A few strands of dark hair clung to a headband that laid on the kitchen counter. Next to it, a cell phone light up. The timer of a rice cooker ticked away. A mix of fine sliced pork and vegetables sizzled in a stainless skillet over the stove top.
A thin layer of dry rice lined the inside of a plastic bin, with a scooping cup over on its side. The lid that leaned against the bin slid away as a girl in a loose shirt dropped a large paper sack on the counter top. She pulled open a drawer and picked up a small sickle, and pulled the top of the sack taut.
And with one clean stroke, she sliced it open.
Makoto Niijima poured the bag of rice into the bin. Some of the grains escaped, spilling over onto the counter or all the way to the floor. She'd get those later, Makoto thought as she returned the bin to the cabinets below.
On the other side of the counter, she took a few empty bowls to the sink, soaking them before the dishwasher. She grabbed two plates from the cupboard.
The front door of the apartment clacked open. A woman in a crinkled, gray suit took her shoes off and passed Makoto without a word and barely even a glance. "Good evening, Sis," Makoto said.
The older sister, Sae, set her briefcase and laptop on the kitchen table, disk drive whirring up.
Makoto looked away, tending to her cooking, deflated. "I started a little late," she said. "I'll be done soon."
"Take your time," Sae said. She pulled up a set of reports.
There wasn't much time left to take. Soon, the rice cooker beeped its completion, and Makoto turned off the heating coils to let the meat and vegetables simmer before everything was ready to plate. She set one down in front of her sister, and took her own plate around the table. "Here you go, Sis,"
A constrained nod was Sae's only response, until she took a sidelong bite.
For a while, she ate on her own, without a sound but the clanking of chopsticks against plates on one side of the table and keyboard strokes on the other. Makoto raised her head to cut through the void. "Looks like you're going to be busy tonight."
A lone grunt of "mhm" punctuated Sae's erratic clicking.
Even if she was being drowned out, at least she wasn't going totally ignored. "How's your new case going?" Makoto said.
"Which one?" Sae didn't miss a beat in her work.
"The one at Shujin. With the volleyball coach." It sent a pang through her heart that she couldn't explain, but Makoto didn't expect her sister to remember every single defendant by name.
"That wasn't really a case," Sae said. In the moment after she answered, there was real silence in the kitchen. "Not mine, anyway. It was just a person of interest. But he didn't have much to say."
"So, it's going to be the big one, then? All night?" It was an investigation Sae had been working for years, now. Connecting the dots on the most bizarre crimes Tokyo had seen. Mental shutdowns, psychotic breakdowns, and now suddenly changes of heart. Sae said it over and over, and Makoto started to believe it too, it was all connected.
Sae took her second bite of dinner. "Not all night. You don't have to worry about that."
"Okay, Sis," Makoto said. "You know your limits better than I do. if there is anything I can do to help, just ask me, okay?"
"Just keep up your schoolwork," Sae said, and she went back to her own. "Actually, since you mentioned it, there is one report I'm still waiting on from Shujin. Thanks for reminding me."
But without getting so much as a glance in her direction, Makoto finished eating and cleaned up her side of the kitchen table. One last check on the sink, on the dishwasher, on her sister, and seeing that everything was fine, Makoto swiped her headband and her phone off the counter and headed to her room for the night.
Early in the afternoon, the sun still hung high over the front courtyard of Shujin Academy. "Hey, Makoto!"
Makoto Naegi jumped in place, turned his head to see Kasumi hopping up beside him. He waved at her, and grabbed hold of his backpack strap again. "Hello, Kasumi."
She craned her head down at his backpack. "Looks heavy," Kasumi said. Crammed with textbooks and barely zipping up, it better have been heavy. "Are you trying to get a head start on finals?"
"That's the idea," Makoto said. Getting back to normal, if that was where he was going, meant a few things, and recovering from his disastrous midterm exams was first on the list. And if it wasn't, well, there was still little use in flunking out of Shujin. "I don't know how much headway I'm making on it, though."
"Every little bit counts," Kasumi said. She could tell, though, from the slump of his shoulders and the faded look of his eyes, that he wasn't making as much progress as he'd like. And he didn't have all the time in the world. "Is there anything keeping you from doing more?"
"I'm not sure," Makoto said. "It's even more boring that I remember. Especially after everything that happened last month. I don't know."
"I think I do." Kasumi could see it, and if Makoto wouldn't admit it to himself, then she'd say it for him. "You miss that investigation already."
"No way! Kasumi, that's the reason I'm in this mess in the first place."
"Okay, that's not wrong, but…" Kasumi held up her open hands and shook like a bobble head, "No, that's wrong. Let's be real, Makoto, your grades suck because you don't care. That's not a bad thing. It's better than being sporadically obsessed over it."
"Kasumi, where's this coming from?" Makoto said. "What are you even getting at?"
"Well, you said you're barely making progress." Kasumi shifted around in front of him. "That's not because the material is too hard. It's because you don't have the right motivation. I noticed it even back on Monday. You're a lot less energetic now than you were all throughout May. I have to believe the Kamoshida investigation had something to do with that."
"But this is back where we started," Makoto said. "I had that motivation, but I still failed the test."
"This time it'll be different. This time, you know you want to succeed."
"Is it really just going to be that easy?"
"I think so," Kasumi said. "Makoto, last month, didn't you feel like you could do anything? You marched up the stairs, in the open for everyone to see, and you tore the crown right off the principal's head! What's one exam?"
"Then, I just have to find that spirit again?" One strap of his backpack slipped off Makoto's shoulder. "I can't just go looking for trouble, though."
"Oh, don't worry Senpai. With your luck, it'll find you."
No sooner did she say it than a text chimed in on Makoto's phone.
Haru – Can you come to the student council room? There's someone here asking for you.
Kasumi took a step back. She met eyes with Makoto with a smile.
A nervous boy paced back and forth in the student council room. Haru looked between the boy, the door, and her phone on the table, and back at the door. Makoto let himself in. "I'm here," he said, breath heavy from the stairs. He propped himself up on one of the chairs.
"Makoto, this is Nishiyama." Haru indicated the nervous boy, who now came to a stop. "He has something he wanted to tell you."
"Nishiyama." His breathing steadied slowly. "You needed me for this?"
"You're the only one I can trust with this." Both boys glanced at Haru, who pinched the corner of her lip in indignation. "Uh, unless you think Okumura can keep a secret," Nishiyama stammered out.
"Yeah, she's good for it," Makoto said. He pulled out the chair he was leaning on, and beckoned Nishiyama to sit too. "So, what's the problem?"
"It's a friend of mine," Nishiyama said. "His name's Iida. I don't know if you know him or not. But he's been acting really strange lately."
"What changed about him recently?" Makoto said.
Nishiyama dragged his hands around the table. "It started, not that long ago. We were hanging out at Shibuya, when a suspicious man approached us over near Central Street."
"A suspicious person?" Makoto said.
"Well, I didn't think that at the time. He didn't threaten us, or anything. In fact, he offered us an easy part time job." That still sounded pretty suspicious. A real part time job would just post an ad on a pillar at a train station, or in a newspaper, or something like that. "I said I wasn't," Nishiyama said.
Well, then. "But?" Makoto said.
He fidgeted in his seat. "But Iida was interested. So they started talking, and I headed home, so I don't know exactly what they talked about. But the next day, Iida was still talking about it, with me. Apparently, the job doesn't take long, and it good for people who don't stand out."
"That sounds like quite a pitch," Haru said.
Nishiyama nodded. "After that, Iida started spending a lot of money. I couldn't tell where he got it from, but, now that I think about it, it's clearly this part time job."
Paid well, didn't take long, and required discretion. "What kind of job is this?" Makoto said.
"He wouldn't say. Kept going on about how well it was paying, though. But now he doesn't even talk about that anymore." Nishiyama shifted and pulled his arms together. "You can help him, can't you, Naegi?"
Help could only really mean one thing. An investigation. To figure out what was going on with Iida, if he was in any danger, and to find a way to stop it. Another case found him, just as Kasumi said it would. So soon after being finished with it.
Could he just take on another one?
But it wasn't like before. He didn't have to worry about making a mistake, about doing someone's dirty work. Makoto had a chance to take action for the right reasons. He had a chance to genuinely do some good.
Could he just let that pass him by?
Nishiyama pleaded with him. Haru looked at him, a neutral pledge of support.
It was dark.
Somewhere, not far away, a door creaked open, and slammed shut. Something thumped on the floor.
A quiet click of plastic. Light flooded the familiar apartment kitchen, pushing back against a circle of shadows.
A braid styled headband dropped onto the counter, and a cell phone fell next to it.
A clump of silk landed on the floor. Across the living room, the TV flickered on, and filled the room with the sound of an announcer commentating over a game.
A rubber seal popped as it pulled off from the hard plastic shell of the refrigerator. Plastic bags rustled and wax paper crinkled over the counter.
A stopper bumped against the wood frame of a cupboard. Glass struck the counter top. Water swirled inside.
The glass again. The cupboard again. The fridge again. Then, a door on the other side of the room.
Behind a door, a wall, a corner, water ran against ceramic. And some time later, it stopped. Creaking steel cut off the droplets left behind.
Lethargic footsteps came back from the other room. A girl's hand grasped the phone from the counter, and set it gently back down. Plates of metal ground on each other below, and the pot on top of the stove lifted off, carried away with the flash of a girl's face, Makoto Niijima, before she replaced it with another pan.
Rushing water from the sink faucet broke and splashed over the stainless steel.
The soft pitter-patter of vegetables and fish on the pan's surface, as the electric coils hummed with power and the stove top started to burn red. Steam roared and raged against lid closing in.
She sank into her chair at the kitchen table. In front of her, her plate was empty, and in front of the empty chair across, another plate was full. From the TV announcer, the game was reaching a turning point, but Makoto's tearful focus stayed stuck on the front door, waiting, hoping it would open.