Money from whom knows where, huh?
And a sum as large as a million yen.
Converted to dollars, it was probably worth over ten thousand.
Thirty years later that might not mean much, but in the 90s, this was a serious amount of money.
It could even serve as a down payment on land to build a house.
After seeing his mother out of his room, Kyousuke lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
“If I were the father, wouldn’t just asking her directly be better than this?”
Mieko had told him that Daisuke had planted a tracking device inside Kirino’s backpack long ago, capable of locking onto her location in real time via GPS.
It was a precaution he’d taken as a detective to protect his family.
If any criminal he’d crossed ever kidnapped Kirino, he could get her location right away.
But now, that tracker’s signal receiver was in his hands.
“Your task is to confirm the places Kirino goes in and out of, what kind of people she meets, their general appearance.
Just bring back that information, and Daisuke will make his own judgment.”
Recalling his mother’s instructions, Kyousuke couldn’t help but cover his face.
How was this any different from being a stalker?
Still, he had agreed to it, more or less.
He was planning to go to Tokyo anyway, so he might as well take a look along the way.
Whatever else one could say, his parents had given him this task out of concern.
Society was complicated, and people’s hearts were hard to read.
A beautiful girl who hadn’t even stepped out of school yet…
not worrying about her in such circumstances would be the strange thing, right?
…..
The next morning.
Kyousuke boarded a train bound for Tokyo.
Kousaka Kirino had left the house earlier than him, taking the JR line, also known as the Shinkansen.
The source of that information was, of course, her father.
The difference lay in the pricier ticket and the faster speed.
With a secret stash of over a million yen in cash, Kirino naturally wouldn’t be stingy about such a small expense.
But Kyousuke received no such generous treatment.
Besides, he had a habit of saving.
“What method could let a middle schooler earn such a large sum of money?”
He turned the question over in his mind but couldn’t come up with an answer.
Perhaps from Daisuke’s perspective, his thoughts couldn’t help drifting toward places with red lights flashing.
After all, despite being middle school age, Kirino was practically an encyclopedia on makeup and skincare, and she’d even dyed her hair blonde.
In this era, every bit of that screamed rebellion.
But Kyousuke had long since gotten used to it.
Girls pursuing beauty was an eternal and unchanging topic.
In young people’s social circles, looks determined status.
After an hour trek, Kousaka Kyousuke stepped out from the west exit of Shinjuku Station.
Just past the ticket gates, he spotted someone from quite a distance holding up a sign with his name on it.
The person holding it wore a professional pencil skirt, a beige blazer draped over her upper body, and gold-rimmed glasses.
The young woman’s eyes kept scanning the station entrance, as if searching for someone.
Kyousuke’s gaze met hers at one point, but she looked away the very next moment.
That was, until he stood right in front of her.
….
Hayakawa Rumi stood amidst the flow of pedestrians at the station, feeling rather nervous.
This was her first time coming to meet someone at a station.
Normally, tasks like this were handled by her seniors, but recently the deputy editor-in-chief of her department seemed to have ideas about putting her to greater use.
He’d dispatched her to receive the winner of a Newcomer Gold Prize.
If she handled the reception well, it might even affect her year-end evaluation.
From there, she’d be just one step closer to the rank of managing editor.
Japanese workplaces valued seniority, but personal connections were a shortcut that could bypass that hurdle.
She absolutely had to seize this opportunity!
With that thought, Rumi’s gaze drifted through the crowd of people exiting the station.
The agreed time was just about here, yet the person was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, a boy entered her field of view.
He was even a little taller than her, completely blocking her line of sight as she tried to scan the distance.
Out of politeness, Rumi shifted her footing and moved to stand somewhere else, but the boy followed her as if he were her shadow.
Don’t tell me he’s trying to pick me up.
Has my charm already reached the point of influencing boys this young?
Hayakawa Rumi was so tense her brain felt overloaded.
“Um…
is there something I can help you with?”
She noticed the boy in front of her extend his hand, as if he wanted to shake hers.
“Hello, I’m Sigsawa Keiichi.”
So he really was trying to pick her up?
Hayakawa found herself involuntarily sizing him up.
Clean-cut features, fair skin, bangs covering half his forehead.
In terms of looks, this boy was honestly exactly her type.
And his height seemed just right, too?
But the massive age gap was an undeniable fact, and she had important business to attend to.
Rumi rapidly assessed the situation in her head.
“Sorry, if fate allows, we’ll meet again.
Right now I have something to do.”
She instinctively turned him down, then walked past the boy, still holding up her sign, and resumed her post.
“?”
Kousaka Kyousuke looked somewhat bewildered.
What just happened?
Wasn’t she here to pick me up?
He walked over and stood in front of her again, carefully checking the sign to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake.
“I already told you I’m not interested right now.
Why do you keep trying to pick me up?”
Hayakawa Rumi was getting a bit angry now.
The favorable impression she’d had of Kyousuke’s looks just moments ago vanished completely.
She could still tell what was important and what wasn’t.
Kyousuke was struck speechless by her sudden vehemence.
“You’re Ms.
Hayakawa, correct?”
“Eh?”
Hayakawa Rumi froze.
“How do you know my name?”
“Editor Hattori mentioned in his reply letter that a Ms.
Hayakawa Rumi would be coming to meet me.”
“…..”
Hayakawa went rigid on the spot.
Right, what had this boy said his name was just now?
Sigsawa…
she hadn’t caught the last part.
She looked up, somewhat stiffly, at the name board she was holding high above her head.
…..
“I am terribly sorry!
I never imagined Sigsawa-sensei would be so young!”
If there had been a gap in the car large enough to fit an adult, Rumi felt she would have dived into it without a second’s hesitation.
The “social death” mentioned in this boy’s award-winning work…
this scene was probably exactly what that felt like.
The atmosphere was a little awkward.
“It’s fine, Ms.
Hayakawa.
Please don’t worry about it.”
In the average person’s mind, for someone to win Dengeki Bunko’s Newcomer Gold Prize at such a young age was indeed rare.
Kyousuke waved it off, covering his mouth with a laugh.
He didn’t think much of it at all.
If anything, his impression of Hayakawa Rumi was fairly positive.
Wrapped in the outer shell of a career woman, inside she was a natural airhead.
A character like that, written into one of those early 21st-century light novels, would count as an extremely likable one.
Men liked good-looking but slightly clumsy women.
Kousaka found himself giving some credence to that notion.
So he didn’t mind offering some reassurance, though it seemed to have absolutely no effect on her.
“I mistook the author I was supposed to receive for someone trying to pick me up…
what was I thinking?!”
“If Deputy Editor-in-Chief Hattori finds out about this, he’ll chew me out till there’s nothing left!”
“Is my career…
going to end right here?”
The enormous shame swirling in Hayakawa’s head quickly morphed into despondency.
“I can’t even handle something as simple as picking someone up.
How could I ever talk about taking on responsibility?
I’ll probably get blasted with all of that, and then be kicked out of the editorial department, right?”
Seeing Hayakawa turning gray and lifeless before his eyes, Kyousuke let out an amused smile and said nothing more from the back seat.
This kind of instant social death might just become a dark history she’d remember for the rest of her life.
She’d need to work through it on her own.
Kyousuke didn’t dwell on it further.
Instead, he took the tracker out of his backpack.
A green marker was blinking on it.
“It got a signal again?”
Earlier on the train, the tracker had lost its function temporarily because the distance was too great.
Now it was back to normal.
“This location…
is it also in Shinjuku?”
Kyousuke rubbed his chin, thinking it over.
“Once the meeting with Editor Hattori wraps up, I’ll go look for her.”