CHAPTER 22 #2
“Guess we’re about to find out.”
The car reached Higashikurume and Teruo slowed down as he entered the narrow streets leading to Kawasaki Mariko’s apartment.
He parked at the only spot available in the area and they went on foot the rest of the way.
While Shinji was sweating, Teruo was grateful for the blazing sun as his body felt heavy with exhaustion.
As they closed in on the apartment block, another cold breeze reached them, and Teruo guessed this was Keiko.
“Mrs. Kawasaki is inside?” Shinji asked. “Okay.” He looked behind him. “No, there’s no turning back now. Let’s go.”
They ducked underneath the open staircase and Shinji went straight for the first apartment on the ground level. He knocked on the door.
“Mrs. Kawasaki? It’s the metropolitan police,” Shinji said. “May we speak?”
The door opened, but it wasn’t Mariko. A man with wavy hair, t-shirt, and shorts answered. He looked warily at them both, especially at Shinji.
“Metropolitan police?” he asked.
Teruo introduced them both, then continued, “We’re here to speak with your wife.”
“She’s not home,” he said.
“Yes, she is,” Shinji retorted. “Tell your wife her father is with us. We come as detectives, not as Onmyōryō representatives.”
“Move,” a woman’s voice said, then Mariko appeared. She was petite and snuck in between the wall and her husband, her eyes wide. “My father is here?” She gasped as she looked somewhere behind Teruo. “Why did you come? He’s a Shinigami!” She stabbed her finger at Shinji.
“Ma’am, I have no intention of sending your father to the afterlife,” Shinji said. “Not until we find out the truth about your brother, Hiroshi. Now, may we please come inside? There’s a lot to talk about, including Takeda Fuyumi.”
Mariko paled, but beckoned her husband to step aside. He reluctantly did, and they entered the small and cramped apartment. It seemed Mariko never touched the fortune she made after the Onmyōryō paid her. Teruo couldn’t blame her. It was blood money.
Inside, a few snacks were set on the low table, two cushions on the floor, and a fan blew in a corner. The TV was on, but Mariko’s husband turned it off. They had no sofa, and Mariko brought two more cushions for Teruo and Shinji to sit on.
Mariko looked to her right, toward the doorway. “Did you tell them?” She nodded and looked at Teruo. “Why is a non-supernatural involved?”
“I’m the lead detective on the murders done by Takeda Fuyumi,” Teruo said. “The ones you helped her commit.”
“We know you turned off her seals,” Shinji added, “in order for her to use her extraction powers outside the castle grounds. And you did it for your brother. So, can you please take us through everything that happened?”
Mariko slouched, placing her hands in her lap.
“Hiroshi and I are both shamans, specializing in seals and protective wards. We’ve always been pretty good so we joined the Onmyōryō in our twenties.
Dad hated the idea.” Her eyes filled with tears and she looked toward the door again. “You were right…”
Her husband placed a palm on her shoulder and soothed her gently.
“I specialize in human seals and wards. It means they’re placed on living human beings,” she explained to Teruo.
“Since extractors are powerful, they require strong seals. Thanks to my skills I was assigned to create the seals, place them on their bodies: around the core in the chest, and several others throughout the body. My job is to monitor them, turn them on and off when necessary. When there are no extractions, I handle other supernaturals in need of seals.”
“Did you brother do the same?” Shinji asked.
“Hiroshi handled seals and protective wards called ‘classified targets,’” Mariko said. “This means he created and attached seals to any sort of target that wasn’t a living person and was meant to be classified.”
“Such as?” Teruo inquired. He couldn’t imagine what sort of things needed seals.
Mariko sighed. “Ancient documents with forbidden practices, buildings containing dangerous creatures that can’t be killed, spirits that are too violent to be sent to the other side and they’re sealed in various objects, even modern things like unreleased prototypes for various machines.”
Teruo folded his arms. “That is incredible.”
“My brother was incredible.” A faint smile crossed her face before more tears fell down her face. “A month ago, he and his coworker were assigned to create blood seals. They’re created with the actual blood of the client, and only that can open them, not even a key.”
“What were these blood seals for?” Shinji asked.
“That’s the problem,” Mariko said. “They didn’t know. His coworker was nonchalant, but Hiroshi was worried. It was a large batch of dozens of blood seals and he didn’t know what they were supposed to be used for.”
“Should they know?” Teruo asked.
“Absolutely. The Onmyōryō has contracts for these seals. They don’t just sell them to anybody.
It’s important because we’re talking about powerful seals created with a person’s blood, so they can’t just be given away.
” Mariko let out a shuddering breath. “Hiroshi confessed to me that he didn’t like the situation.
He knew nothing of the client, nothing of the target for the seals.
He only had the vials with drawn blood and the orders. ”
“And his partner continued to not care about it?” Shinji asked.
“That was another red flag for Hiroshi: his partner insisted it was all fine and not to worry.”
Teruo exchanged a glance with Shinji. He had a feeling he knew where Mariko’s story was going.
“Two days before delivery, the order doubled,” Mariko continued.
“Hiroshi’s partner suddenly came with more vials of blood, more seals to be made, all in a hurry.
They argued about it. Hiroshi told me he was extremely uncomfortable, he addressed this issue with one councilor, who shrugged and said the client was important.
She ordered my brother to do his assignment. ”
It astonished Teruo to hear about the dangerous things that the Onmyōryō and its employees created and worked with. He’d always known Shinji scratched the surface with the info he provided, and yet couldn’t help but feel both fascinated and fearful.
“On the night of the exchange,” Mariko said.
“They packed the seals which are split between the two of them for security reasons. But his partner insisted on holding all of them. He gave up when Hiroshi wouldn’t accept.
They went to meet with the client in a remote location, at the border with Saitama Prefecture.
And then suddenly Hiroshi’s partner attacked him and tried to take the seals they were transporting. ”
Shinji gasped. “His own partner?”
Mariko nodded, wiping her tears with the back of her palm.
“I don’t know why. Hiroshi didn’t know either.
He told me he had to defend himself, that his partner wouldn’t listen to reason.
In their fight, Hiroshi accidentally killed him.
” She held her breath for a moment before releasing a shuddering sigh.
Her husband offered her another tissue and she dabbed her eyes.
“He called the Onmyōryō to report, but instead he found himself on the run from a team of field agents. So he went into hiding.” Mariko paused, looking blankly at the table.
“He called both me and Fuyumi in a panic, telling us to help the Onmyōryō understand he was innocent, but when we tried to do that, they told us he’s a murderer who stole important seals.
I couldn’t believe it! My brother was a kind man. He was not a killer or a traitor.”
“I knew Hiroshi for a long time,” the husband said. “He would’ve never done such a thing.”
“They didn’t believe either of you?” Teruo asked incredulously, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. It wasn’t the first time the Onmyōryō accused innocent people of a crime.
Mariko shook her head. “No. I think Hiroshi was meant to die that night by his partner’s hand.
He was dizzy from blood loss and the team of field agents eventually caught up with him.
Six agents for one innocent man. Fuyumi and I begged them to release Hiroshi once he was captured.
I tried to tell them he was set up, that everything he did, he did it to protect himself.
They told me he’d already been sentenced to extraction.
And that was it.” She straightened herself with her husband’s help.
“About a week later they came to me with a deep apology and bereavement money. An error they called it. Turns out, the councilor that my brother initially went to had been stealing blood seals for a long time and planned to get them from Hiroshi’s partner—so it was a theft gone wrong.
They’re pretending to investigate her and she’s temporarily suspended.
” She looked from Shinji to Teruo. “But no justice for my brother.”
Teruo swallowed the knot in his throat, needing a moment to absorb everything Mariko just told them.
It was such a tangled web of horrifying decisions and blame thrown at the wrong people.
He glanced at Shinji and wondered what he would’ve done if Shinji had been in Hiroshi’s place.
Gone mad with fury, that was for sure. And it was what happened to Takeda Fuyumi as well.
“Fuyumi was devastated,” Mariko continued.
“She was set on revenge. And so was I. Fuyumi never told me her full plan, but told me that, at certain intervals, I should turn off her seals for a short period of time, and then turn them on again. I wasn’t sure what she planned to do.
I think part of me knew she was going to extract their spiritual energy, but another part hoped I was wrong. ”
“You shouldn’t have helped her,” Shinji said, his voice low. It almost sounded like he didn’t really believe his own words. “The field agents who went after Hiroshi didn’t know they went after an innocent man. They were completely unaware of the situation.”
Mariko stared at him, her lips trembling. Then she covered her face with her palms, mumbling something through sobs.
The ring of Teruo’s phone pierced through the heavy silence. It was Nakagawa and Teruo answered quickly.
“Sir, two patrol officers spotted Takeda Fuyumi, but lost her. We’re scouting the area right now.”
“Send me the location,” Teruo said. After hanging up, he gently held Mariko’s hand and removed it from her face. “Tell us where Takeda is headed next. Please.”
“Likely to the councilor, and to Kichida, as well—the leader of the extractors. He and the councilor were together and he is the one who extracted Hiroshi’s reiryoku.”