Loups-Garous (41 page)

“If I get caught here it's your job on the line too. I'm sure you're in no state of mind to be making idle chitchat.”

He wasn't wrong, but…

“You're right, but you're in the best place possible for hiding. The rooms can't be viewed from the halls for the sake of the children's privacy, and the sound protection is complete. The courtyard beyond the window is, as you know, off-limits. As long as there are no children in the room nothing will be recorded, and unless myself or a child inside the room makes an emergency call no one can open the door from the outside. The only drawback is how we're going to get you out of here when I leave the office.”

“The sensors turn on when the room is vacant. Then…”

Kunugi looked at the ceiling. There were five cameras.

“I should leave as soon as I can to avoid causing any more problems for you.”

Kunugi took deliberate steps toward the door. “But I can't check the area. I can't see or hear what's going on out there.”

“That's true. You could open the door into the hall and find people walking there…That would be bad.”

“Yes, it would
.
” Kunugi stood motionless at the door.

“You couldn't just say I came in disguised as a cop and threatened you, could you?”

“I couldn't lie like that. Besides if I said that you'd be…”

It wouldn't just be that he'd be suspended. They'd send him to trial.

“It's not a lie, though.” Kunugi furrowed his brow. “It's half true.”

“I don't remember being threatened.”

“Even if you didn't feel it, this is plenty threatening. I snuck into a no-entry area and illegally came in through your window. Besides, you shouldn't worry about what happens to me. If I get caught anywhere in this neighborhood they'll take my badge for good.”

Kunugi extended his arm toward the door shield.

“Wait. Even if you get into the hall, how do you plan on getting out of the building?”

“I guess I can't just go out.”

No, you can't. You can't go out if there's no record of you having gone in.

“These past few days there have been several police officers and area patrols coming in and out, but even they have had to pass their IDs through.”

“Of course. Even zero-year-old infants have to have ID. The only way to go in and out without an ID is to break your way through the glass doors. However, the glass is reinforced, so it'd be difficult to break with your bare hands.”

“Yeah. Even if it weren't reinforced, I couldn't break it. Even if I broke it I doubt I'd get through it. I should just get caught.”

“Get caught…”

“On purpose,” Kunugi said. “I'm just going to cause you more trouble if I stay here.”

“It won't matter where you are. Be it at the front of the building or in my office, wherever you get caught they'll ask how you got in. If you refuse to answer they'll figure it out when they find that the only place where security was compromised was my office. They'll suspect me of helping you anyway.”

“In that case, I'll just go out through the yard. That's where I was to begin with.”

Kunugi went toward the window. “If I leave through here, it'll be as if I was never here. I mean, unless you count the two cups of tea I had, but you could say you drank them.”

“What about the sensor?”

“Sensor? Well, there's no limit to barriers on my way to freedom. I'm sure they'll send someone to find me eventually, but out through the courtyard will be better than busting through a glass door. I don't have any upper body strength, but I can run fast. Because I'm a coward.”

“If you run at full speed at your age, you'll get hurt.”

“That's age discrimination if I ever heard it,” Kunugi said. “Eh, I guess it's okay because we're talking privately.”

“It's also the truth. I'm just telling you as a cautionary measure. Even if you run, where would you run to?”

“Where…”

“You aren't possibly thinking of going home and playing your old role-playing games, are you?”

“Actually, that's not a bad idea, but my server has been totally inactive for the past few days, so it's highly likely someone's there surveilling my house. With my monitor in the house but the house itself showing total vacancy, they'd know there's trouble. Police officers are required to keep their monitors on them, even when on leave. Not that they'd be contacting me or anything. I'm not going to find a way out by being buttered up by your hospitality, and besides, I won't get anything done just sitting around here.”

“Does that mean you had something you wanted to do in the first place?”

“I didn't have a concrete mission or anything, but with Yuji Nakamura dead now too…I'm not satisfied just sitting around anymore,” Kunugi said in a low voice.

“As if you were ever just sitting around,” Shizue said, as if she had been either.

“This latest theory that the undocumented resident is the culprit doesn't sit well with me.”

“It might have some validity though. It's questionable where the police got their information, but if the lieutenant is spouting it, it's possible it's true. However, if this girl and this undocumented pharmacy her family runs are the supposed criminals, the police can't say Rey Mao did everything herself. If there were an unknown partner…”

Someone
under the radar
, as it were.

“Well then,” Kunugi said and reached out to the door panel again, when just at the same moment, a beeping sound went off and her desk monitor turned on.

“Wait.”

Kunugi turned around.

Shizue put an index finger to her lips as if to say
be quiet
.

“Yes, this is Fuwa.”

On the display was a female employee at the center's entry.

“There's a child here requesting to see Counselor Fuwa.”

“A child?”

“Did you not have an appointment to see a child privately?”

“No, I didn't.”

“I see. This is a
real contact
request. The child is presently here. Insists on seeing you—given the circumstances I felt I ought to call the director, who asked that the child be apprehended at your office.

“Apprehended…either way I'd like you to see the child. I can't turn her away. Since children aren't allowed to be out right now anyway.”

Shizue shifted her gaze from the monitor screen to Kunugi.

Kunugi received her look and moved away from the window toward the desk.

Shizue's face was being watched by one of the cameras, so she couldn't make any facial gestures to express what she wanted to say to Kunugi.

Kunugi came up to just behind the monitor and opened his mouth to speak. Shizue quickly uttered, “I understand, I'll be with you in one second,” and closed the dialogue.

“What are you doing? I told you not to make a sound.”

“Yeah. I thought it would be easiest if someone on your monitor saw me attack you. Then Lieutenant Ishida would arrive immediately. Otherwise—”

“I'll figure something out. Just sit still.”

“Figure something out? Isn't there a kid about to show up here? Then what?”

“These aren't normal office hours. Something's wrong.”

Shizue called the reception desk.

“This is Fuwa. I apologize for abruptly signing off. I was slightly confused. Now who did you say was this child that requested to see me?”

“Uh, one Ayumi Kono. She's in your session for age fourteens.”

“Kono?”

Ayumi Kono
.
What kind of child was she?

After thinking about it, Shizue gathered herself.

“She lives alone, if I'm correct.”

“That's right. We have received a notice of long absence of her guardian. In case of emergency our center takes over as her guardian, which is why I thought the director's judgment…”

“I see. But this girl…”

Her older sister was a member of the environmental cleanup development project and living abroad. That much Shizue recalled, but that didn't help her remember anything else about the girl herself. She couldn't remember any characteristics. She left her sentence unfinished and searched for her file, whereupon a picture of Ayumi Kono came up on the display.

Very short hair and a refined-looking face.

Ahh…

“W-where is Miss Kono now?”

“It was dangerous to be outside the building, so I let her through the entrance gate, but she's not yet in the hall. If you give me the cue I can open the hall gate.”

“The child in question has a fear of strangers and will not like seeing people she is not acquainted with. Are there any police-related personnel in the East C road between the entrance hall and the counseling booth?”

“Please wait a second while I check.”

Kunugi waited with bated breath. Shizue looked at the still image of Ayumi Kono on her display. Something about it…

Something about it troubled her.

There is no one there
, the display answered.

“Is that so? In that case please block the East C road from the entrance hall until the visiting minor has gone through. Obviously if there is an emergency you can lift the block, but this child is particularly frightened of police and authority figures. Please advise.”

“I need the director's permission to block the road, but I can tell you what the odds are of this child running into anyone. As of now all the police personnel are in the south corridor, and all the center personnel short of the director are in separate meetings in the west corridor. You and Ms. Shima are the only counselors here as the rest of them have been asked to return home. Right now in the east corridor it is just you and Ms. Shima.”

“That's fine. In that case please open the hall gate for Miss Kono and ask her to proceed to counseling booth C0045.”

Shizue was about to close the dialogue when the attendant said, “Wait, there's something else. The police have instructed to have the minor escorted back to her house by a guard brought in by the area patrol after the interview. You will have to contact me again about the passersby in the East C road anyway, so please contact me as soon as your interview is over.”

“Understood.”

Shizue turned off her communication, turned her chair around, and faced Kunugi.

“What do you think?”

“What do you mean? What are you going to do?”

“The minor will be headed this way. Right now there is no one between here and the entrance. You just need to leave before the child arrives.”

“Into the hall?”

“The only sensor in the hall is one for body temperature. There is no visual surveillance. I will tell the child that you are the bodyguard assigned by the police—that's not technically a lie. Stay outside the door and flat up against the wall until our meeting is over.”

“You mean like a bodyguard.”

“Yes. If you're in the middle of the hall they'll know you're a human. When the interview is over I will escort the child out, so at that point please follow us to the entrance hall. I can open the gate from inside. Once it's open we'll appear on the management department's scans, but there's a brief interval before the scan begins. I realize I said you're old for the exertion, but you will have to run as fast as you can to outside the center. The area patrol will send someone for the child immediately, so you need to clear out before they arrive.”

Go anywhere
, Shizue would have normally said.

“You could go to your parents. You can say you lost your monitor in the house and went home to your parents. They'll buy that, won't they? Losing track of your monitor is a minor violation.”

As Shizue finished her sentence she stood in front of the door and brought her hand up to the sensor panel.

The door opened.

Kunugi moved uncharacteristically correctly from the window to where Shizue stood, and said, “I owe you one, big time.”

“I don't expect anything,” Shizue said.

Kunugi stepped into the hall at almost the same time a small figure appeared on her floor.

She looked just like the girl in her monitor.

Her gaze looked somehow pained and forced Shizue to look down.

It was immoral.

Shizue still didn't know what compelled this girl to come to her.

She'd come out to make a real contact conversation in the midst of a warning not to leave home, so it must have been a serious issue. And yet the whole time, Shizue was thinking of how to use this opportunity to help Kunugi escape the center. This was unforgivable as a counselor. Not only against the counselor's code but her own personal code of conduct. She was behaving…recklessly.

“I'm Ayumi Kono,” the girl said.

“Miss Kono…” Shizue still couldn't recall anything about her. “Please come in. This is the police…”

Shizue gulped. Ayumi was looking at Kunugi's hands. Kunugi must have noticed as well. He put his hands behind him. In those hands were his mud-caked shoes.

“I am your bodyguard,” Kunugi said. “Please come in.”

“Wait a second.” Ayumi stood her ground.

“Wait…wait for what?”

“Please don't close the door. When you do and I swipe my ID to come in, the room starts recording. I came to tell you something I don't want recorded.”

Don't want recorded…

Shizue's heart started racing. This girl…

What was she doing here?

“But as I'm sure you're aware then, what gets recorded here can't leave the center without your permission. So…”

That wasn't true.

Recordings might be abridged, but they all got handed over to the police.

Shizue was lying.

So…

She couldn't tell her
not to worry
.

Shizue turned her eyes away again.