A Midsummer's Equation

SIXTY-TWO

Narumi scanned all the sites she could find for any follow-up on the incident but found nothing. The only headline about the case read, “Falling Death in Hari Cove Actually a Poisoning—Local Innkeepers Involved in Cover-Up,” followed by a short article that told her nothing she didn’t already know. It didn’t look like the case was getting much attention beyond the borders of their town.

That didn’t make it any less of a big deal for her, though. Narumi wondered almost constantly how her parents were doing, with no means of finding out. She tried calling Nishiguchi, but he only apologized. “Sorry, I don’t know exactly what’s going on either,” he said. “I’m sure they’re fine, though.”

He said they should get together for a drink once things calmed down, and she told him she’d think about it. Going for a drink was the last thing on her mind.

She was listlessly looking through some help wanted ads when she heard footsteps on the stairs outside, and the door opened. It was Wakana.

“Narumi? There’s someone here to see you downstairs.”

“Me?” Narumi said, putting a hand to her chest. “Is it the police?”

“No, someone who says he wanted to go for a dive. He requested you specifically and said you’d talked about it before?”

“Tall guy? Glasses?”

“That’s the one.”

“Right,” she said, standing up.

She went downstairs to find Yukawa waiting for her. He was looking at one of the stickers they had for sale.

“Hello,” she said.

He looked up and smiled. “Thanks for the other day.”

“My pleasure,” she said. “How did you know I was here?”

Yukawa put the sticker back on the shelf. “I paid a visit to the police department and told them I had a question about my bill from the other night and wanted to talk to the person in charge at the Green Rock Inn. They told me where you’d be.”

“That worked?” Narumi shook her head. She half wanted to ask him if he had heard anything about her parents, while he was at it.

“As a matter of fact, I’ll be leaving town today,” Yukawa said.

“Really? All finished with your research?”

“I think DESMEC can handle the rest. School’s starting up soon. Anyway, I figured this is my last chance to see this ocean you’re so proud of. I believe you promised to take me diving?”

“I did, but—”

She heard a sound behind her and turned to see Wakana step up. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take you out,” she offered. “Narumi’s had a lot going on lately, and she’s probably pretty tired. It’s not a good idea to dive when you’re not at your best.”

Yukawa nodded thoughtfully and turned his eyes to Narumi. “I certainly won’t force you. Though there were some things I wanted to talk to you about.”

Narumi stared at Yukawa’s face. There was a serious look to his eyes, more so than usual. And yet, there was a kindness there too. She got the sense that he had something he needed to tell her.

“I’d rather not do all the prep we’d need to go scuba diving, but I could handle some snorkeling,” she said. “And that should be more than enough for you to see the real treasure of Hari Cove.”

“Perfect,” Yukawa said, picking a pair of goggles off the shelf. “I might have lied when I said I had my diver’s license, anyway.”

An hour later they were in the ocean, at the very spot that made Narumi a snorkeling fanatic years before. It was a bit of a secret, being a ways away from the main swimming area and most of the popular diving spots. Here, only a short distance off shore, it got very deep very quickly, and the scenery changed dramatically. The seafloor was a beautiful carpet of light, with a hundred gradations of color, and there were fish everywhere.

This is what I’ve been protecting, she thought. Just like it’s been protecting me. She wondered what would have become of her if she hadn’t found the ocean, and the thought frightened her.

Sixteen years ago, when she moved here, she had no guidepost to live by. She’d begun to seriously entertain doubts about whether she deserved to be alive at all. How could she possibly have a right to a happy life after killing one person and sending another to jail for her crime?

Her hands still remembered what it felt like to stick a knife into that woman’s body. She doubted she’d ever forget. And still, she didn’t know why she’d done it. It was like her body had been moving by itself. But she did remember how she’d felt just before it happened. She felt like everything would fall apart, their lives dashed on the rocks.

Nobuko Miyake rose in her mind. She could see her frown when she heard Narumi’s mother was out, then how she stared at Narumi, a faint smile coming to her lipstick-red lips. “You do look like him, don’t you,” she said.

“Like who?” Narumi asked. Thinking about it later, she wished she hadn’t.

Nobuko had scoffed, her smile turning mean. “Narumi, was it? I bet people tell you all the time that you don’t look like your father.”

Her eyes opened wider. Nobuko chuckled. “Bull’s-eye, hmm? It’s okay. I’m the only one who knows the truth.”

Narumi felt the blood rush to her head. “What do you mean, the truth? You’re crazy,” she said sharply.

“There’s nothing crazy about it, dear. But my, you do look so much like him. Especially the mouth.” Narumi could feel the woman’s eyes invading her space, an unwelcome presence lingering over her features.

“Stop. I’m going to tell my father.”

The woman made a mock show of alarm. “Please do,” she said. “In fact, I’d be happy to tell him the truth myself. I wonder what would happen then? You and your mom would probably get kicked out onto the street, at the very least. Anyway, tell your mother I’ll be back. And don’t make that face at me, young girl. You’ll regret making an enemy of me when the tables are turned—and they will be, very soon.”

Narumi was still watching those ruby-red lips when she realized Nobuko had already left. Her head was a whirlwind. She couldn’t think straight, and yet, her body knew what to do. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen, then went after her.

She ran mindlessly, and yet, there was one shred of clarity at the bottom of her murky consciousness. It was the realization that the woman was telling the truth. She wasn’t her father’s daughter. It confirmed a doubt she’d been holding inside for years.

It started one night when her father came home from a school reunion, unusually drunk. He couldn’t even walk straight, slumping onto the kitchen table when he sat down and tried to drink some water. Setsuko tried to rouse him but he didn’t look like he was listening, until he suddenly turned and slapped her mother full across the face. Narumi was shocked. She’d never seen her father lift a hand against anyone before. Setsuko froze.

“Don’t you say anything,” he growled in the most terrifying voice she’d ever heard him use. “You don’t have the right.” Then he opened his wallet and pulled out a photograph, tossing it on the floor. Narumi recognized it: a family picture of the three of them, taken at a studio. “They all laughed. Said she didn’t look like me. Of course she doesn’t look like me.” And then, drunk, her father fell asleep on the spot with her mother standing over him.

The next day, Shigehiro was back to being her gentle father, a kind husband. He apologized to both of them about drinking too much the night before and said he didn’t remember a thing. It never came up again, and Narumi never asked her mother about it, but she didn’t forget.

Nobuko Miyake brought that memory screaming back to the surface, and with it came the fear that her family would fall apart. She saw the woman walking away, her silhouette floating in the light of the streetlamp. Narumi grabbed the knife tight in both hands and charged. Her mind was a blank. She didn’t stop to think—that this was a crime, that people who did this went to prison.

She didn’t remember what happened next very clearly. When she came to, she was curled up in her bed. She didn’t sleep, she just lay there trembling until morning. When her mother questioned her, she tried to tell her what had happened but couldn’t put the pieces together. Her recollection was too vague.

But she did what she was told, and when her mother came back to collect her, she changed her clothes and left the house with no idea where they were going, what they were doing, or what would happen to her.

A few days later, it was announced on the news that the man who killed Nobuko Miyake—a man she didn’t know—had been caught. Her mother then explained who he was, and why he’d taken the blame. Narumi was aghast. She didn’t want to believe it, she couldn’t believe it. And yet, here she was, free and not in prison.

“You can’t tell anyone this. Especially not your father,” her mother said, her face severe.

Narumi didn’t object. Her chest ached when she thought of this man she’d never met serving her prison sentence. But there was blame there, too, for the married man who had a one-night stand with another woman. And for the child born from that union, there was guilt.

Her days were spent struggling with that guilt. She’d put her real father in jail and deceived the man who had raised her. When her father would come home on the weekends, she would feel such a welling of emotion she couldn’t look into his eyes.

Which was why she didn’t resist when her father quit his job and said he was going to take over the inn. She wanted to leave that place as soon as possible. Her knees felt weak every time she walked past where it happened.

Then, about a month after they had moved to Hari Cove, one of her friends took her to the observation platform on their way back from school. It was the first time she’d really looked out over the ocean, and she was awestruck by its beauty. She remembered then what her mother had said about the painting Senba had given her.

In that moment, she felt like she knew what she had to do with her life. She owed it to her real father. She would protect the ocean that he loved until the day he could see it again.

Yukawa worked his diving fins like a pro, not a bit of wasted movement. Narumi started to wonder if he’d been lying about not having a license. She showed him a couple of her favorite spots, then they went back to the shore and climbed up on the rocks.

Yukawa took off his snorkel mask and smiled. “Amazing. I understand why you’re so proud of the ocean here. Makes me wonder how so many people in Tokyo can go off to Okinawa and Hawaii when there’s this beauty right here under their noses.” He turned to Narumi. “Thank you. When I think of Hari Cove, this is what I’ll remember, and that’s saying something.”

Narumi took off her fins and sat down on the rock. “I’m glad you liked it. But wasn’t there something else you wanted to talk to me about?”

Yukawa smiled knowingly and sat down next to her. His eyes were fixed out on the horizon. “Summer’s ending soon,” he said.

“Mr. Yukawa?”

“My detective friend found Hidetoshi Senba. I met him yesterday, in fact. He’s in the hospital with an incurable brain tumor. He doesn’t have long to live.”

Narumi felt a lump form in her chest, an uncomfortable tightness she couldn’t swallow or spit out. Her face drew tight.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why a physicist would go so far out of his way. I wonder that myself. It’s really none of my concern.”

Narumi searched for something she could say that would explain it all away. But at the same time, she realized there weren’t any magic words. He already knew everything.

“The man mostly responsible for taking care of Senba was none other than the detective who arrested him sixteen years ago. Tsukahara had retired from the police force, but that one case still bothered him. I’m not sure what the two of them spoke of, but I imagine that Tsukahara tried everything he could to get the truth out of Senba. And I’m guessing he did, in the end, though he didn’t feel the need to make that public. Instead, all he wanted to do was fulfill an old man’s dying wish to see the daughter he’d traded his life to save.”

Yukawa spoke evenly and calmly, giving each word time to make an impact. Narumi remembered when her eyes met Tsukahara’s at the hearing, finally understanding that gentle look he had given her.

“I don’t think what Tsukahara was trying to do was a bad thing. But it was dangerous. Like trying to open a set of doors on the bottom of the sea. You don’t know what’s going to happen when you do. That’s why no one touches them. And when someone comes along who does, others try to stop them.”

Narumi looked over at Yukawa. “Are you saying it wasn’t an accident?”

“You think it was?” Yukawa asked, giving her a cold look. “Really?”

“Of course,” she wanted to say, but she couldn’t make her lips form the words. Her mouth was bone dry.

Yukawa was looking back out at the horizon. “I didn’t want to say anything, to be honest. There were a number of things about what happened that bothered me right from the beginning, but I decided to ignore them. That is, until I realized if I didn’t take action, it would have a tremendous impact on someone’s life, through no fault of his own.”

Narumi looked at him, not understanding.

“Tsukahara’s death wasn’t an accident, it was murder,” he said, suddenly turning to face her. “And the murderer … was your cousin, Kyohei.”

For a second, everything around her went silent. Even the surface of the sea appeared still, completely frozen. Then, sound returned with a gentle lapping of waves. She felt a gust of wind blow between them. She stared at the physicist. What the hell is he saying? For a moment, she wondered if she had misheard.

“Of course,” Yukawa said, “he didn’t do it on purpose. He didn’t even understand the meaning of what he was doing at the time.”

“What did he do?” Narumi asked, her voice a whisper.

Yukawa looked down in silence for a moment before turning to face her. “I believe I mentioned that the police were having a hard time re-creating the conditions for what happened. There’s a simple reason: your father is lying to them. In order to reproduce what happened, one very important condition needs to be met. It’s nothing elaborate, nor particularly difficult. But it’s impossible if you have a bad leg like your father, which is why forensics hasn’t even considered the possibility.”

Narumi flinched. “I don’t understand.”

Yukawa took a deep breath. “It’s simple. All you have to do is cover the top of the chimney, which causes the exhaust to flow back down the pipe, eventually resulting in an incomplete burn in the boiler. The carbon monoxide then goes up, and leaks out through the cracks in the pipe into the Ocean Room. I calculated that it would take fewer than ten minutes to reach lethal concentrations.”

“When did you know this?”

“I understood the potential when forensics first came to the Green Rock Inn and began sniffing around your kitchen burners.”

“But you didn’t say anything.”

“Like I said, I didn’t feel it was my place to get involved.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Something Kyohei said. He was watching one of the forensics officers come down the fire escape, and he mentioned there was a chimney up on top of the roof. That surprised me, because you can’t see the chimney at all from the ground, so he must have gone up there at some point. It’s unlikely to have been the last time he came to the Green Rock Inn, because he would’ve been much smaller, and it would’ve been too dangerous. That left the night of the fireworks. From there, it was a process of connecting the dots until I realized Kyohei must have done something—unknowingly, mind you—to the chimney that caused the accident.”

“Did you ask him?” Narumi asked.

“No, I didn’t want to lead him to the same conclusions I’d reached, not before he was ready.” Yukawa smiled. “Although I did have him help me a little. He stole the master key for me.”

“Why did you need that?”

“To investigate the Ocean Room. I realized the chimney must pass through the wall in that room, and that was the only door on the floor that was locked. Nothing raises suspicion like a locked door. As I thought, I found cracks in the back wall of the closet. That’s when Kyohei supplied the final piece to the puzzle—when he told me he’d gone around the inn before setting off fireworks and had covered up every place and window a bottle rocket might accidentally fly into. That’s when I realized why he’d gone up to the chimney.”

“He covered it?”

“A slightly dampened cardboard box placed over the top would do the trick. I’m sure those were his instructions.”

“My father’s instructions,” Narumi said.

Yukawa didn’t answer. Instead he picked up a small pebble by his foot.

“It wasn’t difficult to get Tsukahara to sleep in the Ocean Room. Your uncle could have given him some excuse for why they needed to switch rooms, then moved his things back into the Rainbow Room afterward. The sleeping pill could’ve been mixed into his drink.”

Narumi felt the last shreds of her hope fade as a deep despair settled in. It was impossible to imagine it having been an accident after hearing Yukawa’s theory.

“I can’t say how serious your father was about killing him, of course,” he continued. “He couldn’t have been certain that covering the chimney would have the desired result. No, I’d say he was just crossing his fingers—but intent is still intent, which suggests a motive. Which is why I had my detective friend in Tokyo investigate your family.” Yukawa stood and tossed the small pebble in his hand into the water. “Once we started down that road, it quickly became clear that we’d have to uncover what happened sixteen years ago. Thus my meeting with Mr. Senba. Who, by the way, didn’t confirm a thing.”

Narumi noticed she was trembling, and not from the cold. The sun today was bright and strong. Her wetsuit had completely dried out some time ago.

“Are you going to tell the police?” she asked with a shiver.

Yukawa’s lips settled into a straight line, and he shook his head. “I can’t, which bothers me. In order to prove your father’s intent, I would have to tell them what Kyohei did. I don’t think he would be punished, of course. But he would have to make a very difficult choice. He would wonder whether he should tell the truth. In fact, I think he’s already wondering. I think he knows the meaning of what he did by now.”

Narumi caught her breath.

“That said, putting him on the spot right now would only make things worse. Whether he tells the truth or not, he’s going to blame himself for what happens as a result.” Yukawa looked down at Narumi. “That’s why I want you to do something.”

Narumi straightened. “What?”

“Kyohei is going to have to live with a very big secret. But someday, he’s going to want to know why his uncle made him do what he did. If he comes to you with that, I want you to tell him the truth, the whole truth. Then I want you to let him decide what he should do. I’m sure you know better than anyone what it is to live with the consequences of one’s actions.”

Every word Yukawa spoke sank deep into Narumi’s heart. It made her heart ache, but there was no helping that.

She stood and stared into Yukawa’s eyes. “Okay. I will.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear that.” Yukawa said. “There’s something else I want you to do, too.”

“I…” Narumi began, steadying her breath. “I should turn myself in, shouldn’t I?”

Yukawa looked surprised for a moment. Then his smile returned to his lips. “I want you to value life. Yours and others. More than you ever have before.”

Holding back tears, Narumi looked off into the distance, out across the sea.