Кэйго Хигасино - A Midsummer’s Equation

Narumi nodded. He was right, of course. The hearing had lulled her into a sense of accomplishment, but that was an illusion. The real work was only just beginning.

“I was surprised at the range of people they brought to the meeting. When that professor butted in, telling them they should just admit it when they couldn’t do something? That was impressive.”

“Him?” Sawamura frowned. “Bet you ten to one he’s a corporate shill. They put him up there to make them look like they’re not all about the money.”

“I don’t know, I thought his heart was in the right place, at least about not trying to pull the wool over our eyes. You never hear that kind of honesty from most officials or politicians.”

“Maybe,” Sawamura said with a shrug.

They left the community center and went their separate ways. “See you tonight,” Sawamura said as they left. They would gather again after dinner to prepare for tomorrow.

Narumi got on her bicycle, waved, and pedaled off. Past the station, she dismounted and began to walk. It was much easier pushing her bike up the long slope than trying to ride it.

A taxi passed her just as the Green Rock Inn came into view. She watched it pull up at the inn. That would be their one reservation, arriving for the night.

It wasn’t unusual for them to only have one reservation a night these days. Summer hadn’t brought an increase in guests. In fact, there were fewer each year, and not just at the Green Rock Inn. Several inns and other businesses serving the dwindling tourist industry had already gone belly up, and Narumi knew it was only a matter of time for the inn. They already couldn’t afford to hire any help except in the busiest months, and the only reason her parents were able to run the place by themselves the rest of the time was that there were so few guests. It had only gotten more difficult when Shigehiro hurt his knee.

The taxi passed her again on its way back down. She recognized the driver. He nodded as he passed — the kind of courtesy you only see in a small town.

She stepped inside the inn to find Setsuko greeting the newly arrived guest at the front counter. He was writing in the guest book. When he finished and turned around, Narumi was surprised to see he was the man she’d noticed at the hearing, the one wearing the open-collar shirt. He smiled warmly to her and nodded, almost as if he’d been expecting to see her here.

“I’ll show you to your room,” Setsuko said, key in hand as she stepped out from behind the counter. A small travel bag in one hand, the man followed her in silence.

After they were gone, Narumi went behind the counter and checked the guest book. The man’s name was Masatsugu Tsukahara. Not a name she recognized.

Maybe it’s nothing, she thought. He might have nodded to her at the hall because their eyes happened to meet, a friendly gesture of solidarity. But then she looked back at the guest book and frowned. The man had listed his address as being in Saitama Prefecture. Why would someone from north of Tokyo come all the way down here just to attend a hearing?

“Hey, Narumi, welcome back.” She looked up. It was Kyohei, looking out the door by the front counter.

“Hey. Were you down in the basement?”

“Yeah, with Uncle Shigehiro.”

She heard the sound of a cane striking the steps leading to the boiler room underneath the inn.

A few moments later, Shigehiro appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Oh, welcome back,” he said to her. “How was the hearing?”

“Good. I’m glad I went. There’s going to be a debate tomorrow — sorry I’ll be out again.”

“Not a problem,” her father replied. “You do what you need to do.”

“You’re protecting the environment, right?” Kyohei asked. “That’s cool.”

Narumi lifted an eyebrow. “You think so?”

“Totally! So do you, like, get on a boat and ram whaling ships?”

“Hardly,” she said. “But what we do is very important. We’re trying to stop people from wrecking our ocean. If they start mining the seafloor, it might hurt the local fishermen.”

“Oh,” Kyohei said, clearly having no interest in anything that didn’t involve fierce battles on the high seas.

Setsuko returned and announced, “He says he’ll eat at seven.”

Narumi looked at the clock. It was almost five.

“Also, we had a last-minute reservation, a single,” Setsuko added. “The call came in right after you left, Narumi.”

Last-minute cancellations happened too often, but last-minute reservations were a new thing, Narumi thought, just as she heard the front door slide open behind her. “Hello?” said a familiar voice, and Narumi nearly jumped. She turned to see the physicist Yukawa standing in the doorway of the Green Rock Inn.

The Green Rock Inn had a few private dining rooms on the first floor, where guests came for their meals. Kyohei was supposed to eat dinner with Narumi’s family in the little room next to the kitchen, but when six o’clock rolled around he snuck out to take a peek at the dining rooms where their new guest, Yukawa, would be eating.

The sliding doors to the first dining room on the hall were open, and a serving cart had been left in the hallway outside. Aunt Setsuko would be in the middle of serving dinner.

Kyohei peeked inside. Yukawa was sitting alone in the middle of a room big enough for ten, watching as Aunt Setsuko arranged dishes on the tray in front of him.

“So places in town are open pretty late, then?” he was saying.

“Well, late for the countryside, maybe. But that only means ten or ten thirty. I’d be happy to show you,” his aunt was telling him.

“I’d appreciate that. You go out drinking often?”

“Oh no, I certainly wouldn’t say ‘often.’ It’s much more of a ‘rarely,’ if that.”

“That’s a shame,” Yukawa said, suddenly looking toward Kyohei. Their eyes met, and Kyohei jumped and shrank back away from the door, out of sight.

“Is something wrong?” he heard his aunt ask.

“No, nothing. This looks delicious,” Yukawa said as Kyohei snuck away, treading as lightly as possible on the floorboards.

He had his own dinner soon afterward. His aunt and uncle had pulled out all the stops for their guest, and the table was loaded with sashimi and all kinds of homemade dishes.

“Eat up,” his uncle said, pushing a plate of sashimi toward Kyohei. “We can’t send you back home skinny, or we’ll never hear the end of it.” He laughed, his belly sticking out like a giant, quivering watermelon.

“And thanks for snagging a customer for us,” his aunt said. “That was unexpected!”

“All I did was show him the map,” Kyohei explained. “He was the one who wrote down the number and everything.”

“Well, you did just the right thing. He must’ve figured that any hotel good enough for you was good enough for him.”

Kyohei shrugged, pretty sure that had nothing to do with it.

Close to seven, Narumi stood from the table, saying she had a Save the Cove meeting and wouldn’t be back until late. Kyohei left to go back to his room. There was a TV show he wanted to watch.

He’d just reached the elevator when the doors opened and an older man with short hair stepped out. He looked like he’d just been in the bath. He was still wearing his robe, and his face had a ruddy sheen to it. The man looked at Kyohei a little curiously, then walked off in the direction of the dining rooms.

Kyohei took the elevator to the second floor and walked down the hall to his room. He’d been given a room big enough for four. His aunt was worried that he’d feel lonely in such a big room all by himself, but Kyohei wasn’t a little kid anymore, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. He spent some time stretching out on the tatami mats, enjoying the space, then reached for the remote control.