Vampire and His Pleasant Companions: Volume 6 - Part 8

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The next day, avoiding his usual daytime bat-hours, Al took the train to Shonan. Hatono had mapped out the route and sent it to his phone. He still had some of the money he’d earned from part-time work back in America, but not much. It would’ve been faster—and cheaper—to fly as a bat, but there was the matter of clothes, so the train it was.

Hatono and Kanezaki had offered to go with him, but they both had part-time shifts at the embalming center, even on Sundays. Since Akira’s absence, the workload on Koyanagi had increased dramatically, and now even weekends were needed just to keep up. With special permission from school, both interns had taken on weekend work to help out.

"The pay is definitely tempting," Hatono had sighed, "but honestly, I’d much rather have my weekends back. I hope Takatsuka-san’s innocence gets proven soon so he can return."

Getting off at a station that offered a glimpse of the sea, Al followed the map on his phone. It had been raining for days, but today the sky was unusually clear, the sun relentless. The muggy heat wrapped around him like a sauna. Still, thanks to the number of tourists—some clearly foreigners—his presence didn’t stand out too much.

Yonekura’s ex-girlfriend Ayane’s apartment was about a ten-minute walk from the station and easy to find. Al paced slowly back and forth in front of the building. Kanezaki had guessed it was Room 203 on the second floor, but since that wasn’t confirmed, it was hard to justify barging in.

On Instagram, Ayane showed her face. She had a small face and large eyes—undeniably a beautiful girl. In every photo, she wore elegant dresses, her curvy figure giving her a very alluring appearance.

He figured he could just visit the place where she worked, and that way he’d be sure to meet her—but today was Sunday, and the club was closed. Unable to wait even a day, he had come to her apartment instead.

Wandering around in front of the apartment for just a few minutes wasn’t going to make her magically appear. Since it was shaded by a large tree and pleasantly cool, Al stood by the wall of a nearby house that had a clear view of the building. He had no idea how long he’d have to wait, but he was prepared for a long battle—several hours, if need be.

He was quietly staring at the apartment when an elderly man with pure white hair came out of the house. The man wore a short-sleeved polo shirt and gray slacks. When their eyes met, the old man called out, "Hello," and Al returned the greeting with a quiet "Hello."

"Do you understand Japanese?"

"Mostly I understand."

The old man visibly relaxed, the corners of his mouth softening. "What are you doing here?" he asked. Al wasn’t sure how to explain this situation. In the first place, why had the old man even spoken to him?

"Maybe… I look like suspicious person?"

"Suspicious? Well… maybe a little. A young guy standing around in front of someone’s home for a while—it makes people curious."

When he put it that way, Al really did seem like a shady character.

"I’m sorry."

"Oh, no, you don’t need to apologize. But can I ask why you’re standing here?"

Unable to come up with a clever excuse, Al just said, "I don’t know where road is."

"Are you… lost?"

"I am lost person."

He decided to go with that.

"Where were you trying to go?"

He showed the man his phone, and the old man’s voice brightened. "Ah, if that’s the place, it’s that apartment right over there."

"You were very close already—glad to help. I’ll show you."

Unable to turn him down in this situation, Al let the old man lead him back to the apartment.

"Here you go," the man said, standing out front.

"Thank you," Al said, to which the old man responded, "Don’t mention it," and walked off. When the old man glanced back, Al made a show of climbing the stairs—first to the third-floor corridor, then the second, then the first. Once he confirmed the old man was out of sight, he exited the apartment building.

He wanted to keep watch, but loitering near someone’s home would only invite suspicion. He needed a public place, like a park. While walking around, he found a nearby convenience store. There was a small eat-in area beside the aisle, and from the window, he could clearly see the apartment’s outdoor corridors and stairs. If he pretended to drink coffee there, he wouldn’t seem out of place no matter how long he stayed.

The convenience store occupied the ground floor of a four-story building with blue tiles, giving it a slightly old-fashioned atmosphere. Though he couldn’t drink it, he bought a drip coffee as a sort of “rent” for the space, then sat down in the eat-in corner by the window and stared at the apartment building beyond.

He had come all this way simply because he desperately wanted to meet Ayane in person. But now that he was here, he realized he hadn’t thought through how he’d even talk to her. They’d never met before. And while he could understand and speak Japanese to a degree, he still made a lot of mistakes. Picking up on subtle nuances was especially difficult.

Let’s just set today’s goal as “finding out which room Ayane lives in,” Al thought, lowering the bar to something more manageable. He’d been sitting for about an hour when, just as he began shifting uncomfortably on the hard chair from the ache in his hips, he saw a door open. A woman stepped out of what seemed to be Room 203 on the second floor. She was far away, but she looked young. That might be her—Ayane, the ex.

If she came closer, he could get a better look at her face.

The woman descended the stairs, and a small child followed behind. She walked quickly, and the child kept lagging farther and farther behind. When they reached a crosswalk, she waited for the child to catch up and took his hand, but as soon as they crossed, she let go with a flick. The child wandered aimlessly from side to side, and just watching made Al nervous.

The woman kept walking toward the store. Even when he saw her face, Al couldn’t be sure whether she was Ayane or not. The Ayane from Instagram was always heavily made-up, but the woman approaching now seemed mostly barefaced, plain-looking. Still, her body shape was very similar. Al felt more and more convinced she was the one.

He had planned to wait for her to pass by the convenience store and then follow her out, but against all expectations, she walked into the store with the child in tow. Al inhaled sharply and awkwardly, taken off guard.

The woman and child disappeared into the back of the store. Al stood up with his untouched coffee and made a slow loop around the aisles. She was standing at the bento section, staring at the boxed meals in silence.

Al stopped near the rice ball shelf beside her and started glancing at her face from the corner of his eye. The shape of her eyes, the line of her mouth—identical to the Instagram photos. He was sure of it. This was Yonekura’s ex, Ayane.

Suddenly, Ayane turned and locked eyes with him. Trying to hide his inner panic, Al smiled brightly and called out, “Hi.” Ayane, expressionless, gave a small nod and said “’Lo,” barely tilting her head toward him.

That was his opening. He had to say something. His palms were sweating from the strange pressure to make conversation.

“Bento… you eat?”

“Huh?” Ayane furrowed her brows.

“Looking… at bento.”

“Oh, yeah. Sort of.”

“Me… like bento.”

“Hmm,” Ayane replied with a drawn-out sound, low and uninterested. Her tone practically screamed “I don’t care about you.”

“Mamaaa!”

The boy ran over and tugged at the hem of Ayane’s shorts.

“Buy this.”

In his hands was a bag of snacks about twice the size of his face. Judging from the packaging, it looked like potato chips.

“No big one.”

“Nooo, I want thiiiis!”

As the child began to whine, Ayane smacked his hand away sharply.

“I said no! Put it back!”

After being hit and yelled at, the boy burst into loud, wailing sobs, his mouth wide open. His teeth were crooked and full of cavities. His T-shirt was stretched at the collar and stained at the chest, and his pants were wrinkled all over. Ayane, completely ignoring the crying child, continued examining the bentos. The boy’s cries echoed throughout the store. Anyone just walking in probably wouldn’t even guess they were mother and child, given how thoroughly she was ignoring him.

Almost without thinking, Al reached into his pocket. Was there something he could give the kid to comfort him? But all he found was a packet of pocket tissues he’d been handed outside the station.

“Here… for you,” he said.

The child stopped crying and stared up at Al, wide-eyed. When Ayane told him, “Go on, take it,” the boy carefully accepted the tissues with his small hand.

“Blow your nose with that,” she ordered.

As the child wiped his nose, Ayane snatched the bag of potato chips from him and returned it to the shelf. Then she picked up a bento with fried chicken and two rice balls and headed toward the drink section. The boy tossed the used tissue on the ground without a second thought and ran after her.

“Ah… trash bin…”

You’re supposed to throw garbage into a trash can. But Al had missed the timing to scold the boy, so he quietly picked it up and disposed of it in the bin near the register.

Ayane paid at the far register, the boy clinging to the hem of her shorts. When they left the store, Al followed behind.

“Excuse me,” he called out.

Both Ayane and the child turned to look at him, the plastic shopping bag swinging from her hand.

“I want… talk with you.”

Ayane sighed and asked, “You’ve been bugging me for a while now. What is this, you hitting on me?”

…He didn’t understand the word nanpa. He knew nappa was a kind of leafy vegetable, but that didn’t seem right in this context.

“You were already trying to talk to me in the store. I’ve got a kid, okay?”

“Mama, I’m huuungry,” the boy whined, tugging at her.

“Have you been to my work before? If you’re a foreigner, I’d probably remember.”

“Work… don’t know. I want talk.”

“I’m huuungreeee,” the boy cried again, like a baby bird begging to be fed. Ayane snapped, “Shut up already!” and the boy flinched hard, shrinking in on himself. Al couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Please don’t yell at him, he thought.

It was a little early for dinner, but the kid clearly wasn’t faking his hunger. Across the street, Al spotted what looked like a diner, with banners displaying food outside.

“Me buy dinner.”

Ayane looked up at Al through her lashes.

“Eat and talk. That okay?”

She had bought a lunch box earlier, so Al figured she’d turn him down—but to his surprise, she said, “If you’re paying for this kid too, then sure.”

With that, the three of them headed toward the diner. The boy had been hanging his head ever since she yelled at him, but when Ayane said, “We’re getting food at a family restaurant,” he perked right up.

“Hamburg steak?”

“You can have hamburger, curry, whatever you want,” she said.

The boy’s face lit up with a wide grin. When they entered the diner, a server asked how many and then smiled, saying, “Please seat yourselves anywhere that’s open.” It was an off-hour, and about half the seats were empty.

“I want the window,” Ayane said and led the way down the aisle.

As soon as they stepped inside, the boy started hopping around with excitement—only to trip and fall face-down with a thud in the aisle.

“You okay?” Al asked.

When Al called out to him, the child didn’t answer. Just as Al was starting to think he was a patient kid, the boy suddenly burst into tears like someone had flipped a switch. Ayane clicked her tongue and snapped, “Clumsy little thing,” grabbing the child roughly by the arm and yanking him to his feet before dragging him over to the window seat.

Even after they sat down, the boy continued to sob and whimper. Sitting beside him, Ayane unfolded the menu that had been left on the table and said cheerfully, “What should I get?”

“You hurt… somewhere?” Al asked the child. The boy gave a big, emphatic nod. Ayane glanced down at him and narrowed her eyes.

“There’s no blood or anything,” she said flatly.

“My knee… it’s all tingly…”

“Stay still and it’ll go away. Besides, you’re the one who tripped,” she shot back.

True, there wasn’t any blood on his limbs, but… Ayane was harsh with her kid.

“More importantly, what do you want to eat? Pick what you like,” she said, pushing the menu toward him. The crying stopped instantly, and the boy leaned forward, peering into the menu eagerly.

“You can eat a lot,” Al added.

Ayane gave Al a quick sidelong glance, then said nothing and rang the bell on the table to call for a server. She ordered a hamburger lunch set with unlimited drinks and a kids’ meal.

“I’m gonna get drinks. Ren, what do you want?” she asked.

“I go too!” said the boy—Ren, apparently—and he followed her off toward the self-serve drink station.

Ren came back first, carefully balancing a red drink in his small hands. “Yoisho,” he said as he climbed into the seat next to Al.

“You, sit on that side,” Ayane told him when she returned. Ren gave a big nod and swayed side to side before taking a deep gulp of what smelled like strawberry juice. He leaned his little body into Al’s side and looked up at him, beaming every time their eyes met.

“Trying to pick up a single mom? That’s hilarious,” Ayane muttered, sipping a fizzy drink through her straw with a loud slurp.

“Nappa? What that?” Al asked.

“Nappa?”

“You say nappa… before too.”

“You seriously don’t know what nanpa is? Man, that’s not good.”

Her jab stung a little.

“Nanpa means when a guy hits on a random woman to hang out.”

Ah. That he understood.

“Japanese is… hard.”

“And yet you still try to pick people up? Well, I don’t care if I get free food.”

“Nee, nee, nee!” Ren chimed in from Al’s side, jumping into the conversation.

“Mama, is Papa coming home too?”

Ayane burst out laughing.

“He’s not your dad. Look carefully—he’s a foreigner.”

“I want this papa!” Ren said.

Ayane just kept laughing, like she couldn’t get enough of the joke.

“I want talk. About… Yonekura,” Al said.

The laughter vanished from Ayane’s face. Her eyes lifted, sharp and suspicious.

“How do you know Kaito?” she snapped.

“Yesterday, weird account… asked about Kaito. That you?” she asked, glaring.

“No. Not me. Friend,” Al replied.

“You track me down and what, then? What do you want from me? You’re creepy.”

Her gaze was intense. Feeling the tension, Ren clung to Al’s pant leg.

“Yonekura… did bad thing.”

Ayane’s expression didn’t soften.

“He’s gone. I find him. Make say sorry.”

At that, Ayane’s stiff cheeks finally eased just a little.

“So, you’re saying Kaito did something to you?”

“Victim… not me. My…” Al hesitated. He’d wanted to say “lover,” but in the end, he said, “friend.”

“If it’s just your friend, then why are you looking for him?”

“Friend… now can’t search.”

Ayane folded her hands together on the table and leaned forward.

“There’s just one thing I wanna check.”

She paused.

“Your friend… he’s not Yakuza, right?”

“No. Not Yakuza. Not gang.”

“Hmm,” she murmured, nodding. “So you understand words like Yakuza and gang.”

“Watch Yakuza movie,” Al replied.

Al had watched a film that mashed together yakuza and horror genres with Mitani. Both the yakuza and horror segments were drenched in blood, and afterward, his stomach had felt heavy, like he’d drunk too much blood.

While they talked, the hamburger lunch and kids' meal arrived. Ayane immediately tore into her hamburger with enthusiasm. Ren was about to do the same, but Al gently stopped him with a “Clean hands, okay,” and handed him a wet wipe. Ren obediently wiped his hands. He was a good, well-behaved kid.

“So what do you do, anyway?” Ayane asked from across the table.

“Me... no job.”

“Whoa. Good face, shame about the rest.”

“I act... a little.”

“Oh, ex-celebrity, huh. There’s a girl like that at my club too. Used to be a magazine idol. Her old fans still come in as customers—it’s gross.”

“I was in BLOOD GIRL Mahiro,” Al said.

Ayane’s head snapped up. “No way,” she said, staring at him.

“I watched that show! I was so shocked when Yuka died halfway through. What part were you?”

“Vampire.”

She tilted her head, thinking, then suddenly clapped her hands and shouted, “Oh my god, that was you!” Her voice was so loud that a few customers turned to look.

“There was a vampire, yeah! Foreign guy, right? That was you? Hahahaha!” Ayane burst into laughter, and Ren, maybe just caught in the moment, laughed along with her.

She laughed for a while, but eventually the sound trailed off.

“So what’s your friend got to do with Kaito, huh?”

She must know something about Yonekura’s past. If he hadn’t told her himself, Al didn’t think it was his place to spill it now. So he kept it vague.

“Friend... long ago live with Yonekura.”

“Oh, someone from the facility he was at.”

She said "facility" without flinching. She must’ve heard about Yonekura’s upbringing.

“Oh, I get it. He borrowed money from someone at the facility, huh?”

Wrong. Yonekura had killed someone. Al had seen it with his own eyes—it was an undeniable truth. But he couldn’t say it here. He could talk about it with Hatono and Kanezaki, but not with Ayane. Especially not with Ren sitting right next to him. He didn’t want to speak words like “dead” or “killed” in front of a child. There were other ways to get information.

“Yonekura... what kind of person?”

“What kind?” Ayane scoffed. “If I had to sum it up? Lowest of the low, scumbag trash.”

She pulled an e-cigarette from her pocket and popped it in her mouth. A server rushed over, apologizing and saying the store was entirely non-smoking. Ayane grumbled that she used to be able to smoke here, then reluctantly put it away and took a long drink instead.

“We met at the beach. Kaito hit on me. His face was nothing special, but he had good vibes.”

Ayane started talking about the past out of nowhere. Al immediately remembered the parking lot by the sea where Yonekura had hit on people left and right, regardless of gender.

“We kind of dated, I guess? But all he ever wanted to do when we met up was screw around, and I got tired of it. Then I found out I was pregnant. I told him I needed money for the procedure and he said, ‘Just have the baby.’”

Realizing Ren was sitting right there, Al frantically tried to cover his ears—but it was too late.

“I was sick of my job anyway, and I figured maybe getting married wouldn’t be so bad. He had a day job, so I thought maybe, just maybe, I could be a housewife and make it work.”

Ren didn’t seem to be paying attention to the adult conversation. He was playing with the little toy that came with his kids’ meal, entirely focused on that.

"I quit my job, and Kaito moved out to Shonan. We lived together at my place for a little while. He promised we’d register the marriage after the baby was born, but when Ren was born and I was in the hospital, that bastard just vanished. Blocked me on all social media. I tried contacting the company he said he worked for, but they told me they didn’t have any employee by that name."

Just imagining what Ayane must’ve felt, left behind with a newborn, was enough to make Al's chest ache.

"Like, seriously, who does that? Getting someone pregnant and bailing? During the pregnancy he kept saying things like, ‘When’s the baby coming?’ and ‘I hope it’s a boy,’ like he was actually looking forward to it. And then poof—gone. I even went to the police, but they said it wasn’t a crime since I didn’t give him money or anything, and we weren’t legally married, and we didn’t have a fight or anything, so it just counted as a missing person."

Al felt a tug at his shirt and turned his head. Ren was showing him a toy, beaming. “Look, I did it!” He’d snapped three little pieces together.

"I was in a care home, too," Ayane said. "When I was in eighth grade, my mom—she was a single mom—died. I didn’t have any relatives, so I was in there for a year. Kaito said he was there for three. He told me that after we started living together. I figured, if we were gonna get married, I’d probably have to meet his parents or something, but then he said his grandma, the one who raised him, had died, and he didn’t have any other family. Honestly, it made me feel kinda relieved. I thought, hey, same as me."

Ayane shook her head slowly. “Ugh, I hated that place. The home I was in, I mean. Some of the kids were nasty, and there were creepy old dudes working there who gave me weird looks.”

“What about Yonekura?” Al asked.

“What about him?”

“He... hate people from the facility?”

“Hate?” Ayane echoed the word, then shrugged. “He didn’t really talk about it much, so I don’t know.”

"Though... now that I think of it, he used to say being at his grandma’s place, or with his real parents, was way worse than the facility."

Al suddenly remembered the woman from the inn saying Yonekura had been abused by his grandmother.

"He said his birth mom just walked out and left him behind, but... there was this one time he said something creepy—like maybe it was really his dad who killed her. Then a new mom came into the picture, and she was apparently brutal to him. If she was in a bad mood, she’d slap him, scream at him, make him kneel out on the balcony for hours."

Ayane’s voice had lost its usual roughness. She was just remembering things now.

"He said he wasn’t given anything to eat, and even when he was, the food was usually rotten. He didn’t know how he survived. His dad never laid a hand on him, but... he ignored him. All the time."

“That guy... he had it rough too,” Ayane added, sipping from her straw with a loud slurp.

Al could see how someone might end up killing their abuser. He could understand if Yonekura had killed his grandmother out of revenge. But Ishimoto—the staff member at the facility—hadn’t abused him. So why would he kill her? And why frame Akira?

“There was this kind woman at the facility,” Ayane went on. “Her name was something like Ishi... Ishii? Or maybe Ishimoto. Kaito used to say, ‘I wish she had been my mom.’”

It had to be Ishimoto—the one who’d been stabbed over and over again. It was hard to believe, but Ayane didn’t seem to be lying. If that was true, then why had Yonekura told her he liked Ishimoto? Was it an attempt to establish an alibi in advance? But would he really go to such calculated lengths for an ex-girlfriend he’d cut off completely?

There was still a possibility—however slim—that Ayane and Yonekura were still secretly in contact, and that she knew the truth of the incident and was covering for him. But based on how she reacted when Hatono asked about Yonekura on social media, that didn’t seem likely either.

“You really think… Yonekura not hate staff? He… like?”

“I don’t know,” Ayane said, “but I think he liked him. And I remember him saying there was another guy at the same facility—a big brother type who liked bats—who was really nice too.”

Al swallowed hard. There couldn’t be that many kids at the facility who liked bats. The “big brother who liked bats” had to be Akira. So if this was all true, then Yonekura had murdered Ishimoto, who was deeply loved within the facility, and framed Akira—someone he’d thought of as a good person—for the crime?

That didn’t make sense.

If you’re going to kill someone who gets in your way and pin the crime on someone you hate—that at least had logic. But why do it to someone you liked? Why go that far? Al couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t make sense of Yonekura’s thinking at all.

After sleeping with a man and woman in his car, Yonekura had cried and called out Ishimoto and Akira’s names when he was left alone. It was an eerily dissonant sight—he had killed her, framed him, and still mourned them? There was something deeply wrong in it.

“Yonekura… you know where?” Al asked.

Ayane raised both hands and turned her face away. “Nope. Not a clue.”

“Other way… to find?”

“I told you—I don’t know. He blocked me on LINE, and I can’t get through to him on the phone either. I tried his other social media accounts, but it’s the same. Nothing.”

Al didn’t miss that word—account.

“Yonekura… account, have?”

“Yeah, he has one.” Ayane pulled out her phone and showed it to him. “This is it.”

It was his real account. Al had one of his own too, though he still wasn’t good at using it, so he snapped a photo of Yonekura’s profile on the screen for now.

“He might have a hidden account too, but I don’t know about that. Also, that guy really loved cars. He bought this huge used car so he could sleep in it. I wonder if he’s still doing that…”

Al asked if she could tell him if Yonekura ever reached out again—and said he’d do the same if he managed to find Yonekura himself. Ayane gave him a “Okay,” then raised her right hand in front of her face and gave him a thumbs-up.

After exchanging LINE info, they waited for her to finish eating and left the diner together.

As they walked, Ayane holding Ren’s hand, she muttered, “Even if Kaito gets in touch, I’m not getting back with him or anything. But I’ll take the child support. Raising a kid’s expensive, and doing it alone’s no joke. I’m so sick of always thinking about money. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.”

Yonekura had run away right after the baby was born. Had it been planned? Or had he just gotten caught up in something and bolted—maybe people had been after him?

As they were saying goodbye, Ren clung to Al, crying out, “Paaaapa!” and wouldn’t let go, leaving Al helpless. Ayane yanked Ren off him, muttering, “Quit sucking up,” and dragged the sobbing child away as they headed back to their apartment.

 

Al quickly reported to Hatono and Kanezaki that he’d met with Ayane—and more importantly, that he’d gotten the real Yonekura’s social media account. But by the time they checked, a lock icon had appeared next to the account name, along with a message reading, “This account is private.” Yonekura’s posts were no longer visible.

Confused, Al asked Kanezaki about it. “Some people don’t want strangers reading what they post,” he explained. “So they lock their accounts to make them invisible to anyone who’s not approved. But if there wasn’t a lock icon when you checked it with Ayane, then maybe Yonekura opens and closes his account depending on the situation.”

Al hadn’t known social media platforms had a feature like that—to selectively allow or block who could read posts. After the explanation, he began monitoring Yonekura’s account obsessively, checking it every five minutes from morning to night.

On the third day, overcome by midday drowsiness, Al nodded off. When he woke, he checked the account again—no lock icon. It was visible.

He immediately used the alternate account Kanezaki had created—one that posed as a regular guy—and followed Yonekura. As long as he didn’t get blocked, he should be able to see whatever Yonekura posted. Al scrolled eagerly through the comment feed, trying to see past posts.

“Male, twenties. Slim build. Average looks. Based in Shonan. Looking for a big bro in his thirties.”

Too many kanji. And some katakana. Al didn’t understand the meaning at all. He copied and pasted it into a translator and grasped only the gist: Yonekura was looking for a man in his thirties. But for what purpose, it didn’t say.

Then replies flooded the post.

“Muscle top from Saitama ready to slam.”

“Free now, Kamata.”

“You dirty bitch.”

It seemed people who were familiar with this kind of messaging understood exactly what Yonekura was after. Al copied the message and posted it in their group chat: “Yonekura account unlocked. He wrote this. Please tell me what it means.”

He didn’t expect an answer right away, figuring they were probably working. But maybe they were on break—Hatono quickly replied with a voice message: “Surprising, but it looks like Yonekura is in Shonan. He seems to be seeking sexual encounters with men and is using criteria to find partners.”

That alone was a shock. So he was back here. But even more unsettling were the kinds of replies that Yonekura’s message had attracted…

Soon after, Yonekura responded to one of them—“Free now, Kamata”—by replying, “Follow me. I’ll DM you.” A little later, his comment disappeared, and the lock icon returned to his account.

No public posts remained.

Al thought back to that time by the ocean—Yonekura with a burly man in his car. Maybe that partner had come from one of these “recruitment” posts too.

It was unclear whether Ayane had known about any of this, but the Yonekura of today clearly used his account solely for finding sex partners. He unlocked it when he needed someone, then closed it once the goal was met. Al hadn’t expected him to be using it like this.

Still, at least now he knew Yonekura had returned from Kyushu to Shonan—the same seaside town where he’d once lived with Ayane. According to Nukariya, the police had tracked his car as far as Osaka, but lost the trail after that. Maybe Yonekura had avoided the expressways and made his way back quietly to Kanagawa.

There was even a chance he was still somewhere near Ayane’s apartment.

A message popped up in the group chat—Hatono again.

“Yonekura’s account... the content is pretty grotesque.”

To which Kanezaki replied, “Terrifying.”

It seemed both of them had been keeping an eye on the timeline, following the twisted trail of Yonekura’s posts.

Al sent a message to Nukariya via social media saying, “I have new information” and soon after, received a return call. Though Yonekura was still considered a person of interest, the theory that Akira was the culprit remained dominant. With a bitter laugh, Nukariya said, “It’s giving me a headache.” On top of that, Yonekura had apparently told investigators that “there was a naked foreigner at the scene,” but Akira had denied it, and there were no other witnesses to support it, leaving the police bewildered by the lack of credibility or meaning behind the claim.

It seemed Yonekura had switched phones, as his GPS could no longer be tracked. But Nukariya had predicted he might return to the Kanto area—“People feel safer in places they’re familiar with,” he said, not at all surprised. When Al told him about Yonekura using social media to search for sexual partners, Nukariya’s tone lifted: “That could actually work.”

“From the look of Yonekura’s behavior,” Nukariya explained, “if you get selected when he posts one of those partner searches, you might be able to meet him. If we know the rendezvous point, we might be able to arrest him there. The next time he unlocks his account—that’s our chance. If his target is guys in their thirties, I’ll go myself.”

Al hadn’t even thought of that. Nukariya was in his thirties, just the right age, and he was a detective. Even if Yonekura turned out to be violent, he’d be able to handle it.

“If there’s no exchange of money, it’s all considered consensual and legal,” Nukariya added.

“You gonna nyan-nyan with Yonekura?” Al asked, using a childish euphemism for sex.

Nukariya laughed. “Nah, of course not. I’ll just talk to him at first. If he gets too excited and hits me, or if he’s carrying drugs, then I can make the arrest right there.”

Because Yonekura’s account could only be followed while it was unlocked, Nukariya, who had an account of his own, couldn’t monitor it all the time due to work. So the smoothest plan seemed to be that Al would apply via his dummy account, and if chosen, Nukariya would go to the meet-up location in his place.

Which meant someone’s account had to get picked.

To increase the odds, Al had his dummy account adjusted by Kanezaki to look more like that of a thirty-something man Yonekura might go for. He also enlisted Hatono and Kanezaki to create sub-accounts posing as men in their thirties. No matter which account got chosen, it would be Nukariya who showed up.

Once more, Al found himself glued to his smartphone, watching Yonekura’s account like a hawk. Staring so hard it felt like the screen might burn a hole in his vision, he thought of Akira. Since Akira’s arrest, the only time they’d “seen” each other was that one night Al had slipped into the detention center in his bat form. He wanted to see Akira again—but sneaking in as a bat was something he’d only managed with Nukariya’s help, and doing it repeatedly would raise suspicion.

Akira hadn’t confessed, so technically he hadn’t been convicted yet—but Nukariya had said a “no visitation” order had been placed, meaning they couldn’t meet face to face.

It had been sixteen days since that visit.

Thinking of Akira, alone in that bare cell, unable to do anything, made Al ache inside. He wanted to save him, quickly. At the same time, the anger he felt toward Yonekura kept bubbling up. Maybe Yonekura had been through some awful things, too—but that didn’t give him the right to destroy someone else’s life.

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