"Did you hear about the murder at Mitsuse Pass?" Yuichi suddenly asked, after quickly running through the thousand yen.

"I heard that a girl got killed there," Hifumi said, still facing his machine. His luck had turned as soon as Yuichi sat down next to him.

Yuichi had brought up the topic but sat there silently, as usual.

"They said she was involved with a bunch of guys she'd met on a dating site. I saw that on TV today." Hifumi kept the conversation going as he went on pushing the slot-machine button.

"Think they'll find him soon?" Yuichi asked.

"Find who?"

No response.

"You mean the criminal?"

No response again.

"Yeah, they'll find him pretty soon. All they have to do is check the phone records." Hifumi didn't glance at Yuichi at all as he spoke.

After thirty minutes with the slots, the two of them exited the pachinko parlor. Hifumi wound up losing fifteen thousand yen, Yuichi two thousand. The sun had already set but the parking lot was brightly lit. Their dark shadows bisected the white parking lines as they walked.

Hifumi, unlike Yuichi, had absolutely no interest in cars and drove a cheap economy car. He unlocked it, and Yuichi quickly sat down beside him. Hifumi glanced up at the sky. The waves nearby sounded as if they were coming down from above. The sky was usually filled with stars, but tonight he could see only Venus. Maybe it'll rain tomorrow Maybe it'll rain tomorrow, Hifumi thought.

As they drove along the coast toward Yuichi's home, Hifumi complained about the trouble he was having finding work. He'd spent the morning at an employment agency, and as he checked through the classified ads, had invited one of the young girls working there out for a drink. He struck out on both counts-no job and no date. But after spending the morning there, he was optimistic about finding a job. "There are a lot of jobs out there if you're looking for one," he concluded.

After the music ended on the radio, a short news broadcast came on. The lead story was the murder at Mitsuse Pass.

Hifumi turned to Yuichi, who hadn't said a word since he'd climbed aboard. "Speaking of Mitsuse Pass ..." Hifumi began. Yuichi had been gazing out the window but he leaned back and turned toward Hifumi in the cramped car.

"You remember how I saw a ghost there?" Hifumi went on, turning into a sharp curve. The sudden curve threw Yuichi against the door.

"Remember? I went for a job interview in Hakata, and took the road over the pass on the way home? And my headlights suddenly went out. I was scared, and pulled over and started the engine again, and suddenly there was this guy sitting next to me, covered in blood. You remember when I told you that?"

As he pulled up close to a Honda Cub motorcycle lazily tooling down the middle of the road, Hifumi shot a glance at Yuichi.

"I was terrified. The engine wouldn't start, and this bloody man was sitting in the passenger seat. I must have screamed as I was turning the key."

Hifumi laughed at this memory, but Yuichi just said, "Hurry up and pass him," motioning to the motorcycle with his chin.

On the night in question it was just after eight p.m. when Hifumi had driven over the pass. After finishing the interview at the company-he couldn't recall now which one it was-he was disappointed, knowing he wouldn't get the job, so to make up for it he went to a massage parlor in Tenjin. Choosing a good massage parlor probably meant more to him at the time than the job interview. After being satisfied at the massage parlor, he went out for some ramen and then headed back home, over the pass.

It was still early, but he saw no other cars headed in the opposite direction, let alone ones headed in the same direction. The woods lit up in his headlights looked eerie, and he began to regret having taken this back road instead of the main highway to save on tolls.

To drown out this lonely feeling he started singing loudly, but his voice only seemed to be sucked out into the forest surrounding him. His headlights-his only lifeline in this pitch-black mountain pass-started to act strangely just as he was reaching the highest point of the road. At first Hifumi had thought something was wrong with his eyes.

The next instant something black flashed in front of his flickering lights. Hifumi slammed on the brakes, clutching the steering wheel to keep it straight. Now his headlights went out completely. Straight ahead was a darkness so deep it was as if his eyes were closed, and though the engine was still running, the incessant chirping of insects from the woods was so loud he wanted to clap his hands over his ears to drown it out. The AC was freezing cold, but he was starting to sweat. He felt as if lukewarm water had been poured all over him.

Just then the whole car vibrated and the engine cut out. And he sensed something-or someone-in the passenger seat beside him. Fear gives us tunnel vision. He couldn't look to the side, or turn to see what was there. All he could manage was to stare straight ahead.

The engine wouldn't start. Hifumi let out a scream. He knew something was sitting beside him. But what it was, he had no idea.

... It hurts so much....

A man's voice said it from beside him. Hifumi tried to drown it out with another scream. The engine still wouldn't start.

... This is it.... I can't stand it anymore....

Again the man's voice. Hifumi put his hand on the door, ready to flee.

At that very instant a man's bloody face was reflected in the windshield. The man was gazing steadily in his direction.

Fusae heard something at the front door. She glanced at the clock, then hurriedly stuffed the manila envelope she'd been vaguely looking at into her apron pocket. On the envelope was written Receipt enclosed Receipt enclosed. Still seated, Fusae reached toward the gas range and reheated the small arakabu arakabu fish cooked in soy sauce. fish cooked in soy sauce.

"Evening!"

Fusae heard Hifumi's cheerful voice and stood up. "Oh, Hifumi's with you?" she said, and went out to the hallway.

Hifumi quickly removed his shoes and went in, almost elbowing Yuichi out of the way. "Hi, Grandma. Something smells really good," he said, peering into the kitchen.

"You haven't eaten yet? It'll be ready in a minute, so would you like to eat with Yuichi?"

"I'd love to!" Hifumi happily replied, nodding several times.

"Did you play pachinko?" Fusae placed the lid on the pan.

"No, the slots. But we had no luck. Lost again."

"How much?"

Hifumi held up his fingers to indicate fifteen thousand yen.

Fusae felt relieved that Yuichi had come home with Hifumi. She knew he had absolutely nothing to do with the murder at Mitsuse Pass, but still the detective's visit-his questions about Yuichi's whereabouts on Sunday and the lie she'd told him-left her with an unpleasant aftertaste.

Yuichi had most definitely gone out that evening in his car. But since Mrs. Okazaki had insisted that he hadn't, even if he had, it couldn't have been for very long. The same thing had happened before, when Yuichi had taken Katsuji to the hospital. Even when he went out for a couple of hours, Mrs. Okazaki would always insist his car had never left the lot.

"Hifumi, were you with Yuichi on Sunday?" Fusae asked after making sure that Yuichi had gone upstairs.

As she checked the fish in the pan, Hifumi said, tilting his head, "Sunday? No, I wasn't.... Uh-I think he must have gone to the repair place. He was talking about getting a part for his car." As he spoke, he reached out to snare a piece of fish from the pan.

"Hey, I told you it would be ready soon," Fusae said, lightly slapping his hand away. Hifumi obediently pulled back.

"Do you have any sashimi?" he asked, opening the refrigerator.

Fusae prepared a plate of food for Hifumi first, then took the clean laundry she'd folded in the evening upstairs to Yuichi's room. She opened the door and found him sprawled out on his bed. "I'll be down in a minute," he muttered curtly.

Fusae placed the clean clothes into the drawers of the worn-out dresser, the one with little bear faces as handles that he'd used since he moved here with his mother.

"The police came here today," Fusae said as she pushed the clothes into the drawers, deliberately looking away from him. "So there's a girl in Fukuoka you were writing to? I'm sure you already heard this, but that girl died."

Fusae turned toward Yuichi for the first time. He was still on the bed, and had only lifted his head. He was expressionless, as if his mind was elsewhere.

"You heard about it, right? What happened to that girl," Fusae started to ask again.

"Yeah, I heard," Yuichi said slowly.

"Did you ever meet her, or did you just write to her?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"If you met her, maybe you should at least go to her funeral?"

"Her funeral?"

"That's right. If you only wrote to her, you don't need to. But it's different if you actually met her...."

"No, I never met her."

Fusae could see that the bottoms of Yuichi's socks were soiled, the dirt tracing the shape of his toes. Yuichi was staring so fixedly at her that Fusae had the feeling someone else was standing behind her.

"I don't know this girl," Fusae continued, "but my gosh, people do some awful things in this world, don't they.... The police said they already know who did it, and that that person is trying to get away and they're searching for him."

"They know who did it?"

"That's what the patrolman told me. He said the man ran off, and they haven't located him yet."

"Are you talking about that college student?" Yuichi asked.

"What college student?"

"Isn't that what they said on TV?"

The certainty with which he said this finally convinced Fusae of one awful fact: He is is mixed up in all this, after all mixed up in all this, after all.

"The police really said that?" Yuichi asked. "That that college student is the murderer?" Fusae nodded. She had no idea how far his relationship with the girl had gone, but it was understandable that he'd feel hatred toward the criminal.

"They'll find him soon. He can't run forever," Fusae said, consoling him.

When Yuichi got up from the bed, his face was flushed. Fusae was sure he must be angry, but at the same time he looked relieved that they had identified the murderer.

"I wanted to ask you, where did you go last Sunday? You went out for a while at night, right?"

"Last Sunday?"

"Did you go to the service garage?"

Yuichi nodded at Fusae's tone.

"The police asked me. They're going around questioning all the girl's friends. Mrs. Okazaki told them you didn't go anywhere, and I didn't mean to lie, but I went along with it. Even if you take your car out for an hour or two, she never counts that as your having actually gone out. Oh, would you like to take a bath before supper?"

As soon as she finished her monologue Fusae left the room, without waiting for a reply. Halfway down the stairs she turned around. With Katsuji in and out of the hospital, she thought, Yuichi was the only one she could rely on. Her eldest daughter wouldn't come to see how her father was, let alone her second daughter.

After coming back down to the first floor Fusae reached into her apron pocket and took out the manila envelope. Inside was a single receipt that said: For purchases: One set of Chinese herbal medicine. 263,500.

Dr. Tsutsumishita, the man who led the health seminars at the community center, had told her, "Come over to my office in town and we can give you a good price on some herbal medicine." Yesterday, half out of curiosity, Fusae decided to stop by on the way home from the hospital. She hadn't planned to buy anything. Traveling back and forth to the hospital had worn her out, and she just thought it might be amusing to hear some more of Dr. Tsutsumishita's funny stories. But when she went there, a rough-looking bunch of young men suddenly surrounded her, intimidating her into signing a contract.

I don't have this kind of money on me, she'd tearfully told them, and the men forced her to go with them to the post office, where she had a savings account. She was so frightened she couldn't ask anyone for help. As they stood watch over her, she withdrew what little savings she had.

CHAPTER 3.

WHO DID SHE HAPPEN TO MEET?.

Mitsuyo Magome was staring out the window of the men's clothing store Wakaba as the rain-swept cars went rushing by. The shop was on the outskirts of Saga City, next to Highway 34, a kind of bypass route around the city. There was usually a lot of traffic on the highway, but all the drivers saw was a monotonous repetition of the same scenery they'd seen a few minutes before.

Mitsuyo was in charge of the men's suit corner on the second floor of Wakaba.

Until about a year before she'd run the casual-wear corner on the first floor, but her manager had decided to move her upstairs. "With casual wear it's better to have the employees be around the same age as the customers," he explained amiably. "That way they have the same sort of tastes." And wasting no time, the next week he reassigned her to the suits corner.

If it had merely been a question of her age, Mitsuyo would have protested, but when it came to "tastes" there wasn't much she could say. She was actually relieved to hear that her fashion sense didn't match what was found in the casual-wear corner of the shop.

The shop sold what might be termed trendyish trendyish jeans and shirts, jeans and shirts, ish ish being the operative element. And there was a great difference between what was trendy and what was being the operative element. And there was a great difference between what was trendy and what was almost almost. For instance, she remembered coming across a shirt in a high-end store in Hakata that had the same design as one they sold at Wakaba, with prints of horses on it. Somehow the horses on the Wakaba knockoff shirt were ever so slightly larger, and that almost undetectable difference of a few millimeters was all it took to make the Wakaba shirts look kitschy.

But she also remembered a junior high school student who bought one of these horse-print shirts, and how happy he was as he carefully put on his yellow helmet and pedaled off on his low-seat bicycle, the precious shirt under one arm. She knew it contradicted the earlier feelings she had when her manager transferred her out of casual wear, but when she saw this junior high school boy pedaling away down along the highway she felt like shouting out to him: That's right-who cares if the horses are a little bigger. Be proud of your shirt! That's right-who cares if the horses are a little bigger. Be proud of your shirt! At that moment, Mitsuyo realized she was almost fond of her hometown. At that moment, Mitsuyo realized she was almost fond of her hometown.

"Miss Magome! How 'bout taking a break?"

Mitsuyo turned and saw the plump face of Kazuko Mizutani, the floor manager, peeking up above the rack of suits. From where Mitsuyo stood by the window, the rows of suits looked like waves rushing in to the shore. On a weekday morning like this they couldn't expect many customers. Occasionally someone would rush in to buy a dark suit for a funeral, but there didn't seem to be any tragedies in the neighborhood today.

"Did you bring your lunch?" Kazuko asked as she weaved her way through the maze of suit racks.

"These days making my lunch is the only thing I enjoy doing," Mitsuyo replied.

When the shop wasn't busy, they took turns going for lunch during the morning. The shop was spacious, but there were only three employees. Quite often they outnumbered the customers.

"I hate this winter rain. I wonder when it's going to let up." Kazuko came up beside her and went over to the window. Her breath clouded a tiny portion as she breathed on the pane. The heat was on in the shop but with no customers the place felt empty and cold.

"Did you ride your bike to work again?"

As Kazuko asked this, Mitsuyo gazed down at the large parking lot below, wet in the rain. They shared the lot with a fast-food place next door, and there were a few cars, but they were all parked close to the other store. Just her one little bike sat next to a fence near Wakaba, as if it were standing up alone to the cold winter downpour.

"If it's still raining when you get off, we'll give you a ride," Kazuko said, patting Mitsuyo's shoulders and then heading off toward the checkout counter.