Free EDGE by Kôji Suzuki Page A

patterns?”
    “How can I put this? It reminds me of some sort of magic trick. Some sort of grand illusion …”
    “An illusion? Like when a magician makes a person vanish on stage?”
    “Right. I saw the inside of the Fujimuras’ home, after all. It was perfectly clear that the Fujimuras vanished from their home in the blink of an eye.”
    “But in magic shows, there’s always some sort of trick at work.”
    “Yes. I don’t know what it was. After having conducted a thoroughinvestigation, the only conclusion I can draw is that I don’t get it.”
    Hashiba listened intently to Saeko. It was obvious that she knew a great deal about missing persons cases and that her knowledge was grounded in experience.
    “And you don’t specialize in missing persons cases as a writer?” he inquired.
    “Not at all. This is the first one I’ve covered.”
    “You seem unusually well-informed.”
    “I’ve been down this road before. That’s why the chips fell to me to take this on.”
    Hashiba cocked his head, unsure what Saeko meant. But she lowered her lids and ignored his quizzical expression. She felt no desire to discuss the traumatic events of her teenage years. Even now, it took all the control she could muster to keep the lump of sorrow in her chest from driving her out of her senses. Even after eighteen years, the pain was quick to well back up in her heart.
    This time, Hashiba failed to notice the expression on Saeko’s face. “Don’t tell me you plotted to run away as a kid or something?” he joked.
    Saeko couldn’t bring herself to smile—running away from home meant being separated from loved ones. How could she ever contemplate such a thing? It was paramount to deliberately plunging into heartrending loneliness.
    Saeko felt her emotions begin to form a familiar shape. A voice in her head urged her to turn forward, but wave after wave of feeling wrenched her consciousness away from the present. She was no longer in any state to maintain a conversation. It was as if she were sinking into a dark abyss, cut off from the rest of the world. Hashiba’s words traveled straight through her without depositing any meaning in her mind as they drifted past.
    Hashiba was baffled by Saeko’s sudden transformation. Clearly, something he had said had hurt her somehow, and he struggled to get the conversation back on track by informing Saeko of the dates scheduled for filming the project.
    Saeko felt his voice go in one ear and out the other. Only a few words lingered in the pit of her mind.
    “Ten days from now … The film crew … Script … Shigeko Torii …”
    She didn’t respond.
    Here it comes
.
    She felt the present fade away and the past come flooding back. Countless words her father had spoken to her in childhood reverberatedin her mind, their warmth intact, before fading into oblivion. As grief flooded her body, the scenery around her began to fade into obscurity. She wanted to cry out for help, but her body was beyond her control.
    But just as she felt herself about to plummet into nothingness, Saeko found herself pulled back into the present. A feeling of warmth registered on the back of her left hand, and her eyes opened to the sight of Hashiba’s worried face peering into hers. He was clasping her hand.
    “Are you all right?”
    There was no falseness in his look of concern. She felt a gentle glow of reassurance flow into her body through his touch. Her recovery was swift. In the blink of an eye, Saeko came back into her body and recovered the thread of conversation. “Sorry about that. A touch of anemia.”
    Hashiba’s face relaxed slightly and he nodded once, but he made no move to let go of her hand.
    Saeko was mildly astonished that an act by another person had warded off the onset of her affliction.
    6 The library didn’t allow books to be checked out, and visitors were only allowed to bring in notebooks and writing utensils. The only items Saeko needed were a notebook, a ballpoint pen,