Hyakki Yagyou

Chapter Nine: Dissemination, Glimmer

“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”

-        Haruki Murakami

December 11th, 5:10 pm

Once they got back to the police station, Abe had some paperwork to do so checking what the IT technician (whatever his name was; she could not remember it for the life of her) found on her computer was impossible.

She knew that whatever it might be it would turn out to be quite valuable for the case.

Case. What case, she asked herself?

If the chief knew what she was up to, playing a free-lance detective in solving what seemed for everyone to be a case as clean as a slate, he would reprimand her quite seriously. Is she risking her job? Probably. But, if she managed to find new evidence then… There wouldn’t be much harm done.

She had no idea why her interest grew about this particular case. She had solved many before and many remained closed during her work at the police station. However, there was simply something about this one that kept making her feel she needed to dig deeper into the subject. It was a pity that her partner, Hara, had absolutely no interest in joining her on this quest.

Unlike her, he rarely showed actual enthusiasm for the work they were doing. On top of that, he was a bootlicker and hoped that one day he would be the Chief’s successor. Truth be told, he had the career, the education, background, knowledge and experience to chair that position but wasn’t he a bit too young? Besides, the Chief wasn’t going to retire for at least six to seven more years so it was Abe’s reason that Hara should stop being so obsequious.

Finally, when it was already after five pm, the paperwork was done. They still had to wait for the autopsy results of the Ozawa guy (it was obvious it was suicide by stabbing, she thought) but procedures were unavoidable. And so, before any sudden work came up, she headed straight to the IT technicians office.

Once she approached his door, she saw that his family name was Ohno. Ah, of course! Now she remembered. Well, maybe not remembered, for she had seen the familiar kanjis before, but at least there were slight possibilities of forgetting it again.

Repetitio mater studiorum est , she thought and walked into the room after knocking twice.

“Ah, Abe-san.” Ohno nodded. He was already by his computer.

“Hello.” She smiled. The way Abe smiled, Ohno noticed, was not a normal, proper smile. It would rarely reach her eyes and it was almost always an incident of courtesy rather than genuine sentiment.

“Hello.” He replied with a tad more genuine smile on his lips. “I was just about to call you.”

“Ah, good.” She said, standing almost awkwardly between his desk and the door.

“Ah, sit, please.”

“Thank you.” Abe said and took a seat next to Ohno.

“You’re welcome.” Ohno nodded and closed some website he was watching before he turned to look at Abe and said “I found the video in your email. Is that what you wanted me to check out? It was the most recent email.”

“Yes.”

Ohno stretched his arms and leaned back against his chair, in deep thought, before he continued to speak. “I thought it was some sort of a virus. It took me quite a while to track the IP address but I managed to do it. I also made a couple of screenshots that seemed interesting for me.”