"Okay, this is the banquet section, can you hear me?

One more speech and then we'll move on to a toast. Are you ready?"

"This is the back end, we're ready!

We can't hear anything from inside, so please give us a cue when the speech is finishing up."

"Ten bottles per table, okay?

Make sure you serve your tables smoothly!"

Young waiters with bowties got bottles of beer ready for a toast.

There are several dozen tables with white table cloths on them in the banquet room.

Approximately eight people are sitting at each table, so there are at least a few hundred people there.

The banquet room is teeming with excitement.

There are many plates with different kinds of food on each table.

A sushi platter, a sashimi platter, a fruit platter...

Also, along the wall, there are cooks ready to serve fresh sashimi.

All the guests appear to be well mannered gentlemen, and obviously, they are notable people from different fields.

The huge and beautiful chandelier above them clearly tells that this hotel holds a status good enough for those famous people.

An elderly gentleman is giving a long speech on the stage before making a toast.

Usually people don't like such long speeches.

Especially if it's before a toast.

But the guests are actually excited with his speech.

Well, maybe "fervor" was a pleasant way to put it.

It was probably more accurate to say their excitement was bizarre.

"Anyway, Japan accepted the demand for unconditional surrender, and the day they did, the Pacific War ended.

In other words, even if they had to take care of further business, the war ended that day according to international law, and from that day on, there was peace!

Therefore, if any troops invaded Japanese land during that peace, that would be an encroachment against Japan!!

No matter what the Soviet Union says, the northern territories are Japanese land, and it should be clear to everyone that they invaded illegally!!"

"""Hear, hear!!"""

"And now they want to settle by returning a mere two islands to us?

Who do they think they're kidding?

Listen. Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir, and Iturup are Japanese territory.

Their total area is equal to an entire prefecture.

What would you think if the Soviets invaded and occupied one of our prefectures?!

Would you settle for just getting half of the prefecture back?

No, you wouldn't! You'd have the entirety returned to you!!

Yet the Soviets are brazenly sitting there claiming vested rights to the land!

This is no joke!!

We must strongly oppose this to the bitter end!

Return all the northern islands!

Our nation must demonstrate unwavering resolve on that point!!"

Thunderous applause filled the banquet room.

All the gentlemen agreed, and expressed that they felt the same way by cheering him on.

In all that hubbub, there were two people standing by the wall who didn't seem to fit in with the rest.

They were wearing sharp-looking suits, and while a little too old to be called young men, were certainly young compared to all the elderly gentlemen in the banquet room.

"...Why do politicians always tend to lean right or nationalist...

...and be so partisan...?"

"That's simple.

What politicians want most are votes.

And votes are cast by their constituents.

But not everyone over 20 actually votes.

Voter turnout is highest amongst those who are retired and have free time, so the elderly interested in politics monopolize the votes."

"...And that means the key to their election is whether or not they can secure the elderly vote."

"The war only happened forty years ago.

In other words, the generation that's interested in voting is the generation from before the war."

"My mother talks about air raids often.

She used to live near Suidobashi, and she lost all of her family in an air raid. She had to walk across the burnt fields all alone..."

"That's right.

Our parents went through the war.

They shed their blood, sweat, and tears, believing it was for the good of the nation.

We lost the war, but they believe the war still brought about change that serves as a foundation for the peace we have today."

"Ah, I hear that a lot.

That if Japan hadn't fought in the war, the Asian countries would still be Western colonies.

There was no way we could have won, but we needed to fight in that war, or something like that."

"In that case, no matter how much they preach pacifism, politicians can't ignore the pre-war generation.

War is bad, and we should never again fight a war.

But that war was necessary.

Unless they say things like that, it's like they're denying the very lives that generation lived."

"I see...

Politicians have to work hard to earn votes, huh?"

"However, it would be one thing if they were truly proclaiming their own beliefs, but...

many of them are simply saying that to get elected.

As long as there are politicians trying to win over what remains of the pre-war generation, this country's post-war era will never end."

"That's how the ghosts of the war will pass their will onto the next generation, and keep things the same for the next millenium.

They'll just keep repeating that the war was justified yet regrettable every time an election takes place.

When will our country ever be freed from that cycle?"

"It's simple.

Young people need to vote.

Don't be fooled by war stories. Vote for those actually pushing policies.

Realistic policies, that is."

"Ah yeah.

There are a few who talk about some pretty unrealistic things, hahahaha.

Ah......

Akasaka-san, isn't that the F table?"

"There she is.

Let's go."

The speech had ended and the elderly gentlemen were giving the man on the stage a standing ovation.

The two men walked through the crowd and approached an old lady in a kimono.

"Yes?

That would be me, but who are you?"

"...I made an appointment with you on the phone yesterday.

I'm Akasaka."

"...Ooooh...!!

Oooooh!

Hic!!

My husband worked so hard for this country...!!

Even so... even so...!"

"Madam, I understand what you're going though."

This wasn't really anything out of the ordinary.

Nobody could remember if there had been a donation or not.

So a handful of politicians were questioned.

As a result, some came up with a scheme to blame a sickly, elderly man who had already retired.

With only a short time to live anyway,

he was the perfect fit for them.

The elderly man had already been sick in bed, and the shock of his friends betraying him had taken away his will to live.

The only thing his wife could do was to simply watch him suffer.

She kept crying while telling the men about her husband's achievements.

"If your husband is, in fact, innocent, a judge will rule accordingly.

Don't worry,

all false accusations will be cleared."

"...I already know that!!

Because he is innocent!!

But he won't live to see the verdict...

He worked so hard for this country... and this is what he gets in return at the end?

How can he rest in peace?"

Akasaka nodded and tried to find the right words to say to her.

His colleague rummaged through a pile of paperwork behind him.

The papers were filled with fine print, and it would be hard for an onlooker to tell exactly what they were.

However, the way he was looking at them made it very clear that they contained something important.

"Akasaka-san, this is amazing.

This records exactly how the money was moved."

Akasaka gave him a signal to remind him that this wasn't the place to be looking through those documents.

"Madam,

there isn't any more paperwork, is there?"

"No.

That was the only thing in his safe.

...Please... use it to get back at those ungrateful bastards...!!

My husband did so much for them, and yet they...!

Ooooh!!"

"...Madam,

you do understand that some things in these documents will implicate him, don't you?"

"Yes, I understand that.

One can't be honest all the time when one is a politician.

I am his wife, after all."

"Thank you for your cooperation.

I will use this to expose the injustice that was done to him."

"Only one thing...

May I ask you just one thing, though?

Could you wait until my husband passes away before making this public?"

The paperwork Akasaka received was something her husband intended to take to the grave with him.

Something that shouldn't exist in this world.

If it went public, her husband's name would be disgraced.

Akasaka nodded.

"I understand.

You have my word."

Vast public funds were moving from Kasumigaseki.

The funds were issued to sub-branches to carry out national policies.

But various ideas over those public funds always came together, and there was never an end to those trying to poke a straw into it to suck it out like a mosquito.

Excess dividends, cordial patronage, profits for organizations that benefited themselves...

...Many financiers approached and adhered to officials and politicians hoping to earn those gains.

And the bureaucrats constantly indulge them.

That's how Japanese corruption works.

These illegal pipes form bypass after bypass in Kasumigaseki, siphoning off public funds for their profit.

To find and destroy such pipes is, of course, in the national interest.

But eliminating illegal expenditures isn't as simple as all that.

There are important people connected to those pipes, and when those people are investigated, a major political scandal takes place.

The reason why the government doesn't investigate such illegal expenditures is not only to protect vested interests, but also because they are conscious of the damage these scandals can cause politically.

To put it more succinctly, the government can't endure the pain of pushing pus out of a wound.

The closer the exposed subject is to the top, the greater the pain faced by the government, and that affects the cabinet approval rating.

...The closer the subject is to the core, the more extensive the damage to the heart.

The secret investigation Akasaka was leading went as close to the heart as it got, and could cause a collapse of the administration from shock.

Akasaka was tipped off that a huge amount of public funding was leaking out through an alumni organization of the seven Imperial Universities, so he and his colleagues had been conducting a secret investigation into the matter for a long time.

His target was tightly-knit, but he learned the wife of one of the organization's senior members bore strong resentment toward them after her husband was made their scapegoat, and he managed to contact her.

And because of that, he had gotten his hands on extremely important information.

"Good work, everyone!

We've almost gathered enough proof.

What Akasaka-kun brought us is particularly shocking.

You must have worked hard to get it. Great work!"

"Thank you."

The small meeting room was filled with boxes that were, in turn, filled with documents. A whiteboard was filled with cramped writing too.

A few of the investigators in the meeting room, which was also filled with smoke, were reading the documents intensely.

Their intimidating manner clearly indicated that they were police officers with a great deal of experience.

Akasaka was one of those men.

It had been a while since Mamoru Akasaka was transferred to this department.

When he worked on the case of the kidnapping of Minister Inukai's grandson, he had been a rookie, but by now he was an experienced investigator.

After a knock on the door, an elderly man entered the room.

Everyone straightened up all at once.

"Sir!

Thank you for stopping by!"

"Thank you!

You don't need to stand. Relax.

I brought a wonderful gift for you all today.

Kanou, you'll get to go to your son's Parents' Day meeting after all."

The meeting room was filled with sighs tinged with exasperation and resignation.

...It certainly wasn't because any of them hated getting to go to Parents' Day.

"I knew it...

I thought it was about time.

...Shit!"

Akasaka's colleague complained.

They had been so close to getting to the root of this issue. They had such strong evidence.

Akasaka, on his part, wasn't too disturbed.

This had happened several times in the past, and considering how hot the documents he obtained were, it was easy enough to predict.

The case was suddenly transferred to another department.

That meant their investigation ended here.

The new department was supposed to continue the investigation to expose injustices, but... that's never happened once before.

It was just an excuse.

The investigation had been terminated because of pressure from above.

"Damn it!!

What about everything we've worked for so far?"

"It was just to see how much it'd hurt to push out the pus.

They realized it would be too painful, so they decided not to treat the wound."

In that sense, their hard work wasn't wasted.

Because of it, the investigation was terminated.

Akasaka understood that, but his colleague wasn't yet mature enough to understand.

Of course, Akasaka's sense of justice was displeased by this.

He felt frustrated with his superiors, who had hesitated to expose the truth.

But he was mature enough to know not to say that out loud.

"We'll organize what we have and hand it over to the other end later.

Anyway, since you haven't had a day off for a long time, you don't have to wait until five PM to leave today.

Please go home and get some rest.

We'll talk about what's left to do tomorrow. Also, don't forget to use up your vacation time too.

Make sure you take a vacation and give a treat to your spouses!

Chief Inspector, please come with me.

That will be all!"

"Yes sir!!"

Though his long, secret investigation left a bad taste in his mouth with its resolution, he managed to earn a holiday until the next incident arrived.

"Well, I guess we'll do as he says.

Everyone, go home and get some rest."

"If you go home that early, you might find out your wife is having an affair, you know!"

"Dumbass, you don't know anything.

Akasaka-san and his wife are madly in love!

He calls her every night from a public phone in a different building."

"I envy you, Akasaka.

My wife is pretty cold.

Tahahaha."

Akasaka smiled bitterly as he gathered the documents in his hands.

One of the pages fell to the floor.

It was a page from a huge pile of papers documenting illegal expenditures.

They exposed the illegal expenditures of the Alphabet Project, the research team for the next generation of hardware in the Defense Agency.

It was entirely possible that this project was created in the first place for the purpose of funneling these illegal expenditures.

When he saw the paper, one thing caught Akasaka's eye.

He picked it up, looked at it,

and tried to remember.

It was a list of people who illegally received public funds.

It was also a list of retirees who were still very much in love with money.

There should have been no connection between those people and Akasaka.

However, there was one thing that caught his attention.

"...............

The Irie

Clinic."

............

As soon as he said it, all sorts of memories resurfaced.

Yes,

the Irie Clinic.

When he was working on the case of Minister Inukai's grandson's abduction, he got into a scuffle with the suspects and became injured. He was taken to the local clinic.

As he recalled, the name of that clinic was the Irie Clinic.

He started to remember one thing after another.

His very first experience with wading into the muck.

It was burnt into his mind like a fresh memory, and he could vividly recall everything that happened.

His daughter was about to be born and he really didn't want to go to Hinamizawa.

He met Ooishi, who taught him a lot of important things.

...He also met a girl in that village.

Her name was... yes,

Rika Furude.

That was it.

How long had it been?

How old was she now?

As he remembered her lovely smile, he also remembered the ominous prediction she made.

She had predicted that if he didn't go back to Tokyo, something terrible would happen.

At the time, he took it as nonsense, but he felt something odd about it, as if it was a divine omen.

Then he had remembered Yukie, who was about to give birth.

He became concerned that something terrible would happen to her.

But he couldn't just leave and go back to Tokyo.

That's why he called her right away.

He told her something would happen.

He told her to be very careful until he returned.

Yukie had laughed and told him he was being paranoid......

but that phone call indeed saved her from a calamity.

Akasaka had found out about that when he visited her after returning to Tokyo.

...A few days after his phone call,

a janitor was seriously injured when he stepped on a loose tile on the stairs on his way to the rooftop.

He also heard afterwards that Yukie had a habit of going up to the roof for a walk every day.

But, because of his phone call, she had stopped doing it.

...If he hadn't called her, she would have been the one to step on the loose tile...

In other words... Rika Furude's prediction had been correct.

There was no proof.

But Akasaka still believed that he was able to save Yukie only because of Rika Furude's prediction.

He'd intended to call and thank her for saving Yukie,

but the busy days that followed put it out of his mind.

...Rika-chan.

...He wondered if she was still doing well, if she was still smiling.

Akasaka remembered the sad prediction she made on that night under the moon,

while still wearing that smile.

That's right.

She'd said something.

She predicted someone would get killed on the night of the festival every year, and that on the fifth year in, she'd be the one to be killed.

That's right, he thought, she did say that.

The fifth year... that's this year!

The festival is...

that's right, it's in June.

If he remembered correctly...

it happens on the last Sunday of the month.

Akasaka looked at the calendar.

It was June 1983.

...Although there was still some time, the death she predicted for herself was coming up.

...The girl who'd predicted Yukie's accident also prophesized a mysterious incident would occur annually for the next five years.

If they'd actually been happening, then it would happen again this year.

Akasaka wondered if Ooishi was still at the Okinomiya PD.

If the annual incident she predicted actually was taking place, he would know.

...In other words, he could confirm if Rika Furude was going to be killed or not with a phone call to Ooishi.

The girl who predicted her own death had muttered that she didn't want to die.

...Muttered?

No.

It was clearly a plea for help.

A young girl who was trapped in the fathomless, bizarre traditions of a village she couldn't escape had sought help from him, an outsider.

She paid his reward in advance,

in the form of foreseeing Yukie's accident.

He had to get to her.

He had to go save her.

A flood of emotions filled him up.

He felt as though he had finally remembered something he was never supposed to forget.

That's right.

...He... had to go to Hinamizawa.

He had to save the girl who asked him for help.

"Hello, Okinomiya PD."

"Hello, is a Kuraudo Ooishi still working in your investigation department?

If he is, may I talk with him, please?"

"Excuse me, may I ask who's calling?"

"Could you tell him it's Akasaka from the police headquarters?"

Ooishi was a very lively person, but he had been old even back then.

Maybe he had already transferred somewhere else, or maybe he'd since retired.

But if he was still there, he'd be happy to hear from Akasaka.

...He sure had a unique laugh.

"Ooishi-san!!

There's a phone call for you.

Someone from the police headquarters in Tokyo."

"Tokyo?

Who could that be?

Hello, this is Ooishi.

...What?

My oh my!

And how have you been?

Na ha ha ha!!"