"Shouldn't we let somebody know?" Sari said.

"But who would we tell?" Mako asked forlornly.

"How about the section chief? Oh, Mako, d'you know Yoshino's parents' phone number?"

"That's right! Maybe she went back home." Mako nodded, relieved, and pulled her cell phone out of her bag.

As Mako made the call, Sari looked back and forth between her and the broadcast from Mitsuse Pass.

"Hello, my name is Mako Adachi. I was wondering if Yoshino is there?" The phone had apparently rung for some time before anyone answered. Mako spoke hurriedly, glancing in Sari's direction.

"Ah, no-thank you you. It's so nice to talk with you.... Uh, no.... No.... I see.... No...."

Mako held the phone away from her, cupped her hand over it, and said to Sari, "What do you think? Is it okay to tell them that Yoshino didn't come back last night?"

"Tell them we're calling 'cause Yoshino said something about going back to her parents' home this afternoon. Tell them she may very well be coming back here soon."

Sari listened as Mako repeated her lie. Sari began to feel that all their fears were groundless.

Mako hung up and said, quite casually, "They just said to tell her to call them when she gets back."

Sari and Mako sat for a while, watching the continuing TV coverage, going round and round about whether they should tell their general manager or even the police, or just wait a while longer to see if Yoshino came back.

Then Suzuka returned to the office.

"Any luck getting Keigo's phone number?" Sari called out to her.

With one eye on the TV, Suzuka ran over.

"He seems to have disappeared."

Sari and Mako exchanged a look. "Disappeared?" "Disappeared?" they chorused. they chorused.

"Yeah. I didn't hear this from him directly, naturally, but from a friend of his friend. The last couple of days nobody can get in touch with him. Maybe disappeared disappeared isn't the right word. Seems like he might have just gone on a trip by himself somewhere." isn't the right word. Seems like he might have just gone on a trip by himself somewhere."

"Wait a sec!" Mako said loudly.

"He was supposed to meet up with Yoshino at the park last night!" Sari continued.

"You still haven't got in touch with her?" Suzuka said, turning to the TV.

"No, not yet," Sari and Mako said, both shaking their heads.

"Don't you think you should tell somebody? The whole thing about Keigo disappearing might just be a rumor, and maybe he actually did hook up with Yoshino."

Suzuka was suddenly acting very friendly, and Sari felt that she was being forced into doing something she'd rather not.

"The police?" Sari said, tilting her head.

Suzuka replied, "Telling her general manager's enough right now, don't you think? Not by phone, but just go there and tell him directly. I'll go with you."

Sari and Mako felt as if Suzuka was leading them by the hand as, together, they exited the building.

It was only a few minutes by taxi to the Tenjin branch where Yoshino worked. The TV was on there, too, and several staff members were watching events unfold as they ate their lunches.

Nervously, all three of them made their way to see Goro Terauchi, the general manager of the Tenjin branch.

Mr. Terauchi had been napping at his desk. Sari briefly explained their concerns. She emphasized that it might all prove groundless. But when she mentioned how much the police sketch of the victim resembled Yoshino, Terauchi turned pale.

Terauchi was finishing his fourth year as general manager. He'd been hired by the company twenty years ago, and finally, after working furiously for years, had achieved his present position, supervising a fifty-six-person branch, the second largest in Fukuoka.

He had a bad leg, which he dragged a little, but it didn't interfere with his ability to do his job. His pace when he walked around the office was slow, but he was sharp at sniffing out potential new customers. In his younger days it was rumored that he flirted with older female employees near retirement, in order to get them to pass along their clients to him, which is what led to his eventually getting promoted.

After he was promoted to general manager, Terauchi decided to start fresh. He no longer had to struggle anymore, calculating how much commission he'd earn for each client. Instead, he decided he would be a good father figure to the young female employees who were working their hardest to earn money, women younger than his own daughter.

And in fact he always was willing to lend an ear to whatever the girls had to say. The more they talked with him, he thought, the stronger their bonds would be. He wanted to hear personal details but the girls didn't usually seek advice about life and love. Instead they wanted to talk about the kind of professional topics he had, over the past twenty years, experienced and grown sick of: "One of the other girls is coming on to her clients," one would say. "My relatives are starting to hate me for trying to sign them up," another would complain.

Still, Terauchi was proud of the fact that in his years as head of the Tenjin branch their sales had grown dramatically. The previous manager had been somewhat hysterical and many new employees had quit in protest before they'd even finished their probationary period. In the world of insurance, where the best way to get new clients is to take good care of the employees, the job of the manager is less to soothe the clients than to keep up the morale of the sales force.

So when Sari and Mako told him they were worried about Yoshino, his first reaction was mild anger. He was worried that it might negatively affect the Tenjin branch's reputation, that it would all lead to a fight over who would take over Yoshino's clients. He thought Sari and the others lacked a sense of urgency over what could be something very serious.

First, Terauchi phoned the Heisei Insurance Fukuoka branch. The receptionist didn't seem to grasp the situation and told him roughly that she'd transfer him to the chief of general affairs.

When the chief heard what Terauchi had to say, he replied timidly, "I ... I think you'd ... better call the police." It was clear that he was hoping Terauchi would handle the whole thing.

As Terauchi hung up, he looked up at the three girls standing in front of him.

"I'm going to call the police now," he said.

"Huh? Oh-I see," they said, nodding.

"You said you haven't been able to contact her since last night, correct? And the description of her clothes on TV matches?" Terauchi asked, his tone sharp. The three girls, huddled closer together, nodded fearfully.

Terauchi dialed 911. After speaking with several detectives, he called a taxi. Sari and the others wanted to come with him, but thinking there was an outside chance he might have to identify the body, Terauchi told them he'd go alone.

When he arrived at the precinct and identified himself at the front desk, he was immediately escorted to the fifth-floor investigation headquarters. The main detective he'd spoken to on the phone appeared, and Terauchi proffered his company ID and business card. He was immediately hustled down to the morgue. As they walked, the detective asked him details about the location of the Tenjin branch and the Fairyland Hakata apartment building.

The experience was just as he'd seen on TV and in the movies. Incense was burning in the room, and the detective ostentatiously drew back the thin green sheet covering the body.

There was no doubt about it. The body lying there was Yoshino Ishibashi.

"It's definitely her," Terauchi gulped. He was surprised at how naturally this line came out.

"She was strangled," the detective said, and Terauchi's gaze fell on Yoshino's white neck. It was ringed with a purplish bruise.

Terauchi remembered how Yoshino looked when she smiled, how she used to rush into the office barely in time for the mandatory morning meeting. It surprised him that he could remember so clearly the face of one employee out of the fifty-odd people who worked for him.

As Terauchi was identifying the body, thirty kilometers away in Kurume, Yoshino's father, Yoshio, was in his house after a late lunch, lying down, using his zabuton seat cushion as a pillow.

From where he lay he could see into the darkened barbershop, closed as always on Mondays. With the lights out inside, the sunlight shone through the window at the front of the shop, projecting the name Ishibashi Barbershop Ishibashi Barbershop, painted in white on the window, as a shadow on the floor.

Yoshio had taken over the business from his father around the time that Yoshino was born. Up until then, he'd mainly hung out with his delinquent friends from the band, living off the money he'd pestered his parents to give him, but at his wife's urging he started training at the barbershop. The year Yoshino started elementary school, his father died of a cerebral hemorrhage. His mother had passed away ten years before, so Yoshio, his wife, and their daughter moved from their apartment into the vacant family house. Yoshio sometimes wondered how his life would have worked out if Satoko hadn't become pregnant so early, but it was just a random thought. He couldn't picture any other life. But truthfully Yoshio had always hated his father's profession. He'd taken over the family business reluctantly. It was a profession he took on for his daughter, but Yoshio had started to sense the instinctive dislike Yoshino had for her father's work.

As Yoshio gazed vacantly around the dark shop, Satoko called out to him from the kitchen. "You think she's coming back?" Apparently one of Yoshino's colleagues had called in the afternoon saying she was.

"I bet she'll ask us to introduce her to somebody she can sell insurance to...."

Yoshio had nothing else to do today, so he thought he'd ride his bike over to the station to meet her, though he knew she wouldn't be happy about it.

Yoshio was half dozing when the call came from the police. As if in a dream he heard Satoko say, "Yes. Yes. That's right. Yes, that's correct." She called out, "Honey!" and he snapped awake. Her voice sounded far away, but echoed nearby in the tiny house.

He rolled over and saw Satoko looming over him as if she were going to trample him, her hand cupped over the phone.

"Honey ... I, I don't know what it's all about.... It's the police...."

Yoshio sat up. Satoko's hand was shaking as she held the cordless phone.

"What do they want?" Yoshio asked, leaning away from the phone.

"You ask them.... I don't know what they're talking about...." ask them.... I don't know what they're talking about...."

Satoko's eyes were out of focus, her face drained of blood.

Yoshio grabbed the phone from her and shouted an angry hello.

It was a woman's voice on the phone-slightly unprofessional, small and hard to hear. The cordless phone was always full of static and Yoshio couldn't get used to it. "That's normal. It's just the signal," Yoshino had explained, and Yoshio had been putting up with it for nearly a year. Today the static was a loud buzzing in his ears.

Yoshino had been involved in an accident, the woman explained, so they would need to please come to the station as soon as possible for identification. "Eh? What'd you say?" Yoshio said, feeling as if he were talking more to the static than to a person.

When he hung up, Satoko was sitting beside him. She looked less astonished than resigned.

"Come on, let's go!" Yoshio said, tugging at her hand. "No way a company director's going to remember the face of every employee!"

Satoko seemed paralyzed and Yoshio yanked her to her feet. After she'd given birth to Yoshino, Satoko had put on weight, and her rear end slid heavily across the worn-out tatami.

"But Yoshino's coming back today! She's coming home!"

The call from Terauchi to the Tenjin branch came in after three p.m. Sari, Mako, and other employees were gathered around the TV in the reception area, quickly switching from one channel to the next to find coverage of the incident. Sari answered the phone.

Mako had a premonition: "It's true. Yoshino's been murdered...."

Sari was listening intently. Suddenly she screamed out, "What?" "What?" Several others turned to look at Mako. Several others turned to look at Mako.

"See? I knew it...." Mako said weakly.

As soon as Sari put down the phone, she began to talk as if she'd been jolted by electricity. There was too much she needed to say and the words tumbled out all at once.

"It was Yoshino, she was strangled, Mr. Terauchi wants us to wait here until he gets back." Sari's body began trembling uncontrollably.

"Are you okay?" someone next to Mako asked, holding her, but Mako couldn't bring herself to look up to see who it was. The office, usually nearly empty at this time of day, seemed claustrophobic. She tried to breathe, but it seemed as if someone had sucked away all the air, and no matter how she tried to take in a breath, the air wouldn't go inside. Sari was standing there, still blabbing away, but Mako couldn't hear her. People's mouths were moving but it was as if they were all drowning, their mouths just moving. Please, someone cry Please, someone cry, she prayed. If somebody cried she knew she could, too. And then she could breathe again.

"Someone's coming here from the police! They want to find out exactly when and where we left her last night!" Sari shouted.

Finally, Mako could react. She nodded, and stood up from her chair without really knowing what she was doing. Her body was still shaking and the floor looked miles away.

From the outset Mako had always sensed a rivalry between Yoshino and Sari. They'd never quarreled openly or anything, but they had used Mako as a sounding board to bad-mouth each other. Yoshino bragged to Mako about dating men she'd met at online dating sites, but always cautioned her to keep it a secret from Sari. Mako didn't see why meeting guys and having dinner with them was something she had to hide, but Yoshino seemed to find it embarrassing as well as fun, and Mako didn't want Sari to use this against Yoshino.

When she first moved into the Fairyland Hakata apartments, Sari had said to Yoshino, half joking, "You're from Kurume, right? And your last name is Ishibashi? Hey, maybe you're related to the president of Bridgestone?" By then Mako already knew that Yoshino's family ran a barbershop, so she was sure Yoshino would deny this, but instead she nonchalantly replied, "Hm? Me? We're sort of distant relatives."

Sari of course nearly shrieked when she heard this. Surprised at her reaction, Yoshino hurriedly added, "But, we're just ... very, very distant relatives."

When Sari had left, Yoshino told Mako, "Don't tell anybody my family runs a barbershop." Mako had been thinking of calling her on this lie, but Yoshino looked so fierce and Mako was afraid of losing a new friend, so she nodded weakly.

Mako couldn't figure out why Yoshino would lie like that, especially when the three of them had just become friends.

Mako wasn't sure of the exact number, but Yoshino always seemed to be corresponding with four or five guys she'd met online. Sometimes, when Sari wasn't with them, she'd let Mako see the messages from the men.

"Isn't this sick?" she'd say, showing Mako a message that said, Thanks for the photo! You're so cute! I spent a whole hour just looking at your picture! Thanks for the photo! You're so cute! I spent a whole hour just looking at your picture! Most of the messages were, indeed, fairly repulsive. Most of the messages were, indeed, fairly repulsive.

Of the men Yoshino met online she'd actually met three-no, four-of them.

Whenever Yoshino met one of these men, she always told Mako all about it. Not what they did for a living or what they looked like, but things like how one man took her to a famous teppanyaki teppanyaki place and bought her a fifteen-thousand-yen tenderloin steak. Or comments on the guy's possessions, how one drove a BMW. place and bought her a fifteen-thousand-yen tenderloin steak. Or comments on the guy's possessions, how one drove a BMW.

Mako listened without comment whenever Yoshino reported back on these dates. She never once felt envious. She knew that having dinner with a man she'd just met would make her too nervous, and she much preferred spending an evening alone in her room reading. But she never had a problem listening to Yoshino talk about her exploits. There was a vicarious pleasure in hearing about Yoshino and the kind of life Mako would never know.

"Sari said the person Yoshino went to see last night wasn't Keigo Masuo, but I think it had to have been." Mako was in the lobby of the Fairyland Hakata, answering questions from a police officer. "I heard from Suzuka Nakamachi that for the last couple of days no one knew where Keigo was. But if they wanted to get in touch with each other, they could have. So if she really wanted to see him last night they could have hooked up...."

Mako felt regretful. The young detective had urged her to tell him anything she might know about Yoshino, so she'd told him how Yoshino and Sari didn't get along, and how Yoshino had met men online. Mako felt she'd given the detective a bad impression of Yoshino.

Mako and the young detective weren't alone in the apartment-building lobby. Every so often a uniformed policeman would come over and report to the detective. Still, it was just the two of them facing each other across the lace-covered table, and talking with a police detective was, of course, a first for her. The young detective had a small scar from stitches next to his right eyebrow. His muscular upper arms strained the fabric of his suit.

"I'd like you to tell me more about these online friends of Ms. Ishibashi's."

At the beginning of last month, a Sunday, a cold rain had fallen since morning. It was just a light drizzle, but to Mako, looking out from the third-floor veranda of her apartment, it seemed as if the rain had erased all the sounds of the city.

Yoshino had stopped by to see her and stood looking out at the same scene. She turned to Mako and asked her to come with her to the convenience store. Whenever she did this, Mako always thought, The convenience store? Can't you manage that on your own? The convenience store? Can't you manage that on your own? But she never said anything, figuring it would cause a rift between them, and she never lied about having something else to do. After all, it wasn't that big a deal. But she never said anything, figuring it would cause a rift between them, and she never lied about having something else to do. After all, it wasn't that big a deal.

They were walking, holding umbrellas, to the convenience store in front of Yoshizuka station, avoiding the rain puddles, when Yoshino said, "Take a look at this," and held out her cell phone.

On the screen was a picture of a young man. "We started e-mailing each other recently," Yoshino explained.

Mako looked at the phone, which had a few raindrops on the LCD. The photo wasn't that good, but she could see the sort of rough look of the man, his dark skin, his nicely shaped nose, the lonely look in his eyes as he gazed at the camera. He was good-looking enough that she couldn't take her eyes off him.

"So what d'you think?" Yoshino asked.