Disclaimer:

Let's just skip the giant disclaimer you can find in Chapter 1!


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FS

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x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.

(new version)

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Fate seemed to pull the strings

I turned and you were gone

While from the darkened wings

The music box played on

("Charade", lyrics by Johnny Mercer)

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After a horrible…

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

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After a horrible sleepless night on the creaky monster of a bed in his dingy pension, Saguru is really not in the mood to strike up a friendship with the suspect of a murder case. And yet the man he is having an animated conversation with is such a sympathetic, sophisticated, intelligent human being that Saguru begins to feel as clingy as a lonely nerd who has just discovered that a nice classmate is pursuing the same weird hobbies as him. The sentiment is mutual, as they've needed less than half an hour to proceed from the usual small talk to Tenoh's death at La Fenice to more personal topics…

Like peregrine falcons, for instance:

"I don't know much about peregrine falcons," his elegant breakfast companion—the man looks as if he was born to wear a black tuxedo!—humbly admits at 08:34:18 a.m., while they're both sipping the Gritti's excellent black coffee and eating scrambled eggs. "I only know that female peregrines are much larger than their male counterparts. Still, I've always admired peregrine falcons! I've read that the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth during its hunting dive…"

Having breakfast at the Gritti Palace with Chiba Mamoru (their table is ideally situated at the large window that looks out to Canal Grande) has turned out to be a treat! The man seems to have studied everything fairly well, as he can jump from medicine to music to art to history to politics to sports with ease. He knows he had better focus on his future job, Chiba Mamoru confesses—but his wide range of interests would always interfere with his main goal of becoming a great surgeon. After losing his parents in a car crash and being saved by a young surgeon who gave him on-the-spot treatment before operating on him, six-year-old Mamoru-kun decided to dedicate his life to the profession of his saviour, whom he had never been able to thank because the surgeon was ironically killed in a car crash soon afterwards.

"I always had the feeling that he had sacrificed his life to save mine, so I had to live both my life and his life in his stead."

To Saguru's delight, Chiba Mamoru is surprisingly candid about the scandal surrounding his wife's past entanglement with Seiya Kou. Despite being bitter about the sleazy reporters who are dredging up the old story again to fill their gossip columns, Chiba seems to have made peace with the past. "Usako"—he utters the nickname with endearing gentleness—and he had already been dating when she was much too young for him, Chiba admitted. And while he tried to keep a safe distance and accepted a scholarship for Oxford for the sake of their future, Usako felt lonely and lost, misread his reticence, and was dazzled by Seiya Kou, who entered her life at such a difficult time.

Instead of being jealous, Chiba is "extremely thankful to Seiya-kun" for taking care of Usako the way Seiya-kun did—going out with her, keeping her company, and encouraging her in all her endeavours for months without asking for anything in return. The teen idol behaved like a real gentleman or even a knightly troubadour from the Middle Ages—not at all like the womanizing jerk the gutter press always depicted him as in their fabricated news. Chiba also suspects that Seiya-kun's love for Usako was Seiya-kun's way of coping with his foster sister's accident. Different people employ different mechanisms to deal with overwhelming grief… And Seiya-kun must have loved "Kakyuu-san" very much, judging from all the things he had done for her: He ran away from home when he was only fifteen, worked as an artist and magician in a circus to become independent from his parents, and took her with him when he had earned enough to support them both. But almost immediately after his idol career reached its peak, she got into an accident and fell into a deep coma, in which she died a few months ago.

"I've never met her but I saw her on a photo once: an extremely beautiful redhead with overlong hair done up in buns just like Usako… But she also looked very frail and delicate, reminding one of these ancient Chinese princesses with tiny feet who would always carry a parasol to hide from the sun and who couldn't even take a bath on their own. Protective as Seiya-kun is, he must have been very concerned for her safety, since—"

They are interrupted by a pretty petite waitress with short blonde curls and green eyes, a rare type in Italy. She quietly refills their coffee, returns Saguru's admiring smile with a coy blush, and quickly checks out Chiba (who is proudly wearing his gold wedding ring, to her disappointment) before she retreats into the corner of the room.

"Everyone has mixed up the dates and the order of things—but I put them into an order and investigated Kakyuu-san a bit… just out of curiosity," Chiba admits, sweetening his coffee with two spoons of sugar. "Ami-chan, a friend of Usako and mine, is also the daughter of the owner of the private hospital where Kakyuu-san stayed until her death, so it was easy for me to find out all the details: Kakyuu-san got into the accident a few months after Seiya-kun met Usako and her friends, only a few days after he introduced her to them. Maybe his harmless attraction towards Usako turned into a full-blown infatuation after he was told that his foster sister would never wake up from her coma. Ami-chan said he had consulted ten specialists or even more before he gave up. I guessed he needed something to hold on to since his two brothers were borderline bipolar. They'd have drowned in their depression if he hadn't managed to stay sane and cheer them up."

"Do you think he suffered from depression as well?" Saguru asks, thinking of Seiya Kou's ever-serene face on the photos and video clips he has seen on the internet. He hasn't noticed any sign of melancholy, neither in the singer's gestures nor in his perpetually amused expression. On the contrary, fine laughter lines adorn a pair of blue eyes which are more distant than his smiling lips would suggest. If Saguru has been struck by anything, that something was the singer's fearlessness bordering on arrogance and his great zest for life.

"Did you know he broke down after a concert?" Chiba counters Saguru's question with another question. "I've heard from Rei-chan that a severe injury wasn't able to keep him in bed. In fact, he simply hid it and managed to deceive his own agent despite his fever. He even refused to take painkillers for fear that they would interfere with his performance. But after he was told that Kakyuu-san would never regain consciousness, he barely made it through the performance and fainted before the curtain call."

Love, even unrequited love, is sometimes born out of despair, Chiba concludes. A ray of hope that keeps one alive when life has become unbearable. But can such a love, no matter how obsessively strong and pure it is, win against a profound connection between two people who have repeatedly fallen in and out of love and who, against all odds, have resolved to stay with each other for life? Chiba has never felt seriously threatened by Seiya Kou for this reason despite Usako's obvious attraction towards the singer and the close friendship the two of them still cultivate after all these years. Chiba knew that a future with him would always be Usako's first priority, and nothing Seiya-kun did for her would ever change her mind.

After Chiba returned from Oxford and made up with his fiancée, Seiya-kun seemed to have fallen into a hole again—Chiba tells Saguru as a water taxi passes by their window, blaring "Charade" so loudly that Saguru has to lean forward to hear Chiba's words—but one had to admire the resilient guy for pulling himself out of it as always. Although he quit the idol business afterwards, he seemed to have enjoyed his freedom and successfully turned his unrequited love into a source of inspiration—writing poems and songs and travelling through Europe before returning to Japan to attend "Odango" and Chiba's wedding in time like a true friend of hers would do.

"I'm glad he finally has his own girlfriend, though, so he can stop pining after my wife. His secretary! None of us believed it since he values his privacy too much to share his apartment with anyone. His siblings are an exception. I admit I didn't even expect him to move in with a girlfriend before marrying her—and he is really not the marrying type. You can't imagine how hard it was for me to keep a straight face in front of the commissario when I was interrogated. I didn't want to blurt it out so that the reporters can drag his name through the mud and harass Shiho-san like they harassed Usako back then. But apparently Haruka-san had managed to ruin it for him again. She simply couldn't stop anything she had started."

"What did she do?"

"Usako told me Haruka-san had sent their photos to all the famous magazines and to his agent. Just because she thought their hidden love affair is a farce she had to destroy so that they could leave the charade behind them. I can't blame Seiya-kun for not faking sadness when Haruka-san died. But seriously: Is that a motive for a murder? The police can't blame her death on him and ruin his career just because he was angry at her attitude."

"The word is she had been provoking him for a long time."

"That's true… Rei-chan said Haruka-san had it in for him ever since she could remember—trying to insult him whenever they met. I don't know anything about it because Haruka-san was always civil towards him whenever I was present. But the way Haruka-san tipped off the reporters the last time irritated even me—and my temper isn't half as quick as Seiya-kun's! Usako told me he once knocked out two paparazzi who tried to get a shot of Usako and him before he destroyed their cameras. Despite his outward patience and cheeriness, Seiya-kun is very impulsive when he is provoked. The police suspect he has poisoned Haruka-san… But even if the medical examiner found a poison during the autopsy—which I doubt—it would only convince me that Seiya-kun is innocent. Poison isn't his style! If he had wanted to kill Haruka-san, he would have done it in a fight."

"The way she tipped off the reporters 'the last time'? So Tenoh Haruka was responsible for the scandal surrounding your wife?" Saguru can only suppress the urge to pull out his notebook with difficulty.

"Well…" Chiba's intense eyes narrow as his deep voice grows strained. Saguru's sharp eyes can also discern that the man's large, long-fingered hands tremble slightly when he hesitantly takes them from the table as if he was trying to hide his white knuckles from Saguru. "I suppose Haruka-san only wanted 'the best' for her 'koneko-chan' and me. She was a fiercely loyal friend. But you know, she was also the type that always did the worst things for the best of reasons…"

Brilliant as she was, Haruka-san was also exasperatingly, autistically clueless when it came to other people's feelings, Chiba explains. "She believed that separating Usako from the source of danger—Seiya-kun, in her opinion—would help us save our declining relationship. Hence she put her scheme into action with fanatical single-mindedness and cruelty: She created a scandal so that Seiya-kun would stop seeing Usako for her own sake. Of course Haruka-san also voluntarily ruined her own reputation for us, noble and selfless as she always was. Since she was successful in the end, as always, it was impossible to reason with her. She never understood that what she did was wrong and that she hurt Usako so deeply that Usako couldn't talk about the memory for years. If Usako weren't the most generous and forgiving person I know, Usako wouldn't have forgiven Haruka-san and invited her to our wedding."

As if he felt sorry for having ranted about his deceased friend, Chiba graciously adds, "That was petty of me! Maybe I wasn't fair towards Haruka-san because I was jealous… She was extremely impressive and charming—so charming that all the women near her would question their sexuality sooner or later. Usako was completely besotted with her before her stunt ruined their friendship. I admit I feared her because she wasn't only a tease but also seized a chance whenever she saw one. She was desperately unhappy and misused the admiration of the naive girls to feed her ego. Seiya-kun is completely harmless in comparison. When I read about the scandal in the newspaper clips a good friend sent me, I was much more jealous of Haruka-san than of Seiya-kun…"

It was an admirable attempt to defuse the tension and to distract Saguru from noticing the obvious. However—sleep-deprived or not—Hakuba Saguru isn't easily deceived after he has imbibed two cups of black coffee. Chiba has never forgiven Tenoh for the scandal—Saguru notes, realizing that, for in instant, this suave, polite, and affable man had a dark glint of resentment in his eyes, which Saguru has already seen in the eyes of all the culprits he has known.

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