A Midsummer's Equation

FORTY-EIGHT

Kyohei looked up from his notebook at the sound of a phone buzzing. His father swore under his breath and checked the display before answering it. It was the fourth call in less than an hour—probably Mom again.

“What? Look, I told you I don’t know anything.… Yeah, we’re at the hotel. We checked in, now we’re just waiting. I said we’re waiting. Look, given the circumstances, the police are definitely—” He stopped speaking for moment and looked around, then continued in a quiet voice. “The police are definitely going to want to talk to Kyohei.… No, what good would you coming here do? That would just make things even more confused than they already are.… No, we can’t. We absolutely can’t delay the opening.” Still holding the phone to his ear, he stood from the table and walked away.

Kyohei drank his orange juice through a long straw. They were sitting in the hotel lounge. The only people in the pool were a little kid wearing a floatie and a woman—probably his mother.

Kyohei’s father stood in a corner of the lounge, still talking. From the way it sounded, he’d left everything in Osaka up to Kyohei’s mom. Kyohei knew it was no little thing getting a new store open. He could imagine his mother fretting up a storm. “How dare they pull a stunt like this when we’re up to our necks in work!”

At first, his father had been mum about why he’d suddenly come to pick Kyohei up, but after they left the Green Rock Inn and checked in at this resort hotel, he had told him the truth. The guest, Tsukahara, had died because of a boiler malfunction at the inn. His aunt and uncle had tried to dispose of the body to hide that fact.

“They should’ve just called the police right away, but because they didn’t, well, now they’re in a bit of trouble. They might even have to spend some time in jail,” his father told him with a dark face.

Kyohei thought back to the way his aunt and uncle had been acting in the days after Tsukahara went missing: the strained conversations, the dark looks in the car. Suddenly it all made sense.

Kyohei slurped at his drink, becoming aware of someone standing next to him. He looked up. “Hey, Professor!”

“They send you here?”

“Yeah, with my dad. Did they put you up here too?”

“This is the hotel where DESMEC made my initial reservation. I hardly imagined I’d be taking them up on it under these circumstances.”

Kyohei looked up at him. “You knew what happened, didn’t you?”

The physicist pushed his glasses up with the tip of his finger. “Knew what?”

“About the accident at the inn. That it was my uncle’s fault.”

“Accident?” Yukawa raised an eyebrow. “I had some theories. How long will you be staying here?”

“I don’t know. We might head out tomorrow, but Dad says we might leave later tonight if we can.”

“I see,” Yukawa said, nodding. “That’s probably for the best. This isn’t a good place for you to be.”

“Why not?” Kyohei asked.

“I should think you’d know that better than anyone else.”

Kyohei looked up at Yukawa, but then he saw his father putting his phone in his pocket and turning back around. Yukawa nodded and walked away with long strides.

“Who was that?” Kyohei’s father asked him.

Kyohei didn’t answer. His eyes were on Yukawa’s back, watching him leave.