The Vanished by Lena Mauger; Stephane Remael

Author:Lena Mauger; Stephane Remael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Pleasure district of Kabukicho, in Tokyo.

13

They appear suddenly in spring and disappear just as quickly. White, pink, pale, or dark, they bloom all along the avenues and transform the ugliest square into the Garden of Eden. During World War II, the Japanese government made people believe that the souls of soldiers killed in combat would be reincarnated as cherry blossoms. Did the myth endure after the war? As they wander, are the evaporated attracted to these symbols of a beautiful and ephemeral life?

The detectives do not rule out any lead. This afternoon, Takumi, the sleuth with the handsome and serious face, crosses parks, eyes peeled, looking for these living kamikazes. In a Zen garden decorated with cherry blossoms in bloom, camphor trees, bamboo, and persimmon trees, old people walk very slowly, almost not moving at all; salarymen empty their bento, partitioned wooden boxes filled with rice, fish, and colorful vegetables. Later, Takumi will visit several cyber cafes where, like a regular customer, he will disappear into a discreet cubicle, convenient for taking a break or looking at a pornographic website. Then he will show the manager a photo from his bag, and the manager, without even deigning to glance at it, will shake his head—no. His customers are free, and he does not want to know anything about their lives, nor give away any of the place’s secrets. Takumi will thank him as usual without getting discouraged.

Next he will enter the lobby of a “capsule hotel,” a uniform establishment made up of cubicles stacked one on top of the other. There, the guests leave personal items and their identities in lockers before donning regulation pajamas and lying down in small, long, and narrow spaces shaped like coffins. Another anonymous and transitory place where a runaway can make a pit stop on his way to becoming someone else. Featured on the small poster Takumi is carrying around today is a retired elementary school teacher who disappeared a few weeks earlier from Tokoroza, not far from Tokyo. Married, father of two self-sufficient children, he seemed to have a peaceful life. Everything was going well. The family always says the same things. When Takumi met with the wife, he gently, tactfully asked her if anything could have disrupted this peaceful life. So she described her husband’s addiction to a television show about mechanisms for financial investing. Immediately afterward, he began dabbling in the stock market, sure of the successes to come. He had a lot of self-confidence and strong convictions. “I always had to go along with what he wanted,” she told the detective. And as she feared, he lost—a lot. At first, she reassured him on the grounds that their savings could guarantee them a comfortable retirement. But the man was mortified. One morning, when she got home from shopping, she discovered a note on the kitchen table: “I might have gone overboard. I’d like to live alone now. If I fail, maybe I’ll come back. If I return, please take me back.

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