July 1st

The school bell rang, signaling the end of today's class. It was also the end of the second week of classes for me. By this point, I had already understood the layout of the building and could come and go by myself.

"Aah, I totally forgot about the homework for today… I'm gonna have to work twice as hard for a good grade now..." – Hisashi was lamenting the fact that he hadn't done the homework the teacher handed last week.

"Well, it's not that bad. I mean, we're still only in the first semester, so you'll get chances to recover your grades."

"I know, but, still…"

"Well, that aside, it's the first of July today! Isn't that nice? That means we're going to be having summer break in a few weeks."

"I don't really know what I'm going to do for summer break yet. Do you have any plans?"

"I don't think so. Mom's been really busy with work lately, so I'm sure we'll have the time to go on a vacation."

"What does your mother do?"

"I'm not fully certain, to be honest. She's like a researcher, and she specializes in bacteria and cells and other things like that."

"Whoa, that's awesome. Being a researcher was one of the options I was considering, but I felt like too much study would ruin the novelty of it."

"I can understand the feeling. I've personally never been one to live the academic life. Everyone has something they're good at, and, no matter how much we try, we can't all be the best at everything."

"We can be the best at what we want to be if we work hard enough. That's what everyone thinks, but sometimes I wonder if that's really the truth."

"I believe in that idea. Sure, we might have things we're better at than some others but if we dedicate our studies to one field then we can certainly become an expert on that. In fact, that's pretty much what the whole concept of colleges are built upon."

"I suppose."

While we were chatting, Saya and Makoto came over.

"Another month starts, huh… Time really does fly by." – Saya said it in a reminiscing tone.

"Not much happened at the school in June. I think that your coming was the most 'exciting' event." – Makoto was bored, apparently. – "By the way, um, this is just my curiosity, but… Have you guys been watching the news recently?"

"Not really, why?" – Hisashi didn't look like the type to care about the news.

"Oh, it's nothing really."

"Are you talking about the disappearances?" – Saya was direct.

"Uh, yeah."

"I've been listing them. The first one was about two weeks ago. In total, there have been six up to today. All of them have been unsolved and the police have given an official statement about it: No clues, no perpetrators. Nothing." – Saya's voice was all business.

"Do we really have to mention this now?" – Hisashi was always defensive when the subject was the town's past incidents.

"Isn't it just too perfect to be a coincidence? Two years later, it all happens again..."

"Seriously, this isn't the time."

"When's the time, then? Or is it never the time? Will we just forget it all, like we did in the past?"

"Leave it to the police! They know what they're doing."

"Hah! As if! The police in this town are worthless! They can't do anything, not even capture a serial kidnapper!"

"This is giving me a headache… I'm going home now! See you guys later!" – Hisashi left, leaving me, Saya and Hisashi behind.

"He can't face the truth, so he keeps running away..." – Saya looked displeased.

"I don't really understand..." – I didn't get why this topic was such a "taboo". It certainly was tragic, but not enough to cause such strong reactions to people.

"It's just the way it is. Still, I won't stop searching. Even if hurts people, I won't give up."

"It's getting late. My Dad's waiting for me to get home, so I gotta go!" – I had already stayed too long, and the conversation wasn't a fun one.

"See you." – Saya's expression softened, and she said it in a friendly way.

I left the classroom and made my way to the exit. The school's walls had been repainted some months ago, so it all looked beautiful and nice to look at. On my way, I stopped to think about what Saya said. 'Two years later, it all happens again...' is what she said. She really must still feel strongly about what happened to her father. It's understandable, of course. Even so, these sudden disappearances just don't feel right… I wonder if there'd be some sort of hint to the events of two years ago hidden in this recent string of crimes.

I got on my bike and cooled my mind with the breeze hitting my face. As always, the smell of today's lunch was enough to make me put my troubles away.

Today's lunch was pasta. It was pretty good. My conversations with Dad weren't particularly exciting, but they were good enough for passing the time.

After eating, I returned to my room like always. After a while of just looking at the ceiling, my phone let out a cutesy jingle a few times.

I took it and started reading the message.

"Hi, it's Saya. I'm messaging you to know if you're free tomorrow. If you are, there's something I'd like to talk about."

In a normal day, that message really wouldn't mean much. However, considering the awkwardness of the argument this morning, it had given off a bit of an alarming feeling. Seeing how serious she was, I decided to respond immediately.

"I'm free tomorrow and Sunday, so whichever is fine by you."

Saya, too, was immediate in her response.

"I'd prefer Saturday. Is 4 PM a good time?"

"Yeah. What do you want to talk about?"

"I've noticed that you seem a bit unaware of the circumstances around here, so I'd like to fill you in. It's nothing too important, but I'd rather do it personally."

"What sort of circumstances?"
"The disappearances. You've certainly already seen the news heard about them since it's a hot topic right now."

"Hisashi's already explained it to me. Sorry if you wanted to do it yourself."

"What did he tell you?"

"He told me about your father. I didn't mention it because I didn't want to be rude."

"I see. Is that all?"

"Is there more?"

"There's a lot more to it. I don't really feel comfortable telling you all about it through messages, so please meet me tomorrow at 4 PM." – She explained where her the house was and which streets to take to get there. It was relatively close to the supermarket, so I was a bit familiar with it. – "Please show up. I really want you to know the whole story."

"I'll make sure to be there."

After agreeing on the time and ending the conversation, I felt hollow for some reason. It just felt like all of my emotions had suddenly vanished, leaving behind a hollow shell of me. I stared at the ceiling some more before closing my eyes and resting.

I woke up again, but it was already really late, almost midnight. I didn't feel sleepy, but I knew I couldn't just stay awake for much longer. I skipped dinner so I made cup noodles to eat. I stared through my room's window and I saw a police officer looking around, going back and forth with a weak flashlight. He was presumably looking out for any strange characters.

"I guess these incidents really have been having an effect on the town as a whole..."

I listened to some music on my cell phone before falling asleep yet again…

July 2nd

I woke up late today, and I hurried to get my school uniform ready…

Until I realized it was actually Saturday, so there would be no classes.

When I went down the stairs, Mom greeted me. I was surprised since I hadn't actually seen her arriving from work. I must have slept through it yesterday…

"Good morning!"

"Good morning. You're already here, huh?"

"Yeah, I arrived yesterday in the late afternoon. Your father and I wondered why you weren't coming downstairs, so we went to check on you and found you sound asleep."

"I was exhausted yesterday. I feel like there's a lot of things bugging me…"

"Bugging you? What sort of things?"

"Some personal stuff… It's nothing serious, but it's being a rock in my shoe, honestly."

"Well, if you want to talk about it with someone, I'm free."

"Thanks. I may take up on your offer later. Not today though! I'm going to go to a friend's house this afternoon, by the way."

"Oh, I see. Well, you should have breakfast, otherwise, the food's going to get cold."

"Okay!"

I had my breakfast like usual. After that, I helped my Dad make lunch by doing some assistant work. It would serve both as practice for the cooking contest and retribution for the bike, which I was super thankful for. It really had been helping me when going to school and just hanging out with my friends in general.

While the three of us were having lunch, a bit of a random thought came to my head and I voiced it.

"Last week you had lunch with the previous owners of the house. What did you two talk about?"

"Oh, you're talking about that? Well, it was mostly a friendly meeting. They asked me how life was going and whether we were liking the house. Usual stuff."

"I get it. Still, why did we have to leave?"

"Those two are old yet they're the timidest people I've ever met. They were honestly embarrassed to have lunch with you two around. They didn't mind me though since we worked together some time ago."

"That actually makes sense now. Thanks for answering honestly."

I had thought of it was some sort of suspicious thing, but it ended up being something extremely mundane… I guess I was just paranoid all along.

I glanced at the clock every once in a while to check the time, and as it slowly passed I could sense my anxiety growing, little by little. Whatever Saya had to say couldn't possibly be that bad.

As much as I wanted time to stop, the hands kept on running, and it inevitably became the time for me to leave. I checked the address one last time and got on my bike before riding my way there.

The afternoon breeze, which usually felt pleasantly cool, was chilly and made my body shake coldly.

The time it took to get there was just a little bit more than the time it took to get there by car. Her house was large, one of the biggest houses I'd seen in the whole town yet. It was in a bit of an isolated area. The ground was paved with yellow stones and formed a circle around the house, and on the circumference of the circle was a short fence like the ones used in cutesy gardens.

I left home a bit too early, so when I arrived at her house, it was still five minutes until four. Her house had a place for me to chain my bike so I chained it. At that same time, a woman came out of through the door.

"Good afternoon! Are you Mitsune-chan?"

The woman spoke to me in a cheerful tone, and I replied using a similar tone.

"Yes. I'm Saya's friend."

"I know, I know. She told me all about it. You two have some school homework to take care of, right? I wouldn't want to bother you, so I'm going to leave for a bit. Have fun!"

After saying that, she left without waiting for my response. She got up on a motorcycle and left, leaving behind the noisy sounds of the engine. After hearing the bike's sound, Saya came out.

"Oh, hi! You're already there? Well, come in."

"Thanks."

Her house was big inside. I could see a bunch of rooms, and only on the first floor! I followed her to the dining room, where a big square table was located. On that table was a laptop. There were also some snacks there.

She sat in front of the laptop and I sat beside her.

"Alright. What I want to show you is on this laptop. Before I show you it all, I want you to tell me."

"What is it?"

"What exactly do you know about two years ago?"

"I know about your father. He disappeared one day when he went to work and no one knows what exactly happened to him."

"Okay. Do you know why he disappeared?"

"No. I did hear a rumor, though. He was supposedly investigating a case and the culprits didn't want the truth to be revealed so they 'erased' him."

"I see. That's all the truth. He really was erased by someone."

"How do you know?"

"I'm his daughter. It'd be weird for me not to know about the things happening to my father. Next question: Do you know what the case he was investigating is?"

"No, Hisashi didn't tell me anything about that."

"Alright. Then, I'll tell you." – She opened up a file in her laptop. There were a bunch of names and dates. – "Okay. Read this, please."

"What's this? I don't get it… What do these names mean?"

"Two years ago, there were a series of crimes. Disappearances, to be exact."

"A series of disappearances. Isn't that the same as what's going on right now?"

"Exactly. It's the same. That can't just be a coincidence."

"What does it mean, though?"

"I think whoever was behind the crimes two years ago is also behind the current crimes."

"I can follow that. But who is that person?"

"I don't know. If did, I'd have done something."

"So, if we don't know who it is, what can we do?"

"Not much. However, I'm not just going to leave it in the past. I'm definitely going to find a connection and discover the identity of the culprit. Back to the disappearances two years ago, now. You probably can't tell just from the names, but there is something that all these people have in common. That includes the victims from the recent string of events."

"It's not the age… It can't be the sex and it definitely isn't the names, either."

"That's right. It's none of these. The connection is something a little more abstract. All of the people who vanished didn't have a lot of close friends or family."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"I'm not sure, but it's the truth. None of them had close ties to other people. I think the reason behind that is to not leave a lot of evidence behind."

"How does one thing tie to the other?"

"If you don't have family or friends, you're not going to leave many people worried or upset, and that means that your case is bound to eventually be forgotten."

"I get it. If you don't have close friends and your case is archived, no one is really going to get upset and complain. It's easier to simply erase people that way."

"Alright. So now you understand the circumstances of the case. So, can you theorize why my father would be erased because of a case like that?"

"I can't think of anything… If none of these people had families, who would really go to such extreme lengths?"

"Again, I'm not certain of anything. However, we can reach a certain conclusion through some logical thinking. If none of the victims had close ties, then the one to erase my father would have to be the culprit. In fact, that would make even more sense than the victims' relatives getting angered at the detective of the case."

"That's true."

"Alright, so we have reached a meaningful conclusion. Where else can we take this through some more reasoning?"

"I can think of one thing…"

"I want to hear your thoughts."

"Hisashi told me your father was a high-rank detective. That would mean he'd have some prestige around here. For him to disappear would take someone with even more power than him. That narrows our culprit pool."

"Good. That's exactly it. My father was indeed a famous detective. He even showed up on the news sometimes. It was through his hard work that we built this big house. That's not to ignore my mother's work, of course."

"But… does that conclusion really make sense?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"Why would someone with even more power than your father decide to erase him? What would he gain by doing it?"

"Isn't it obvious? That would stifle the progress of the case and prevent the truth from being revealed publicly."

"On one hand, that is possible. However, wouldn't erasing him also serve to bring a lot more unwanted suspicion to the cases as a whole?"

"Hmm… I suppose. Perhaps the person was so powerful that they had other means of guaranteeing the case wouldn't be solved."

"That would require someone with a lot of money…"

"Now that you understand my father's situation from two years ago, I want you to know about what happens after that."

"What is it?"

"My father disappeared around June. It really was around two years ago. My mother and I waited weeks for the case to be solved, or at least for some meaningful clues to arise. But nothing was found. There were no witnesses, no evidence. Unable to figure out the truth, they decided to archive the case and focus their work on more recent cases. My mother and I couldn't leave it at that."

"What did you do then?"

"We knew that the media was our greatest weapon. My mother's older brother was a journalist. She contacted him and told about the case. He then contacted various newspapers and tabloids. They sent journalists to gather info on the case. We took that opportunity and organized a little protest of our own in front of the prefecture and the police station."

"Did you get some sort of result?"

"We did. Not a positive one, though. The protests themselves weren't very big or anything. I think the biggest one had like, thirty people. Around half of them were journalists and the other half were family members and close friends. We did them every day for a week."

"Why did you stop?"

"Well, the first days were pretty nice. Everyone was pumped and we really wanted the truth to come out. After three or four days, though, people were already getting tired. Some journalists had already gone back and some family members were too tired to participate. By the seventh day, it was just me, my mother and my uncle."

"That's too bad… Still, why was that a negative result?"

"The negative part happens now. After the protests died down, the journalists that came here felt like their time was wasted, so instead of just forgetting about it, they decided to write news reports on it. By itself, that would be fine. The real problem was the content. They mocked our town and the police force, claiming we were some country fools. The headlines were things like 'Strange case unsolved due to police incompetence'. It really shone a bad light on the town."

"What happened after that?"

"Well… that's where the story gets a bit depressing. After those news coverages showed up on TV, the townspeople got aware of the awful things outsiders were saying about the people here. They were angry and needed someone to blame for all of this… so they chose to blame me and my mother."

"Blame you? How?"

"They said we were traitors, that we should leave the town and never come back… That's around the same time the rumors of my father and his lover started spreading."

"That's awful…"

"The only friends I had at the time started to distance themselves because of the bad rumors and stories about me."

"So… that's why you don't have many friends."

"That's right. I'm sure Hisashi told you part of the story, but I didn't want you to get the wrong impression and think that I was the evil party in the situation. I guess no one was really at fault…"

"Still... for people to do this to you and even place the blame on you."

"When it happened, I was still a young teenager, so I couldn't control my emotions very well. People treated me badly, and I countered by acting twice as harshly. I know now that my attitude was bad and needlessly combative."

"I can't really hold it against you. You lost your father and people were worried over the town's appearance to outsiders?"

"That's just how people are… Well, that's about it for my little fun story."

"I see… Being told all of this directly by you has really helped put my mind at ease."

"Why?"

"Well, I thought this was some sort of super private trauma of yours, so I was really making sure not to mention it carelessly."

"Oh, I see. Well, you really don't have to walk on eggshells over that. I don't hold some grudge over it or anything. That's what annoys me about Hisashi. He wants to mention it but doesn't have the courage to go through with it. Don't be like that. Just make sure to not spread misinformation and things like that."

"I understand."

"It's still only a bit past five, and I asked Mom to prepare a snack, so if you're hungry, feel free to eat a bit."

"I'll take up on that offer!"

I took a closer look at the snacks on the table. There were crackers along with thin slices of cheese and some cans of soda. I took a slice of cheese and placed it on the cracker and ate it.

"That's pretty good."

"I'm glad you like it. If you want something else, just say it."

"I'm fine with these crackers."

In an oxymoronic way, we had fun eating crackers and drinking soda right after talking about her past. By the time I realized it, it was almost six. Mom would be pretty mad at me if I arrived home too late.

"It's getting pretty late. I really have to get going."

"Oh, you live pretty far, huh? I'll show you the way."

"Thanks."

I already knew the way out, but I accepted her courtesy and left with a farewell.

My bike was still chained to the side of the house. I unchained it using the key and got up on it. I rode it quickly and went home. It was already past six by the time I arrived and I had to listen to one of Mom's long sermons.

July 03rd

Today was a rather boring day. I woke up late again, so I only had time to have breakfast in the morning. It was tasty, though, so I can't really deny that.

My mind was at peace after being given the chance to have a thorough understanding of the town and Saya's past.

It was tragic, but it was part of the past, so reopening the wound really served no purpose. Of course, I comprehend Saya's efforts to discover her father's whereabouts, but I, personally, don't believe that there is any realistic chance of him returning.

Today, the one to prepare the lunch was Mom. I don't really understand why she decided to cook this time, but it apparently had something to do with an argument she had with Dad over her cooking skills. It really was no surprise to anyone that she couldn't cook very well. Subsequently, it was no surprise to anyone that today's lunch was pretty bad compared to Dad's. Still, we had the politeness of eating it and not complaining too much.

In the afternoon, Mom decided to have me clean the house. Her reasoning was that a young adult like me could do it easily, while the two of them were already too old for that. I protested but there was ultimately nothing to be done about it. It took me the whole afternoon to finish, so I didn't have time to enjoy my Sunday. After a few hours of scrubbing, washing, dusting and whatever else Mom decided I had to do, I eventually finished my not-so-thorough cleaning of the house. I felt absolutely pooped so I just took a shower and ate dinner (which was prepared by Dad, since Mom had silently resigned her position as house cook). As soon as my head hit the soft pillow, I couldn't help but fall asleep.