1
We'd only gone a few steps out the front door when I saw something unexpected, tied to the plum tree in the garden.
It was a horse. The biggest and most majestic horse I'd ever seen.
Its entire body was a shiny black like obsidian, and its back stood far above my head. It looked up at the roof of the house with a head sporting a thick mane, and its meticulously braided tail reached the ground. When I saw the horse's muscular body, I thought it looked as though it had been carved from a single grand ebony tree. Its reins sparkled with gold studs, and the saddle was so elaborate it looked like a Middle Eastern carpet.
In the past, when we'd still had the old mansion, we'd had a horse and carriage, but we'd never owned a horse as elegant as this.
“Is this your horse, Miss Yuriko?”
“Yeah, it is. Let me get your bags for you.”
Yuriko loaded my furoshiki packages onto the back of the magnificent black steed. I'd brought so much with me that it made the horse look like it was wearing a blanket.
“Do you want to ride, Mariko?”
“I'll refrain, thank you.”
In truth, I'd never ridden a horse before, and I was afraid.
Yuriko took hold of the reigns and walked alongside the horse to the gate. I hurriedly followed them.
“...Did you take this horse with you from the circus?”
“Yeah! That's right! I escaped by riding on this horse. Strong and fast, this one is. Not quite up to racehorse standards, though.”
“What's his name?”
“Katsuyo.”
“...Katsuyo? Oh, I see. She's a female. Did you name her, Miss Yuriko?”
“Yep. I hope you two get along.”
If it were me, I would have named my horse something like “Elisabetha” or “Brunhilde”. Of course, Yuriko probably couldn't have ever come up with a name like that.
Katsuyo occasionally turned her head as we walked, looking appraisingly at me past her long, curled lashes.
The street was quiet in the early afternoon. I felt embarrassed, walking with a horse and a girl who both looked like they'd just run away from the circus, so I lowered my face whenever someone passed us by and hid in Katsuyo's shadow as much as I could.
Looking around, it occurred to me that a foreigner who knew nothing about this place would never have been able to imagine that two years ago, an earthquake had nearly destroyed the entire city.
It wasn't the same as it had once been. Many of the buildings around us were made of naked planks that appeared to have been assembled by hand. The rubble had all been cleared away, but every now and then we passed an area where a house was just missing, nothing built to replace it. No matter how much we wanted to, we could never replace what we'd lost. A sense of loneliness still lingered, hanging over the city like the smell of smoke.
“Miss Yuriko, where are we going?”
It looked like she was letting the horse guide her. As though Katsuyo were the one who knew where we were going, Yuriko leisurely walked behind her with a graceful gait, occasionally stroking her on the back.
“We're going to Mr. Harumi's company. I promised Grandpa Harumi I'd show him what I picked up as collateral.”
“Oh, is that so? So you're going to show me off.”
I realized this was my walk of shame.
“How old are you, Mariko?”
“I turn 18 this year.”
“Really? Then I'll be 18, too. Nice to meet'cha.”
Yuriko sounded like she'd just decided that. It may have been that she didn't know her own age.
I closely scrutinized her face, wondering how old she actually was, and I was shocked to realize that the metal portion of her earring was actually pierced through her earlobe. Seeing me, Yuriko used her free left hand to touch her ear.
“Oh, this? If I do somersaults with a big earring like this, it'll just fall off. That's why I had to have it fixed in like this.”
“Doesn't that hurt?”
“Not anymore.”
Yuriko rubbed her earlobe, satisfied with herself. I couldn't stand it and looked away.
“Forgive me if I'm being rude, but... do you have a family, Miss Yuriko?”
“I dunno. I wonder about that myself, sometimes.”
Well, she must have had them at some point.
When I didn't speak any further, Yuriko spoke up as though she'd decided it were her turn.
“Hey, Mariko, you write stories, don't you?”
I was shocked at her sudden guess. Of course, Yuriko seemed to have good intuition, so it wasn't that surprising she'd realized that from the state of my room.
“...That's right. You seem to understand everything already.”
“Yep! You don't want Mr. Viscount to know, do you? Are you planning to become a novelist, Mariko?”
“Of course not. I only wish it were that easy.”
Even so, spending all day writing stories and fantasizing helped to clarify the image of my future, which was otherwise a mystery. Of course, they weren't very suitable fantasies for a Viscount's daughter.
The only person I'd ever told about my writings was the second eldest of my sisters, the one who was now dead. I felt blessed that Yuriko couldn't read. I didn't know just how smart she was, but there was no way she could ever see the deepest recesses of my heart.
2
The Harumi Trading Company's Yokohama headquarters were apparently a rounded, richly decorated four-story building in the Baroque style, but I'd heard that it was among the many buildings brought to a miserable end in the earthquake.
Since the earthquake, the company's presence in Tokyo had increased, and now, Harumi Trading had a new, larger building in Shinagawa.
I'd been taken to a newly constructed four-story concrete building, decorated in the simple fashion that was in style at the time.
As soon as I saw the building, all the tension I'd forgotten in the face of Yuriko's street performer aesthetic came rushing back to me. It had been a strange journey, but the long and short of it was that I was about to be introduced to the president of one of the largest trading companies in Japan.
Yuriko left Katsuyo in one of the stables behind the building. Then she took me by the arm and guided me with practiced steps through the company's front entrance.
Inside was a receptionist, who Yuriko completely ignored. We passed several employees as we made our way down the hall, all of whom acted as though Yuriko's flashy clothing was nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed this girl really was the president's private enforcer.
We took the elevator up to the fourth floor and went straight to the president's office, where Yuriko banged on the door like a woodpecker.
“I brought the collateral!”
She shouted that, and then, without waiting for a reply – or giving me any time to think – Yuriko opened the door.
Mr. Harumi stood next to the desk in the back of the office.
He had neat, solid white hair and a matching beard and carried a walking stick carved from driftwood. Mr. Harumi himself looked like a piece of driftwood, washed over by rough waves again and again until he'd been polished to a dull, faint sheen.
Yuriko put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me towards Mr. Harumi.
“Look, it's this girl! This is Mariko. She's Mr. Kabatani's daughter. And now, I'm taking care of her!”
“Alright, then. Please, have a seat.”
Mr. Harumi gave a rough jab at an easy chair with his walking stick, as though I were a stray dog Yuriko had taken in.
Yuriko said “Okay” and pulled me over. I'd been getting dragged around like a sled on snow for a while now.
Mr. Harumi sat down in the chair opposite me and leaned forward to peer at me with a disapproving expression. He looked healthy, but I could still feel his age from the way he was just a little bit too skinny and how far his eyes were sank back in their sockets.
“I am Harumi. So, you are the daughter of Viscount Kabatani?”
“I am Mariko, daughter of Tadamichi Kabatani. I deeply apologize for the disrespect my Father has shown you, Sir Harumi.”
“Are you now? Well, it isn't any problem of yours, so you can apologize as much or as little as you please.”
“The problem is with your father, who won't return my money. It seems Yuriko has decided to respond by taking you hostage, but I have no choice but to take responsibility for her actions, so I'll ask you.”
“Do you have any objections to this arrangement? I'm afraid you won't be able to return home until we find a way to get me what I'm owed.”
Mr. Harumi hadn't reacted to the news that I was the collateral with the slightest bit of surprise.
I'd thought that perhaps he would scold Yuriko for forcibly taking someone else's daughter from her home and have me sent back, but that hadn't happened. As expected, famous financier or not, the sort of person who'd hire Yuriko as a debt collector was a proper weirdo.
“Well, sir, I'm afraid I don't know what to do...”
“Well, then, I guess there's no other choice. Just do what Yuriko says. I've left getting the money back entirely up to her, so that's all I can say now.”
With that, Mr. Harumi leaned back in his easy chair and closed his eyes. He looked exhausted.
Surely she's more than just a nuisance, I thought as I looked at Yuriko, smiling next to me without a care in the world.
“Sir Harumi, you've placed your trust in Miss Yuriko. I have faith she can complete even the most difficult tasks.”
“I'm no longer at the age where I can afford to worry about 'trust' or 'distrust'. But I have no family, so I have to start thinking about what I will do with myself until I die. If I leave my fortune to someone calculating, they'll take unnecessary action with it and cause trouble. It's better to leave it all to someone like Yuriko, who doesn't understand anything.”
“Whether or not you choose to trust her is your own decision. Will that be all, Yuriko?”
“No, there's more. Grandpa, you were talking about the Kinukawa's treasure earlier, right? So I've decided me and Mariko are gonna go find it together! That's why I want to hear the story from you one more time. I want you to tell me everything you know.”
Yuriko was talking like she wanted to hear about a play he'd seen or something like that. Mr. Harumi exhaled before turning to me.
“How much do you know about the story behind Viscount Kinukawa's hidden fortune?”
“Very little. Only what I've heard from Miss Yuriko.”
“Then I'll explain from the beginning. This isn't a story I researched after lending the money to your father.”
“I had met both the late Viscount and his father, and I have many acquaintances within the world of art, so I've known of the treasure of the Kinukawa family for decades.”
“I never saw the real thing, but an antique dealer who had been shown the treasure by the previous Viscount long, long ago told me it's quite the valuable collection, easily over one million yen.”
“However, his successor, Yoshinori Kinukawa, developed a mental illness. He became convinced his family's treasure was being targeted by other families, and he began to proclaim his intentions to hide it somewhere no one would ever find it. This was near the beginning of 1911.”
“That his family's property was being targeted may well have been true. In October of that year, a security guard at Viscount Kinukawa's villa was murdered. The culprit may have been someone who sought that which belonged to the Kinukawa.”
I had no idea such an incident had occurred. I was still only a child at the time.
“About a month after that incident, I met Viscount Kinukawa at an evening party, and he didn't seem to care that his employee had been killed. He was thrilled that he had finally hidden the treasure away and that he had 'made it in time'. What he was in time for, I don't know.”
“Furthermore, the Viscount had told his family that he had hidden the treasure's hiding place in a code which he had entrusted to them, a code that no outsider could ever decipher. It was as though he was taunting the world, 'Steal it if you can!' Did you never hear about it, Mariko?”
“No, this is the first I've ever heard of it.”
The adults must have kept it from my ears. It was too childish for an adult to do, which made it impossible to explain to a child.
“To have gone that far is madness. It may have been better for the Viscount's health if the treasure had been stolen. Or if it had been sold off and converted to cash, but it was a family heirloom. The Kinukawa family valued it as the source of their honor, so for the sake of their appearance, they couldn't have given it away.”
“It may have been a foolish decision, but it seems the Viscount did a good job hiding the treasure. No one dared even try to get their hands on it. The only way they could have progressed would be to kidnap the Viscount or a member of his family and torture the location out of them.”
“However, the Kinukawa family was annihilated in the earthquake two years ago. Now, nobody could say anything even if the treasure was found.”
Mr. Harumi took a foreign cigar of a sort I'd never seen before from his sleeve and placed it between his lips.
“That was when I began investigating, after I heard rumors of others searching for the treasure.”
“The first step in the treasure hunt would be to get a hold of the code left behind by Viscount Kinukawa. I don't know what it said, but there was no way to begin without it.”
“I had someone ask around the neighborhood where the Kinukawa family home once stood. I found out that someone had been seen searching the rubble of the collapsed house right after the earthquake, while the flames still burned and the corpses still lay in the street.”
Come to think of it, Yuriko had said earlier that the code had apparently been found in the ruins of the Kinukawa family home.
It was a scene that was easy to imagine. On the night of the earthquake, I, too, had witnessed people swarming like flies around the ruins of noblemen's homes, searching for even a single silver piece.
“So, was somebody able to find Viscount Kinukawa's code?”
“It appears they were. But I have a good idea of who. When we asked around, we found that the eldest son of the Hasebe family and a servant of the Minoshima family had been seen rummaging through the rubble.”
“Have you ever heard of the Hasebe and Minoshima families? Have you met Viscount Hasebe or Count Minoshima?”
“Yes, I've met them both several times.”
Yuriko had also mentioned Count Minoshima. And the Hasebe family were relatives of the Kinukawa family, so they must have already known about the Viscount's hidden treasure.
Growing up, I had heard about both families as role models, the sorts of people all the nobility should seek to emulate. But it seemed those same families had taken advantage of a crisis to commit base thievery.
“Both the eldest son of the Hasebe family and the servant of the Minoshima family were regular guests at the Kinukawa home, so the neighbors knew their faces. They probably assumed that the two of them were searching for letters exchanged between their households that couldn't be made public. It was there that the eldest son discovered the code.”
“How do you know?”
“Since the earthquake, the members of the Hasebe family have been searching across the country, looking into different places with historical connections to the Kinukawa family. It seems the entire family is engaged in the search for the treasure.”
“It looks like they're trying to interpret the code and find an answer. But they're likely just guessing. They haven't been able to properly decipher the code. That's why they're just wandering aimlessly.”
“Viscount Kinukawa said that the code was designed such that it could only be solved by a member of the Kinukawa family. It won't be easy to break.”
“But the Kinukawa family members are all dead, aren't they?”
“It seems so. Most of the family was found dead in Tokyo. The second son appears to have gone to Kamakura. It is believed that he perished in a fire there.”
“Then is finding the treasure even possible?”
“I don't know. Yuriko's the one taking on that challenge.”
“Yeah. I'll think hard about it.”
Yuriko said that and leaned back in the easy chair. It appeared she had no ideas whatsoever, but she didn't look worried.
“Is it possible that the place where Sir Kinukawa hid the treasure was damaged by the earthquake. And if so, aren't you worried that the items may have been destroyed?”
“I don't know. But even if the treasure was consumed by fire, its remnants must exist somewhere. And since the Viscount hid it, it's unlikely he left it out on display. He likely wrapped each piece individually in silk and placed them in separate boxes. In that case, most, if not all of it would have been saved. They also say the treasure included antique swords and gold Buddhas.”
That was true. And the hiding place wasn't even necessarily in Kanto.
Mr. Harumi spoke up as though he'd just remembered something.
“Your sister married into the Minoshima family, didn't she? Would you like me to contact her?”
“...No, I wouldn't.”
My oldest sister and I didn't get along. I didn't expect letters from her anymore.
“Is that so? Well, Count Minoshima isn't doing much digging. He probably never saw the code, so there's no point in asking.”
“But Count Minoshima is probably more desperate for that million yen than anyone. His company is aggressively buying up large amounts of land. I wouldn't be surprised if he kills someone.”
Mr. Harumi said something scary. He didn't seem like the type to make jokes, but... did he really believe that?
What I found strange was that, even though he acted as though he had no interest in the treasure, Mr. Harumi was extremely well informed about it.
He said he knew Viscount Kinukawa well enough to know he'd hidden the treasure without having to have asked, but why had he looked into the people who were searching for it now? One million yen is a lot of money, but no so much that it would move the president of Harumi Trading.
Was it because the treasure was made up of artwork? Mr. Harumi was well known as a supported of young artists.
When I timidly asked him, he answered:
“I don't care about ancient artworks like calligraphy or old paintings. If a dying old man like me were to cling to such things, I would be no different than a ghost haunting the ruins.”
“I only care about your father's debt. He must pay it back, no matter what. Yuriko can't do this sort of research on her own.”
“It's not worth the effort, but that can't be helped. Your father's debt is one that absolutely must be paid off.”
Mr. Harumi seemed extremely upset, and when he explained himself, his age, which wasn't immediately obvious, became suddenly apparent. I couldn't bring myself to ask any more.
“Anyway, while there may be others, those two families are clearly the prime movers and shakers in the search for the hidden treasure.”
They were the ones we had to beat. And it seemed they had quite the head start.
“Miss Yuriko, what do you plan to do now?”
Allegedly, the code was in the hands of Viscount Hasebe. I had no idea how we could get it.
“I don't think we need to worry too much about the code. Mr. Hasebe probably has the code, but he hasn't made any progress, has he?”
“Besides, there might be copies of the code other than the one he has. Mr. Viscount Kinukawa might have left more than one, right? So I'll start by looking into Mr. Kinukawa's past.”
“Well, let's go, Mariko. Mr. Harumi's a busy man. Not that I know what he's busy with.”
Yuriko abruptly cut the conversation short and pulled me to my feet.
“Ah, thank you for having me. I'll be off now.”
When I gave the usual farewell, Mr. Harumi spoke.
“Mariko, if you truly want to obtain the Kinukawa family treasure, stay by Yuriko's side. I know of only three people as clever as her.”
3
Mr. Harumi's home was in Azabu.
The 1,000 square meter plot was modest when you considered its owner was one of the richest men in Japan. Mr. Harumi was a practical man who had no use for a mansion larger than necessary, and he had no family.
Ever since his wife died of illness five years ago, Mr. Harumi had been alone in the world. He had married twice, but with no children, biological or adopted, he had no heirs.
I considered that strange. After leading such a successful life, he acted as though he had no interest in preserving his fortune, and instead spent his time caring for people like Yuriko.
The mansion had originally been purely Japanese, but like most of the houses in the area, it had collapsed during the earthquake and been rebuild in a hybrid Japanese-Western style. Since he had no family, Mr. Harumi often slept in his office and didn't bother returning home, even though it wasn't a long drive.
Yuriko told me she lived in the mansion's garden.
I wondered what she meant by that, but when she took me through the mansion's back gate, I saw at once.
Behind the magnificent mansion stood a much less magnificent shack. It was about six square meters, of the sort that were a common sight after the earthquakes, hastily assembled from wood scraps as emergency shelters.
“Is this where you live, Miss Yuriko?”
“Yeah! I made it myself. I asked Grandpa if I could build it here, and he said it was fine. I didn't have anywhere else to go after the earthquake. Miss Inamura was a big help.”
That was a name I didn't recognize. Yuriko explained that Inamura was the one who'd introduced her to Mr. Harumi after the earthquake, as well as the one who managed the household. She was also the only maid in the entire mansion.
Even after the earthquake, when better accommodations were made, Yuriko remained attached to this shabby shack and refused to move out.
In back of the shack was a stable, also assembled from scrap. As soon as we arrived, Yuriko took Katsuyo back around.
“Thanks a lot, Katsuyo. Just wait here for a bit, alright?”
With that, Yuriko came back around to the entrance to the shack. The door had an imposing lock that looked like it had been taken from a Western mansion.
When Yuriko opened the door, I cried out in amazement.
“Wow! Incredible! It's like a sunken treasure ship... If you'll allow me to say so.”
Despite how crude it looked from the outside, the shack was filled with different things.
It might even have been overly decorated. A carpet from the mainland with a pattern like a mandala was laid on the floor. It looked high quality, but one corner was torn, marking it as an item from a home struck by the disaster. In the back was a cast iron stove, too large for the small shack.
Ethnic-looking clothes like the ones Yuriko was wearing spilled out over the shelves on the walls. In the places where there were no shelves, illustrations from children's books and cut outs from movie magazines were affixed to the wall with pins.
Hanging on another wall, I saw two fine crescent-shaped blades, with tigers carved on their handles.
Yuriko saw me looking at them and quickly snatched one up, unsheathing it.
“These are my swords. I brought them with me from the circus. Pretty, isn't it? Cuts great, too.”
Yuriko took a fig from a basket on a shelf and tossed it in the air. Then, she quickly twirled the sword in her right hand.
For a moment, it looked like a flying fish had jumped across my field of view, then Yuriko swept the air with her left hand, and next thing I knew, she was handing me two perfectly even halves of a fig, split right down the stem.
“See! I take good care of it. Practice a lot, too.”
“Amazing. I didn't know there was anyone in this world who could do things like that.”
“Oh, really?”
Yuriko listened to my compliment, but she clearly didn't understand.
Even though I knew nothing about real circuses, it was clear to me that Yuriko was more than a common acrobat.
And yet, she'd run away from the circus, somehow become a debt collector, and was now trying to take me, the daughter of a Viscount, on a treasure hunt. Yuriko, innocent as a newborn, had no idea how impressive she was.
The sun was setting. I followed Yuriko into the mansion's back door for dinner. Inside was a kitchen furnished in the latest Western style. Once again, I was surprised by what I saw.
“Is that an electric refrigerator? This is my first time seeing one in person.”
“Yeah, it is. It gets cold even though there's no ice. I have no idea how they do it.”
On top of everything else, Yuriko was a skilled chef. Without asking my preference, she prepared omelettes, fried chicken, and consommé. I was relieved that I didn't have to do any servant's work myself, despite how deep my family's debt was.
Next to the kitchen was a large bathroom. Yuriko occasionally brought Katsuyo inside to be bathed. Apparently Mr. Harumi didn't know about that.
After dinner, as Yuriko washed up and I was left to look after Katsuyo, I sat in the shack with a novel I'd brought with me spread out on my lap, deep in thought.
Traveling always made me feel introspective. Perhaps because I was surrounded by strange furnishings, forgotten memories floated to the surface, as though they'd fallen from a jarred cupboard.
As a child, I had been capricious, irritable, and spiteful. I remembered how I'd thrown a tantrum at a maid, demanding perfectly clear marbles, and how I'd once taken my eldest sister's hand mirror without permission.
I was told afterwards that I shouldn't be unreasonable and that I shouldn't blindly imitate adults, but even as a child, I'd known they didn't sell clear glass marbles, and I hadn't even wanted the mirror. I just wanted to cause the maid and my sister trouble.
I don't know if my family ever noticed the kind of child I was. As I grew older, I gradually forgot those ill intentions.
Perhaps it was when I started elementary school and learned that I would be praised for studying hard. After all, I was receiving the education of a child of the nobility, courtesy of my parents and the school. Most people would have recognized me as the daughter of a Viscount.
I was vaguely aware that there had been much discussion going on about the idea of “first generation nobles” and the claim that the nobility itself was an unnecessary institution, held up by rampant lies and deception. I lacked the courage to deny such claims. And yet, I couldn't live my life without the title of “Viscount's daughter”. For if I did, I was sure I would turn back into the twisted child I'd once been.
I thought that if I asked for a perfect clear marble now, the mysterious girl called Yuriko would be able to find it. I felt like I was at an exposition. I was nervous about what Yuriko and I would do, but it was more straightforward, comprehensible anxiety than I'd had sitting at home, worrying for my future.
But I also had a hint of fear. If I wasn't careful, that girl could strip me of all my pride as a child of the nobility.
After nine o'clock, Yuriko curled up in the hammock, and I laid on the carpet under a saddle blanket. I was still thinking. For some reason, being around Yuriko, a girl who couldn't even read, made me feel like the most ignorant person in the world.
4
What was I doing? I was sitting on a bench, looking out at Yuigahama Beach. The sky was clear and the spring sea was calm. I could see the island of Enoshima to the south. Fishing boats and yachts floated here and there, and the people strolling along the beach were speaking to one another softly, feeling reserved in the tranquil atmosphere.
An abridged translation of Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland was open in my lap. That's when I remembered – my family had come to our villa in Kamakura while I was on spring break.
I was about to return to being engrossed in the book, when I suddenly became curious where my older sister, who was supposed to have come with me, had gone, so I got up to search for her.
Ayako, my second oldest sister, was walking alone along the distant shore, occasionally picking something up from the ground. However, when she noticed me searching for her, she came right over.
“Even though we came all this way, you're still reading that book.”
“Yes, I am.”
I wasn't surprised to hear her say that. I had been the one to beg to go to the beach, but my parents had refused, saying that the maids were too busy. They only gave permission when Ayako agreed to come with me. But I hadn't wanted to go walking on the beach. I'd just wanted to be able to read somewhere outside.
Ayako smiled at me and showed me what she'd collected: two hands full of dried nuts and seashells polished pure white by the waves.
“Look, there's so many. Want some of them, Mariko?”
“I agree they're nice, but no, thank you. Why don't you hang them in the entrance of the house?”
“Really? I don't think Mother would like that.”
Ayako threw the shells and nuts back onto the beach with a laugh. It seemed she'd known from the beginning that I wouldn't want them.
Ayako sat down next to me. Since I couldn't continue with Jean-Christophe like this, I closed the book.
Ayako seemed interested in what I was thinking.
Everyone at home was always trying to find out what I was thinking. Whenever I got too quiet, they knew it was because I was either brooding or thinking something bad.
But Ayako was the only one who ever wanted to hear my thoughts for no reason at all.
“Sister, the truth is, I owe a lot of money to a circus girl.”
“That's rough. You'll have to work hard to pay it back.”
“She can't read.”
“But you can read really well, right, Mariko? So isn't that good?”
At my sister's urging, I stood up and we walked together down the beach. Ayako started picking up shells again.
As I watched her, I noticed Ayako's hair clip, fountain pen, and paperweight were lying on the beach among the shells. My sister picked them up and showed me them as she had before.
“What about these, Mariko? Do you want them?”
“No, I... I need them. I'll use them.”
After taking my sister's belongings, we started walking back towards the villa where my parents were.
...I awoke to a feeling of confusion. What was that foreign carpet? Why were so many of my books piled on it? I got up, smoothed out my hair, and only then finally remembered that I was in the shack where Yuriko lived, that I wanted to find the Kinukawa family's treasure, that the house in Kamakura had already been sold, and that Ayako had died in the great earthquake. On September 1st of two years ago, Ayako had been swallowed up by the rubble of a collapsing building when she'd gone to a kimono shop to look at some fabric.
The reason I couldn't accept that, even after all this time, was obvious. It wasn't fair. What was even more unforgivable was that this injustice had been buried in a disaster that had killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The way I was viewed as “the daughter of the Kabatani family” hadn't changed from the past to the present. As a result, I always felt like I somehow didn't count.
The only things in life that comforted me were my novels, and Ayako. As we were the two of the family closest in age, Ayako was the only one who listened to me and took me seriously. There was no one else.
If a person is beset by an absurd fate and comes to a tragic end, shouldn't the world itself be sacrificed and destroyed at the same time? But the world was recovering from the earthquake, and Ayako had been totally forgotten. Wasn't that the most unreasonable thing of all?
Whenever I let myself be immersed in such thoughts, everything else just stopped seeming to matter.
I looked at the clock and saw it was 7:00 A.M. The hammock was empty; apparently, Yuriko was already awake.
As I absentmindedly wondered whether it was worth getting out of my pajamas, the door to the shack suddenly flew open.
“Oh, Mariko! Good morning. Here you go.”
As if taking a sledgehammer to my thoughts, Yuriko dropped a basket on my legs under the blanket.
“What is this?”
“It's lunch! I made it myself. I'm going out now.”
“Going? Where?”
“A mountain in Ōme. That's where Mr. Viscount Kinukawa's villa is. I'm going to check it out.”
It seemed the Kinukawa family's villa was still in the mountains of Ōme. Before he'd hidden it, the Viscount had apparently kept his treasure there, so there might be some clues to its hiding place.
“But surely the villa has been searched countless times already? Will there be any clues left?”
“Dunno. But it's fine, there's nothing else to do. Let's just have fun.”
Yuriko started getting ready. Newspapers, dish towels, wooden cups, a straw mat... no matter how I looked at it, she was preparing for a picnic, not an investigation. Finally, Yuriko put a straw hat on my head without my permission. I took it right off. It made me look like a scarecrow in a kimono, standing in a rice field.
Yuriko bought us tickets, and we took the tram to Shinjuku, where we got on the train. We changed trains at Tachikawa, and arrived at Ōme Station in a bit over two hours. The sky was clear, with not a cloud to be seen. It was definitely the perfect weather for a picnic.
I was made to hike uphill for over an hour, holding the basket the entire time. We made our way through the mountains, headed towards the border with Saitama Prefecture. I was exhausted, but seeing Yuriko look totally fine despite the large sack slung over her shoulder, I couldn't bring myself to ask for a rest.
After we went around a large bend in the path, Yuriko finally stopped. She pointed to a small structure on the left side of the road.
“That must be the guardhouse of Mr. Kinukawa's villa.”
Next to the guardhouse, a road led into the depths of the forest.
I pulled out the map I'd been given. It was a map of the villa, given to me by Mr. Harumi.
It was a rough map drawn based on second-hand accounts, but it certainly looked like we were in the right place. If we took the road further, we'd arrive at Viscount Kinukawa's villa.
The guardhouse, a log building, was in terrible condition. It was clear at a glance no one was there. It leaned towards the road, all of the windows were broken, and ivy covered the roof, which was also full of holes.
“Perhaps it was damaged in the earthquake?”
“Must've been. But it looks like it was abandoned before then.”
The door had been crushed in place and wouldn't open, so Yuriko nimbly slipped through a window. I stayed outside, afraid of getting hurt, and watched through the window as Yuriko searched the room.
The room wasn't very well furnished. There was one small shelf, a chair, and a desk, and the old-looking plates, cups, and letter papers that must have been on it now lay scattered on the floor.
Yuriko picked up four magazines.
“What kind of books are these?”
“May I borrow them? These are all old general magazines, the sorts often read by men. Things like Chuokoron4.”
I looked through them and saw the most recent was the June 1911 issue of Taiyou5.
“There's nothing new here. These must have been here ever since the guard was killed.”
I was shocked when she said that.
Mr. Harumi had told me that just before Viscount Kinukawa hid his assets, in October 1911, the villa's security guard was murdered. If he was the caretaker of this guardhouse, everything here could have belonged to him. This could even have been the crime scene.
I hurriedly returned the magazines to Yuriko.
“So Mr. Kinukawa didn't hire a new security guard after the incident in 1911?”
“I'm sure he didn't. I mean, he'd hidden the treasure, hadn't he? He didn't need to keep it guarded any longer.”
“Hey, is there anything else you need to do here? We should go.”
“Yeah, you're right. Let's leave these back where we found them.”
With that, Yuriko put the four magazines back on the floor, exactly where they'd been.
We next walked along the road next to the guardhouse. All that lay before us was Viscount Kinukawa's villa.
The road had a gentle slope. It felt like we were descending into a valley. After about half a block, the magnificent Western-style building came into view.
“Oh, nice. This one isn't in too bad a shape.”
Just as Yuriko said, the villa was in much better condition than the guardhouse. The walls were white plaster, dotted with bay windows, and it had a triangular roof like a pointed hat. A door the color of chocolate stood at the entrance.
However, closer inspection revealed signs that the villa had indeed been affected by the earthquake. The tiles on the roof were peeling off and broken, several of them lying scattered on the ground, and the bricks of the path in front of the entrance were drastically uneven.
There were also patches of moss growing on the roof. It seemed this place had also been abandoned since the deaths of the Kinukawa family.
Yuriko gave the doorknob of the front door a reckless jiggle, but it didn't open.
“Locked. We can't go inside. Let's take a look around.”
We decided to walk around the villa.
As we went around to the right, the ground sharply dropped towards the back of the villa. It was as we reached around the middle of the building that we realized that the villa had been built on a slope, with the entrance on the second floor.
The ground wasn't smooth. If you weren't careful, it was easy to fall over.
Yuriko held my hand, and we finally made it to the bottom of the slope. There, we could see a river, flowing behind the villa. The current was gentle. It looked like the sort of river you could go out on in a rowboat.
There was one window on the wall facing the river that caught our attentions.
It was the only window in the villa to have both shutters and iron bars, thick as rolling pins. They looked a bit rusty, but still quite solid. Looking into the room through the half-open shudders, we saw decorative shelves on all four walls of the room, but nothing on any of them. Opposite the window stood a heavy iron door.
“This must be the room where Viscount Kinukawa kept the treasure.”
“Yeah. There's really nothing left.”
Then we went back around the other side of the villa and returned to the entrance.
Along the way, we saw a room with a broken window. Looking down, I saw pieces of glass that had been stepped on and embedded in the dry earth. I could tell it had been broken a long time ago.
“It was broken from the inside. Whoever did this, they weren't breaking in.”
“That thing must have fallen on it. Look.”
A hat rack was lying in the middle of the room. It did look like it had fallen on the glass during the earthquake.
I strained my neck to see the floor under the window and saw several footprints. It appeared several people had entered the villa this way.
“Let's follow their example and head it.”
Yuriko, light on her feet, hopped like a grasshopper and was inside the villa in the blink of an eye.
I wondered if she would go back to the entrance and unlock the door for me, but as though the thought hadn't even occurred to her, Yuriko instead helped me climb inside through the window frame. Despite my reluctance, I managed to sneak into the villa.
Yuriko looked around the room and said “It's incredible. It looks just like a Western house from a movie.”
The room we were in looked like a guest room. It had sustained some damage from the earthquake, but the chandelier-esque light on the ceiling and the four easy chairs with their quilted fabric were all still intact, as were the tea serving utensils sitting in an open cabinet.
As I looked at the footprints on the floor, which appeared to belong to several different people, I said something.
“Hey, Miss Yuriko, if nothing was stolen, then all the people who broke in here must have been searching for clues to the treasure's location, right?”
“Right.”
After all, there were many more people than us who were looking for that treasure. Surely they would have already found any clue that could have been found here, wouldn't they?
Yuriko retrieved two pairs of slippers from somewhere.
“Okay! Let's see what it's like.”
Yuriko said something strange.
In addition to the guest room, the second floor also had a kitchen, dining room, and servants' quarters, everything one would need. It was furnished like a vacation home, without much in the way of decoration.
On the first floor were five bedrooms. All of them were quite spacious.
The hallways on both the first and second floors had wallpaper that was somewhat unusual. It was a calming shade of dark brown, but when I touched it, I felt the surface wrinkle and bulge. At first I thought it had just been applied by an unskilled craftsman, but then I noticed that the wrinkles were perfectly straight and evenly distributed, which made me realize that it had been applied that way on purpose. The villa had been built in the mid-Meiji era, but the wallpaper appeared to have been applied more recently.
The room with the iron door was at the very back of the first floor. It was unlocked, so we could enter without any trouble.
“This must be where that friend of Grandpa Harumi was let in. He said the room on the first floor was full of treasures.”
“If a room this size was full, it would have been difficult for Viscount Kinukawa to carry it all out. It would have been too much to carry, even with a carriage or car.”
Perhaps the treasure's hiding spot wasn't far from here.
In the end, we didn't find any clues to the hiding place. All we really accomplished was confirming where the treasure wasn't.
Yuriko didn't seem disappointed.
“Let's have lunch now. Where do you want to eat?”
“Um... Why don't we step outside?”
It seemed a bit rude to wander into a dead man's villa and eat on his dining table.
We went up to the second floor and tried to step out through the front door into the garden.
But as we reached the top of the stairs, Yuriko suddenly grabbed me by the arm. As I wondered what was going on, she signaled me to stop and listen.
There was a scraping sound coming from the entrance.
“What's that noise?”
“The sound of someone trying to pry the door open.”
An intruder! To think they'd arrived at the same time as us. What were they doing? Were they a thief, or someone else investigating the treasure?
I tugged at the folds of Yuriko's dress.
“Miss Yuriko, let's escape out the first floor window.”
“Hold on a second.”
Yuriko watched the situation unfold without panicking. I, on the other hand, was panicking so hard my feet were rooted to the floor.
Soon, we heard the front door open. Yuriko and I tried to see the intruder's features as we hid behind the grandfather clock in the hall.
The person who entered was a small, sinister looking man of about fifty.
I knew at a glance he was a criminal. The man walked carefully, searching around him with every step. Then he opened the door to the guest room we'd entered through and stepped inside, still looking around restlessly.
“He's a thief! Miss Yuriko, what are we going to do?”
“I'm gonna go say hi. We just so happened to run into each other, so it's only natural to be polite.”
Before my surprise had time to register, Yuriko briskly walked towards the guest room.
Just then, the intruder returned from the guest room to the hallway. When he unexpectedly ran into Yuriko, his eyes went wide with shock.
“Hi! I'm Yuriko. What brings you here?”
“Wha–!?”
The man screamed and made a run for the entrance. Yuriko quickly grabbed his arm from behind.
“I wanna ask you something. You want to know about Mr. Kinukawa's treasure, don't you? Are you looking for it?”
“T-The Viscount's treasure? ...Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The man's resistance seemed to weaken a little.
“Right, sorry, I'm Yuriko. I'm looking for the treasure Mr. Viscount Kinukawa hid. And you?”
“Hid? The Viscount hid the treasure? What are you talking about?”
It didn't seem like he was playing dumb. It seemed like this man really didn't know about Viscount Kinukawa's hidden fortune. Judging from the way he'd reacted to Yuriko's story, it didn't seem like he had anything to do with the treasure.
“Mariko and I are looking for the treasure Mr. Viscount Kinukawa hid somewhere. Hey, Mariko!”
When she called out to me like that, I had no choice but to reveal myself. Feeling my facial muscles tense, I walked towards them.
“Hello. It's a pleasure to meet you.”
The appearance of another girl, completely different from Yuriko, took him aback, as though he'd found a squirrel living in a wooden box he'd left out in the garden.
Yuriko spoke to the speechless man.
“Hey, you're a thief, aren't you? You opened the front door so easily, you must be. I know, because I've got a friend who's a thief.”
“No, that's not it... not now. I didn't come here to steal anything.”
“Really? My thief friend told me they quit, too. So you came here to check something out, then? What are you checking out? Do you want the treasure?”
“I don't want it or anything like that. It has nothing to do with me. It doesn't matter at all. That isn't what I want to know.”
It didn't seem like he was lying, but I had no idea what the ex-thief's purpose was. It seemed his situation was complicated.
“Well, I want to hear your story detail. What's your name?”
“It's Kashida.”
That's how the man introduced himself.
We went back around behind the villa, where Yuriko looked out over the bank of the gentle river.
“Is this a good spot? Let's sit here.”
So saying, Yuriko spread out the straw mat she'd brought. She had myself and the former thief Kashida sit down, spread out the blanket, set out sandwiches for us, and poured tea from a flask. And so, we began a rather uncomfortable picnic.
“Here you are.”
The former thief took the sandwich, looking like a middle-aged man who'd somehow wandered into Alice's Wonderland.
Motivated by both contempt and caution, I tried to avoid the man called Kashida's gaze, but he spoke up.
“Do you have some connection to Viscount Kinukawa? You're a real beauty... are you the daughter of a noble family?”
“My Father's name is Tadamichi Kabatani, and he holds the title of Viscount.”
“So you are a daughter of nobility. An real aristocrat. Do you have some connection to Viscount Kinukawa? Or maybe... the Orihara family?”
Kashida suddenly introduced the name Orihara.
The Orihara, like the Kinukawa, were a noble family whose entire lineage was wiped out in the earthquake. I'd heard they'd come from the same town as the Kinukawa family, but I'd never heard anything about them being connected to the hidden treasure.
What did Kashida know? I answered cautiously.
“I believe Father had connections to them both, though I don't know the details.”
“Is that so?”
“What's up? Did you know Mr. Orihara? Also, who's Mr. Orihara?”
Kashida looked troubled. No matter how innocent Yuriko sounded, there was something about her that made her difficult to ignore.
“First, I want you to tell me who you are and what you're planning. And what did you mean about Viscount Kinukawa hiding his treasure?”
In response, Yuriko generously told him everything: about Viscount Kinukawa's code, how she was a circus girl-turned-debt collector, and how she'd taken me as collateral while she searched for the hidden treasure. Kashida looked incredulous, but eventually, decided that there was no better explanation for the presence of such a disparate pair of girls.
“...So, even though you want to look for the treasure, you don't have the code. Sounds like you're having a rough go of it.”
“Yeah, we are. That's why we came to investigate this villa. Maybe we'll find something, you know? And, wouldn't you know it, we met you, Mr. Kashida! What do you know?”
Little by little, Yuriko was cornering Kashida to the point where he had no choice but to tell us something. But despite the subject matter, she never forgot to take bites of her sandwich.
“It's probably okay to tell you now. It's already been over ten years. And Akihiro Orihara is dead, too. But I want you to keep what I'm about to say a secret. To be honest, this isn't the sort of story that's fit for a young lady of the nobility–”
“Oh, it's fine. Right, Mariko?”
Having decided that for me, Yuriko urged Kashida to continue. He made up his mind and began his story.
“This is a story from 1911. It was the incident that made me give up stealing, one I've never told anyone before. This will be my first time putting it into words.”
“Do you know about the incident in October 1911, when the guard at this villa's guardhouse was murdered?”
Mr. Harumi had told me about it. He'd said that Viscount Kinukawa had hidden the treasure right afterwards.
“The truth is, I was present when the murder took place. The murderer was Akihiro Orihara, the eldest son of the Orihara family. He'd hired me to help him steal the treasure kept in the villa.”
Kashida's story was shocking. Even though I wanted to keep my distance from him, I couldn't help myself from leaning forward to listen.
The murder of the guard which had remained a mystery for so long unfolded before us. A young aristocrat, Akihiro Orihara, had accidentally killed him while trying to steal the treasure.
But the murder wasn't the problem. When Akihiro Orihara and Kashida had tried to steal it, the treasure suddenly disappeared under what seemed like impossible circumstances. They'd left the villa for a bit over two hours, during which the treasure disappeared without leaving a trace in the area surrounding the house, which was muddy from recent rain.
“That young nobleman had no idea what magic they'd used to make the treasure disappear, and of course, I didn't either. We had no choice; we ran. I was given my money and told to keep my mouth shut. I didn't need to be told twice. That was when I gave up on breaking into houses.”
“It was better for me if I didn't get involved, so I didn't try searching for the treasure or anything. I mean, Akihiro had killed a guy. So I never even knew that Viscount Kinukawa had made a code.”
The murder committed by Akihiro Orihara must have kept the disappearance a secret. No matter how strange what they saw was, neither Kashida nor Akihiro could ever tell anyone.
“But it's been almost 14 years since that incident. And then there was that huge earthquake, right? I started wondering about the strange stuff I saw in there. So I came, thinking maybe I could solve the mystery. I thought nobody would be here, so you two gave me a real scare.”
“I had been keeping quiet out of my responsibility to Akihiro, but now that he and his family are gone, I don't think I need to worry about the Orihara family's honor anymore.”
I didn't know much about law, but since Kashida hadn't been involved in the murder, had the statute of limitations on his crimes expired already? At any rate, Viscount Kinukawa, the treasure's owner, and Akihiro Orihara, the murderer, were both no longer with us. The earthquake had shattered everyone's plans. I didn't have the energy to be offended over the crimes of someone who'd no doubt met an untimely end in that hellish disaster.
It was probably too late to blame Kashida, either. More than anything, he seemed to want to tell someone his story.
Kashida had told us his secret, but after he finished, he suddenly became embarrassed.
“Anyway, I'm not being greedy now, or anything. Even though I used to be a thief. I'm sure I look like just another thug to you all, but–”
“Nah, you're cool. I did all sorts of bad stuff when I was a kid, but I didn't ever think of myself as a 'thug'.”
“When you were a kid? You? Hmm. I see.”
Kashida seemed strangely relieved at that.
I was curious what sorts of “bad things” Yuriko had done in the past, but the girl blew right past that and kept talking.
“Mr. Harumi said that Mr. Viscount Kinukawa didn't care that his guard was killed. He probably didn't want to share how he'd gotten his treasure out of its room.”
“You mean if the murderer had been caught, the public might have found out about how the treasure disappeared like magic?”
“Yep, that's it.”
Of course, Viscount Kinukawa must have been the one to make the treasure disappear. The Viscount may have feared that if they found out how he did it, the treasure's hiding place would be exposed. That was why he hadn't cooperated with the police investigation, even though a guard at his villa had been killed.
“So, is there a secret passage somewhere in this villa? And just before you were able to steal the treasure, he quickly took it out through there?”
Kashida answered my question enthusiastically, rambling as though he were talking to himself.
“I thought that might be the case, too. At the time, I panicked and ran away, but thinking back on it calmly, it can't have just disappeared. I'm sure if I'd thoroughly searched the villa, I'd have found a hidden room somewhere. Perhaps the treasure was even still inside it.”
After Yuriko finished peeling and eating her peaches, we resumed searching the villa. This time, we were focused on finding the secret passageway we knew must have existed.
Starting from the second floor, Kashida checked with expert skill, tapping the walls and putting his ear to them to listen for hidden entrances. I tried imitating him, but I didn't find anything and quickly gave up. Yuriko also decided to leave everything to him.
Kashida took out a tape measure. He measured the rooms and the hallways, checking whether any of the walls had space for a passageway. At his request, we helped him with his work, holding down the end of the tape measure.
Eventually, Kashida concluded that there was no secret passage on the second floor.
“Well, that's obvious. It makes way more sense to built in on the first floor than the second. It's way easier that way.”
Making sure to keep my distance, I timidly asked Kashida something.
“Um, it's been over a decade since the treasure disappeared, hasn't it? Isn't it possible the secret passage was filled in during that time?”
“No way. This villa isn't new anymore. It was probably built during the Meiji era, back when they were laying down the first railways. If it was tampered with later, there'd be traces.”
“The only thing that's changed it the wallpaper in the hallway. That was new when we first snuck in here back then. But the walls of the hallway are too thin to have secret doors in them.”
“At that time, I checked everywhere to make sure nobody was hiding, but dammit, why didn't I think to check for secret doors...”
We went down to the first floor.
Perhaps there was a passageway leading underground. Since the building had been built on a slope, there may have been room to insert something special during the construction.
Starting with the bedrooms in the front, we searched, more thoroughly than on the second floor, to see if there were any hidden mechanisms.
“I don't think it's possible to build a hidden door without leaving some traces. You've got to include a gap so the door can open properly, so if you touch it, you're bound to feel some resistance.”
There wasn't much furniture in the villa, so even searching carefully, it only took so much time. After confirming there was nothing amiss in any of the five bedrooms, we entered the final room, the one with the iron door.
“Is it really in here? This room's a pain.”
Kashida searched behind the shelves on all four sides and on the thickly carpeted floor, crawling across the room.
But it was all in vain. The secure room was exactly as it appeared, an eight tatami room hiding no secrets.
There wasn't a single secret passage in the entire villa.
The musty smell of the abandoned villa eventually became suffocating, so we all went outside.
“Strange. I was sure that was it. What on Earth did Viscount Kinukawa do, then?”
Kashida seemed afraid we'd begin to doubt his story.
I'd had a hard time trusting him even before we searched for the hidden door. But looking at Yuriko's expression, it was clear she sympathized with Kashida's confusion.
“How weird.”
It seemed we had no choice but to tackle the mystery head on. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“It looks like the forest around the villa has been cleared; there are no trees nearby. Was it already like that in 1911?”
“Yeah, exactly the same. I considered the possibility that someone had jumped from a tree onto the villa's roof, but it's far enough that you'd need to use a rope. But there's nothing to attach a rope to on the roof. Not even an acrobat could do it.”
“Yeah, it's impossible,” Yuriko assured us.
“So are you sure there was no one else in the villa?”
“I'm sure. I checked thoroughly.”
“But surely there must have been some way keep Mr. Kashida and company from seeing them?”
“For example, what if they'd been hiding in the treasure room you were trying to get into? What if someone had already been inside the villa, and they hid in that room and locked it behind them while you two were searching the second floor?”
“No, that's impossible. I pried open the shutters to that room to check the lock from the inside. I looked into the room then, so I would have seen if there were someone there.”
“There was a lot of stuff, but there were no gaps large enough for a person to hide in. And you couldn't fit someone into even the largest vase.”
“I've been thinking about it all these years. Could someone have been hiding in our car? But the only things in that car were the body and a can of gasoline. I even got curious at one point and went back to check on the body. No matter how I look at it, it was impossible to hide.”
“Even if someone managed to get into the villa without us seeing them, that's only half the story. How the hell did they get the treasure out? Until we can solve that problem, all this theorizing is useless.”
He was right.
But no matter how we thought about it, that was impossible. Could it have been removed using some unique method no one had thought of? I shook off the mental image of an airplane using a grappling hook to snatch the packaged treasure off the front steps.
The mystery remained unsolved. Yuriko folded up the straw mat by the river and started preparing to go home.
Kashida didn't seem interested in accompanying us.
“Well, I'll be going, then.”
Kashida left us to clean up and made his way away.
“Is this alright?”
“If he's going off on his own, we can't stop him. Even though I kinda wanted to ask for his help...”
However, unexpectedly, our next meeting with Kashida came only ten minutes later.
As I was walking back down the road, empty basket at one side and Yuriko at my other, I saw two men arguing.
One of them was Kashida. The other also looked familiar.
“Miss Yuriko, that's a member of Viscount Hasebe's family! I think he's the second son. Oh, what's his name...”
A young man of the Hasebe family, searching for the treasure, had come to the villa. His questioning of Kashida was so heated he looked about to grab him by the collar.
“You know him, Mariko?”
“Yes, I expect he'll remember me, too.”
“Really? No point in pretending not to know him, then. Let's go.”
Yuriko walked up to them without changing stride at all, then called out to them without a hint of shame, as though greeting a neighbor.
“Hiya! What's up?”
The young man of the Hasebe family looked at Yuriko with undisguised suspicion for a while, but when he saw me, he cried out.
“Oh, you're Viscount Kabatani's girl, aren't you?”
“Yep! That's Mariko. I'm Yuriko. You?”
It was probably only my presence that stopped him from lying.
“...Ryujiro Hasebe.”
“Mr. Ryujiro Hasebe, is it? What do you want from this suspicious old man, Mr. Ryujiro?”
Yuriko poked Kashida in the side as she spoke.
“Of course, it's because he's suspicious. I was wondering who he was. He could be a thief.”
“Yeah, he's suspicious, so it's natural. But the truth is, this suspicious old man's actually NOT suspicious. He was just on his way home after a picnic with us. If this old man is suspicious, then you're suspicious too, Mr. Ryujiro. But I've known this old man for about three hours longer than you, so I'd say you're more suspicious.”
“So? Can you tell me what exactly you're doing here, Mr. Viscount Hasebe's son Mr. Ryujiro?”
The young man of the Hasebe family maintained his dignity, studiously ignoring Yuriko's existence. He looked at me appraisingly, and said as though to himself:
“I see. So Viscount Kabatani is also searching for the treasure. ...But what exactly are you doing here? Did the Viscount send you?”
Yuriko didn't let me answer.
“No, it wasn't Mr. Viscount, it was me. We still don't know anything. We were just here on a picnic.”
“What about you? You've got the code, haven't you, Mr. Hasebe?”
Hasebe realized that Yuriko couldn't be brushed off. He didn't understand what a strange trio like us were doing together, and appeared to be worrying about how much we already knew.
“Would you like to make a deal?”
“What? A deal? What'll you give us?”
The young man gave up on getting anything out of Yuriko.
“...Well, whatever. For today, let's avoid conflict. Excuse me, please.”
With that, Ryujiro gave Kashida a pat on the shoulder and left us there, walking in the direction of the villa.
“I'll also be attending that picnic you mentioned! If you have any information you'd like to share, please, do let me know. I have some advice I'd like to give you all, as well.”
“Y'know, he looked a bit like Akihiro Orihara. Do all noblemen's heirs act like arrogant geisha?”
“No, they do not.”
I was beginning to get used to the ex-thief. I realized that, beneath his rough exterior, he was actually a bit of a coward.
Kashida let out a deep sigh.
“Well, I should at least thank you for saving me. You've got quite the silver tongue. Are you planning to join the circus?”
“If you talked like that at the circus, they'd yell at you.”
“Yeah, guess so. We should probably give up on searching any more today, what with that guy hanging around.”
“Yeah. Guess so.”
With that, Kashida and Yuriko exchanged promises to keep what we had discussed today a secret.
5
It was after 7:00 when we returned.
“That was fun! I'll go make dinner now.”
Yuriko put down her bag on the floor of the shack and, showing no signs of fatigue, went straight to the mansion's kitchen to start on dinner. As usual, I hadn't been asked to help, so I unfolded the newspapers she'd brought as a sandwich wrappers and read them.
I read them in order of oldest to newest. The first was from 1920, over five years ago. I was filled with nostalgia for the time before the earthquake and became lost in the printed pages.
There was an article about the stage actress Mitsue Asama. She was such a great actress than even I recognized her name. When talking about modernist theater, her name was always among the first to come up.
IS MS. MITSUE'S NEW LIFE THAT OF A NEW WOMAN?
Following the divorce between modern theater actress Mitsue Asama and businessman Minoru Oshima which has become the talk of the nation, reports have come in that the dispute which had broken out over custody of their daughter has ended, with Ms. Mitsue being granted sole custody. While it was ruled that the divorce was caused entirely by bad behavior on the part of Mr. Oshima, Ms. Mitsue's skill in using this as pretext to drive her husband away and be granted the ability to pamper a very lovely young woman to her heart's content are no doubt envied by many. Furthermore, her ability to conceal any traces of sadness from her separation, be it onstage or in her private life, are truly worthy of the title of greatest actress of our time, and she has been met with considerable acclaim, especially from the so-called “new women”...
The article went on, but I stopped reading, unable to stand the author's vulgar words.
I wasn't allowed to watch recent plays like Ibsen's A Doll's House, but I had seen Mitsue Asama perform Shakespeare several times. She was an excellent actress, and I could still recall the way her performances had moved my soul, free of the ridiculous melodrama often seen when Japanese people performed Western material.
I was a bit surprised to find out she'd been involved in a tabloid divorce drama.
If I had remained at home, I never would have seen that article. I felt like an illusion had been shattered. It was a story about a woman I would have never crossed paths with in life.
I folded the newspaper and placed it in my life.
“Lucky. Since you can read, you're never bored.”
Yuriko's words held no trace of sarcasm, but I still felt embarrassed, sitting there in the kitchen without helping.
“Do you ever get bored, Miss Yuriko?”
“Nah, never in my life. But I'm sure I especially wouldn't get bored if I could read.”
“But Mr. Hasebe's a real hard worker. He probably couldn't make sense of that code, so he came to the villa looking for clues, didn't he? He must have gone there again and again, looking for... something.”
The Hasebe family had come into possession of the code just after the earthquake, so they'd been struggling for almost two years now. If they were still searching the villa for clues, did that mean they hadn't made much progress?
“Miss Yuriko, I've read a few stories featuring codes, and most codes can only be solved with a key in the form of a specific page from a dictionary or some such. Without that, it can't be decoded no matter how hard you try.”
“Viscount Kinukawa said that only his family could decipher the code, correct? So if the key to the code only existed within the family's heads, then it may be that the code is impossible to decipher. After all, the entire Kinukawa family have passed away.”
Yuriko responded while chopping up some potatoes.
“We don't even have the code yet, so there's no reason to think about that now. It'd be a problem if Mr. Hasebe solved it before us, so it's better for us if it's hard to break.”
“Yes, that might be true. But how can we get our hands on the code?”
I thought that the only way for us to get the code would be to exchange it for some information, but after what I'd seen that day, I didn't think Mr. Hasebe would be very agreeable.
“The code's whatever, but we learned something super important today, didn't we? The treasure disappeared like magic in 1911.”
That was the only thing we knew that our rivals didn't. But would solving that mystery really help us find the treasure?
Yuriko boiled a pot of macaroni. I picked up another newspaper and looked at the headline.
“Oh my.”
It was the morning edition of a paper from July 15, 1921.
CIRCUS IN FULL SWING IN ASAKUSA
The Tendō Circus Troupe, which has been performing daily in Asakusa Park since the first of the month, has been attracting legions of cheering spectators. Japanese acrobatics have long been renowned as the greatest in the world, giving performances that leave foreigners with their mouths agape. The Tendō Circus Troupe specializes in performances of Western-style acrobatics with technique rivaling the greatest performers in France and Mexico, and audiences can't get enough. Their most amazing star is a young girl named Yuriko, who can do it all, from trapeze artistry to horseback riding, changing costumes between every act. Those with a love of acrobatics or an eye for the arts say that, even if you don't care for the rest of the show, you can't miss seeing Yuriko.
The circus where Yuriko had worked was called the Tendō Circus Troupe. Apparently, it had quite the reputation.
What was that circus doing now? Had it managed to escape the earthquake? And why had Yuriko run away?
“What's up? Something on your mind?”
Yuriko asked that with a smile as I sat engrossed in the paper.
“No, it was just somewhat interesting.”
“Really? Well, good for you.”
There was no way Yuriko could have known I was reading an article about her off of her sandwich wrapping.
A thought suddenly occurred to me. This girl wasn't even supposed to be part of my life.
[4] A general interest magazine published since 1887 and still ongoing today. At the time The Circus Enforcer is set, it was known for both its publishing of many liberal, pro-democracy essays and for being a stepping stone for new authors.
[5] Taiyou (lit. “The Sun”, not to be confused with any English publications by that name) was Japan's first ever general interest magazine. Unlike Chuokoron, it was unable to keep up with the social changes of the Taishō era and ended publication in 1928.