Nocturne of Remembrance (27 page)

“Why didn’t you warn him? As an industry person you had access to that info.”

“Company regulations prohibit issuing instructions on specific stocks. If the client profits, we might be accused of insider trading. If the client doesn’t, we might get sued for supplying false tips.”

Aoyagi had a point, so Mikoshiba let it go. Reaching for gamed stock, blowing his horn when the price went up, and fretting as soon as it started tanking overlapped perfectly with the picture of Shingo that Yozo had drawn.

The further down Mikoshiba went, the more blank spaces lined the column for sums deposited—Shingo was even beginning to miss his interest payments.

Mikoshiba kept going and finally found what he’d imagined he would: “add-co” equivalent to 80,000 yen in collateral value supplied biweekly for the two months prior to the incident. “So there was additional collateral worth a total of 400,000 yen in cash terms. Yet the integrity rate barely changed.”

“Well, the shortfall in collateral dwarfed the additional collateral. In fact, these itsy-bitsy add-cos are the worst.”

“Why do you say the worst?”

“While they aren’t substantial enough to boost the rate, it shows some attentiveness and a base line of intent. The client seems to be trying to make good, so we think twice about unilaterally selling the stocks … And as that goes on, the debt turns bad. We’re partly to blame for providing the client with meaningless mercy.”

“But additional collateral in the form of securities only nets eighty percent. Doesn’t a cash influx beat submitting stocks for raising the integrity rate?”

“You know, poverty dulls the wits. They think, ‘Cash is only ever worth its face value. If it’s in stocks, there’ll be a synergy effect when I get my chance to roll things back.’ They can’t think straight anymore, having been pushed into a corner.”

Drop-in-a-bucket add-cos and creditors’ meaningless mercy—how ironic that such impulses generated bad loans. No matter the era, nothing was as toxic as half-assed good will.

“I really appreciate your cooperation.”

“What? Is that it?”

“I’m beginning to see my line of defense thanks to you.”

The next day, Mikoshiba went to Yozo’s home.

“Ah! It’s Mikoshiba-sensei!”

Bad premonitions tended to come true, and indeed, it was Rinko
who greeted Mikoshiba. As he approached the entrance, she clung to his feet like a puppy.

“Hey, hey, you went to Kyushu? Was Mommy’s house still there?”

“Nope, not anymore.”

Rinko pouted in disappointment. “Aww, I was gonna visit too if it was still there.”

Don’t
—Mikoshiba just barely swallowed the word. “When the trial is over … and your mother comes back, ask her. The house may be gone, but there are still people who remember her.”

“Okay.”

The trial’s outcome was uncertain. So was Akiko’s date of release. But even if she never returned, Rinko would head out there someday. Mikoshiba had come to understand the girl in the last few days. She would head to Fukuoka alone if need be to seek the roots of the misfortune that had struck her family. And she would know new sorrow, and new anger.

Mikoshiba had no right to stop her.

Her grandfather looked rather more solemn when he showed up at the entrance. “Sensei, thank you for your continued efforts. How did the trip to Fukuoka go?”

“Well, it wasn’t to report on the trip that I came here today. I have one last thing to confirm.”

Sensing something from Mikoshiba’s tone, Yozo instructed Rinko to go to the other room. “I bet it’s not appropriate to discuss in her presence.”

“Thank you.”

Shown into the living room, Mikoshiba sat face to face with Yozo, who seemed somewhat anxious. The man must have been agonizing in his own way while Mikoshiba was away on the trip.

“Was it worth visiting such a distant place?”

“It wasn’t entirely pointless. Luck smiled on me and I found someone familiar with Akiko’s early years in Fukuoka.”

“Her early years … Will that serve any use in defending her?”

“Character formation from early childhood to the present day often provides for extenuating circumstances.”

“It’s been a while since she became my daughter-in-law, but she’s never talked about her childhood.”

“That’s not unique to your family, is it? Not everyone had a bright and cheerful childhood. Some people prefer not to share that part of their lives.”

“But it will be beneficial to her defense after all?”

“I intend to make it beneficial. It might tarnish Shingo’s image as a result, though.”

“Like I said before, that can’t be helped.”

“This may be rude, but Shingo and Akiko seem to have been such contrasting personalities for a married couple.”

“Contrasting?”

“Soon after Akiko graduated from commercial high school in Kobe, she got a job at an accounting firm in Tokyo. Apparently she was the only one from her class to come out here.”

“She was already pretty independent, then.”

“Not necessarily. On the contrary, maybe she sought new ties.”

“New ties, huh?”

“With her parents, she’d only ever be in a position to be protected. If she left home and lived in a new world, though, she might find someone to protect. And she met Shingo and started a family that she needed to protect.”

“True, her two daughters are someone to protect for Akiko. But are you sure this isn’t a little too precarious?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s entirely off the mark given her attitude in court and her behavior when I interviewed her. Plus, we have her relationship with Shingo.”

“You said that they were a contrasting pair.”

“Shingo did have some ambition even as a company employee. When he got laid off, it manifested in a negative direction. He hoped to become the CEO of his own venture, but when that fell through
at the business plan stage, he abandoned his dream to launch his own company and tried to get rich quick through day trading. Whether it’s founding a venture or becoming a day trader, you usually put aside time for preparations and some sort of tutelage. But uninterested in any of that, he seemed to think that his innate talent was all he needed.”

“… It does rankle to have a stranger put it so baldly, but you said it.”

“When his day trading earnings dwindled, he deepened his wound by taking out a securities investment loan. Even then, he blamed his failed investments on market conditions and took no measures, and when a debt-collector drone began to visit his home, he just shut his eyes and made his daughter deal with it. I can go on and on, but in short he had a manifest tendency to be dependent on others.”

Yozo didn’t attempt to refute this and fell silent. What Mikoshiba said was all true and irrefutable.

“Have you heard of ‘co-dependence’?” asked the lawyer.

“No.”

“Let’s say you have a caregiver and a care receiver. The receiver naturally depends on the giver, but when the giver’s sense of self-worth is bound up with providing the care, you have co-dependence. I sense something of that nature from Shingo and Akiko’s relationship.”

“You mean Shingo withdrawing into himself and neglecting his family, and protecting it becoming Akiko’s purpose. Putting my daughter-in-law aside, it hurts to hear that Shingo was dependent on his family and others because that nails it. If you were to tell me that my own failings had a hand in his ‘character formation’—to borrow your term—I could only plead guilty.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t limited to his childhood years?”

“… What are you saying?”

“Actually, I had his trading history for the securities investment loan where he had his account disclosed to me yesterday.”

“His trading history. But an employee called Aoyagi already testified to the outline of Shingo’s debts in court, didn’t he?”

“On its own, the testimony merely exposed Shingo’s irresponsibility, but when you take a close look at his trading history, you notice a factor that enabled his irresponsible behavior.” Mikoshiba explained how additional collateral worth about 100,000 yen in cash terms had been deposited four times over the two months before the incident. “By then, Shingo had used up almost all of his savings to make interest payments and, moreover, had no income. So how did he come up with that 400,000 yen? He doesn’t seem to have had significant assets outside of his bank account. Akiko, who was barely making ends meet, couldn’t afford it, either. The most likely possibility is funding from a third party. Sir, was it you by any chance?”

Mikoshiba paused there; Yozo cast down his eyes and emitted a low groan.

“That’s right, sensei,” he admitted. “I was indeed the one who gave money to that good-for-nothing.”

“Why did you keep silent about it?”

“Because it was an embarrassment, not only for Shingo but for me.” The elder Tsuda sounded fairly disgusted with himself. “He might have been over forty, but he was still my son. I’m past seventy but was still his parent. No matter how foolish, unreliable, or incompetent, if he stood on the brink of ruin, I wanted to help him. Does that also count as the ‘co-dependence’ you mentioned earlier?”

“I wouldn’t go so far, but token acts of sympathy can just drag out a problem.”

“Token? It came out of my pension, and I felt like I was paying an arm and leg.”

“Pardon me. But against Shingo’s total debts, it was a drop in a bucket.”

“You’re as frank as ever.”

“I beg your pardon, sir. But if you had pushed him away, Tokyo Mortgage would have gotten fed up and sold his securities. Real estate, though, can’t be hawked off as easily, so the family wouldn’t have been forced out on the spot. As a result, the enormous loan would have
remained, with the creditors having to cry themselves to sleep as long as the debtor lacked the means to repay. It wouldn’t have been impossible for Shingo to seek court protection under the Civil Rehabilitation Law. With personal bankruptcy, at least real estate doesn’t need to be sold.”

“I had thought about that, too.”

“I believe you, since district welfare officers are often asked for advice on debt. Why didn’t you recommend that course to your son?”

“That idiot … Shingo … wouldn’t listen, saying bankruptcies and civil rehabilitations were for losers.”

In other words, he had conceded to his fool son’s vanity. Akiko must have made the same suggestion as Yozo and been likewise turned down. Really, both wife and father had been busy accommodating the man and exacerbating the situation.

“Because my younger, Takahiro, is such a good son, Shingo seemed all the more helpless. But it’s hard to push away precisely such a child. You probably wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

This was intended as neither sarcasm nor a rebuke. Many parents made similar remarks. It wasn’t that such children were hard to push away, though. Rather, the distance that it would create scared people.

Yozo let out a deep sigh drawn from the bottom of his lungs. “I can tell what you’re thinking, sensei. I don’t care if I’m called a doting parent or if I’m berated as a coward. But I do want Akiko and my granddaughters to get back to having a peaceful life together. Please believe me when I say that.”

Mikoshiba merely gazed down on Yozo’s humbly bowed head.

“Actually, sensei … I have another thing that I must tell you.”

“What might it be?”

“For the final session tomorrow, I’ve been summoned as a witness for the prosecution.”

“And the nature of your testimony?”

“They said it concerns my financial assistance to Shingo.”

Mikoshiba snorted. If he had noticed the angle, it was a given
that Misaki would, too. The idea was probably to underscore Akiko’s murderous intent with supplementary evidence of the victim’s failures as a provider.

“Sensei, how should I answer the prosecutor?”

“Just be honest. Trying to conceal something from him will only come back to bite you. Well, then.”

When Mikoshiba stood up, Yozo asked with an imploring look, “Are the odds … in our favor?”

“I don’t base my work on odds.”

Leaving Yozo behind, Mikoshiba headed to the front door, where Rinko awaited him.

“What now?” he demanded.

The girl uncha​racteris​tically avoided eye contact. “It’s tomorrow, isn’t?”

“Are you coming too, or what? Thank you, but you’d just be a bother.”

“Rinko will wait outside. Grandma is also coming tomorrow.”

“Grandma?”

“Mommy’s mommy.”

So it was going to be a family get-together of sorts. But in a murder case where the victim shared the same blood, hardly anyone would be cheering, whatever the outcome.

Hardly anyone but Mikoshiba.

—
2
—

The final arguments of the appeal trial.

Five minutes before opening, Mikoshiba got out of an elevator and headed to Courtroom #822.

Glancing at the waiting room on the way, he saw Rinko but hurried past. She didn’t seem to notice him.

In the courtroom, Prosecutor Misaki and the visitors had already
taken their seats. Today, Misaki had a rather calm look on his face compared to the last two sessions. He glanced at Mikoshiba and retracted his gaze just as quickly. He wasn’t pretending to be composed to hide his anxiety. He seemed confident that the final arguments would proceed with the prosecution sustaining its advantage. The advice that Mikoshiba had dispensed at the end in the basement cafeteria must not have gotten through, then.

Fine. The enemy isn’t Misaki
.

Towards the back of the gallery was a figure that looked quite out of place in the courtroom. A lean-faced old woman with well-coiffed silver hair was looking down silently, waiting for the session to begin. She was probably Akiko’s mother.

Led by a detention officer, the defendant entered, her gait as trudging as ever. Though she had wanted her sentence reduced, she seemed to have concluded that she didn’t stand much of a chance.

Looking back, it was to delve into the past hidden under her lifeless expression that Mikoshiba had journeyed to western Japan. He’d pursued a ray of hope that he’d glimpsed, but the result was a process of verifying what the woman had lost—and now wanted to protect.