He trotted off, still hunched, toward the stairs. Still shaken, Germain followed him. Had he been listening through the door? This question tortured her. He discovered something interesting? That might just be a turn of phrase... she had kept her voice so low there was no way he could have heard her, but either way he had almost certainly been trying to. Which meant...
"Oh, Germain," Sebastian said, not turning around.
"Y-yes?"
"Why didn't I hear the toilet flush before you left the room?"
"It's rather rude to ask a girl something like that, Sebastian," Germain managed, wincing slightly at her mistake. Sebastian did not appear to be phased.
"Is it? Nevertheless... if you forgot to flush, it is not too late. You can still go back. The genders are equal when it comes to sanitary behavior."
What a horrific way of putting it. In every meaning of the word.
"I was on the phone. Just a regular check-in with my client. But I did not want to you hear some of it."
"Oh? But either way, from now on, I recommend flushing. It provides good camouflage."
"I suppose it does."
They reached the bedroom. Sebastian went down on all fours as lie crossed the threshold. It looked less like an investigation method modeled on Sherlock Holmes than some sort of religious jinx.
"Over here." Sebastian scrabbled across the carpet toward the bookshelves.
Believe Bridesmaid's bookshelves, with their fifty-seven tightly packed books. It was the first place Germain had checked after talking with 707. "You said you found something new?"
"Yes. Something new-no, let us be bold. I have uncovered an important fact." His attempt at sounding cool annoyed her. She ignored it.
"So you found a clue of some kind on the bookshelf, you mean?"
"Look here," Sebastian said, pointing to the right side of the shelf second from the bottom. There was an eleven-volume set of a popular Japanese comic book named Akaukin Chacha.
"What about it?"
"I love this manga."
"You do?"
"I do."
How was she supposed to respond? In direct contrast to her wishes, she felt her expression softening, but with no attempt to probe her inner struggle, Sebastian continued.
"You're Nikkei, aren't you?"
"Nikkei...? My parents are both from Japan. My passport's American now, but I lived in Japan until after high school..."
"So you must know this manga. Min Ayahana's legendary creation. I read every issue as it was serialized. Shiine is so adorable! I liked the anime just as much as the manga. Love and courage and hope-Holy Up!"
"Sebastian, are you going to go on like this for a while? If so, I can wait in the other room..."
"Why would you do that when I'm talking to you?"
"Er, um... I mean, I liked Akazukin Chacha too. I watched the anime. I also experienced the love, courage, hope and Holy Up."
She longed to inform him exactly how little interest she had in his hobbies, but it was doubtful whether this private detective would be able to understand opinions directed at him from anywhere near common sense. As questionable as Sebastian himself.
Or was that overstating things?
"Good. We shall discuss the pleasures offered by the anime in detail on some other occasion, but for the moment, look here."
"Hunh..." Germain said, obediently looking at the volumes of Akazukin Chacha on the shelf.
"Notice anything?"
"Not really..."
It was just a bunch of comics. At most they could tell that Believe Bridesmaid was fluent in Japanese, and liked manga... but there were lots of people like that in America. Reading the original Japanese instead of a translated version was not terribly unusual, either. With the advent of Internet shopping, it had become extremely easy to obtain them.
Sebastian's dark-rimmed eyes were staring fixedly at her. Uncomfortable, Germain avoided his gaze, checking each volume individually. But even after she'd finished checking them out, she'd found no curious facts or anything like a clue.
"I don't see anything... something about one of these comics?"
"No."
"Hunh?" There was more than a hint of anger in her voice. She did not like being made fun of.
"No? What do you mean?"
"Not one of these," Sebastian said. "Something that should be here, but isn't. Germain, you're the one who figured this out-any messages from the killer are indicated by the absence of what should be here. You're the one who figured out that this must refer to the body of Believe Bridesmaid. I didn't think I would need to explain this to you-look closely, Germain. They aren't all here. Volumes four and nine are missing."
"Huh?"
"Akazukin Chacha ran for thirteen volumes. Not eleven."
Germain looked down at the books again, and the numbers went from one, two, and three to five, six, seven, and eight to ten. If Sebastian was right, and there were thirteen volumes in all, then two volumes were missing-volumes four and nine.
"Hmm... right. But... Sebastian, so what? You mean the killer took those two volumes with him? It's certainly a possibility, but it seems equally likely they were missing in the first place. Maybe he planned to pick them up soon. Not everyone reads manga in order, you know. I mean, he seems to have stopped halfway through the Dickwood series, up here..."
"Impossible," Sebastian said, firmly "No one on earth would ever skip two volumes in the middle of Akazukin Chacha. I am absolutely sure this fact would pass muster in court." Had this man ever been in a court?
"Or at least, if the members of the jury knew much about Japanese comics."
"What a biased jury."
"The killer has obviously taken them with him," Sebastian said, blatantly ignoring her. Germain wasn't about to let this pass. Her feet were firmly planted on more realistic ground.
"But you have no proof of that at all, Sebastian. It's equally possible he just loaned them to a friend."
"Akazukin Chacha?! You wouldn't even loan it to your parents! You'd tell them to buy their own! The only possible explanation is that the killer took them away!" Sebastian insisted, quite forcefully.
He didn't stop there.
"Furthermore, no one on earth would ever want to read only volumes four and nine-I'd bet my jam on it!"
"If you're referring to the jam you were eating earlier, a jar of that only goes for around five bucks." Min Ayahana would be disappointed.
"So it follows, Germain, that when the killer removed those two volumes from the room he had some other, completely unrelated reason for doing so."
"Since that the two volumes are missing, ignoring logic and possibility for the moment and following along with this hypothetical... it's still strange, isn't it? I mean, Sebastian, this bookshelf..." Was packed full. So tightly that removing a book from it had been rather difficult. If he had really removed two volumes of manga, then there should be that much of a gap... or wait...
"Sebastian. Do you know how many pages there are in volumes four and nine of Akazukin Chacha?"
"I do. 192 pages and 184 pages."
She had not actually expected him to know the answer.. .but 192 plus 184 was 376 pages. Germain glanced along the shelf, looking over the fifty-seven books for a volume the same thickness as 376 pages of manga. It did not take long. There was only one book that thick on this shelf-Insufficient Relaxation by Permit Winter.
When she took it off the shelf it did, indeed, turn out to be exactly 376 pages.
Hopefully Germain flipped through the pages, but she didn't see anything particularly interesting.
