fic for darkdropout
For: darkdropout
From: airairo
Title: 38 Seconds
Pairing/Focus: Nino/Enomoto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Rating is for some details about a murder case.
Summary: What appears to be a suicide happens on the 15th floor of Nino's apartment building. It seems like an open and shut case, as she died alone in her locked bedroom. But is it really that simple?
Notes: This is a crossover with Nino and Ohno’s character Enomoto from Kagi no Kakatta Heya. I know it wasn’t written out in your request but a ~little birdie told me that it would be something you’d like so I decided just to go ahead with it! I really hope you’ll enjoy it darkdropout! :) <3 Thank you to G for the cheerleading and handholding and encouragement! <333
The girl, Hashimoto Chihiro, a senior in high school, is found alone in her bedroom. All doors and windows locked. Her mother, Hashimoto Michiko, insists it wasn’t a suicide, but there is an explanation - she had just failed a test at school - that should be considered.
Of course, a mother never wants to believe her daughter could commit suicide. But all the same, it seems like an open and shut case. A girl dies alone in her room. She cuts both wrists with a small blade. She has a reason. She has the means and the time.
But there is something that doesn’t sit right with Aoto. Even though Chihiro failed a test at school it wasn’t something that would affect her graduation. And that morning she’d just found out the result of her university entrance exam. Pass. Not just a pass but a high score that made her mother proud. The blade, too, had some kind of story to tell. No one knew where it came from, although it was an extravagant knife - silver with a complex floral design etched into the handle. An antique, though the lab would have to reveal any further clues as to where it came from and when.
Aoto wonders, at first, if she can solve this on her own. Is it possible that someone came into the room, committed the murder and then left undetected? If so, who? Who had the means and the motive? She spends a whole afternoon going over the case, first getting permission from Serizawa to keep it open for investigation. Although he can’t promise long because the police are pressuring them to close the case.
“You better call that guy,” Serizawa tells her over the phone.
And even though she wanted to give this a go on her own, she knows that’s what has to be done.
---
Nino officially hears about the incident on the news, but he and the other residents already know something is going on when there is a steady flow of strange people coming and going from the Hashimoto apartment.
Rumors start to circulate. The Hashimoto girl killed herself. The whole apartment building is abuzz and once the news report finally appears, no less than five residents turn in notice that they’re moving out. It’s being considered as a possible murder case.
Nino knows, of course, that this isn’t any kind of joke, but he also knows that he can’t live his life worrying. He could be hit by a bus or struck by lightening or have a really unfortunate encounter with some bad fish... He’s not going to move out. But the next few days are more than little curious with all of the police coming in and out of the building.
The morning after the news report, Nino leaves for work at his usual time like he usually does. At 6:45 am he takes the elevator downstairs. Usually he’s by himself or with Miyoko-san, the nice old lady who lives two doors down and sometimes leaves for an early walk, but today he’s joined in the elevator by a little guy with thick, black glasses and a purple sweater.
Suspicious. But most things are these days.
“Good morn--” Nino starts to say, but is quickly interrupted.
“Do you leave every morning at this time?” the guy asks.
“Eh?” Nino says.
“For the investigation.”
“Oh,” Nino says. “Ah. Are you a cop?”
“No,” he says. The guy stands in a weird pose, one arm crossing his chest and the other hand fidgeting near his ear.
Nino looks at him, suspiciously. “Then why should I tell you anything?”
The guy doesn’t seem to have a response for that, so he turns, facing the elevator doors.
“You’re kind of weird,” Nino says. Then the elevator reaches the first floor and the doors open with a ding. “See you,” he says, and isn’t too surprised when the weird guy doesn’t respond.
---
Enomoto spends the day riding the elevator. Up and down up and down. Aoto joins him around midmorning and takes a few trips.
“We got the results back from the lab,” she tells him. “The knife isn’t one that can be bought anywhere in Tokyo and it was traced back to a little antique shop in Nagano prefecture.”
The doors open and two high school boys get on. Enomoto starts rubbing his fingers together a little more quickly.
“What time was the time of death?” he asks.
“Enomoto-san...” Aoto says when the two high school boys quickly whirl around.
They reach the bottom floor but the boys don’t make any move to leave. Aoto holds the door open and Enomoto says a flat “thank you”.
“Ah! Hold the door!” Aoto can hear Serizawa’s voice before she sees him and he rushes into the elevator holding a picture of the murder weapon.
That’s enough for the two boys to take off running.
Aoto sighs.
“Find anything Enomoto-san?” Serizawa asks as the doors close again.
“Fourteen salarymen left between the hours of 5:15 and 5:45 in the morning, all of them except one went to the train station but one took his own car. Between 5:45 and 6:00 am two elderly women left together with shopping bags. At 6:30, two university students came home smelling like beer and at 6:45 a man in his 20‘s rode the elevator down alone. Between 6:45 and 8:00 there were 11 elementary students, 7 junior high school students and 15 high school students who went downstairs and left for one of the local schools. From 8:00 until 10:00 only five people rode the elevator. Two high school boys who you saw just now, Aoto-san, Serizawa-san and myself.”
Serizawa pauses for a moment, like he’s trying to process all of that information all at once. Then pauses another moment like he’s given up. “And?” he asks.
“Now it’s 10:07,” Enomoto says. “What was the time of death?”
“7:20 in the morning,” Aoto says. “The neighbors saw Michiko-san downstairs checking her mailbox just around that time. She came back upstairs to call Chihiro for breakfast, but...”
“Yeah...” Serizawa says. “Well, what do you think Enomoto-san?”
“I think I have to come back to the elevator tomorrow,” he says.
---
On Monday, there was a murder in Nino’s building without him knowing about it. So he just went to work like normal. He rode the elevator downstairs at 6:45 am and went to the office. On Tuesday he did the same, but this time a weird guy rode the elevator with him. And on Wednesday the same weird guy is there again.
“Good morning,” Nino says. This time the guy doesn’t interrupt him. In fact he doesn’t say anything at all.
Just stands there in that weird pose. This time in a green sweater.
“Aren’t you going to say good morning to me?” Nino asks. He’s half joking, but maybe if this guy is going to be the new elevator guy he could at least say something.
“Good morning,” he says, with a blank expression.
“Still weird...” Nino says under his breath.
“Did you notice anyone strange on Monday morning when you rode the elevator at 6:45?” the guy asks.
“I thought you said you weren’t a cop,” Nino says,
“I’m not.”
“Well, tell you what, I’ll give you a hint anyway,” Nino says.
“What’s that?”
“I did notice someone weird,” Nino says.
“Can you describe the person for me?”
“Short, black glasses, purple sweater...” Nino says.
ding
Nino gets out at the bottom floor.
---
Several theories are presented, but what Enomoto wants to explore is the assumption that someone got out of the locked room and that someone was sending a message with the ornamental knife. When it gets back from the lab the results are a little unexpected.
“It’s not a knife,” Enomoto says. It’s inside of a plastic bag, but he looks at it from every angle. “It’s a letter opener.”
“Letter opener?” Aoto asks. She looks closely at the bag he’s holding up and sure enough.
“Nagano prefecture,” Serizawa says. “Letter opener... but what does this have to do with a high school girl in Tokyo?”
Aoto’s phone goes off and it’s the department saying they can keep the investigation open another couple of days. “It’s Chihiro’s mother,” Aoto says. “Her sister Yoko lives in Nagano...”
“How would someone leave that room?” Serizawa asks, turning to Enomoto.
“We have to go to Nagano,” Aoto says.
“And you,” Serizawa says, clasping a hand on Enomoto’s shoulder. “You can stay right here.”
---
When Serizawa says “stay right here” Enomoto assumes he means in Tokyo and not at the apartment building because that would just be weird. But just in case he waits around the apartment building just for a little while. People come and go. The same people Enomoto has seen on the elevator rides. But now they’re all looking at him a little suspiciously. Or very suspiciously in some cases.
After three old ladies walk by and start muttering under their breath about calling the police Enomoto decides to leave.
He spends some time putting together a replica of the room where the murder took place. Somehow it’s a little difficult to concentrate however. There are too many variables. Too many scenarios entering his mind at once. Usually this isn’t such a problem for Enomoto. The more information the better. Like pieces of a puzzle, somehow they all connect.
But Enomoto keeps thinking about that guy, 6:45 am, and that piece doesn’t fit anywhere. There is probably no reason to suspect him. His usual time of leaving the building is before the murder took place. It would be easy enough to verify that he was at work that day, but he has no connection to the girl or her family. Even if there was a way, there is no motive.
So why does this keep coming up in Enomoto’s mind? Why does he keep thinking about that guy in his dark business suit, shoulder bag slung haphazardly so it’s dangling closer to his knees?
He has to be considered as a suspect, Enomoto thinks.
---
Nino doesn’t see the weird guy for a full day. Will he come back? And what was that all about anyway? He said he wasn’t police, but he obviously knew about the murder and was... investigating in some sort of way. Kind of creepy. A stalker, maybe. But he was definitely too weird to be a stalker. A real stalker would probably try to act normal, try to fit in. He was also too cute, Nino thinks, grinning to himself as he steps onto the elevator.
There is no one else this morning. Just Nino by himself at his usual 6:45 am.
It’s hard not to think about that guy. He’s so weird, but he seemed so nice and proper. Not a hair out of place. And it makes Nino want to mess his hair up, maybe flip half of his collar and wrinkle his sweater. He wants to see his glasses, crooked, just wants to dirty him up a little.
The elevator passes the 5th floor and his mind wanders to a place where he’s messing the guy all up with a kiss. Maybe against the wall of this elevator, pushing him up against it and moving his fingers through his hair, pressing their bodies together then pulling back just to see Enomoto there, all nice and disheveled...
The ding of the elevator reaching the first floor startles the fantasy away and Nino nearly stumbles out into the lobby.
---
Enomoto returns to the apartment building. The room where the murder took place is still closed off by police and the investigation will remain open until Aoto and Serizawa return. Aoto sends an email in the morning that they have located the antique shop where the letter opener came from, but the lead ended there as the elderly shop owner didn’t recall the face of the person who bought it. She wonders if Enomoto has any ideas yet and he says he does have one. She trusts him enough not to ask further. Just sends a simple “Good luck.”
Enomoto arrives at 6:40 and rides the elevator up to the 15th floor. That’s where both the Hashimoto apartment is and where the the 6:45 am guy lives. It takes 38 seconds to reach the floor and Enomoto waits outside of the elevator doors for 6:45 am guy to get on.
He comes around the corner at 6:42.
“You’re early,” Enomoto says.
“Didn’t want to keep you waiting,” the guy says.
The doors close.
“Are you sometimes early?” Enomoto asks.
“Not usually,” the guy says. “I’m more likely to be late.”
“Late,” Enomoto repeats. He shifts that information to memory.
“My name is Ninomiya by the way,” the guy, Ninomiya, says. He gives a small bow.
Enomoto returns the gesture. “Enomoto,” he says.
“You can call me Nino,” Nino says.
After 38 seconds they reach the ground floor. The doors open up.
“I come home around 7:30,” Nino says. “Will you be here?”
Evening doesn’t really have anything to do with this case. It took place in the morning anyway, plus the room has already been searched and anything Enomoto could observe in the evening isn’t going to have any bearing on the data he’s already gathered.
But opening a lock is more than just simply turning a key. There are mechanisms in place in the knob, the lock itself, the frame of the door.
“I’ll be here,” he says.
---
Nino knows that Enomoto will show up and he spends the whole day wondering just what it is he plans to do. A part of him wants to just say a quick hello then disappear into his apartment. Because that would be funny. But another part of him wants to invite Enomoto inside.
He’s strange. He acts kind of funny and robotic but then he wears these cute little sweaters (today’s was in lavender, Nino can still recall the shade) that have probably been painstakingly picked out. He’s... meticulous. Nino wants to poke at him just to see how he reacts.
The day crawls by and now Nino is thinking of just not showing up at all. He could go out to the bar after work and come home at midnight. But then, he thinks, Enomoto might stand there by the elevator until then. It’s a funny thought. Enomoto just standing there by himself while the sun goes down and the parking lot lights go up.
He could send someone else in his place just to confuse Enomoto. Or he could bring some of his coworkers home with him (they’d jump at the promise of free drinks, he knows) and put Enomoto in the middle of a group date. He has to bury his face in his hand, thankful the cubicle walls are high because this is really making him laugh.
Then it comes time to leave the office and while a number of amusing scenarios have been running through his mind all day, what really happens is he sees Enomoto standing by the elevator at 7:30 in the evening. Same lavender sweater. And he invites him up and into his room.
---
Enomoto steps inside behind Nino, but instead of closing the door right away he takes a look at the lock. They don’t have very tight security in this building and a lock like this could easily be picked even by an amateur.
He makes a note of that and slips his shoes off in the entrance after closing and securing the door.
“You sure do like looking at things,” Nino says. “Want a drink?”
“Yes,” Enomoto says. He probably shouldn’t accept a drink from a suspect, but the murder weapon was a blade, not poison, so it’s probably safe. Nino goes to the kitchen and brings back a glass of cold tea.
“I won’t serve the poisoned one until later,” Nino says.
Enomoto looks from the cup to Nino then back again. He takes a drink.
“Have a seat?” Nino asks. He gestures to the sofa, then picks up a pillow and fluffs it a little like he’s trying to coax Enomoto into sitting down. Nino smiles when he does.
Enomoto notices three guitars leaning against the wall facing opposite the couch. Two are acoustic, but one is electric and plugged into an amp.
“You play guitar,” Enomoto says.
“Yeah,” Nino replies.
“It’s not just a hobby,” Enomoto says. “Or you’d have just one, but you have three.”
“Observant,” Nino says. He takes a seat on an armchair next to the couch, leaning with his elbows on his knees.
Enomoto knows that Nino works an office job. He can deduce that by the hours he keeps and the fact that he wears a freshly pressed suit every morning. It’s an easy conclusion to reach, but it says a lot about Nino as a person. Maybe he has regrets. Maybe he wanted to pursue a career in music but couldn’t or didn’t and now he’s working all day in a job he doesn’t really want to do. Regret can be a motive. Regret or wanting something you don’t or can’t have...
“The callouses on your fingers too,” Enomoto says.
“Eh?”
“I felt them,” he says. “When you handed me the tea.”
Nino looks down at his fingers, moving them against each other. “Can you play anything?” he asks.
“No,” Enomoto replies. “I have to go now.”
“Will I see you in the morning?”
“Yes,” Enomoto says. “Thank you for the tea.”
---
In the morning, Aoto sends another email. They’ve traced the letter opener to being purchased by Chihiro’s aunt Yoko in Nagano, but they can’t put her into custody because she had an airtight alibi. She was at work, seen by several dozen coworkers, hours away from Tokyo. There is no possibility that she could have committed murder, so the police can’t hold her.
“Where does she work?” Enomoto asks in an email reply.
She’s a publisher, Aoto replies, it’s a small company, but they publish novels that are distributed all over the country. She’s a writer as well and has published several novels under her own publishing company. She’s successful, has a big and beautiful home. But she lives in that big and beautiful home alone now since her husband died in an accident several years before.
“She’s coming with us back to Tokyo,” Aoto writes. “We told her what happened with Chihiro and she’s been a mess ever since. She doesn’t know if she can help but she wants to come to Tokyo to do whatever she can.”
Enomoto files all of this information away in his mind.
---
He’s standing there by the elevator in the morning, just like Nino expected him to be.
“Good morning,” Nino says. And they both step on.
Enomoto doesn’t say anything on the way down, but he’s standing in that pose again. Where he moves his fingers together close to his ear. It looks like he’s lost in thought so Nino doesn’t interrupt him this time. But when they reach the bottom floor he speaks just before he steps out.
“If you come back at 7:30,” Nino says. “I’ll play guitar for you.”
Enomoto looks up at him the split second before doors close and Nino smiles smugly.
---
Enomoto hits the up button and goes back to the 15th floor. The room where the crime took place. It’s still quiet and bleak. Lonely looking because no one has entered the room since yesterday. Enomoto ducks under the police tape and walks around in what might be the footsteps of the killer.
There is a desk in the main room covered in papers and documents. They were deemed as unrelated to the case, but when Enomoto takes a closer look, they’re manuscripts. He only skims over them, but one seems to be a romance, another seem to be a detective story, and another still seems to be a work of science fiction. All are scribbled over with notes, erased and written over so the papers look aged and wrinkled. They all appear unfinished.
If it was Nino, he’d have to finish the job and get back to the elevator in time to leave for work at 6:45 in the morning. Maybe the time of death was innacurate or there was another reason why it was reported as 7:20. Enomoto takes a few tentative steps over the threshold of the doorway. This was where Chihiro was in her room getting ready for school. And this was where her wrists were cut. This was where she was left before the killer escaped.
The door was locked from the inside. The elevator takes 38 seconds to reach the floor. Chihiro died at 7:20. He steps to the corner of the room, then sidles along the wall to the other corner. That’s where his foot snags on something. A bit of carpet that is peeling back, just slightly where the floor meets the wall.
He pulls on it and a small corner is visible. A different floor perhaps. The wood floor that was there before the carpet was laid down.
Wood floor, 38 seconds. Enomoto moves his fingers against each other, searching for the way to open the lock.
The mechanisms slide into place. One, two, three bolts that won’t move the way they need to unless the proper key is inserted into the proper keyhole. The gears move together, locking into place so that it will turn. The doorknob will turn and the door will open with it.
Nagano. 38 seconds. Carpet that peels back and the elevator. The elevator...
It’s almost there. Enomoto can feel it. The one piece that doesn’t fit. Nino. The guy who works at an office from morning until night. Who has three guitars propped against his wall and calloused fingers. Maybe he wanted a different life. Something that someone else had. Maybe she wanted to be a writer. Enomoto thinks, looking over at messy writing desk. But even then, what is the motive? Why does she kill her daughter?
It’s only an idea, but it makes sense... And if this one piece falls into place...
It’s as easy as a turn of the key.
---
Nino doesn’t see Enomoto the next day. Not in the morning and not at night when he comes back from work. It’s disconcerting because... shouldn’t he be there? Shouldn’t he be waiting by the elevator in a little lavender sweater, or maybe a beige or a blue?
Maybe he’s just like this, appearing and then disappearing at will. That seems like it would fit someone like Enomoto somehow.
It’s also the next morning that Nino doesn’t see him and while he’s at work that day he thinks maybe he should just try to forget that he ever came into his life or his mind or into his apartment to drink some tea.
But it’s impossible. The seconds of the day drag on and on and all Nino can think about is that scenario again. The two of them in that elevator, alone. A kiss that leaves Enomoto looking like...
“Hey can you keep it down over there?” one of his coworkers calls over the cubicle wall.
Only then Nino realizes how hard he was banging on the keys.
---
When Enomoto puts the facts together, they fit so fluidly he can’t understand how he could have seen them any other way.
“I did it, okay?” Michiko confesses right there in the entry to the apartment. Enomoto can see the elevator from here and can almost trace every footstep that Michiko took from the doorway and down the hall.
Aoto looks down at her feet. This is tough. But the police put Michiko in handcuffs and she sighs almost in relief.
“I was hoping you’d figure it out,” she says. “I wanted Yoko to know I did it.”
“But is that really the way things should be?” Aoto asks, looking Michiko in the eye.
“She took my life!” Michiko says, handcuffs rattling as she tries to make a gesture and is stopped by the hard metal.
Regret, Enomoto thinks, as the details of the case roll around in his mind.
“How did you know?” Serizawa asks.
“Because she had regrets,” Enomoto replies.
The call came after Enomoto had unlocked case. Michiko wasn’t Chihiro’s real mother. But, the woman in Nagano who she’d always known as her aunt Yoko, was. Michiko took care of her when her sister was too young and irresponsible to take care of a baby. Then when Yoko went on to have a life, free to write and explore her creativity, to write and read and travel, Michiko could hardly take it.
Regret, Enomoto thinks, again.
It wasn’t until Yoko tried to get Chihiro back and tell her who her mother really was that Michiko started devising her plan. Yoko already took her life. And she wasn’t going to also take her child.
She cut Chihiro’s wrists, then locked the door from the inside. Then she slipped under a panel below the carpet that no one knew was there. A panel that wasn’t supposed to be in the building. A mistake that the construction company didn’t want to own up to. A mistake that leads right to the elevator shaft, sealed for years and forgotten, that Michiko found by chance and then took that chance as far as it could go.
She rode the elevator down, checked her mailbox so that her neighbors would see her, then up again.
The letter opener. That was just to be poetic, Enomoto supposes.
“You regret it,” Enomoto says to her,
“I do,” Michiko says.
“You’ll have a lot of time to think about it,” Serizawa says, as the police lead her out the doorway in handcuffs.
Then they close the door to the bedroom one last time.
---
The Hashimoto case is solved and Enomoto settles back into his regular routine. Work at the security company is steady. Enomoto knows he can at least count on that.
But there is one problem that won’t stop tugging at the back of his mind.
Did Nino have anything to do with the case? In the end, he didn’t, but then why was he such an important detail that kept coming up. And why, even now, is Enomoto still thinking about him. Trying to find a place for him in the puzzle somewhere, even though he clearly doesn’t fit.
It’s almost 7:00 now and Enomoto can leave for the day as soon as he finishes testing out the locks he’s changed out for a department store. He can make it to Nino’s apartment building, to the elevator, before Nino gets there.
Nino is related somehow. To something.
---
Since it’s already been days since Nino has seen Enomoto, he knows he should give up on it. But still every time he arrives at the elevator, he expects Enomoto to be there.
He comes home from work late tonight. He stares at the clock for most of the day, but then as soon as it’s quitting time two of his coworkers invite him out for drinks and he doesn’t say no.
It’s about 10:30 when he actually does get back, cheeks hot and slightly buzzed. At first he definitely thinks it’s just a dream. Because Enomoto definitely can’t be standing there in front of the elevator in a pink sweater. If he’s standing there waiting for Nino it meas...
“Have you been standing there for three hours?” Nino asks, tentatively.
“And fifteen minutes,” Enomoto says.
Nino laughs because it’s weird and funny and Enomoto is here and that feels really, really good somehow.
“Do you regret not becoming a musician?” Enomoto asks.
“Eh?”
“Your guitars,” Enomoto says.
“What about them?”
“Do you like your job?”
Nino shrugs. “It’s alright,” he says. “Do you want to come upstairs?”
“Okay,” Enomoto says.
The doors close behind them and maybe this is the last time Nino will ever see this guy. He really doesn’t know. So he has no choice but to do it. Just do it. It’s like the daydream, sort of, but a little different because now it’s real and Enomoto is reacting. When Nino gets close to his space, Enomoto lets him. When he leans in to press their lips together, Enomoto’s glasses press against Nino’s cheek. When he tangles his fingers in Enomoto’s hair a small sound escapes his lips and then Enomoto’s phone goes off and Nino takes a step back just to appreciate his handiwork.
It’s just like he pictured it. Glasses all crooked. Hair looking like he just got out of bed. Perfect, Nino thinks, with a grin.
Enomoto’s phone buzzes noisily in the otherwise quiet elevator, but he keeps watching Nino, blinking.
---
It takes 38 seconds to get up to the 15th floor. As soon as the doors open, Enomoto answers his phone.
“Enomoto-chan~” Serizawa says. He sounds much too friendly for this to be a friendly call.
“Y-yes,” Enomoto says, his voice coming out a little hoarse. He didn’t mean to stumble over his words like that, but he makes a quick recovery.
“There was an interesting file that showed up on my desk and Aoto-san and I were wondering if we could get some advice...”
“I have to go,” Enomoto says to Nino.
“Yeah okay,” Nino says, leaning in to brush some more of Enomoto’s hair in the wrong direction.
“See you in the morning,” Enomoto says.
Is it that simple? Enomoto wonders. Sometimes regret leads to revenge and sometimes it simply leads to a hobby?
“Tomorrow night,” Nino says. “I’ll play guitar for you then.”
Enomoto looks at Nino, curiously. “I’ll be here,” he says.
Enomoto watches him until the elevator doors close and a small smile forms on Nino’s lips. Yes. He definitely needs to keep an eye on this guy.
From: airairo
Title: 38 Seconds
Pairing/Focus: Nino/Enomoto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Rating is for some details about a murder case.
Summary: What appears to be a suicide happens on the 15th floor of Nino's apartment building. It seems like an open and shut case, as she died alone in her locked bedroom. But is it really that simple?
Notes: This is a crossover with Nino and Ohno’s character Enomoto from Kagi no Kakatta Heya. I know it wasn’t written out in your request but a ~little birdie told me that it would be something you’d like so I decided just to go ahead with it! I really hope you’ll enjoy it darkdropout! :) <3 Thank you to G for the cheerleading and handholding and encouragement! <333
The girl, Hashimoto Chihiro, a senior in high school, is found alone in her bedroom. All doors and windows locked. Her mother, Hashimoto Michiko, insists it wasn’t a suicide, but there is an explanation - she had just failed a test at school - that should be considered.
Of course, a mother never wants to believe her daughter could commit suicide. But all the same, it seems like an open and shut case. A girl dies alone in her room. She cuts both wrists with a small blade. She has a reason. She has the means and the time.
But there is something that doesn’t sit right with Aoto. Even though Chihiro failed a test at school it wasn’t something that would affect her graduation. And that morning she’d just found out the result of her university entrance exam. Pass. Not just a pass but a high score that made her mother proud. The blade, too, had some kind of story to tell. No one knew where it came from, although it was an extravagant knife - silver with a complex floral design etched into the handle. An antique, though the lab would have to reveal any further clues as to where it came from and when.
Aoto wonders, at first, if she can solve this on her own. Is it possible that someone came into the room, committed the murder and then left undetected? If so, who? Who had the means and the motive? She spends a whole afternoon going over the case, first getting permission from Serizawa to keep it open for investigation. Although he can’t promise long because the police are pressuring them to close the case.
“You better call that guy,” Serizawa tells her over the phone.
And even though she wanted to give this a go on her own, she knows that’s what has to be done.
---
Nino officially hears about the incident on the news, but he and the other residents already know something is going on when there is a steady flow of strange people coming and going from the Hashimoto apartment.
Rumors start to circulate. The Hashimoto girl killed herself. The whole apartment building is abuzz and once the news report finally appears, no less than five residents turn in notice that they’re moving out. It’s being considered as a possible murder case.
Nino knows, of course, that this isn’t any kind of joke, but he also knows that he can’t live his life worrying. He could be hit by a bus or struck by lightening or have a really unfortunate encounter with some bad fish... He’s not going to move out. But the next few days are more than little curious with all of the police coming in and out of the building.
The morning after the news report, Nino leaves for work at his usual time like he usually does. At 6:45 am he takes the elevator downstairs. Usually he’s by himself or with Miyoko-san, the nice old lady who lives two doors down and sometimes leaves for an early walk, but today he’s joined in the elevator by a little guy with thick, black glasses and a purple sweater.
Suspicious. But most things are these days.
“Good morn--” Nino starts to say, but is quickly interrupted.
“Do you leave every morning at this time?” the guy asks.
“Eh?” Nino says.
“For the investigation.”
“Oh,” Nino says. “Ah. Are you a cop?”
“No,” he says. The guy stands in a weird pose, one arm crossing his chest and the other hand fidgeting near his ear.
Nino looks at him, suspiciously. “Then why should I tell you anything?”
The guy doesn’t seem to have a response for that, so he turns, facing the elevator doors.
“You’re kind of weird,” Nino says. Then the elevator reaches the first floor and the doors open with a ding. “See you,” he says, and isn’t too surprised when the weird guy doesn’t respond.
---
Enomoto spends the day riding the elevator. Up and down up and down. Aoto joins him around midmorning and takes a few trips.
“We got the results back from the lab,” she tells him. “The knife isn’t one that can be bought anywhere in Tokyo and it was traced back to a little antique shop in Nagano prefecture.”
The doors open and two high school boys get on. Enomoto starts rubbing his fingers together a little more quickly.
“What time was the time of death?” he asks.
“Enomoto-san...” Aoto says when the two high school boys quickly whirl around.
They reach the bottom floor but the boys don’t make any move to leave. Aoto holds the door open and Enomoto says a flat “thank you”.
“Ah! Hold the door!” Aoto can hear Serizawa’s voice before she sees him and he rushes into the elevator holding a picture of the murder weapon.
That’s enough for the two boys to take off running.
Aoto sighs.
“Find anything Enomoto-san?” Serizawa asks as the doors close again.
“Fourteen salarymen left between the hours of 5:15 and 5:45 in the morning, all of them except one went to the train station but one took his own car. Between 5:45 and 6:00 am two elderly women left together with shopping bags. At 6:30, two university students came home smelling like beer and at 6:45 a man in his 20‘s rode the elevator down alone. Between 6:45 and 8:00 there were 11 elementary students, 7 junior high school students and 15 high school students who went downstairs and left for one of the local schools. From 8:00 until 10:00 only five people rode the elevator. Two high school boys who you saw just now, Aoto-san, Serizawa-san and myself.”
Serizawa pauses for a moment, like he’s trying to process all of that information all at once. Then pauses another moment like he’s given up. “And?” he asks.
“Now it’s 10:07,” Enomoto says. “What was the time of death?”
“7:20 in the morning,” Aoto says. “The neighbors saw Michiko-san downstairs checking her mailbox just around that time. She came back upstairs to call Chihiro for breakfast, but...”
“Yeah...” Serizawa says. “Well, what do you think Enomoto-san?”
“I think I have to come back to the elevator tomorrow,” he says.
---
On Monday, there was a murder in Nino’s building without him knowing about it. So he just went to work like normal. He rode the elevator downstairs at 6:45 am and went to the office. On Tuesday he did the same, but this time a weird guy rode the elevator with him. And on Wednesday the same weird guy is there again.
“Good morning,” Nino says. This time the guy doesn’t interrupt him. In fact he doesn’t say anything at all.
Just stands there in that weird pose. This time in a green sweater.
“Aren’t you going to say good morning to me?” Nino asks. He’s half joking, but maybe if this guy is going to be the new elevator guy he could at least say something.
“Good morning,” he says, with a blank expression.
“Still weird...” Nino says under his breath.
“Did you notice anyone strange on Monday morning when you rode the elevator at 6:45?” the guy asks.
“I thought you said you weren’t a cop,” Nino says,
“I’m not.”
“Well, tell you what, I’ll give you a hint anyway,” Nino says.
“What’s that?”
“I did notice someone weird,” Nino says.
“Can you describe the person for me?”
“Short, black glasses, purple sweater...” Nino says.
ding
Nino gets out at the bottom floor.
---
Several theories are presented, but what Enomoto wants to explore is the assumption that someone got out of the locked room and that someone was sending a message with the ornamental knife. When it gets back from the lab the results are a little unexpected.
“It’s not a knife,” Enomoto says. It’s inside of a plastic bag, but he looks at it from every angle. “It’s a letter opener.”
“Letter opener?” Aoto asks. She looks closely at the bag he’s holding up and sure enough.
“Nagano prefecture,” Serizawa says. “Letter opener... but what does this have to do with a high school girl in Tokyo?”
Aoto’s phone goes off and it’s the department saying they can keep the investigation open another couple of days. “It’s Chihiro’s mother,” Aoto says. “Her sister Yoko lives in Nagano...”
“How would someone leave that room?” Serizawa asks, turning to Enomoto.
“We have to go to Nagano,” Aoto says.
“And you,” Serizawa says, clasping a hand on Enomoto’s shoulder. “You can stay right here.”
---
When Serizawa says “stay right here” Enomoto assumes he means in Tokyo and not at the apartment building because that would just be weird. But just in case he waits around the apartment building just for a little while. People come and go. The same people Enomoto has seen on the elevator rides. But now they’re all looking at him a little suspiciously. Or very suspiciously in some cases.
After three old ladies walk by and start muttering under their breath about calling the police Enomoto decides to leave.
He spends some time putting together a replica of the room where the murder took place. Somehow it’s a little difficult to concentrate however. There are too many variables. Too many scenarios entering his mind at once. Usually this isn’t such a problem for Enomoto. The more information the better. Like pieces of a puzzle, somehow they all connect.
But Enomoto keeps thinking about that guy, 6:45 am, and that piece doesn’t fit anywhere. There is probably no reason to suspect him. His usual time of leaving the building is before the murder took place. It would be easy enough to verify that he was at work that day, but he has no connection to the girl or her family. Even if there was a way, there is no motive.
So why does this keep coming up in Enomoto’s mind? Why does he keep thinking about that guy in his dark business suit, shoulder bag slung haphazardly so it’s dangling closer to his knees?
He has to be considered as a suspect, Enomoto thinks.
---
Nino doesn’t see the weird guy for a full day. Will he come back? And what was that all about anyway? He said he wasn’t police, but he obviously knew about the murder and was... investigating in some sort of way. Kind of creepy. A stalker, maybe. But he was definitely too weird to be a stalker. A real stalker would probably try to act normal, try to fit in. He was also too cute, Nino thinks, grinning to himself as he steps onto the elevator.
There is no one else this morning. Just Nino by himself at his usual 6:45 am.
It’s hard not to think about that guy. He’s so weird, but he seemed so nice and proper. Not a hair out of place. And it makes Nino want to mess his hair up, maybe flip half of his collar and wrinkle his sweater. He wants to see his glasses, crooked, just wants to dirty him up a little.
The elevator passes the 5th floor and his mind wanders to a place where he’s messing the guy all up with a kiss. Maybe against the wall of this elevator, pushing him up against it and moving his fingers through his hair, pressing their bodies together then pulling back just to see Enomoto there, all nice and disheveled...
The ding of the elevator reaching the first floor startles the fantasy away and Nino nearly stumbles out into the lobby.
---
Enomoto returns to the apartment building. The room where the murder took place is still closed off by police and the investigation will remain open until Aoto and Serizawa return. Aoto sends an email in the morning that they have located the antique shop where the letter opener came from, but the lead ended there as the elderly shop owner didn’t recall the face of the person who bought it. She wonders if Enomoto has any ideas yet and he says he does have one. She trusts him enough not to ask further. Just sends a simple “Good luck.”
Enomoto arrives at 6:40 and rides the elevator up to the 15th floor. That’s where both the Hashimoto apartment is and where the the 6:45 am guy lives. It takes 38 seconds to reach the floor and Enomoto waits outside of the elevator doors for 6:45 am guy to get on.
He comes around the corner at 6:42.
“You’re early,” Enomoto says.
“Didn’t want to keep you waiting,” the guy says.
The doors close.
“Are you sometimes early?” Enomoto asks.
“Not usually,” the guy says. “I’m more likely to be late.”
“Late,” Enomoto repeats. He shifts that information to memory.
“My name is Ninomiya by the way,” the guy, Ninomiya, says. He gives a small bow.
Enomoto returns the gesture. “Enomoto,” he says.
“You can call me Nino,” Nino says.
After 38 seconds they reach the ground floor. The doors open up.
“I come home around 7:30,” Nino says. “Will you be here?”
Evening doesn’t really have anything to do with this case. It took place in the morning anyway, plus the room has already been searched and anything Enomoto could observe in the evening isn’t going to have any bearing on the data he’s already gathered.
But opening a lock is more than just simply turning a key. There are mechanisms in place in the knob, the lock itself, the frame of the door.
“I’ll be here,” he says.
---
Nino knows that Enomoto will show up and he spends the whole day wondering just what it is he plans to do. A part of him wants to just say a quick hello then disappear into his apartment. Because that would be funny. But another part of him wants to invite Enomoto inside.
He’s strange. He acts kind of funny and robotic but then he wears these cute little sweaters (today’s was in lavender, Nino can still recall the shade) that have probably been painstakingly picked out. He’s... meticulous. Nino wants to poke at him just to see how he reacts.
The day crawls by and now Nino is thinking of just not showing up at all. He could go out to the bar after work and come home at midnight. But then, he thinks, Enomoto might stand there by the elevator until then. It’s a funny thought. Enomoto just standing there by himself while the sun goes down and the parking lot lights go up.
He could send someone else in his place just to confuse Enomoto. Or he could bring some of his coworkers home with him (they’d jump at the promise of free drinks, he knows) and put Enomoto in the middle of a group date. He has to bury his face in his hand, thankful the cubicle walls are high because this is really making him laugh.
Then it comes time to leave the office and while a number of amusing scenarios have been running through his mind all day, what really happens is he sees Enomoto standing by the elevator at 7:30 in the evening. Same lavender sweater. And he invites him up and into his room.
---
Enomoto steps inside behind Nino, but instead of closing the door right away he takes a look at the lock. They don’t have very tight security in this building and a lock like this could easily be picked even by an amateur.
He makes a note of that and slips his shoes off in the entrance after closing and securing the door.
“You sure do like looking at things,” Nino says. “Want a drink?”
“Yes,” Enomoto says. He probably shouldn’t accept a drink from a suspect, but the murder weapon was a blade, not poison, so it’s probably safe. Nino goes to the kitchen and brings back a glass of cold tea.
“I won’t serve the poisoned one until later,” Nino says.
Enomoto looks from the cup to Nino then back again. He takes a drink.
“Have a seat?” Nino asks. He gestures to the sofa, then picks up a pillow and fluffs it a little like he’s trying to coax Enomoto into sitting down. Nino smiles when he does.
Enomoto notices three guitars leaning against the wall facing opposite the couch. Two are acoustic, but one is electric and plugged into an amp.
“You play guitar,” Enomoto says.
“Yeah,” Nino replies.
“It’s not just a hobby,” Enomoto says. “Or you’d have just one, but you have three.”
“Observant,” Nino says. He takes a seat on an armchair next to the couch, leaning with his elbows on his knees.
Enomoto knows that Nino works an office job. He can deduce that by the hours he keeps and the fact that he wears a freshly pressed suit every morning. It’s an easy conclusion to reach, but it says a lot about Nino as a person. Maybe he has regrets. Maybe he wanted to pursue a career in music but couldn’t or didn’t and now he’s working all day in a job he doesn’t really want to do. Regret can be a motive. Regret or wanting something you don’t or can’t have...
“The callouses on your fingers too,” Enomoto says.
“Eh?”
“I felt them,” he says. “When you handed me the tea.”
Nino looks down at his fingers, moving them against each other. “Can you play anything?” he asks.
“No,” Enomoto replies. “I have to go now.”
“Will I see you in the morning?”
“Yes,” Enomoto says. “Thank you for the tea.”
---
In the morning, Aoto sends another email. They’ve traced the letter opener to being purchased by Chihiro’s aunt Yoko in Nagano, but they can’t put her into custody because she had an airtight alibi. She was at work, seen by several dozen coworkers, hours away from Tokyo. There is no possibility that she could have committed murder, so the police can’t hold her.
“Where does she work?” Enomoto asks in an email reply.
She’s a publisher, Aoto replies, it’s a small company, but they publish novels that are distributed all over the country. She’s a writer as well and has published several novels under her own publishing company. She’s successful, has a big and beautiful home. But she lives in that big and beautiful home alone now since her husband died in an accident several years before.
“She’s coming with us back to Tokyo,” Aoto writes. “We told her what happened with Chihiro and she’s been a mess ever since. She doesn’t know if she can help but she wants to come to Tokyo to do whatever she can.”
Enomoto files all of this information away in his mind.
---
He’s standing there by the elevator in the morning, just like Nino expected him to be.
“Good morning,” Nino says. And they both step on.
Enomoto doesn’t say anything on the way down, but he’s standing in that pose again. Where he moves his fingers together close to his ear. It looks like he’s lost in thought so Nino doesn’t interrupt him this time. But when they reach the bottom floor he speaks just before he steps out.
“If you come back at 7:30,” Nino says. “I’ll play guitar for you.”
Enomoto looks up at him the split second before doors close and Nino smiles smugly.
---
Enomoto hits the up button and goes back to the 15th floor. The room where the crime took place. It’s still quiet and bleak. Lonely looking because no one has entered the room since yesterday. Enomoto ducks under the police tape and walks around in what might be the footsteps of the killer.
There is a desk in the main room covered in papers and documents. They were deemed as unrelated to the case, but when Enomoto takes a closer look, they’re manuscripts. He only skims over them, but one seems to be a romance, another seem to be a detective story, and another still seems to be a work of science fiction. All are scribbled over with notes, erased and written over so the papers look aged and wrinkled. They all appear unfinished.
If it was Nino, he’d have to finish the job and get back to the elevator in time to leave for work at 6:45 in the morning. Maybe the time of death was innacurate or there was another reason why it was reported as 7:20. Enomoto takes a few tentative steps over the threshold of the doorway. This was where Chihiro was in her room getting ready for school. And this was where her wrists were cut. This was where she was left before the killer escaped.
The door was locked from the inside. The elevator takes 38 seconds to reach the floor. Chihiro died at 7:20. He steps to the corner of the room, then sidles along the wall to the other corner. That’s where his foot snags on something. A bit of carpet that is peeling back, just slightly where the floor meets the wall.
He pulls on it and a small corner is visible. A different floor perhaps. The wood floor that was there before the carpet was laid down.
Wood floor, 38 seconds. Enomoto moves his fingers against each other, searching for the way to open the lock.
The mechanisms slide into place. One, two, three bolts that won’t move the way they need to unless the proper key is inserted into the proper keyhole. The gears move together, locking into place so that it will turn. The doorknob will turn and the door will open with it.
Nagano. 38 seconds. Carpet that peels back and the elevator. The elevator...
It’s almost there. Enomoto can feel it. The one piece that doesn’t fit. Nino. The guy who works at an office from morning until night. Who has three guitars propped against his wall and calloused fingers. Maybe he wanted a different life. Something that someone else had. Maybe she wanted to be a writer. Enomoto thinks, looking over at messy writing desk. But even then, what is the motive? Why does she kill her daughter?
It’s only an idea, but it makes sense... And if this one piece falls into place...
It’s as easy as a turn of the key.
---
Nino doesn’t see Enomoto the next day. Not in the morning and not at night when he comes back from work. It’s disconcerting because... shouldn’t he be there? Shouldn’t he be waiting by the elevator in a little lavender sweater, or maybe a beige or a blue?
Maybe he’s just like this, appearing and then disappearing at will. That seems like it would fit someone like Enomoto somehow.
It’s also the next morning that Nino doesn’t see him and while he’s at work that day he thinks maybe he should just try to forget that he ever came into his life or his mind or into his apartment to drink some tea.
But it’s impossible. The seconds of the day drag on and on and all Nino can think about is that scenario again. The two of them in that elevator, alone. A kiss that leaves Enomoto looking like...
“Hey can you keep it down over there?” one of his coworkers calls over the cubicle wall.
Only then Nino realizes how hard he was banging on the keys.
---
When Enomoto puts the facts together, they fit so fluidly he can’t understand how he could have seen them any other way.
“I did it, okay?” Michiko confesses right there in the entry to the apartment. Enomoto can see the elevator from here and can almost trace every footstep that Michiko took from the doorway and down the hall.
Aoto looks down at her feet. This is tough. But the police put Michiko in handcuffs and she sighs almost in relief.
“I was hoping you’d figure it out,” she says. “I wanted Yoko to know I did it.”
“But is that really the way things should be?” Aoto asks, looking Michiko in the eye.
“She took my life!” Michiko says, handcuffs rattling as she tries to make a gesture and is stopped by the hard metal.
Regret, Enomoto thinks, as the details of the case roll around in his mind.
“How did you know?” Serizawa asks.
“Because she had regrets,” Enomoto replies.
The call came after Enomoto had unlocked case. Michiko wasn’t Chihiro’s real mother. But, the woman in Nagano who she’d always known as her aunt Yoko, was. Michiko took care of her when her sister was too young and irresponsible to take care of a baby. Then when Yoko went on to have a life, free to write and explore her creativity, to write and read and travel, Michiko could hardly take it.
Regret, Enomoto thinks, again.
It wasn’t until Yoko tried to get Chihiro back and tell her who her mother really was that Michiko started devising her plan. Yoko already took her life. And she wasn’t going to also take her child.
She cut Chihiro’s wrists, then locked the door from the inside. Then she slipped under a panel below the carpet that no one knew was there. A panel that wasn’t supposed to be in the building. A mistake that the construction company didn’t want to own up to. A mistake that leads right to the elevator shaft, sealed for years and forgotten, that Michiko found by chance and then took that chance as far as it could go.
She rode the elevator down, checked her mailbox so that her neighbors would see her, then up again.
The letter opener. That was just to be poetic, Enomoto supposes.
“You regret it,” Enomoto says to her,
“I do,” Michiko says.
“You’ll have a lot of time to think about it,” Serizawa says, as the police lead her out the doorway in handcuffs.
Then they close the door to the bedroom one last time.
---
The Hashimoto case is solved and Enomoto settles back into his regular routine. Work at the security company is steady. Enomoto knows he can at least count on that.
But there is one problem that won’t stop tugging at the back of his mind.
Did Nino have anything to do with the case? In the end, he didn’t, but then why was he such an important detail that kept coming up. And why, even now, is Enomoto still thinking about him. Trying to find a place for him in the puzzle somewhere, even though he clearly doesn’t fit.
It’s almost 7:00 now and Enomoto can leave for the day as soon as he finishes testing out the locks he’s changed out for a department store. He can make it to Nino’s apartment building, to the elevator, before Nino gets there.
Nino is related somehow. To something.
---
Since it’s already been days since Nino has seen Enomoto, he knows he should give up on it. But still every time he arrives at the elevator, he expects Enomoto to be there.
He comes home from work late tonight. He stares at the clock for most of the day, but then as soon as it’s quitting time two of his coworkers invite him out for drinks and he doesn’t say no.
It’s about 10:30 when he actually does get back, cheeks hot and slightly buzzed. At first he definitely thinks it’s just a dream. Because Enomoto definitely can’t be standing there in front of the elevator in a pink sweater. If he’s standing there waiting for Nino it meas...
“Have you been standing there for three hours?” Nino asks, tentatively.
“And fifteen minutes,” Enomoto says.
Nino laughs because it’s weird and funny and Enomoto is here and that feels really, really good somehow.
“Do you regret not becoming a musician?” Enomoto asks.
“Eh?”
“Your guitars,” Enomoto says.
“What about them?”
“Do you like your job?”
Nino shrugs. “It’s alright,” he says. “Do you want to come upstairs?”
“Okay,” Enomoto says.
The doors close behind them and maybe this is the last time Nino will ever see this guy. He really doesn’t know. So he has no choice but to do it. Just do it. It’s like the daydream, sort of, but a little different because now it’s real and Enomoto is reacting. When Nino gets close to his space, Enomoto lets him. When he leans in to press their lips together, Enomoto’s glasses press against Nino’s cheek. When he tangles his fingers in Enomoto’s hair a small sound escapes his lips and then Enomoto’s phone goes off and Nino takes a step back just to appreciate his handiwork.
It’s just like he pictured it. Glasses all crooked. Hair looking like he just got out of bed. Perfect, Nino thinks, with a grin.
Enomoto’s phone buzzes noisily in the otherwise quiet elevator, but he keeps watching Nino, blinking.
---
It takes 38 seconds to get up to the 15th floor. As soon as the doors open, Enomoto answers his phone.
“Enomoto-chan~” Serizawa says. He sounds much too friendly for this to be a friendly call.
“Y-yes,” Enomoto says, his voice coming out a little hoarse. He didn’t mean to stumble over his words like that, but he makes a quick recovery.
“There was an interesting file that showed up on my desk and Aoto-san and I were wondering if we could get some advice...”
“I have to go,” Enomoto says to Nino.
“Yeah okay,” Nino says, leaning in to brush some more of Enomoto’s hair in the wrong direction.
“See you in the morning,” Enomoto says.
Is it that simple? Enomoto wonders. Sometimes regret leads to revenge and sometimes it simply leads to a hobby?
“Tomorrow night,” Nino says. “I’ll play guitar for you then.”
Enomoto looks at Nino, curiously. “I’ll be here,” he says.
Enomoto watches him until the elevator doors close and a small smile forms on Nino’s lips. Yes. He definitely needs to keep an eye on this guy.