Next week's communication sessions were canceled. All outside travel was prohibited, day or night. If you absolutely must leave the house, you had to take your monitor and set it on GPS mode so that if for example you were killed, the authorities would know where to find your body.
Hazuki's foster father grimaced as Hazuki read her message. Then said, “This is a serious problem.”
He kept talking about something or other, but Hazuki heard none of it.
Hazuki's consciousness was focused on her monitor.
At the bottom of her screen was an icon she'd never seen before.
A turtle.
The shape of a turtle.
There'd been no stupid icons on her screen this morning.
She was pretty sure there hadn't been anything there till she got the message from the center, actually. Her foster father was still saying something or other, but her voice recognition was turned off.
Mindful of her foster father's gaze Hazuki deftly slid her finger across the tablet and moved the cursor.
OPEN.
No audio upon opening the file.
THERE WILL BE A POWER OUTAGE FROM 5:55:30 TO 5:56:00 PM.
LEAVE THE HOUSE DURING THOSE THIRTY SECONDS. WAIT AT THE DOVEROOM.
WE MEET AT THE PRIVATE ROOM.
DO NOT PASS YOUR FOYER UNTIL AFTER THE OUTAGE.
WRITE BACK RELEVANT INFORMATION ON BACK OF THIS MESSAGE.
THAT'S ALL.
--MIO
Mio. Mio Tsuzuki.
As Hazuki scrambled to close the file it closed on its own. It must have been programmed to do that. If the message were open for any less time she wouldn't have caught all the information.
Five fifty-five pm.
The clock on her monitor said it was 3:33. She had two hours and twenty-two minutes. The helper would be gone by then.
Butâ¦
Hazuki looked up.
“Just don't worry so much,” her foster father said. “The security on this house is impeccable. Intruders cannot get in. You have no reason to go out anyway, so there's nothing to worry about. I'm sure the community center will reopen soon enough. I'll also tell the police to ensure the foolproof safety of the house.”
Intrudersâ¦
Intruders had penetrated this house several times now. It just hadn't been a crazy killer or some sly pervert. It was a little girl with some hacking skills.
Nothing would make her feel safe in this house.
Her foster father said, “I'll be off now,” and placed a hand on her shoulder.
That hand was warm and soft. But it made her think of the sensation of Yuko Yabe's wobbly body.
She felt somehow odd.
“I'm thinking of dropping by your little brother and sister's. I don't think they have anything to worry about, butâ¦I'm going to spend the night at my office tonight so I won't be far. If anything comes up please contact me.”
He smiled.
See ya
.
“Okay, goodbye.”
Soon the helper had arrived, and Hazuki went to her own room.
Wait at the doveroom
.
Ayumi's rooftop.
Had something happened to Yuko?
She turned her monitor on. The turtle icon was also on her bedroom monitor, but no matter how many times she opened it the file would immediately close. She didn't know what was going on, but it must have been one of those things. Mio had made it, after all.
It sounded like she was supposed to reply by typing in “relevant information” on the “back,” and she sought just enough time to jot something down. As long as she was typing it seemed the window would not close. She started to wonder what would happen when her voice changed, and while thinking about it she accidentally pressed the enter key.
> WHAT THE HELL
She meant to type “hell is going on?”
She tried once again to open the file, but this time at the end of the text her own additional sentence was tacked on and immediately disappeared. When she saw her incomplete sentence on the screen she went limp. She didn't feel like finishing it anymore and put her monitor in sleep mode.
Hazuki remained there till 5:55 pm, sitting in that chair doing nothing. She didn't put her hands on anything. At the fiftieth minute she left her room. She was going to leave her house as instructed.
She moved to the living room. The helper was gone. Her dinner was on the dining table as usual.
Two more minutes.
Those two minutes were long. Curiously, looking at the food on the dining table whetted her appetite, but she had no time to eat.
Why am I suddenly hungry now?
Hazuki thought.
Fifity-five and ten secondsâ¦twenty secondsâ¦thirty seconds.
Hazuki reflexively opened the door and went through the hall.
She hadn't had any intention of obeying orders, but there she was.
Through the foyer and out the front door. She stopped outside the door and took a gulp and spun on her heel.
The gate light snapped back on. The foyer and house lights all went back on shortly thereafter.
The occupancy light turned on.
She could not go back in now.
If she went back in now the security camera would spot her. Once in the foyer she would also have to use her ID card to get into the house.
But the house thought she was still in it. If someone ostensibly already inside entered this house, the system was sure to go haywire.
What a mess.
Oh.
Hazuki scrambled to get her monitor out. She made sure her GPS wasn't on.
It would be another system contradiction if her GPS showed her outside the house. Fortunately it wasn't turned on, but for some reason the monitor
was
on audio mode, even though Hazuki never listened to music.
Geez.
She deleted all the notices from the center.
No one was following the letter.
It wasn't that dark out yet.
Hazuki stared at the road leading straight ahead. The road went on forever. It made her uneasy. She couldn't get a complete view of it. She couldn't position herself on it. She didn't know where exactly she was. Nothing changed in the frame when she moved, making it pointless to move at all. Maps were maps because of the delineations they made.
She looked at her monitor. Not being able to use her GPS also meant she could not use the navigator. It wasn't as though she'd forgotten how to get there, butâ¦
At this rate she couldn't tell how quickly she was moving either. Nor could she confirm exactly where she was. Noâ¦
Hazuki was most definitely in her own home. The Hazuki standing on the side of the road now was a mere ghost of the real Hazuki. Hazuki's ghost moved around like a real ghost would. Aimlessly.
Even when she stepped on the ground it seemed insincere.
She checked the time.
She wanted at least to know how much exercise she was getting out of this.
If she couldn't measure distance she could at least measure how many calories she was burning.
She'd been walking for twenty minutes.
She walked past what used to be a burial ground for the dead.
Beyond the alleys was a wild forest.
There was a three-floor regulation-size building holding back the forest.
There wasâ¦
There was a nonregulation structure.
Ayumi's place.
Hazuki had walked for twenty-five minutes and twenty-two seconds to reach the doveroom.
After confirming the vacancy signal at the front of the building she walked around to the back.
She climbed the metal spiral staircase.
In the illegal structure built on the roof of this building a light was on.
Hazuki hesitated to move immediately toward the door and walked along the fence to where Ayumi had first been sitting. She sat down on the chair left there.
She sat down and looked up.
She looked at the sky the way Ayumi had. The world had gone dark. It was pitch black here and there.
Night skies are inconsistent
, Hazuki thought uselessly.
As she focused her eyes Hazuki began to see lights. Mio had said it was weirder to be able to see the lights than not, but even Hazuki could see a few. They were smaller than the pixels on her monitor.
After much concentration she realized the black part of the night sky was actually an obstructionâit was a physical object. She thought it was one deep black object, but it was actually a bridge. And as soon as she thought this, she felt like she could recognize the entire world.
The bridge was black and large.
There was a loud noise behind her.
“What are you doing?”
Two catlike eyes peered at Hazuki from behind the door.
It was Mio.
“You were supposed to come in when you got here. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“
Jesus
,” Mio let out, leaning forward to grab Hazuki by her right sleeve and pull her into the room.
“Don't you think this is a bad work environment, Kono?”
Mio's hands clasped Hazuki's shoulders as she spoke. Mio's face was right in front of hers. She didn't have time to back away and was trapped looking straight into Mio's big round eyes. She was stunned.
Pupils. Iris. Capillaries. Eyebrows. Eyelids.
A living thing.
Mio thrust Hazuki into the room.
Hazuki took a few steps toward the dove cage with her eyes still open. Mio slammed the door shut.
Mio must have felt the same thing
, Hazuki thought.
She was not used to making eye contact with humans either.
Mio looked over her shoulder.
“You're really weird.”
“What do you want?” Hazuki said in a small voice. She looked away from Mio.
“What do you mean what do I want?”
“Your file.”
“You didn't recognize that drawing?”
“I know what it was. That's what I'm asking now.”
“You knew? I'm so bad at drawing.”
“So?”
“It's a turtle! I don't know how to draw anything else. At least not animals.”
“That's not what I mean,” Hazuki brought her hand to the wire netting. “What
was
that?”
“Huh? Oh, wellâ¦an electronic message or voice message would leave traces. I had to think of a way to communicate without leaving a trace. It was really hard. I found a path no one in the general population would use and put out a weak signal on it. A signal of extremely random numbers, so if anyone did happen to pick it up it wouldn't make sense, but on a specially programmed monitor the code can be deciphered.
That's how⦔
“That's how nothing!”
“What's the matter?”
“
Why
did you do that?”
Hazuki looked around nervously. Mio started cackling. “I didn't think you'd come.”
“I gotâ¦worried.”
“Nah, I mean if we still had labs I wouldn't have called you out here, but it's canceled. They don't know when they'll solve the case, and I knew you'd be worried about it in the meantime.”
“Worried about Yabe?”
Was she worried? Sure she was a little ruffled and generally uncomfortable with the situation, but as soon as she got home everything was normal, and as long as everything was normal she wouldn't think anything out of the ordinary. She was not worried about Yuko Yabe.
Yet, Hazuki had trouble identifying what she had thought or how she felt specifically during that time.
The unpleasant sensation of carrying Yuko Yabe's body?
Hazuki looked at the doves.
She would remember the smell and movements of the creepy animals.
What have I gotten into?
She heard Ayumi's voice.
The door to the room with the bed opened and Ayumi appeared.
“I'm sorry if we're causing any more trouble.”
“We're not doing any such thing, Hazuki. Jesus, you're so weird.”
Hazuki thought Mio was much stranger than herself.
“Tsuzuki's explaining it poorly,” Ayumi said.
“Explaining what?”
“That message you sent, which made no sense.”
“Yes it did. I sent just enough information to get Makino to come here. I got around the system just fine.”
“Not that.”
Ayumi pushed a chair toward Hazuki. “Then what?” Ayumi said.
“The plan?”
“I think so. Yabe's almost completely recovered. She wants to go home. Tsuzuki objects. That Chinese girl can't be caught. I don't care either way. Tsuzuki thought we should ask what you thought since you've been in this from the beginning. She thought you would be concerned. I don't know why you would be, but that's what Tsuzuki said.”
Mio took the chair Ayumi brought to Hazuki, spun it around, and straddled it.
Ayumi grabbed another chair by the back and pushed it toward Hazuki.
“But there was no protocol for secret communication. Anything we sent you would have been recorded. And we couldn't guarantee any record of communication wouldn't get you in trouble. I told her to go see you personally but this one wouldn't have it.”
“It didn't make sense for me to go to your place alone.”
“So Tsuzuki came up with this weird coded message. I thought she was going to ask you point-blank what you thought we should do about Yuko, but then she made you come out here. If you ask me, I think she wanted to see you.”
“What?” Mio's face scrambled.
Wanted to see her?
Mio dropped her chin to the back of the chair. “
What do you mean
wanted
to see her?
I don't know what you mean, Ayumi.”
“I think you do. You went to a lot of trouble to hack into electrical systems and security systems, and you used unheard-of precision to design a way to get Hazuki to come out. So yes, I think you wanted to see her. If you can make such grandiose gestures, you can certainly make much simpler ones. If you got caught you'd be in big trouble. Hacking and illegal data transfers are serious offenses, even if you are a minor. This time you shut off the power in her house for thirty seconds on top of everything. I bet you'd have to pay restitution on that.”