“I need to thank you again for helping me with the television earlier,” Suzuno said. She had changed to a new kimono before entering Devil’s Castle.
“But I am impressed,” Ashiya added as he sat on the tatami-mat floor, “you managed to discover the address.”
“Oh, uh, I exchanged addresses with Suzuno over our phones when she bought the TV.”
Suzuno blinked and pointed at herself. “With me?”
“Y’know you can put a lot more than just your name and phone number in your contact list, right? It kinda depends on the model, but with a lot of ’em, you can use an infrared link to exchange all that info in a flash.”
“Ah.” Suzuno nodded with a warm smile, recalling how they had done just that at the electronics shop. Rika guided her through it herself. “Well, superb, then. I had nothing private written on mine, and it brought you here safely, at least.”
“Yeah. Kinda funny how you wrote ‘inquisitor’ of something or other in your job description, though. I don’t think I’ve even heard of that word before.”
The smile froze in place.
“…Ha-ha… Is that what I wrote?”
“Yep.”
Rika seemed neither suspicious of Suzuno nor interested in carrying the subject any further, but Suzuno awkwardly averted her eyes anyway. Urushihara glared at her, silently gloating at her stupidity.
“Nngh…”
Thankfully, Rika gave her no time to wallow in self-pity at her mistake.
“So, uh, I thought it’d be bad of me to just stop by without contacting you or anything, but I kinda felt like I had to do something, so…”
The usually bright expression Rika wore was now dour, clouded. Ashiya could already guess what she was going to say.
“…I dunno if I’m barking up the wrong tree, but…have any of you guys heard from Emi lately?”
He was right.
Emi mentioned she had requested a little time off from work for her little trip to Ente Isla. But little was the operative word. She was supposed to be gone for only a week. And now Emi had been AWOL from her job for two weeks straight.
“I mean, she’s not answering her phone or responding to my texts. I got up the nerve to visit her apartment, but she wasn’t there…and she hasn’t reported to work in a pretty long time now.”
“So did they f…er, what kind of footing is Yusa at workwise at the moment?”
They hadn’t known each other for that long, but Ashiya could tell nonetheless that Rika’s apparent serenity was just a front. He strained to avoid stressing her out too much.
“They’re still kind of tolerating it for now…but, like, she’s never been late to work once before this, and all her evaluations have been superexcellent up to now, so the floor chief and manager and stuff are really a lot more worried than angry, I guess you could say.”
“I see…”
“But Emi lives by herself, right? And her parents are overseas?”
“In-indeed…”
Ashiya paused for a moment, unsure if he should be agreeing to this. They had never bothered comparing notes on their respective improvised backstories.
“It didn’t seem like she had a whole bunch of friends outside of work, so I’m just worried that… You know, if she got sick or had an accident, maybe no one would have any idea at all, so…”
“…”
Now Rika’s eyes were pointed at the floor. Ashiya took that opportunity to give both Suzuno and Urushihara a furtive glance. This long with no contact would make near anyone fear the worst. The glance, before he turned his eyes back to Rika, was his way of telling them that the optimist’s scenario wasn’t going to work here.
“So when I tried thinking about Emi’s friends that I knew, Maou and you guys were about all I could think of, so… I’m sorry I’m butting in and all, but I couldn’t just sit there any longer…”
Neither Ashiya nor Urushihara were socially backward enough to correct Rika on the “friend” bit. But they also knew that neither of them would be much help to her at the moment.
“Sad to say, Ms. Suzuki…but none of us know any more than you do.”
Rika did not show much in the way of disappointment at this. She was no doubt prepared for it—or it might be more accurate to say that she wasn’t expecting much more than that from them.
“Do you know why Yusa took off from work in the first place?”
“Indeed,” Suzuno said, “it was something to do with her family. She did not seem to wish to discuss it much, so I avoided asking where she was going, exactly…”
If it were Maki Shimizu, their other mutual friend at work, she might’ve had the gumption to ask Emi point-blank about her family roots. But to Rika, subjects like that were practically taboo in her mind. The vast earthquake she experienced as a young child growing up in Kobe had something to do with that, but even without that past, an adult woman talking about having to handle “family issues” was always a topic best dealt with carefully.
“Yes,” Ashiya added. “That is all I know as well. I heard she was returning to her family home, but as for where that is… Well, to be honest, I had little interest in that question at the time.”
He was straining himself now, keeping the lies as little and insignificant as possible to keep himself secure.
“You neither, Suzuno?” Rika asked, hoping for perhaps something different from a fellow woman.
But all she could do was parrot Ashiya. “I apologize… I know of nothing else.”
One couldn’t blame her. Rika would never believe the truth. It would just throw her into even more of a panic.
“Yeah… I guess not. I’m sorry I had to barge in here and bring all this stuff up out of nowhere…”
“…Are you doing all right?”
They could all tell that she was straining herself. Ashiya was genuinely concerned that Rika would fall over at any moment. But she didn’t, although her posture wasn’t what it used to be.
“I just… I mean, what could’ve happened to her?”
Rika was talking for everyone in the room. Nobody added to it. A heavy silence loomed over the apartment.
“You think maybe we should talk to the police about this?”
“Dude, wait a sec…”
It was Urushihara who found himself reacting to Rika’s completely sensible suggestion. Everyone else knew that this was nothing the Japanese authorities could do much about, but now he had gone and reflexively said it.
“Yeah,” Rika said as she turned to him and shrugged. “Like, maybe we’re friends, but we’re not related or anything, so I kinda feel awkward about getting the cops involved and making this into some big thing…but then I think, oh, what if something happens to her while we’re hemming and hawing about it, y’know?”
“Rika…”
Although a little relieved that Rika took Urushihara’s reaction as simple reluctance, Suzuno couldn’t help but feel for her plight. She reached out to pat her on the shoulder.
“Still, though…”
But before she could, Rika’s next words changed the entire atmosphere of the room.
“I mean, totally falling out of contact for an entire week? That’s just weird. And that’s one thing, but not even going back home, either?”
“Huuuh?”
All three of them gasped at once.
“…What?”
“Ms. Suzuki?”
“Yeah?”
“…What did you say just now?” Ashiya asked, eyes round and wide.
“Just now…? Um, like how it’s weird she’s not back at home?”
“No, dude, before that! How long’s she been out of contact?!”
“Huh? Like I said, about a week ago…”
This was starting to agitate Rika a little. It was agitating the other three quite a bit more.
“Now…now wait just a moment, Rika. Are you sure about that? Quite sure?”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“I mean, when was the last time you s
poke with Emili—with Emi?”
“Um, last Friday night, but…?”
“Last Friday night?!”
Now it was surprise that ruled over Devil’s Castle. Last Friday night would have been one week after Emi was supposed to return home. It had been two weeks since Maou or Suzuno had any idea where she was, and yet she made contact with Rika a whole week after that?
“Um, why’re you acting so surprised about it?”
“We, we’ve been out of contact with Emi since Friday two weeks ago. Three weeks, actually. She was supposed to return home on that Friday, and nothing since then.”
“Huh?”
“Did she contact you by phone, or text?”
A text, Suzuno reasoned, could easily have been sent by an impostor. But Rika quickly foiled that thought.
“It was over the phone.”
“And, and you’re sure it was Emi?!”
“Umm, hang on a minute…”
The sudden energy from the other three in the room unnerved Rika a little, but she nonetheless took a mobile phone out of the bag she had along and brought up the call-history screen.
“I think this was the call from Emi, but…”
But, for some reason, the entry Rika pointed out had “Number unknown” written on it.
“The number was unlisted?”
“Wow, and you don’t block calls like that?”
“I have no idea why, but my family’s landline’s set up to block caller ID by default. My granddad uses that phone to call me up sometimes, so…”
“But if the number was blocked,” Suzuno said, doubting the evidence presented to her, “perhaps it was someone disguised as Emi, no?”
“Ooh, I doubt it,” Rika rebuked. “It was definitely her voice. She identified herself as Emi before I could say anything, and, like, it was just a normal conversation between us. I mean, I work for a phone company, so I’d think I’d spot it if it was a scammer or something.”
“They’re the ones you gotta watch out for, dude…”
Urushihara’s under-the-breath whisper went unnoticed.
“What did you talk about?”
“Um, nothing too much. Just about our shifts and stuff… Oh, and I just remembered. You said Friday two weeks ago, right? She called me up on that Friday, too.”
Rika tapped at her phone again, then showed the screen to Ashiya. Another call from an unlisted number.
“I remember she asked me if we could trade shifts the following week—so, like, last week’s shifts.”
“The following week? I thought Yusa was working practically every day of the week.”
“Nah, I think she was reducing her workload a bit this month. I’m pretty sure she was only scheduled for three days on that week. And, um…”
Rika suddenly looked at Ashiya. Their eyes met, and much to Ashiya’s puzzlement, it made Rika look a bit panicked.
“Well, you know, I’m not exactly a social butterfly, either, and there were a few shifts I wanted to get that week but couldn’t, so I said okay to it. Kinda worked out for both of us, y’know?”
Ashiya and Suzuno exchanged glances. As far as they could tell, there was no reason to doubt Rika. If they were talking about things like that, the idea of an impostor seemed unlikely. And there was nothing about the calls that indicated Emi was endangered, or even perturbed. But something did stick out.
“And that was really it, huh?” Urushihara questioned. “Nothing unusual about it?”
“Hmm?” Rika crossed her arms, deep in thought. “Well, I dunno. Not really. Emi ain’t really the type of girl to talk on the phone very long. I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary.”
“So you were talking about work shifts in both calls? That was it?”
“Huh? Well, yeah, I think so. The second call was pretty much just a thank-you for taking her shifts.”
Rika didn’t sound too concerned about the content of the calls. To the rest of them, it created new issues to tackle. What were Emi’s intentions—what kind of situation was she in—that she felt compelled to make these perfectly normal phone calls to her coworker? She must have known that going incommunicado for a week past their planned date would freak Chiho and Suzuno out—and on that first week, all she decided to do was thank Rika for a workplace favor?
It was a bombshell on what had otherwise been a dead end for the demons. They knew they couldn’t let this clue go unexplored.
“All right,” Suzuno began, “so you did not talk about anything besides work shifts? About the weather, perhaps? Or did she greet you differently from usual? Anything!”
The sheer force behind the question made Rika dig into her memories one more time, bringing a hand to her forehead. “Boy,” she said, “you hear that question a lot in dramas and stuff, but I never thought someone’d be asking me that.”
A few moments of silence, and then:
“Hmmmm, well, here’s the whole order of the first call. I get a call from an unlisted number, I pick it up ’cause I figure it’s my family, and it was Emi. She was talking kinda fast… Like, not really waiting for me to respond, y’know? And it sounded like her voice was kinda far away, too. She said her parents were overseas, so, y’know, I figure she was just tryin’ to end the call fast so she didn’t pick up a ton of roaming charges or whatever.”
The words came in fits and starts as Rika continued to probe her memory.
“The connection sounded pretty unsteady, too. Like she was calling from a basement or something. She must’ve been out in the country or someplace pretty far from a cell tower, I figure.”
It would be pretty far, yes. Another planet, in fact. But the three of them nodded silently at her, nobody wanting to interrupt her train of thought.
“Oh! And there was something or other on a PA system behind her. Like, really loud. That’s why I figured she wasn’t in Japan anymore.”
“Broadcast?”
“Yeah. Uh, I dunno what language it was, but… Y’know how they broadcast the bon-odori dance music at superhigh volume during summer festivals and stuff? It sounded a little like that. So then, uh, she was talking about swapping shifts and then, ooh, I think, uh…”
Rika interrupted herself to take a notebook out of her bag, flipping through the pages.
“Oh, here it is. There was one day out of the ones she talked about that I wasn’t sure I could cover. So I was like, ‘Hey, I think Maki’s free’—oh, she’s another girl we know at work—‘I think Maki’s free, why don’t you ask her?’ And, oh, actually, that was kinda odd, too, now that I think about it…”
As Rika put it, here was how Emi responded to the suggestion:
“She said she couldn’t call Maki for some reason. I thought, well, that’s weird, ’cause I knew she had her number and everything. But then I realized I never called her, either—we just texted each other, ’cause we’re on the same network. So maybe not, y’know? So I wound up volunteering for that day anyways, and then she was, like, ‘Okay, thanks’ and she hung up. So then, last week’s call, uh… That was just, like, ‘Thanks for taking the shifts.’ But there was something playing behind her then, too. We still just talked about work shifts, though.”
What could that mean?
There was no telling what that background noise could be. But if the call had come from Ente Isla, then why was she calling Rika, of all people, about work shifts, of all things? One would think she’d sound more urgent, at least, if she was in actual trouble—but why were they having a nice, leisurely chat about work instead?
And that wasn’t even the biggest question.
“Why Rika, though…?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, er, sorry,” Suzuno said, covering for her unintentional whisper. Not to be rude, she thought, but if Emi’s life was in danger, calling Rika would do little to change that—something Emi had to know herself.
Something unexpected had happened to her. That much was certain, at least. It wasn’t something that directly threatened Emi, but it still
meant she couldn’t return home on time, so she asked Rika to pick up a few shifts in the meantime. Was that it?
“I doubt it.”
Emi was safe enough that she could chitchat about work shifts with Rika, but she contacted only Rika. There had to be a good reason for that.
“…Ah, one moment.”
It was Ashiya who broke the silence brought on by this torrent of information.
“Shut the windows, Urushihara. We have rain.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
“Well, look at this,” Suzuno marveled. “I thought the forecast said it would begin in the afternoon. Oh, dear, my window is still wide open…”
It was still sunny when they first spotted Rika on the road, but now the sky was gray and depressed, droplets of rain falling from it. Suzuno hurried out to shut the windows she had flung open before nearly dying of asphyxiation.
“Oh, don’t you have laundry hanging out there?”
Rika stood up, spotting the laundry Ashiya had just moved from the window closest to Suzuno’s room.
“M-my apologies,” Ashiya blurted out. Towels, socks, and a few pairs of boxers with the elastic all stretched out were right in front of them—not the sort of things a man wants hanging around while entertaining the opposite sex.
“Ah, it’s all right!” Rika smiled as Ashiya frantically tried to take the clothes down. “I’m not some spoiled little rich girl who gets all hot ’n’ bothered over a coupla undies hangin’ in the air, y’know?” Then her own face grayed as she looked out the window. “Whoa, it’s gettin’ pretty dark over there. They didn’t call for that much rain, did they?”
Ashiya, with laundry hangers in both hands, looked in the same direction. “It could be quite the storm, yes,” he said. “Not to eject you from our place, Ms. Suzuki, but do you have an umbrella?”
“Yeah, just a little travel one…but you mind if I wait it out in here for a little bit? I wanna talk a little more about what each of us knows about Emi, and plus…”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 8 Page 8
