The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories by Nishimura Kyōtarō

Author:Nishimura, Kyōtarō [Nishimura, Kyōtarō]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime
ISBN: 9781783080113
Amazon: 1783080116
Goodreads: 18174628
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 2012-02-01T08:00:00+00:00

Sawaki was dumbfounded. He had expected this of all the letters to be full of reproach, but if he had hoped to learn the reason for the suicide from it he was disappointed.

This letter did not reveal even a trace of the vague anxiety that permeated the other two. It reminded Sawaki of a rooster shaking its crest at a hen, flaunting itself to get attention. It was absolutely not the sort of letter you would expect from a young man about to commit suicide. Sawaki stared at Akiko, baffled. No two ways about it, this was a love letter.

“What does it say?” asked Akiko.

“That he’s in love with you,” Sawaki answered, and she grinned.

“Then I should have read it after all.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s fun!”

“But he killed himself.”

“Because of me?”

“If that was the case, what would you think?”

“Hmm. Kind of flattered, kind of sad…” answered Akiko in a singsong voice.

The more Sawaki talked to her, the more he felt irritated. He felt like he was discussing the plot of a romantic movie, not a young man who had just committed suicide.

Changing the subject, he asked her about the toy monkey.

“No idea,” she said flatly. “I never gave him anything.”

“Really?”

“Really. He meant nothing to me, so why would I give him a present? Weird.”

Sawaki was lost for words. It seemed the desk editor had got it completely wrong. Sawaki should have felt vindicated, but instead he just felt even more baffled.

He had forgotten all about the desk editor’s instructions to goad Toku into slapping Akiko’s face. He felt utterly wrong-footed by the contents of the letter being so different to what he had imagined. Far from gaining any insight into Shinkichi Yoshizawa’s suicide, he felt even further from the truth. He was no closer to goading Toku into anything. After reading the letter, Toku herself merely asked Akiko, “Would you be so kind as to let me have this letter?”

Toku wanted to return to Hokkaido right away, but Sawaki pressured her into staying one more day. For what it was worth, he reported the encounter with Akiko Shimojo back to the desk editor. At this rate, it did not look as though he would ever get a story.

After hearing Sawaki out, the desk editor put an unexpectedly bright face on things. “Come on, cheer up!”

Sawaki said glumly, “I just don’t understand young people today.” It was the truth. He had considered himself young, but now he felt a chasm had opened up between him and the younger generation. He had no better understanding of the young bartender Miyamoto than he did Akiko Shimojo. More than anything, he had no idea what had been going on in Shinkichi Yoshizawa’s head. How could anyone write such a naively optimistic love letter just before killing himself?

“Oh, I understand them alright,” laughed the desk editor. “Not that I sympathize with them, mind you. It’s just that their way of thinking is simple.”

“But how are we supposed to interpret that last letter? It was obviously a love letter, and a wildly optimistic one at that—”

“That’s easy.

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