“Would we be here now if it weren’t?” Narucchi said. “We don’t know for sure that he’s dead, but we know he disappeared.”
So just “disappeared.” Vanished, like the assistant in a magician’s trick? Then he’s more “missing person” than “murdered” person.
“So, like I said,” I said, “hold on a minute. I don’t understand a thing you’re telling me. Start from the beginning. How did Sano disappear?”
But Kan cut me off. “Forget it. We don’t have time for your questions. We want answers. You tell us, Aiko, where were you last night from ten to eleven?”
“I got home at ten-thirty and didn’t go out after that.”
“But where were you between ten and ten-thirty?”
“I was on the train home from Shinjuku.”
“The express from Shinjuku to Chofu takes fifteen minutes…”
“But I waited at Shinjuku and the train was a little late, and I had to walk home from the station. What are you saying?”
“Were you by yourself?”
“By myself?”
“Did you go home alone?”
“Of course!”
“And Sano?”
“He wasn’t with me.”
“So what happened to him?”
“How should I know? I got sick of him and left him at the hotel.”
“So you left him at the hotel! Why?”
“Like I said, I got sick of him, he’s disgusting!”
“Sick of him how?”
“Who cares? I left him there.”
“We care! Somebody killed him. What do you mean you got sick of him?”
Killed him? You just said you didn’t know whether he was dead or not! All you really know is that he’s missing.
“Wait a minute! You don’t think I did it, do you?”
“We don’t know who did it,” Kan said.
“You don’t know, but you think it was me.”
“We’re just trying to get the facts. Innocent until proven guilty.”
“What the—Why would I want to kill Sano?”
“You just said you got sick of him.” It was Shima this time. “So if you couldn’t stand him, you might have killed him. That’s like a motive or something.”
“And you’re like a moron or something. Do you kill everybody you can’t stand?”
Narucchi jumped in to defend her. “Shima wouldn’t kill anybody. It’s you we’re talking about, Aiko,” she said, and then all of us, me included, turned to look at Maki, who was still sitting on the floor, head down, pressing her handkerchief against her nose.
“Maki,” Kan said, “you should look up—the bleeding stops faster.” Maki shook her head but said nothing. It was obvious she was crying and didn’t want us to see her covered with blood and tears and snot.
Okay, point taken. I’m good in a fight. And I guess I did kick Sano in the face last night…
Whoa! It felt like somebody had just kicked me.
Now that you mention it, I did kick him in the face. Kicked him—sugaaan!—and knocked him flat on the floor.
But he laughed about it afterward. “Ouch!” he’d said. But then he giggled. But what if that kick was harder than I realized or I’d hit him in the wrong place? What if he’d started bleeding inside that stupid head of his? What if it got worse later and he died?
I felt the blood draining out of my head, my face going white. They were all staring at me, still looking funny. But wait a MINUTE! It’s not what you think. It was just one little kick. Nobody ever killed a boy with one little kick!
But Sano was pretty scrawny. And my kick did get him pretty much straight in the face…
No, no, no! People aren’t that fragile! Nobody croaks from one girl-kick.
I was now completely tongue-tied, unable to think about anything but my kick. I was almost too frightened to speak. Somewhere in the back of my head a white guy was telling me all that stuff they say when they arrest you: “You have the right to remain silent; you have the right to an attorney…” Had I really killed Sano? I sure hadn’t meant to. This was not premeditated. Murder in the second degree? Involuntary manslaughter? But hold on, we don’t even know whether he’s dead or not!
“Say something, Aiko!”
“Did you remember something, Aiko?”
“Tell us, Aiko!”
“I didn’t do anything,” I finally managed to mutter, but this only threw gas on the fire.
“Didn’t do what? Tell us everything!”
“Don’t be stupid! Tell us!”
“What happened last night?”
“Why did you get so mad at him?”
Shut up shut up shut up shut UP!
Kan finally seemed to realize what was going on. “She can’t answer if we’re all yelling at her,” she said. “Quiet, girls.” Then she turned to me. “So tell us what happened, Aiko. I don’t know why you got so mad at him, but you did. So did you also beat the shit out of him like you did Maki just now?”
No!
It wasn’t anything like Maki.
But it also wasn’t true that I didn’t know what I’d done to him—so I decided to exercise my right to remain silent.
But then they were all over me again, trying to get me to confess. And I knew if I told them I’d only kicked him in the face, they’d never let up. Then a girl came into the bathroom—a little awkward with the would-be Crucifixion in progress. Of course the new girl would need to know what was going on, and this forced Kan to backtrack a bit.
“So, Aiko, tell us. What happened with you and Sano?”
“Katsura and Sano?” The new girl—Riko or Emiri or something—was suddenly all ears. I wanted to tell them nothing had happened, that I had nothing to do with Sano, but I wasn’t so sure myself anymore. My legs felt weak, and I was shaking.
“Aiko, don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” Even Nakada was getting into the act, though there was a smirk on her face. But I didn’t—have anything to say for myself, not at the moment.
Then, as I stood there, more girls started coming in—it was a restroom, after all—and when they realized they had walked into a Crucifixion-in-progress, they didn’t want to leave. So the place got crowded and crazy, and that, in the end,
