The specter had been gone five minutes, but the group kept staring at the point at which it had been unblinkingly, as if it were still there. Rationality lost all its meaning when even Akagi conceded, within himself, that there probably were things that couldn’t be explained by any form of logic. Shortly there appeared on the second floor landing two other figures – two very familiar figures.
“Fujima and Hanagata?” said Sendoh incredulously. He was generally very equable, but even he could succumb to his emotions in a situation like this. “What are you two doing up there?”
“Whoa,” said Fujima when he almost slipped and fell off the second floor. “What happened to the staircase? Shouldn’t there have been a staircase here?”
Hanagata, too, seemed bemused.
“Now how do we get down?” It was a problem that had many solutions, but few that didn’t require one to sacrifice one’s limbs.
“What were you doing up there in the first place?” It was Hasegawa. When his captain and vice-captain had mysteriously disappeared he couldn’t help but jump to the worst conclusion: that Fujima had suddenly come down with diarrhea.
“We kind of went ahead of you guys because we wanted to explore the second floor,” said Fujima. “But the marble staircase is gone, and now there’s nothing here either.”
“How do we get down?” Hanagata asked, his voice betraying his desperation.
“Forget about that,” said Kogure, who was still on a high from seeing the specter of the princess. “Did you the see the ghost lady?”
“What ghost lady?”
“A couple of moments ago there was a girl dressed in a kimono. She was standing right there.”
“We didn’t see anyone,” said Fujima. “Did you, Toru?”
“No,” said Hanagata. “And now will someone please hurry up and get us down from here!”
“Okay, okay,” said Dr. Wanatabe. “Don’t panic. Go into the room that’s directly opposite you. Do you see it? There’s a window in it that opens onto the hillside. All you have to do is jump out.”
“Come on, Kenji!” said Hangata in ecstasy as he dragged Fujima along with him by the arm. “Freedom at last!”
“Have you ever seen Hanagata like that before?” asked Uozumi.
Akagi shook his head.
“He’s not a true center.”
Uozumi agreed.
By and by Fujima and Hanagata returned.
“Phew,” said Hanagata, wiping his glasses on his shirt. “A few more minutes and I would have started feeling like a zombie.”
“It wasn’t very pleasant,” agreed Fujima.
“So did you see anything ghostly?” asked Kogure.
Fujima shook his head.
“If there was a girl, she most probably escaped the same way we just did.”
Kogure was disheartened.
“It might interest you to know,” said Dr. Wanatabe, “that that room was the Emperor’s bedroom.”
“Let’s go see!” said Kogure. “We could enter through the window!”
“You can’t,” said Hanagata. “It’s over ten feet above ground.”
“I nearly sprained my ankle,” said Fujima, and he was a person who didn’t like spraining his ankles.
Sakuragi laughed at this point for no reason in particular.
“Why did you do that?” asked Miyagi.
“I just wanted to remind everyone that I’m a genius, and there’s nothing to fear when I’m around.”
“Idiot,” said Rukawa.
“RUKAWA!”
“Idiot.”
“RUKAWA!”
“Idiot.”
“RUKAWA!”
“Kiyota!” said Kiyota.
Both Sakuragi and Rukawa stared at him.
“Er… what?” said Kiyota, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Then he became more self-assured. “I can say my name anytime I want!”
“Idiot,” said both Rukawa and Sakuragi.
Dr. Wanatabe walked up to where the three coaches were standing.
“Recent events,” he said, “have made it inevitable that we terminate this tour prematurely.”
“What!” said Coach Taoka. “What about my money?”
“It will be refunded in part,” said Dr. Wanatabe. “But you see, this palace doesn’t seem to be a very safe place anymore, and the last thing I want is for anyone to get hurt.”
“True,” said Coach Anzai. “There’s no point in anyone getting hurt.”
“Safety first,” echoed Coach Takato.
“Everyone,” said Coach Taoka. “We’re leaving.”
“What!” said Kogure. “But… but… I thought… we were not.”
“Change of plans,” said Coach Taoka. “Apparently the hotel is a better place to be at the moment.”
“Oh well,” said Maki. “It was fun while it lasted.”
“Really?” asked Sendoh, who didn’t think the tour came anywhere close to fun since it began.
“No,” said Maki. “I just wanted to use that expression.”
The group exited the palace, and made its way to the mouth of the cave, where the bus conductor cum ex-tour guide was sitting on a rock, so still that he could have passed for a rock himself.
“Over so quickly?” asked the conductor rising.
“Yes,” said Coach Taoka. He had collected his refund and was happy. “It wasn’t a really great place.”
“Oh?” said the conductor. He mumbled something inaudible that would have sounded much like “People these days…” to anyone who might have heard it. Nobody had. “Very well. Before we begin our journey through the tunnel, I must warn you that the return trip is always more difficult than the first.”
“And why is that?” asked Ayako.
“You will see. Now, we will stand in two lines. One will stick to the left side of the tunnel, and the other to the right. Remember to hold on to the railings. It’s very important.”
“Aye,” said Coach Takato in a manner that didn’t become him. He had a childish predilection for adventure.
The moment Mitsui’s foot made contact with the first step, he nearly slipped and tumbled down the rest.
“Whoa!” he said.
“I told you to be careful,” said the conductor. “The steps slope downward, remember?”
“This is so disorienting,” said Ayako as she climbed down the staircase one small step at a time.
“Ayako…” said Miyagi. He could sense Ayako’s discomfort, but unfortunately, the fact that he was at the back of the line and Ayako in the front made it impossible for him to help her. He was overcome by a feeling of compunction, and was prepared to become emo all over again if it weren’t the fact that he had somehow lost both knives.
Coach Takato was enjoying himself. He felt like a song.
“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go…!” he sang, much to everyone’s chagrin.
“You weren’t exactly born with a singing voice, you know,” said Coach Taoka, who was standing right in front of his rival and hence bore the brunt of his off-key singing.
“Don’t be silly,” said Coach Takato. “You don’t need a singing voice to sing. Anyone can sing if the immortal fire burns within him.”
Coach Taoka rolled his eyes, but it went wasted in the dark.
“Whoa!” said Sendoh as he almost slipped. Luckily Akagi was in front of him. Akagi tended not to yield. Had it been someone like Miyagi the entire line would have collapsed like dominoes.
Akagi grunted in annoyance.
“Careful,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Sendoh pleasantly.
From in front of the line Mitsui laughed.
“What a loser,” he said. “Can’t you see where you’re going?”
Sendoh couldn’t. Nor could anyone else. That was a fact.
“You’re one to talk,” said Jin, who had come to realize that making fun of Mitsui gave him a supreme feeling of superiority. “You were the first to slip.”
“That’s enough,” said Maki. “We’re almost at the end of the staircase.”
“Thank goodness,” said Ayako. “It feels like ages.”
Darkness, they say, is dark. The group in the tunnel would agree with whoever it was who said this. The tunnel seemed even darker than earlier. The phosphorescence of the rocks seemed to have become dim, as if shrinking from something evil.
“This is eerie,” said Kogure cheerfully. “I wonder if it means that the girl is somewhere in the cave. That would be so cool. What would be cooler is if the girl somehow made herself part of our group in the dark.” He laughed loudly.
“Shut up, Kogure,” said Akagi, whose patience was wearing thin. “You’ve lost your sanity, and because of that I’m losing mine.”
“Quit psychoanalyzing me, Akagi,” said Kogure. “Don’t be a spoilsport. Oh, this is so much fun!”
Sendoh stepped on Akagi’s foot.
“Oh, sorry,” he said with a sheepish laugh. “I couldn’t see—”
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” bellowed Akagi so loudly that Sendoh took a step back and bumped into Rukawa.
A solitary bat that had been rudely disturbed from its slumber by Akagi, screeched angrily and left to find a quieter, more human-free place.
“That wasn’t nice, Akagi,” said Kogure. “Not nice at all.”
“Brother,” said Haruko. Her tone held disillusionment. “Apologize to Sendoh.”
“Sorry, Sendoh,” said Akagi with great effort. “I… I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Mitsui sniggered and whispered something to Kiyota, who was the nearest him, and he began sniggering as well.
“What?” snapped Akagi.
“You just said,” said Mitsui through sniggers, “that you weren’t thinking straight.”
Akagi gritted his teeth, making a mental note to himself not to resist any homicidal urges once they were out of the cave.
Once they were out of the cave, Akagi resisted all homicidal urges. He was surprised at himself for being so degenerate as to even consider doing something violent. Ever since he had had his last growth spurt, one of his dreams has been to be known as the “Gentle Giant”. It had become abundantly clear to him, once he had simmered down somewhat and begun to think logically again, that not a soul on the planet would have called him a gentle giant if he had acted upon impulse and ripped Mitsui’s head off today, for that would have qualified as an act of violence, and violent acts were not something that gentle giants engaged in, even when they were bored.
Since Akagi was a logical thinker, he logically looked at every aspect of his character, trying to be as dispassionate as he could in his analysis. Finding nothing in it that even hinted at violent tendencies, Akagi happily concluded that his dream of becoming a gentle giant had been fulfilled. He noted with a certain amount of complacency that his behavior toward Sakuragi was, euphemistically, disciplinary, and not violent. Gentle giants were fond of euphemisms, and society was fond of gentle giants. When a drunkard runs over a pedestrian in his car, it is murder; when a gentle giant runs over a pedestrian in his car while fully in his senses, it is an unfortunate accident for which the pedestrian is to blame.
Akagi glanced amusedly at Uozumi, who had balled his hands into fists and was threatening to reduce Hikoichi to a pile of bones if he didn’t remove a certain paragraph, which, judging the things Uozumi was saying, was a slanderous account about him, from his notebook. Here was a giant that was not gentle, thought Akagi. Uozumi was even more gigantic than Akagi. It is always better to be gentle giant than to be a gigantic but violent giant. And that’s why Akagi was the better center.
Next Akagi glanced at Hanagata. Here was a malnourished giant, he thought, and malnourished giants didn’t get anywhere in life – especially if they were anorexic. He silently offered his sympathies to Hanagata, but that was all he could offer.
“Glad we got out,” said Sendoh, looking at the mouth of the tunnel and shivering. He was greatly relieved. “A few moments more and I would have started to feel like a bat myself.”
Akagi nodded. Here, he thought, was a gentle non-giant. The gentle non-giants of society needed to be protected from the non-gentle non-giants and the non-gentle giants by the gentle giants. Akagi felt remorse for the way he had behaved with Sendoh earlier, and felt obliged to give Sendoh another apology.
“Hey, Sendoh,” he said in a gentle manner that would have made any gentle giant proud. He walked up to Ryonan’s ace and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Uh, okay,” said Sendoh, a little bemused. He had forgiven Akagi much earlier. “Sure.”
Akagi turned to Rukawa.
“You, too, Rukawa,” he said.
Rukawa didn’t know what Akagi was talking about.
“I’m sorry,” went on Akagi. “I wasn’t very nice to you during our practice sessions.”
Rukawa thought the Captain had finally lost it, but forbore to comment.
“Hey, what about me?” said Sakuragi. “How could you forget me? You owe me an apology, Gorilla!”
If Akagi had truly lost it he would have apologized to Sakuragi, too. However, since Akagi hadn’t lost it, he said, “YOU IDIOT! I DON’T OWE YOU ANYTHING!”
“Harsh, isn’t he?” said Kogure to Uozumi, who nodded.
“I don’t yell like that,” said Uozumi.
“Akagi does,” said Kogure. “Most of the time. And that’s not the end of it. Did you know that he calls himself a gentle giant?”
Uozumi blinked a couple of times before he fully registered what Kogure had said.
“A gentle giant? Akagi?” Uozumi laughed long and hard. “Akagi’s no gentle giant. If anyone’s a gentle giant, it’s me.”
“Correction,” said Hanagata, flashing his glasses austerely upon Uozumi as he was wont to do whenever he wanted to show someone who was in charge. “You said you would reduce Hikoichi to a pile of bones and then feed him to your Dobermans, verbatim. That is not something a gentle giant would do. You, Uozumi, are not a gentle giant. If there any gentle giants in this world, you are certainly not one of them, Uozumi.”
“I AM GENTLE!” bellowed Uozumi. “DO YOU WANT PROOF?”
“No thanks,” said Hanagata. “Any more proof, and all of us will probably be dead.”
“Boys,” said Coach Taoka when he sensed that things were beginning to get too heated. “We were supposed to return to the hotel. Now doesn’t that sound nice?” He put on a falsely cheerful tone in a lame attempt at livening things up and dispelling the tension that clung to the air like superglue. “The hotel! I can’t wait to return. There’s lunch and so many other nice things at the hotel. How about that?”
“Always getting down to the point, Taoka,” said Coach Takato, who rather was enjoying the little skirmish among the basketball players. It reminded him of his youth.
“Ho, ho, ho,” said Coach Anzai. It reminded him of his youth, too.
As the group walked up to the bus, something caught Koshino’s eye.
“What’s that in your pocket?” he shot at the conductor.
“Nothing,” said the conductor tersely, hastening to hide whatever it was that had caught Koshino’s eye.
Koshino narrowed his eyes.
“What is it Koshino?” asked Sendoh.
“Nothing,” said Koshino.
The conductor had a flashlight in his pocket – the same flashlight that had fallen in the tunnel and broken. It could have been one like it, but if the conductor had had a second flashlight all along, why did they have to travel in the dark?
Even though Koshino decided not to pursue the matter any further, a feeling of uneasiness lingered throughout the bus ride.
“What’s the matter?” asked Sendoh, who was sitting next to him.
“Nothing,” said Koshino vaguely. He was lost in his thoughts.
“I know something’s wrong,” said Sendoh. He knew when something was wrong someone – especially when it was obvious.
“Fine,” said Koshino, sitting up. He didn’t want to make a big issue out of the thing and spoil everyone’s vacation, but to a person who’s just discovered something big, a confidant is a desideratum. “The conductor – don’t look now – has the same flashlight in his pocket as the one that had fallen inside the cave and shattered.”
“So…?” said Sendoh.
“You don’t get it,” said Koshino impatiently. “It’s completely intact.”
“But if it had shattered, then how can it still be intact?”
“My point exactly.”
“Forget it, Koshino,” said Sendoh. “It’s obviously a different flashlight.”
“I swear on the cell phone that I dropped into the manhole that it’s the same flashlight,” he said agitatedly. “If it weren’t, then why wouldn’t he use it in the tunnel on the return journey? Mitsui nearly fell; you nearly fell. There could have been casualties. So why wouldn’t he use the flashlight?”
Sendoh thought awhile.
“Actually, that’s a good question,” he said. “In fact, it would be a good question even if the flashlight were the same as the one that broke – if it was, as you say, intact.”
Koshino was feeling proud of his exemplary deduction skills.
“When we get back to the hotel,” said Sendoh in a low whisper, assuming a conspiratorial air, “I want you to help me on something.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Let’s just say I’m planning to do some sleuth work.” Sendoh grinned.
“Awesome,” said Koshino, assuming the conspiratorial air himself, returning the grin. “Who else is in on it?”
“No one as of yet. But I’ll talk to a couple of other people. A lot of weird things have been happening of late, and I’m not liking it one bit.”
“Neither am I. You do realize that this could be dangerous, don’t you?”
“Yup.”
It was in the dead of night, when everyone was asleep, that Sendoh chose to arrange a secret meeting with his fellow sleuths in a broom closet. The only source of illumination was Kogure’s flashlight.
“We move now,” said Sendoh.
Kogure grinned widely.
Rukawa yawned. He wasn’t used to doing things in the dead of night. He wasn’t sure why Sendoh had asked him to come in the first place.
“Why did you ask Rukawa to come?” asked Hanagata.
“It’s plain to see,” said Kogure, “that Rukawa’s so pale that he could easily pass for a ghost himself. We could scare off the enemy ghost!”
“Erm, actually,” said Sendoh, “I wanted him to help me get past a tricky spot in one of my Nintendo DS games.”
Rukawa yawned again. Right. He had promised Sendoh something like that. Not promised, exactly, but Sendoh had taken it for a promise.
“Funny,” said Ayako, crossing her arms. “I thought this was going to be a serious thing.”
“It is,” said Sendoh. “But you know – we can’t go on sleuthing forever, so I thought we could do something fun once in a while.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Kogure. “Hey, how about we play hide-and-seek?”
Sendoh thought it was a good idea.
“Sure. It sounds like fun,” said Sendoh. “But first we sleuth.”
“Fujima and Hanagata?” said Sendoh incredulously. He was generally very equable, but even he could succumb to his emotions in a situation like this. “What are you two doing up there?”
“Whoa,” said Fujima when he almost slipped and fell off the second floor. “What happened to the staircase? Shouldn’t there have been a staircase here?”
Hanagata, too, seemed bemused.
“Now how do we get down?” It was a problem that had many solutions, but few that didn’t require one to sacrifice one’s limbs.
“What were you doing up there in the first place?” It was Hasegawa. When his captain and vice-captain had mysteriously disappeared he couldn’t help but jump to the worst conclusion: that Fujima had suddenly come down with diarrhea.
“We kind of went ahead of you guys because we wanted to explore the second floor,” said Fujima. “But the marble staircase is gone, and now there’s nothing here either.”
“How do we get down?” Hanagata asked, his voice betraying his desperation.
“Forget about that,” said Kogure, who was still on a high from seeing the specter of the princess. “Did you the see the ghost lady?”
“What ghost lady?”
“A couple of moments ago there was a girl dressed in a kimono. She was standing right there.”
“We didn’t see anyone,” said Fujima. “Did you, Toru?”
“No,” said Hanagata. “And now will someone please hurry up and get us down from here!”
“Okay, okay,” said Dr. Wanatabe. “Don’t panic. Go into the room that’s directly opposite you. Do you see it? There’s a window in it that opens onto the hillside. All you have to do is jump out.”
“Come on, Kenji!” said Hangata in ecstasy as he dragged Fujima along with him by the arm. “Freedom at last!”
“Have you ever seen Hanagata like that before?” asked Uozumi.
Akagi shook his head.
“He’s not a true center.”
Uozumi agreed.
By and by Fujima and Hanagata returned.
“Phew,” said Hanagata, wiping his glasses on his shirt. “A few more minutes and I would have started feeling like a zombie.”
“It wasn’t very pleasant,” agreed Fujima.
“So did you see anything ghostly?” asked Kogure.
Fujima shook his head.
“If there was a girl, she most probably escaped the same way we just did.”
Kogure was disheartened.
“It might interest you to know,” said Dr. Wanatabe, “that that room was the Emperor’s bedroom.”
“Let’s go see!” said Kogure. “We could enter through the window!”
“You can’t,” said Hanagata. “It’s over ten feet above ground.”
“I nearly sprained my ankle,” said Fujima, and he was a person who didn’t like spraining his ankles.
Sakuragi laughed at this point for no reason in particular.
“Why did you do that?” asked Miyagi.
“I just wanted to remind everyone that I’m a genius, and there’s nothing to fear when I’m around.”
“Idiot,” said Rukawa.
“RUKAWA!”
“Idiot.”
“RUKAWA!”
“Idiot.”
“RUKAWA!”
“Kiyota!” said Kiyota.
Both Sakuragi and Rukawa stared at him.
“Er… what?” said Kiyota, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Then he became more self-assured. “I can say my name anytime I want!”
“Idiot,” said both Rukawa and Sakuragi.
Dr. Wanatabe walked up to where the three coaches were standing.
“Recent events,” he said, “have made it inevitable that we terminate this tour prematurely.”
“What!” said Coach Taoka. “What about my money?”
“It will be refunded in part,” said Dr. Wanatabe. “But you see, this palace doesn’t seem to be a very safe place anymore, and the last thing I want is for anyone to get hurt.”
“True,” said Coach Anzai. “There’s no point in anyone getting hurt.”
“Safety first,” echoed Coach Takato.
“Everyone,” said Coach Taoka. “We’re leaving.”
“What!” said Kogure. “But… but… I thought… we were not.”
“Change of plans,” said Coach Taoka. “Apparently the hotel is a better place to be at the moment.”
“Oh well,” said Maki. “It was fun while it lasted.”
“Really?” asked Sendoh, who didn’t think the tour came anywhere close to fun since it began.
“No,” said Maki. “I just wanted to use that expression.”
The group exited the palace, and made its way to the mouth of the cave, where the bus conductor cum ex-tour guide was sitting on a rock, so still that he could have passed for a rock himself.
“Over so quickly?” asked the conductor rising.
“Yes,” said Coach Taoka. He had collected his refund and was happy. “It wasn’t a really great place.”
“Oh?” said the conductor. He mumbled something inaudible that would have sounded much like “People these days…” to anyone who might have heard it. Nobody had. “Very well. Before we begin our journey through the tunnel, I must warn you that the return trip is always more difficult than the first.”
“And why is that?” asked Ayako.
“You will see. Now, we will stand in two lines. One will stick to the left side of the tunnel, and the other to the right. Remember to hold on to the railings. It’s very important.”
“Aye,” said Coach Takato in a manner that didn’t become him. He had a childish predilection for adventure.
The moment Mitsui’s foot made contact with the first step, he nearly slipped and tumbled down the rest.
“Whoa!” he said.
“I told you to be careful,” said the conductor. “The steps slope downward, remember?”
“This is so disorienting,” said Ayako as she climbed down the staircase one small step at a time.
“Ayako…” said Miyagi. He could sense Ayako’s discomfort, but unfortunately, the fact that he was at the back of the line and Ayako in the front made it impossible for him to help her. He was overcome by a feeling of compunction, and was prepared to become emo all over again if it weren’t the fact that he had somehow lost both knives.
Coach Takato was enjoying himself. He felt like a song.
“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go…!” he sang, much to everyone’s chagrin.
“You weren’t exactly born with a singing voice, you know,” said Coach Taoka, who was standing right in front of his rival and hence bore the brunt of his off-key singing.
“Don’t be silly,” said Coach Takato. “You don’t need a singing voice to sing. Anyone can sing if the immortal fire burns within him.”
Coach Taoka rolled his eyes, but it went wasted in the dark.
“Whoa!” said Sendoh as he almost slipped. Luckily Akagi was in front of him. Akagi tended not to yield. Had it been someone like Miyagi the entire line would have collapsed like dominoes.
Akagi grunted in annoyance.
“Careful,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Sendoh pleasantly.
From in front of the line Mitsui laughed.
“What a loser,” he said. “Can’t you see where you’re going?”
Sendoh couldn’t. Nor could anyone else. That was a fact.
“You’re one to talk,” said Jin, who had come to realize that making fun of Mitsui gave him a supreme feeling of superiority. “You were the first to slip.”
“That’s enough,” said Maki. “We’re almost at the end of the staircase.”
“Thank goodness,” said Ayako. “It feels like ages.”
Darkness, they say, is dark. The group in the tunnel would agree with whoever it was who said this. The tunnel seemed even darker than earlier. The phosphorescence of the rocks seemed to have become dim, as if shrinking from something evil.
“This is eerie,” said Kogure cheerfully. “I wonder if it means that the girl is somewhere in the cave. That would be so cool. What would be cooler is if the girl somehow made herself part of our group in the dark.” He laughed loudly.
“Shut up, Kogure,” said Akagi, whose patience was wearing thin. “You’ve lost your sanity, and because of that I’m losing mine.”
“Quit psychoanalyzing me, Akagi,” said Kogure. “Don’t be a spoilsport. Oh, this is so much fun!”
Sendoh stepped on Akagi’s foot.
“Oh, sorry,” he said with a sheepish laugh. “I couldn’t see—”
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” bellowed Akagi so loudly that Sendoh took a step back and bumped into Rukawa.
A solitary bat that had been rudely disturbed from its slumber by Akagi, screeched angrily and left to find a quieter, more human-free place.
“That wasn’t nice, Akagi,” said Kogure. “Not nice at all.”
“Brother,” said Haruko. Her tone held disillusionment. “Apologize to Sendoh.”
“Sorry, Sendoh,” said Akagi with great effort. “I… I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Mitsui sniggered and whispered something to Kiyota, who was the nearest him, and he began sniggering as well.
“What?” snapped Akagi.
“You just said,” said Mitsui through sniggers, “that you weren’t thinking straight.”
Akagi gritted his teeth, making a mental note to himself not to resist any homicidal urges once they were out of the cave.
Once they were out of the cave, Akagi resisted all homicidal urges. He was surprised at himself for being so degenerate as to even consider doing something violent. Ever since he had had his last growth spurt, one of his dreams has been to be known as the “Gentle Giant”. It had become abundantly clear to him, once he had simmered down somewhat and begun to think logically again, that not a soul on the planet would have called him a gentle giant if he had acted upon impulse and ripped Mitsui’s head off today, for that would have qualified as an act of violence, and violent acts were not something that gentle giants engaged in, even when they were bored.
Since Akagi was a logical thinker, he logically looked at every aspect of his character, trying to be as dispassionate as he could in his analysis. Finding nothing in it that even hinted at violent tendencies, Akagi happily concluded that his dream of becoming a gentle giant had been fulfilled. He noted with a certain amount of complacency that his behavior toward Sakuragi was, euphemistically, disciplinary, and not violent. Gentle giants were fond of euphemisms, and society was fond of gentle giants. When a drunkard runs over a pedestrian in his car, it is murder; when a gentle giant runs over a pedestrian in his car while fully in his senses, it is an unfortunate accident for which the pedestrian is to blame.
Akagi glanced amusedly at Uozumi, who had balled his hands into fists and was threatening to reduce Hikoichi to a pile of bones if he didn’t remove a certain paragraph, which, judging the things Uozumi was saying, was a slanderous account about him, from his notebook. Here was a giant that was not gentle, thought Akagi. Uozumi was even more gigantic than Akagi. It is always better to be gentle giant than to be a gigantic but violent giant. And that’s why Akagi was the better center.
Next Akagi glanced at Hanagata. Here was a malnourished giant, he thought, and malnourished giants didn’t get anywhere in life – especially if they were anorexic. He silently offered his sympathies to Hanagata, but that was all he could offer.
“Glad we got out,” said Sendoh, looking at the mouth of the tunnel and shivering. He was greatly relieved. “A few moments more and I would have started to feel like a bat myself.”
Akagi nodded. Here, he thought, was a gentle non-giant. The gentle non-giants of society needed to be protected from the non-gentle non-giants and the non-gentle giants by the gentle giants. Akagi felt remorse for the way he had behaved with Sendoh earlier, and felt obliged to give Sendoh another apology.
“Hey, Sendoh,” he said in a gentle manner that would have made any gentle giant proud. He walked up to Ryonan’s ace and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Uh, okay,” said Sendoh, a little bemused. He had forgiven Akagi much earlier. “Sure.”
Akagi turned to Rukawa.
“You, too, Rukawa,” he said.
Rukawa didn’t know what Akagi was talking about.
“I’m sorry,” went on Akagi. “I wasn’t very nice to you during our practice sessions.”
Rukawa thought the Captain had finally lost it, but forbore to comment.
“Hey, what about me?” said Sakuragi. “How could you forget me? You owe me an apology, Gorilla!”
If Akagi had truly lost it he would have apologized to Sakuragi, too. However, since Akagi hadn’t lost it, he said, “YOU IDIOT! I DON’T OWE YOU ANYTHING!”
“Harsh, isn’t he?” said Kogure to Uozumi, who nodded.
“I don’t yell like that,” said Uozumi.
“Akagi does,” said Kogure. “Most of the time. And that’s not the end of it. Did you know that he calls himself a gentle giant?”
Uozumi blinked a couple of times before he fully registered what Kogure had said.
“A gentle giant? Akagi?” Uozumi laughed long and hard. “Akagi’s no gentle giant. If anyone’s a gentle giant, it’s me.”
“Correction,” said Hanagata, flashing his glasses austerely upon Uozumi as he was wont to do whenever he wanted to show someone who was in charge. “You said you would reduce Hikoichi to a pile of bones and then feed him to your Dobermans, verbatim. That is not something a gentle giant would do. You, Uozumi, are not a gentle giant. If there any gentle giants in this world, you are certainly not one of them, Uozumi.”
“I AM GENTLE!” bellowed Uozumi. “DO YOU WANT PROOF?”
“No thanks,” said Hanagata. “Any more proof, and all of us will probably be dead.”
“Boys,” said Coach Taoka when he sensed that things were beginning to get too heated. “We were supposed to return to the hotel. Now doesn’t that sound nice?” He put on a falsely cheerful tone in a lame attempt at livening things up and dispelling the tension that clung to the air like superglue. “The hotel! I can’t wait to return. There’s lunch and so many other nice things at the hotel. How about that?”
“Always getting down to the point, Taoka,” said Coach Takato, who rather was enjoying the little skirmish among the basketball players. It reminded him of his youth.
“Ho, ho, ho,” said Coach Anzai. It reminded him of his youth, too.
As the group walked up to the bus, something caught Koshino’s eye.
“What’s that in your pocket?” he shot at the conductor.
“Nothing,” said the conductor tersely, hastening to hide whatever it was that had caught Koshino’s eye.
Koshino narrowed his eyes.
“What is it Koshino?” asked Sendoh.
“Nothing,” said Koshino.
The conductor had a flashlight in his pocket – the same flashlight that had fallen in the tunnel and broken. It could have been one like it, but if the conductor had had a second flashlight all along, why did they have to travel in the dark?
Even though Koshino decided not to pursue the matter any further, a feeling of uneasiness lingered throughout the bus ride.
“What’s the matter?” asked Sendoh, who was sitting next to him.
“Nothing,” said Koshino vaguely. He was lost in his thoughts.
“I know something’s wrong,” said Sendoh. He knew when something was wrong someone – especially when it was obvious.
“Fine,” said Koshino, sitting up. He didn’t want to make a big issue out of the thing and spoil everyone’s vacation, but to a person who’s just discovered something big, a confidant is a desideratum. “The conductor – don’t look now – has the same flashlight in his pocket as the one that had fallen inside the cave and shattered.”
“So…?” said Sendoh.
“You don’t get it,” said Koshino impatiently. “It’s completely intact.”
“But if it had shattered, then how can it still be intact?”
“My point exactly.”
“Forget it, Koshino,” said Sendoh. “It’s obviously a different flashlight.”
“I swear on the cell phone that I dropped into the manhole that it’s the same flashlight,” he said agitatedly. “If it weren’t, then why wouldn’t he use it in the tunnel on the return journey? Mitsui nearly fell; you nearly fell. There could have been casualties. So why wouldn’t he use the flashlight?”
Sendoh thought awhile.
“Actually, that’s a good question,” he said. “In fact, it would be a good question even if the flashlight were the same as the one that broke – if it was, as you say, intact.”
Koshino was feeling proud of his exemplary deduction skills.
“When we get back to the hotel,” said Sendoh in a low whisper, assuming a conspiratorial air, “I want you to help me on something.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Let’s just say I’m planning to do some sleuth work.” Sendoh grinned.
“Awesome,” said Koshino, assuming the conspiratorial air himself, returning the grin. “Who else is in on it?”
“No one as of yet. But I’ll talk to a couple of other people. A lot of weird things have been happening of late, and I’m not liking it one bit.”
“Neither am I. You do realize that this could be dangerous, don’t you?”
“Yup.”
It was in the dead of night, when everyone was asleep, that Sendoh chose to arrange a secret meeting with his fellow sleuths in a broom closet. The only source of illumination was Kogure’s flashlight.
“We move now,” said Sendoh.
Kogure grinned widely.
Rukawa yawned. He wasn’t used to doing things in the dead of night. He wasn’t sure why Sendoh had asked him to come in the first place.
“Why did you ask Rukawa to come?” asked Hanagata.
“It’s plain to see,” said Kogure, “that Rukawa’s so pale that he could easily pass for a ghost himself. We could scare off the enemy ghost!”
“Erm, actually,” said Sendoh, “I wanted him to help me get past a tricky spot in one of my Nintendo DS games.”
Rukawa yawned again. Right. He had promised Sendoh something like that. Not promised, exactly, but Sendoh had taken it for a promise.
“Funny,” said Ayako, crossing her arms. “I thought this was going to be a serious thing.”
“It is,” said Sendoh. “But you know – we can’t go on sleuthing forever, so I thought we could do something fun once in a while.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Kogure. “Hey, how about we play hide-and-seek?”
Sendoh thought it was a good idea.
“Sure. It sounds like fun,” said Sendoh. “But first we sleuth.”
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