“ ‘Creative business seminar.’ ”
“The name’s new, but it’s really not much different from a personal development seminar,” Sara said. “Basically a quick, impromptu brainwashing course to educate your typical corporate warriors. They use a training manual instead of sacred scriptures, with promotion and a high salary as their equivalent of enlightenment and paradise. A new religion for a pragmatic age. No transcendent elements like in a religion, though, and everything is theorized and digitalized. Very transparent and easy to grasp. And quite a few people get positive encouragement from this. But the fact remains that it’s nothing more than an infusion of the hypnotic into a system of thought that suits their goal, a conglomeration of only those theories and statistics that line up with their ultimate objectives. The company has an excellent reputation, though, and quite a lot of local businesses have contracts with them. Their website shows that they run a variety of new programs guaranteed to get people’s attention, from boot-camp-like group training for new employees and a reeducation summer session for mid-level employees that’s held at an upscale resort hotel, to high-class power lunches for top-level executives. The way these seminars are packaged, at least, makes them look really attractive. They focus on teaching business etiquette and correct communication skills for young employees. Personally it’s the last thing I’d like to do, but I can understand how companies would find it appealing. Does this give you a general idea now of what sort of business we’re talking about?”
“I think so,” Tsukuru said. “But to launch a business like that you need a fair amount of capital. Where could Aka have possibly gotten it? His father’s a university professor and kind of a straight arrow. As far as I know he isn’t that well off, and I can’t imagine he’d be willing to invest in something that risky.”
“I don’t know. It’s a mystery,” Sara said. “That being said, when you knew him in high school, was this Akamatsu the sort of person you could imagine becoming a kind of guru?”
Tsukuru shook his head. “No, he was more the calm, objective, academic type. He was quick, superintelligent, and had a way with words. Most of the time, though, he tried to not show any of that. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but he was more comfortable in the background, scheming on his own. I can’t picture him standing up in front of people and trying to inspire and encourage them.”
“People change,” Sara said.
“True enough,” Tsukuru said. “People do change.
And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither of us knew anything substantial about the other.”
Sara gazed at Tsukuru for a time before she spoke. “Anyway, both of them are working in Nagoya City. They’ve basically never taken a step outside the city since the day they were born. Their schools were in Nagoya, their jobs are in Nagoya. Reminds me of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. Is Nagoya really that nice a place?”
Tsukuru couldn’t answer, but he had a strange feeling. If circumstances had been different he might have spent his life entirely within the confines of Nagoya too, and never questioned it.
Sara was silent. She folded up the printouts, put them back in the envelope, placed it on the end of the table, and took a drink of water. When she spoke again, her tone was more formal.
“Now, about the last person, Shiro—Yuzuki Shirane—unfortunately, she does not have a present address.”
“Does not have a present address,” Tsukuru murmured.
That’s an odd way of putting it, Tsukuru thought. If she’d said she didn’t know her present address, that he could fathom. But saying she doesn’t have a present address sounded strange. He considered the implications. Had Shiro gone missing? She wasn’t homeless, was she?
“Sadly, she’s no longer in this world,” Sara said.