to steer the conversation away from himself. “Speaking of which, that USB drive… does it contain Kagehara Tetsuya’s diary? Is there no physical copy? If it’s just a digital file… I’m afraid it might not be… admissible… as formal evidence.”

At this, Yomikawa Tsuko’s eyebrow arched in amusement. “You truly are quite… fixated… on Kagehara-kun’s diary, aren’t you, Officer? May I be so bold as to ask why?”

Kishida Masayoshi clasped his hands together on the table, his expression turning earnest, almost pleading. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m a police detective. It is my sworn duty, my solemn responsibility, to see that justice is served for all the victims.”

“Justice for all the victims, you say?” Yomikawa Tsuko’s eyes narrowed, a slow, deeply unsettling smile spreading across her lips. “So dedicated to your work, so desperate for new leads to solve the case… why, Officer Kishida, one might almost mistake you for a good, competent cop.”

Why is she praising me all of a sudden? What’s her angle? Kishida felt a prickle of profound unease. He scratched the back of his head, a nervous, reflexive gesture. “A good cop… I’m just… trying to do my job.”

“Indeed, indeed,” Yomikawa nodded, her gaze locking onto his, her eyes like chips of polished, unforgiving obsidian. “And here I was, laboring under the mistaken impression that you were so obsessed with Kagehara-kun’s diary because you were desperately hoping to find some shred of evidence, any evidence at all, that he was the one who murdered Tanaka Erika.”

“Eh? Wh-why… why would you say that?” Kishida stammered, his carefully constructed composure beginning to crack, to crumble.

“Isn’t it the most logical conclusion?” Yomikawa Tsuko said, her tone as light and casual as if she were discussing the weather, her beautiful, innocent face a mask of serene curiosity. “If you could definitively prove that Kagehara Tetsuya was, in fact, the one who murdered Tanaka Erika… then his father’s subsequent, tragic suicide would have absolutely nothing at all to do with you, would it, Officer Kishida?”

Kishida’s face went rigid, a mask of pure, unadulterated torment. “That… that’s not…”

“Isn’t it?” Yomikawa pressed, her voice a soft, silken, and utterly merciless whisper. “To be accused, publicly and privately, of driving an innocent man to his death… it must be a terribly vexing and rather heavy burden to bear. But if Kagehara-kun is the real killer… then you, Officer Kishida, you are not a failure. You are a hero.”

“And heroes… heroes are showered with flowers and praise. They are not forced to carry the crushing, suffocating weight of guilt. The accusations of the past, the whispers of incompetence, they simply… melt away, dismissed as the jealous, baseless slander of lesser men.”

A soft, almost musical laugh escaped Yomikawa Tsuko’s lips, her eyes, black and white, sharp and clear, never leaving his, boring into him, seeing right through him. “What do you truly hope for, Officer Kishida, in the deepest, darkest, most secret corners of your heart? Don’t worry. No one else needs to know.”

The words, delivered in that soft, lovely, girlish voice, were like poisoned needles, each one finding a home deep in Kishida Masayoshi’s tormented soul. His face was frozen, his body rigid. He felt like he was being flayed alive, his every weakness, his every secret shame, laid bare for her cool, dispassionate amusement.

He couldn’t meet her calm, steady gaze. His own eyes darted back and forth, like cornered animals seeking an escape that didn’t exist.

“I… I just want to find the truth,” he choked out, the words tasting like ash and bile in his mouth. “That hope… that kind of hope…”

He couldn’t bring himself to lie, not to her, not now. He couldn’t say that he’d never had such a dark, desperate hope. In the dead of night, in the solitary darkness of his own apartment, when the guilt and the self-loathing came for him, that dark, seductive thought would often surface, a venomous whisper in the silence of his own mind. If only Kagehara Tetsuya was the killer… He would find himself hoping, praying, for a piece of evidence, any evidence, that would prove it, that would grant him absolution…

But then, the memory of his own father, Kishida Takatoshi, his unwavering integrity, his steadfast, almost fanatical belief in justice, would rise up to torment him. He was a police officer. His duty was to catch the real criminals, to protect the innocent. He could not, he would not, allow himself to pursue a case with such a clear, malicious, self-serving intent, simply to soothe his own tormented conscience, to negate a past, catastrophic mistake. If he allowed himself to be controlled by that dark, desperate hope, his life, his career, his very soul, would be over.

Countless nights, his heart had been torn in two by this brutal, unwinnable internal war, leaving him sleepless, forcing him to seek a temporary, unsatisfying refuge in alcohol or sleeping pills.

“It’s a perfectly normal way of thinking, isn’t it?” Yomikawa Tsuko’s voice was even softer now, a hypnotic, serpentine whisper, like the serpent in the garden, offering the sweet, sweet poison of the forbidden fruit. “Who, after all, willingly, happily, admits their own mistakes?”

“And consider this, Officer. Kagehara-kun is already a wanted fugitive. A pariah. A criminal in the eyes of the public. So, if you were to find some… circumstantial evidence… a vague, suggestive entry in his diary, perhaps… wouldn’t it be so very, very easy to pin everything on him? And the truth, the actual truth… does it really, truly, matter, in the end?”