Chapter 1 Part 4 | Contents | Chapter 2 Part 1
July 6, 1992 (Heisei 4) – Monday
The diary reached June 5 of last year. The iced coffee I’d been sipping bit by bit was now finished. As I ordered a second glass from the manager, Shirakawa exhaled deeply for the first time, when she’d been clearly straining her nerves to not let a single word slip by.
“Shall we take a short break?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
I closed the diary for now.
We took turns going to the washroom, then waited for my coffee to be delivered. But even after it was placed on our table, neither I nor Shirakawa suggested to immediately resume our investigation. I couldn’t speak for Shirakawa, but my eyes and throat were tired, and my mind was clearly in a whirl. The events we’d read up till now were during a time when I was light-headed with joy and excitement. My diary, which didn’t record events that didn’t need to be recorded, would skip forward by two weeks.
While staring at the notes she’d taken down, Shirakawa murmured.
“Looking at it this way, Maja liked jumping to conclusions, huh?”
Rather than jumping to conclusions, I felt that it was more of her being overeager. Weren’t her misunderstandings borne from her rushing to get results from her observations? She probably wanted complete explanations for all the things that piqued her interest, like the one I did for her at the archery range. But two months was too short for that. In more ways than one, Maja had no choice but to rush, despite appearances.
“If you weren’t there, Moriya-kun, she would have probably left with all sorts of weird misunderstandings.”
I could certainly take some credit here, but then again, I would have been useless without Tachiarai.
The sunlight reflecting off the table surface was really bright, so I drew the blinds. The air conditioning was strong.
Shirakawa spoke in a small voice, apparently unsure if she should say it.
“By the way…”
“Hm?”
I waited for her to finish her sentence, but a somewhat self-deprecating smile formed on her face, and she slowly shook her head. Thinking that she was retracting her words, I put the straw in my mouth, but it turned out that her gesture was not directed at me. Emanating with weariness, Shirakawa continued.
“So, we’re sorting out last year’s events like this to try and figure out where Maja went.”
As I looked upward while sipping from the straw, Shirakawa met my gaze. After waiting wordlessly for a moment, Shirakawa finally took the plunge and said her piece all in one go.
“But there’s no guarantee we can do it with only what we’ve heard. Even if we feed all the information we have to the best computer in the world, it might say that our request is impossible. It’s easy to say that we can do anything if we just don’t give up, but we’re not even sure that we have the information necessary to find the answer, right?
“On top of that, even if we did have all the necessary information, as university students we might not even know that it’s the condition for finding Maja.”
It was exactly as she said, and it was in fact so obvious that I wanted to ask, “Why bring it up now?” I took my mouth off the straw.
“Rather than necessary, I think the problem is whether we have enough.”
I muttered, then returned to my coffee. While I hadn’t properly addressed her concerns, Shirakawa didn’t appear irritated, and instead looked down apologetically.
“Sorry. I knew as much from the very beginning, too.”
“……”
“But I’m still afraid. Not afraid that this will end in vain, but afraid that this feeling might never end…”
I was also afraid of that. To begin with, I was never one with nerves of steel. But why bring up this concern now?
I returned the glass to its coaster.
“You want to give up?”
Shirakawa laughed sadly.
“No, not like that. It’s just that I’m hesitant to go forward or pull back.”
“Yeah, I understand that feeling.”
I said, then knocked my diary with my middle finger.
“But all we can do now is believe.”
“We can only believe in the spirits that we’ve met all the conditions. Or in Buddha, for that matter. But can we believe that we have the ability to uncover this? I’m not familiar with Yugoslavia. I’m just Maja’s friend.”
“It’s also fine to believe in that.”
“Why?”
I knew that this was the point where I should show some confidence, so I held up my head with pride.
“I did a little research. You can count on me.”
That confidence was nothing but bravado, but both Shirakawa and I clung to it. “Alright,” she said with a nod, and picked up her pen again. The break was over.
The account continued from June 27.
Chapter 1 Part 4 | Contents | Chapter 2 Part 1
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