Prelude

"Huh? Oh, it's just you. Mom's still… Huh? A message? How

should I know? Why don't you just tell her yourself?"

"Useless." She heard him click his tongue at her.

"What did you say?" Minori pulled down hard on the string of her

parka, making the hood pucker up.

"Bernie!" said the voice on the other end of the phone. The hip

method of communication shared by the older-sister-and-younger-brother

duo came back to her. Say it ain't so, Bernie! When he urgently yelled those

words in the past, it had always made her laugh, but now…

"If you need something, you could just call Mom's cell," she told

him.

"I tried, but I couldn't get through!" The disgruntled tone of her

brother's voice only made her feel like retorting more sharply. She frowned,

even though he couldn't see it over the phone.

"I'm cold over here, you dolt! I had to come all the way out to the

hall just to talk on the phone with the likes of you! You're a nuisance!"

"Then use a cordless!"

"A core-des?!"

"You don't know what a cordless phone is?!"

"I don't know where it went!"

It actually was cold. She had pulled off her socks while under the

heated table, and now she was barefoot. In addition, the phone was set up

near the entryway, in a wood-floored hallway that felt below freezing. Even

though she was indoors, her breath was terrifyingly white.

"Then how should I know, ugly?!" the voice on the other end of the

phone wailed back at her. "You idiot," her little brother added as she

wrapped the string of her parka tighter around her freezing hand. The hood

along her back crumpled into even more of a mess.

"Next time you come home, I'm actually going to kill y—oh. I think

that's Mom?"

The jingle of keys echoed loudly from the entrance, and her mother

came in, wearing a coat and carrying a shopping bag in one hand. Minori

thrust out the phone and just said, "It's Midori." When it finally registered

for Minori's mother that her son was calling from the dorms, her excited

voice filled the room—"Hello, hello?!"

"Seriously," Minori said, "you're so loud…"

As she brought the bags over to the kitchen, she noticed the droplets

shining on her mother's coat. For a moment, she mistook them for rain.

"Huh? No way."

Still barefoot, Minori headed to the entrance. She slipped on her

loafers and opened the cold steel door, then ran into the outside hallway of

the condo. The cold air that permeated her lungs came as a shock.

At some point, snow had started to descend on the town she now

watched from the fourth floor. She forgot the cold in spite of herself and

leaned out toward the white flakes fluttering down like countless small

feathers from the night sky. She'd said she hated snow during the school

trip, but it was special when it fell in her own town.

"Wow! It's beautiful." Minori thought about going back to her room

to text her friends. We got snow, did you notice? It's so pretty. Hey, take a

look outside. What are you doing right now?

"A white Valentine's Day…but we already have a White Day in

Japan. What else would it be called?"

In the end, she stayed where she was and concentrated on the

fluttering and dancing flakes in the sky. She formed right angles with her

thumbs and pointer fingers, making a rectangle to look through, like she

was taking a picture.

It was the sacred evening of Valentine's Day. The snow might have

been a gift from heaven. A pure white curtain sent for a brief period to

insulate people who weren't honest with themselves from everyday life.

In that case, come down, she thought as she stretched her hands

farther into the freezing night sky. I'll close my mouth and my eyes. I won't

send out those texts. I'll just be here. She spread her fingers to catch the

snow in her palm. She could see the small flakes, faint and fleeting. As they

touched down, it felt as though the warmth of her hand, the vivid emotions

amassing within her in the moment, and the memory of the words she'd

exchanged were all evaporating along with her body heat into the sky.

There, they'd turn into droplets of water and eventually freeze in the

clouds to once again come down on the world. Her heat would become

glittering diamond dust and fall on everyone's heads without so much as a

sound, and—

"Hey, missy! Miso or soy sauce pork belly—what do you want?!"

Her mom, who had poked her head out from the front door, held a rustling

package of frozen ramen in her hand.

"You ruined it, Mooom!" Minori groaned, holding her head

sorrowfully.

Seriously, this is why, this is why. She raked her fingers through her

bangs and looked back up at the night sky from which the snow fell.

This might just be how it is. This might just be the way things go,

even after everything, on a night like this. She twisted her fingers around

the strings of her parka, which was pulled as taut as possible, and released a

long white sigh into the night sky. The falling snow and her breath could

become part of the curtain coming down on the world. It could become the

protective white barrier sheltering the two people who were probably

meeting somewhere out there right now, like the shell of an egg.

She was sure that if they were together, protected from the eyes of

others, they could come clean to each other in their private moment.

Hey, universe! Minori thought as she breathed in a lungful of the

freezing air. As though trying to draw people's attention, she spread her

arms with the grandeur of an actress performing on stage.

"What kind of mother feeds her daughter, who works at a ramen

shop, more rameeeeen?!"

"You…just stop…"

Ha ha ha ha, Minori laughed. This time, she actually went back

inside. Light leaked from the front door.

She didn't see the black sports car on the bridge crossing the river,

racing smoothly past several cars like it had a life of its own.

***

Every dark-colored car that passed them looked like her mother's

Porsche to Taiga.

They were on a corner of the sidewalk at a crossing, hiding in the

shadow of a closed salon's sign and waiting with bated breath for the light

to change. She thought it might never change as the intense, red light

illuminated the snow that danced down from the sky like falling ash.

It's cold, she wanted to say.

I wonder if the snow will stick, she wanted to say.

"…"

Ryuuji, she tried to say, but her voice froze at the back of her throat.

Unable to make a sound, she blew away the snow that had come to rest on

her bangs, which touched the tip of her nose.

Ryuuji, where are we going? What will we do? What will happen to

us now? If she couldn't say those things, she might as well keep silent.

A large truck turned too fast into the crossing in front of her, and its

cargo creaked as it went. The shrill, grating sound echoed down the

deserted nighttime residential road. It sounded full of deliberate menace.

Taiga felt scared despite herself and shifted her weight on her booted feet.

The chill from the freezing asphalt permeated through her toes and into her

bones.

Her right hand was in the safekeeping of Ryuuji's left the whole time.

Ryuuji remained silent, but his fingers shivered. His grip firmed and

loosened several times, but he never seemed to be able to stop from

shaking.

She looked up at the side of his face from where she stood next to

him. His blurred outline seemed as though it were incredibly high up, but

she felt like if she stretched her arms out, she might be able to reach him

without even standing on the tips of her toes. He looked as though he was

glaring at the red light with his intensely scowling eyes, but she was sure

his face would be warm and his chin would be soft. A single snowflake fell

onto the edge of his color-robbed upper lip, melting and disappearing

instantly.

Touching him would mean the end. Taiga averted her eyes.

A desire so intense it frightened her soaked into her through their

connected hands. She wanted to grip it harder, to pull it in, to tear into it

with nails like claws. She wanted to cling to it and drive her fangs into it.

She wanted to satiate her hunger and quench her thirst. Then, as she bit in,

she wanted to scream the contents of her heart.

She wanted to drive away the emotions which she still didn't fully

understand. She wanted to confront the ebbing and flowing feelings that

had always been within her. And yet, she couldn't even say his name as she

hid in the shadow of the salon's sign. A haircut was four thousand five

hundred yen. For long hair, it was an extra thousand yen. A blowout was

two thousand five hundred yen. She stared at the lettering until she'd almost

memorized it. The light still didn't change.

If her best friend, who'd given her shivering, cowering back a push,

could see them now—

"Uh…"

—how disappointed would that friend be?

When Taiga turned her face down, her nose started to run. She

sniffled and rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand. Ryuuji might

have mistaken that sniffle for the unbearable sound of her crying, because

the hand that had so firmly held hers suddenly let go.

"Ah?!"

"Don't raise your voice. We'll bother the people nearby. Plus, we're

runaways," he said, scolding her for the yelp she let out without thinking.

He hadn't spoken in a while, either, and might not have had full control

over the volume of his awkward words, because they came out loud,

carrying further than expected.

But Ryuuji ignored that and quietly took off the cashmere scarf he'd

been wearing under his down coat.

"Whaat… You can't be serious."

"It's fine," he said. "Just take it."

He gently wrapped it around her neck—well, not exactly around her

neck. She already had her own scarf under her coat. Ryuuji put his scarf

around her head in order to protect her from the snow. He even tied a neat

knot right under her chin.

"I look like a loach collector…"

Ryuuji looked at her like he were the great king Enma, passing

judgment on whether a departed soul would go to hell. "You don't collect

loaches, you catch them," he murmured slowly, considering his words

carefully. Snowflakes gathered again on the tip of his nose. His white breath

quavered.

"I could have at least said something. Done my due diligence…" he

continued, letting his cryptic words trickle out as though he were talking to

himself.

"What about?"

"To Kitamura. I should have told him we were keeping our jobs

secret from our parents."

Unable to meet his eyes, Taiga curled her lonesome right hand, which

no longer had a place to go, into a fist. She opened it again. Would he hold

it again for her? But-but-but—

The light still wouldn't change.

***

Regardless, it must be stated that arriving at a conclusion would be

too premature. Period.

However, it is a fact that many have insistently objected to such.

Period.

Irrespective of that, a conclusion has yet to be reached at this time—

"Unable to join the consensus" sounded kind of shaky. Maybe he

should try to be more direct? "Conclusions cannot be drawn at this time."

Period. Okay, that sounded about right.

After carefully collecting the sheaf of papers that made up the report,

Kitamura took a proper count of the pages again. He had three people's

worth of reports, with ten pages to each. Now he just had to put the cover

sheets on, staple them together, and he would be done. That would be two

thousand yen times three, or six thousand yen in total. He had been careful

to vary the handwriting and used a 2B pencil, an HB 0.3 millimeter

mechanical pencil, and a thick, blue ballpoint pen to write each of them, so

they probably wouldn't be arousing suspicions any time soon.

He pulled off the glasses digging into the bridge of his nose and

rubbed his temples. When he put an effort into stretching his back, it made a

loud cracking sound. He rotated his shoulders and neck, then groaned,

"Ngaaaah." He was painfully aware he sounded like an old geezer.

Kitamura turned off the fluorescent lamp on the desk he had been

using since elementary school and piled the three reports to the side, trying

to make sure he didn't get them dirty. Even if he only had to make it seem

like they did their readings, it was pretty difficult to come up with three

people's papers from one thesis. It wasn't mentally tiring so much as a

strain on his eyes and arm.

According to his older brother, it had apparently become less

acceptable to use a word processor recently (though he was fuzzy on how

many college students were actually using word processors in his brother's

generation.) Because there were more students simply turning in articles

they had found on the internet, or that they copied and pasted from scanned

material, some papers were assigned with the condition that they had to be

handwritten. Kitamura, then in his second year of high school, had seen this

as a business opportunity to him. Of course, when the subject material was

a little too specialized, it went right over his head, but when it came to

general topics, he was a mass-producing machine.

He had listed the "bookings" his older brother had acquired for him

on the corkboard next to his desk. Kitamura put his glasses back on and

looked at them. His older brother was well connected within the large,

wide-reaching social circles of famous private colleges. This was the time

of year when they did the best business; they had so many bookings that

they could afford to charge five thousand yen per person. He had decided to

take a break from softball club anyway, so he had time to spare.

"One thousand, five hundred, one thousand…that's two—two

thousand, so uhhh, up to now that's twenty-eight thousand…"

He ticked them off on his fingers as he counted, but he was still far,

far short of his goal. Kitamura pursed his lips. He still had to worry about

fuel surcharges. Plus, his cheapskate brother would take a ten percent cut.

"Ten percent's a lot. Damn, I need to fix that… What was that?"

He lifted his head at the loud sound of exhaust coming from outside

his window. He remained seated in his cramped chair as he stretched out his

arm to open the curtain.

"Whoa!"

He was surprised to see snow coming down. The countless flakes fell

ceaselessly in the light of the streetlamps.

"Whoa…!" Kitamura exclaimed again without thinking. A pair of

distinctive headlights crawled towards him from within the snow—the

echoing sound of the engine was coming from a Porsche. Sports cars were

rare in this suburb.

Shivering from the cold, he closed the curtains. He stood up to turn

on the heat, and through the old heater's groaning, noticed the engine

suddenly go quiet. He heard a loud sound after it—probably the car door.

Maybe they were coming to his house? He didn't know anyone who

had a car like that, but—ding dong. He heard the doorbell, the sound of his

mother's footsteps, and then her formal, "Yes?" through the intercom.

He heard them talking about something for a while and, eventually,

the footsteps coming up the stairs. There was a knock on the door, and his

mother peeked her face in. She looked in with an indescribable, delicate

expression.

"Could you come down for a bit?" Her tone was still half-formal—an

ominous sign. He steeled himself.

"Me? What? Who is it?"

"She says she's Aisaka-san's mother. From your class—look, it's that

girl you went with as a group to Kawashima-san's villa, right? It seems

like… Well, she said she's looking for her. She disappeared."

Aisaka Taiga had disappeared—right when Takasu Ryuuji also went

missing.

This is bad, he thought reflexively. The light bulb in his head lit

instantly, and the pieces of the imaginary puzzle came together. It had been

that phone call. Something must have happened since it had come.

Hey, Kitamura-kun, I can't find Ryuu-chan anywhere, but do you

know where he is? Ryuuji's mother had asked him. Kitamura had been

stupidly honest and answered her.

He knew something special was likely to happen between Aisaka

Taiga and Takasu Ryuuji on that day. He wanted it to happen, which was

why he wasn't worried to hear they didn't get home at the time they

normally did, that was good. He unconsciously thought of Takasu Yasuko

as parent and guardian to both Ryuuji and Taiga, and so he hadn't lied about

where they were.

Aisaka Taiga said her parents were divorced and she was living

alone. So why was it that her mother was in town and coming to his house

with such timing? If she was looking for Aisaka, then wasn't the house she

should have been paying a visit to Kushieda's or Takasu's—or maybe the

phone call from earlier hadn't been made just to find his best friend? Were

they together? Had they disappeared somewhere together? Were they being

searched for because they had disappeared? Had they disappeared because

they were being searched for?

"I wonder what happened… You know anything about it?"

Instead of answering his mother's lowered voice, Kitamura left his

room. He was lost in thought as he went down the stairs.