Three days had passed since the night he'd looked up the company name: Tsurumi Port Logistics Service. In the end, there was no thread leading to that company anywhere. On the surface, it was an ordinary logistics firm. They did business with dock workers' unions. There was nothing overtly unnatural in the circumstances of its establishment. Yet Fujidou Takeshi was certain. The erased corporate name, the rewritten records—Kawase had not wanted that correction. Or perhaps that correction had shortened Kawase's life. The problem was that there was no way forward from here. A holiday morning. In his apartment in Kyodo, Fujidou sat facing a small desk. From outside came the calls of the shopping street and the distant sound of a train running. Light filtered through the curtains, thin and pale. It looked like it would be clear today too. On the desk lay a single sheet of A4 paper, printed with a document. It was the response to a disclosure request for call records submitted through a lawyer—Kawase Shunsuke's mobile carrier records. Kawase's estimated date of death was October 17th. Three days before that—from October 14th to 16th—there were repeated calls to a specific number. Six times in total. None of them had connected. Or rather, no one had answered. Tracing the phone number, the registered owner was Kubota Makoto—a former member of the Zero Patrol Unit. The Zero Patrol Unit. A special forces division directly under the Joint Staff Office of the Ministry of Defense, an unofficial unit that did not exist in public records. An organization to which both Fujidou and Kawase had belonged, and which had "officially" been disbanded in 2020. Kubota had been a mid-level member at the time, and after retirement, Fujidou had heard he was working at a logistics warehouse in Saitama. And now, the carrier's call records contained one more piece of information. According to what the lawyer had confirmed through another channel, Kawase's smartphone had contained an unsent email addressed to Kubota on the night before his estimated date of death. The full content had not been disclosed. Only a portion could be indirectly confirmed. —I have evidence of Iron Gardenia. I need someone to listen. Iron Gardenia—Operation "Iron Gardenia" executed in eastern Myanmar in 2017. An unofficial operation in which the Zero Patrol Unit had moved to sever the smuggling routes of the Ceylon Brigade. Three members had been wounded, and two local cooperators had died. The operation was recorded as "successful" in the report, but Fujidou had always felt something was off. That night, something had definitely been wrong. Kawase had possessed evidence of it. Fujidou slowly placed the document on the desk. He had been trying to speak. Six times, he had called. He had written an email. And yet—no one had received it. (He didn't make it in time.) Those words sank quietly into the depths of his chest. It was not anger. It was something heavier than anger, something immovable that had solidified in his chest. Why hadn't Kubota answered the phone. Why hadn't that email been sent. —Kawase had been trying to reach out to someone. Until the very end, he had tried to hand it over to someone rather than carry it alone. And it hadn't reached. Fujidou stood and moved to the window. From the direction of Kyodo Station, he heard children's voices. Someone's ordinary holiday. It felt like a story from an impossibly distant place now. He had no choice but to contact Kubota. He had already identified the current address independently. By checking the voter registry, questioning retired Self-Defense Force officers he knew, combining several routes, he had narrowed it down to a single unit in an apartment building in Kawaguchi City, Saitama. He had the phone number too. He took out his smartphone and dialed the number. The ringtone sounded. Once. Twice. Three times. Midway through the fourth ring, it connected. "...Who is this?" The voice was muffled. Low, hoarse, with a note of exhaustion in it. "It's Fujidou. Fujidou Takeshi from Zero." There was silence. Not a long silence. But within that brevity, Fujidou could clearly sense Kubota trying to make some kind of judgment. "...What do you want?" "I want to talk about Kawase. He was calling you before he died. Do you know that?" Silence again. This time, slightly longer. "I know." "You didn't answer?" "...I didn't." The tone of his voice had changed. It had become flat. Like emotion had been deliberately stripped away, an intentional blankness. "Kubota. Kawase said he had evidence of Iron Gardenia. There's a possibility he was trying to give it to you." "I don't know." "Can't we meet and talk? Right now, I—" "[cold]That's a finished story for me." His voice had dropped another register. "[cold]Don't get involved. You or me. You already know what happens to people who get involved." "Kawase is dead." "[cold]I know. That's why I'm telling you." The call ended. Fujidou stared at the screen. Call duration: one minute and forty seconds. Kubota's voice had not trembled. He had not been angry. Only—he had been afraid. That much was clear even through the phone. Because he was afraid, he was making the decision not to get involved. It was a rational judgment. Even a logical one. But Kawase was dead. Fujidou couldn't bring himself to blame Kubota. But without a witness, this investigation would stop here. There were fragments of physical evidence. The unnatural modification of intake records. The operation name Iron Gardenia. But there was no "human voice" to connect them. Fujidou placed the smartphone down again and returned to the desk. Outside the window, the sky over Kyodo was filled with the white light of late morning. --- The overtime at Genba Planning deepened quietly. Friday night. After ten o'clock, employees left one by one. The fluorescent lights in the office remained bright, but as the presence of people thinned, that light only made the emptiness of the space more pronounced. Fujidou Takeshi was at his desk. Final confirmation of materials to be submitted to a client. While pretending to look at the screen, his mind was performing different calculations. How to change his approach to Kubota. The phone wouldn't work. So, go meet him directly? But that risked cornering Kubota. If the other man was afraid, applying pressure would backfire. A faint sound came from the break room. Someone was using the coffee maker. There were only two people left in the office now—himself and Shinohara Natsumi. She had been facing documents at her desk for the past two hours. From time to time, the sound of her pen moving. Nothing else. For Fujidou Takeshi, that silence was not particularly unnatural. Shinohara didn't waste silent time. That was how she worked, something he had come to understand over these three weeks. Fujidou stood up. He needed coffee too. When he opened the break room door, Shinohara was standing there with a white cup in her hand. Her black hair, which fell to her shoulders, caught the fluorescent light. The small silver stud earring in her right ear glinted faintly. Her sharp, narrow eyes turned toward Fujidou. For a moment, they were both silent. "You're working late," "So are you." Fujidou pressed the button on the coffee maker. The faint sound of extraction began, spreading through the narrow break room. Shinohara held her cup in both hands and said nothing. The liquid dripped into the cup. That sound alone continued for a while. "[gentle]...Your previous work," Shinohara's voice fell quietly. "[gentle]It must have been difficult, wasn't it?" Fujidou didn't stop his hand. Still looking at the coffee maker, he received those words. Received them—or rather, they caught on something. That voice was different from usual. Shinohara's normal voice was direct, with a calculated coldness. Even when she talked about work, when she probed into Fujidou's background, that tone never changed. But now it was different. Thin. Like a membrane had been peeled away, that kind of thinness. (An act?) The question rose immediately in his mind. Words for getting closer? Or—had she genuinely perceived his exhaustion and felt something? "[serious]...Yes, I suppose so." He answered briefly. That was all. The coffee finished brewing. Fujidou took the cup. Shinohara seemed about to say something—then closed her mouth. Fujidou saw that subtle gap. That moment when her words had stopped midway. Shinohara quietly adjusted her grip on the cup and said, "Thank you for your hard work." Her voice had already returned to its usual tone. She left the break room and walked back to her desk. Her footsteps—click, click—receded into the distance. Fujidou stood alone in the break room. The aroma of coffee drifted. The fluorescent light. Outside was quiet. What was that? --- He returned to Kyodo just before the date changed. Room 201, Corpo Asagiri. Through the thin walls of the wooden apartment, the television sound from the neighboring room leaked faintly. Fujidou sat at his desk without removing his jacket. The document was still there on the desk. The call records and the words Iron Gardenia. Kawase had been trying to reach someone. Trying to hand over evidence. Six times he had called. He had written an email. He didn't make it in time. Shinohara's voice returned to his mind. "It must have been difficult, wasn't it?" Why had she spoken those words at that moment? She had been interested in Fujidou's background from the start. That much was certain. The way she asked questions at the first drinking party, the movement of her eyes—none of it was coincidence. There was calculation in it all. But tonight's words carried a different scent than that calculation. Different, though he couldn't point to concrete evidence for the distinction. Fujidou placed the coffee cup on the desk. It had long since gone cold. Kawase had tried to trust someone. Tried to reach someone with his voice. The result had been that bathroom. He himself couldn't even judge whether he should trust Shinohara or not. That was what Fujidou Takeshi was. Suspicion had been hammered into his very marrow over fifteen years. It had kept him alive. But now that same skill was hobbling the investigation. He wavered at a single word from Shinohara, unable to make his next move. But if he trusted without certainty and ended up like Kawase— All evidence, all witnesses would disappear. Fujidou thought for a moment. Shinohara would remain undecided. Neither trusted nor doubted, not for now. That was the only honest judgment he could make at this moment. Kubota wouldn't move on the phone. So change the approach. If the phone didn't work, then a letter. Or go in person. Or find something that would force Kubota to act. "That's a finished story for me." Behind those words, Kubota still knew something. The fact that he didn't want to get involved meant he still sensed the possibility of involvement. There was a gap there. Fujidou folded the document and put it away in a drawer, then turned off the light. In the darkened room, he looked out the window. The night over Kyodo was quiet. The lights of the shopping street still lingered faintly, and the sound of a distant train drifted in. The fact that Kawase had tried to speak would not disappear. Fujidou was on the receiving end of it.