It’s all right for you! It’s okay for you to look like that, you’re a man!
Mikami had lost control. All consideration for her condition disappeared. This time, he hit her with his fist. Ayumi had scrambled up the stairs and taken refuge in her room, locking the door from the inside. Leave her be! He’d bellowed the words from the bottom of the staircase as Minako chased up after her. Some minutes later a sound like someone putting their foot through the floor had rung out from above. Then something smashing. An extraordinary noise. Mikami had bolted up the stairs and kicked open the door to her room, then gone in. He’d felt a sharp pain in his foot. The mirror lay in pieces, the glass scattered all over the floor. Ayumi had been balled up in the corner, sitting in darkness. Punching herself in the face. Using her nails to tear at it. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I hate this face. I want to die! I want to die! I want to die! Mikami had found himself frozen to the spot, unable to speak, scared to do anything in case Ayumi shattered like the mirror.
Mikami had spent the whole night discussing the situation with Minako. For Ayumi in her current state, they were nothing more than the enemy. They had seriously considered checking her into hospital. In the end, seeing no other viable option, they’d called Ayumi’s therapist. I can come tomorrow. You should probably leave her by herself until then . . .
It happened the evening after the therapist’s visit. Ayumi left the house without a word, without even leaving a note.
She’s a lot calmer now. Just keep an eye on her, don’t make too much fuss.
The words of a professional no doubt providing her with a glimmer of hope, Minako, who hadn’t slept at all the previous night, had dozed off in the living room. Ayumi had used the opportunity to run away. They had found an empty bag of doctor’s masks in the bin in her room. She’d taken a single shoulder bag. All she had to her name were the few coins and single ten-thousand-yen note she’d taken from the small music box. The bike she’d used to run away with was reported found four days later, discarded on the pavement next to the train station.
While it was true that the work on City D’s public transport system had suffered delays, the train station was still the largest in the prefecture. Two private railways used it, alongside Japan Rail, and the bus terminus next to it had services that ran in all directions.
Even so, a young girl in a doctor’s mask would stand out. It wasn’t as if there’d been a spate of summer colds. Somebody must have seen her. If nothing else, she would have caught the attention of the station staff.
Such hopes led to nothing. Visiting the station during rush-hour, the people had flowed through the automated gates with alarming speed, and the majority waiting for buses or trains had had their eyes trained on mobile phones or magazines. The police officer who manned the koban outside the station also claimed not to have seen her. Ayumi had slipped through, completely unnoticed. Either that, or she’d headed away from the station after leaving her bike there.
What evidence did you have to tell us she’d calmed down? Mikami had interrogated the therapist. He’d been unable not to. It was only because of the therapist’s advice to try going back to work that Mikami had seen fit to leave Minako and Ayumi alone that afternoon. You need to avoid provoking her, act as though everything is normal. Mikami had swallowed the advice and left the house; yet this had been the result. The therapist hadn’t shown any signs of remorse. ‘I won’t cause them any trouble, not any more.’ I decided she would be fine when she said that. He went on to tell Mikami that, in retrospect, the words might of course have signalled an intention to run away.
In Mikami’s mind, the sentence had intimated more than a plan to leave home. A number of interpretations had entered his thoughts. She’d said it so they would lower their guard. To say goodbye. Had she perhaps hinted that she would commit suicide? No. Ayumi would never kill herself. She’d definitely said it to get them to lower their guard. She’d known they’d relax their watch if she told them she wouldn’t cause any more trouble. There’d been that element of calculation: she hadn’t run out of the house in the heat of the moment. Didn’t the fact that she hadn’t forgotten to take her wallet and a change of clothes prove that?
I want to die! I want to die! I want to die!
High-risk missing person. That was what the ‘special arrangements’ Akama had spoken of actually boiled down to. Someone vulnerable, with a high chance of becoming involved in an incident or an accident of some kind. Someone likely to attempt self-harm or suicide. Mikami had no argument with Ayumi being classified in this way. He understood that the investigation would become cursory in nature if the threat of suicide was removed completely, whether Ayumi was the child of a police officer or not. As it was, the regional stations had spared no effort in conducting the search. As well as officers on the beat, personnel from Criminal Investigations and Community Safety had also been assigned to the search. Even then, they had yet to pick up any significant leads. He had politely refused when, a month ago, they had suggested that he let them take the search public, which would mean exposing her face to every passerby in the street. Mikami had refused because he’d known that, for Ayumi, there could be no greater hell.
His eyes stung from the glare of the TV set. Five or six girls not too far from Ayumi’s age were singing and dancing, looking half naked in their outfits. Each vying to stand out. Staring right into the camera, as if to say, Look at me, just me.
If she had only meant to run away . . .
If he’d been one hundred per cent certain that Ayumi wouldn’t try to take her own life, that she’d only wanted plastic surgery so that boys would notice her, only shouted abuse at them and charged out of the house because they’d turned down her request, then, even though she was in the middle of adolescence, he felt confident that his anger would have outweighed his concern. At sixteen, she was not yet fully mature, but neither was she a child. There was no reason to let her trample over her parents’ dignity. All daughters leave home eventually. Society’s full of families that don’t get on. I’ve seen too many cases of parents killing their children, children killing their parents. Lining up angry sentence after angry sentence, it was possible he’d convinced himself and Minako into thinking her behaviour was acceptable.
What did Minako think . . .
Of him, for having refused to deal with their daughter’s condition?