This is a story I heard from my Shisho. It was the autumn of my first year in university. I was heading to the house of Kanako-san, my master in the occult arts. I didn't have any particular business with her, but since I was in the neighborhood, I figured I’d drop by. While waiting for the signal at a crosswalk, I spotted her on the other side of the road. She was a bit far away, and there was an unusually heavy stream of cars passing by, so she didn't notice me calling out to her. Instead of walking away, she had stopped by a utility pole and was standing there motionlessly. Wondering what was going on, I squinted and saw something lying near the base of the pole, which she seemed to be looking down at. It looked like a sweet bun in a plastic bag. While I watched, Shisho began to glance around nervously. Thinking there was no way she would... She smoothly squatted down, picked up the bread, tucked it inside her clothes, and walked away in a hurry. Was she really scavenging discarded food? I felt a wave of intense embarrassment, as if I were the one doing it. The pedestrian light turned green, and I followed after her. I had to give her a lecture. This was just too much. Even after turning the corner, I couldn't see her anywhere. She was far too fast at running away. As I headed toward her house, I remembered that she had seemed a bit strapped for cash lately. There was never any sign of her having a steady part-time job, and I had seen her several times staring at the one-off job postings on the university bulletin board. She was always short on money and would frequently try to sponge off me, only to suddenly come into some cash, blow it all on weird junk, and then end up flat broke and exhausted at home again. Watching from the sidelines was quite amusing, but being the target of her freeloading was a nuisance.
When I reached her house, I hammered angrily on the door. After getting a response, I greeted her and stepped inside. I immediately scanned the room, but there was no sign of the bread bag. "You picked up that bread just now, didn't you?" She was clearly flustered. "I did not." "I saw you. Have you eaten it already?" "I told you I didn't pick up anything." I kept pressing the issue, but she stubbornly refused to admit it. Eventually, I wore down. "Fine. Whatever, I don't care anymore." "I'm not desperate enough to pick things off the ground and eat them. You are extremely rude, you know that? Besides, it was past the expiration date." Whatever. It was my fault. Something about it all felt off, but I had no intention of continuing such a sterile conversation. Not that we had any fertile conversations to begin with. Deciding I'd shown my face and it was time to leave, I started to stand up. Then Shisho piped up, "Go buy something to eat." "That's right. You haven't had lunch, have you? I'll cook you a homemade meal, so go buy the ingredients." She phrased it differently, but it was basically just freeloading. I sighed and went outside, heading toward a nearby supermarket. As I walked through the increasingly chilly residential streets with the items she demanded, I realized I had completely fallen into her rhythm. And surprisingly, I didn't find it all that unpleasant.
"I'm back." I opened the door and placed the plastic bag at my feet. Shisho was just hanging up the house phone. "Plan change." "Huh?" "A way to make some money has popped up." Saying this, Shisho began getting ready to go out. "Come to think of it, I've never taken you there before, have I?" "Is this some kind of part-time job?" "You could call it that. It's interesting. Come along." She tossed the cooking ingredients into the fridge and we headed out together. She started to get into her light kei car, but stopped, saying, "Ah, the gas is dangerously low," and added, "Let's go by bicycle," directing us to ride double on her bike to our destination. Naturally, I was the one doing the pedaling. When I asked where we were going, she brushed me off with, "A nice place." I just steered the handlebars in the direction her finger pointed. Eventually, the bicycle turned into an area slightly away from the city center. As we navigated past a line of old and new mixed-use commercial buildings, I felt a tap on my shoulder. "Here." It was a shabby three-story building with a coffee shop at the entrance on the first floor. Thinking we were going in there, I watched as she instead started climbing the stairs right next to the entrance. I involuntarily looked up and saw a consumer finance sign hanging on the second floor. I hesitated. What is this? She isn't planning on making me take out a loan, is she? Paranoia started to creep in. Even so, with her, anything was possible. With a pounding heart, I followed her up the narrow, dim staircase. Looking up at her back, I saw her pass the second-floor door and step onto the stairs leading even higher. The third floor? I tried to remember what kind of business was up there, but it had left almost no impression on me from the outside.
At the top of the stairs, Shisho was waiting in front of a door. She gave a thumbs-up and pointed to the letters written on the door. *Ogawa Detective Agency* That's what it read. The font and size were modest. "Hello-oo." After knocking, Shisho twisted the knob and pushed the door wide open. The scent of coffee instantly drifted into my nostrils. The austere interior had a few desks and, further back, a steel shelf crammed with colorful folders. There were also potted houseplants near the entrance and beside the desks. A man resting his legs on the rearmost desk while flipping through some documents let out an "Oh." He seemed to be the only one here. "Where's the client?" Shisho approached him. "Not here yet. Haven't seen their face lately." The man tossed the documents onto the desk and stood up from his chair. "Why would I come here if there's no work?" "So cold, don't be like that... Want some coffee?" Heading over toward the coffee maker, the man looked over at me. "Who's this?" Or rather, who are *you*? Is this place what they call a private investigation agency? This was turning into a development I didn't understand at all. "My assistant. He won't get in the way," Shisho said. "Heeh. You swapped partners, then? From Tatsuo?" The man handed a cup of coffee to me. "So you can see them too, kid?"
The eyes behind his glasses narrowed appraisingly. "I can see them. I guarantee it." I didn't appreciate being volunteered like that without my consent, but I gathered he was talking about spiritual perception. While the coffee cups in our hands emptied, I received a basic explanation. The man in front of me was Ogawa, the director of the Ogawa Detective Agency, and its sole employee. "As you can see, it's a micro-scale detective agency. We only get handed subcontract-of-subcontract work, the garbage dump of society," according to Ogawa himself. This Ogawa seemed to be related to a senior from my university named Kuroya, who had an undeniable connection to Shisho. Apparently, Kuroya had occasionally been roped into helping out with the rougher jobs brought to the agency, and at some point, Shisho—introduced by Kuroya—started joining in on those gigs. "Rough jobs?" When I asked, both of them laughed. "Ghosts," Ogawa said, placing his cup on a nearby desk and wiping around his mouth with a handkerchief. A detective agency's work is mainly credit investigations: looking into corporate assets and operational realities, as well as personal background and infidelity checks. And searching for people the police can't find. In my impoverished imagination, the first image that popped up was a man in a trench coat going around the neighborhood asking questions about someone's marriage partner or their relatives.
While all sorts of requests were brought in on a half-desperate basis—though they naturally couldn't accept anything involving serious crimes, (when I double-checked just in case, Ogawa irritably said, "Yeah, minor ones are out too. Maybe this is the sorrow of a micro-agency"), they also basically turned down pointless jobs like someone showing up with a photograph saying, "This cat is messing up my flowerbed, so go teach it a lesson." Many clients didn't trust a detective agency and wouldn't even provide the bare minimum of information. Some wouldn't even give their contact details. They'd say, "We'll contact you if necessary." In those cases, you had no choice but to politely show them the door. "And then there are cases where the request is downright baffling." Ogawa made an exaggerated gesture of giving up and patted his chest pocket. "A father who supposedly died five years ago starts showing up in front of his old friends asking for money, but why won't he come to see his own daughter? I want to see my dad one more time. Please find him.' ...Like, how the hell should I know?! You pull their family register, 'He is definitely dead, so we apologize that we cannot meet your expectations,' you say that, collect the basic fee, and the job is done. It takes less than a day. Easy work, but it doesn't pay for the trouble." He lit a cigarette and exhaled deeply. "We can't arrange a family reunion, but the reason this guy is able to explain *why* a dead father is wandering around begging for money..." Shisho tilted her cup with a cool expression. "When you can rake in contingency fees on impossible cases like this, you have to call it a special skill." Eventually, these kinds of absurd requests kept getting bounced around major detective agencies before finally ending up at the Ogawa Detective Agency. Nowadays, people in the local industry muttered behind their backs, "If it's ghosts, go there."
"Ghosts" was the code word for those incomprehensible cases. "Still, for a poverty-stricken office like this, we're grateful just to get any work tossed our way." "And yet, nobody's been calling us lately," Shisho complained indignantly. So that was why she had been living in such wretched financial destitution, since she was counting on that side-job money! "Personally, I was relieved to just have normal requests for once. If we only get those kinds of cases, I'm shutting the sign down. Then I'll hand over the office and retire." With that, he pointed at Shisho. Shisho looked entirely unbothered as she picked up all three cups and disappeared into the next room, which seemed to have a sink. The phone rang. Ogawa walked over to his own desk and picked it up. The phones on the other desks hadn't been ringing at all. They must have been just for show. Even if they weren't, a one-man director operation didn't need multiple desks. Was he just trying to put on airs in front of clients? Ogawa responded to the person on the other end with a thoroughly submissive tone, hanging up while bowing repeatedly. Then, noticing my gaze, he slowly moved his lips without making a sound. *Y-A-K-U-Z-A* It looked like those three syllables. He might have just been teasing me. "Who's the client?" Asked by Shisho, who had just returned, Ogawa checked his watch. "Right about time." Shisho pointed at Ogawa's ragged tie, signaling him to fix it.
About ten minutes later, the office door opened. "I was told to come by Takaya General Research," said the woman. At that exact moment, I saw something small slip through the gap between the door and her feet—a stray cat. Thinking that, I ignored the visitor and looked frantically around the corner of the room, but I couldn't find where it had hidden. "Please," Ogawa said, indicating the guest chair, and exchanged a look with Shisho before the two of them sat down in the chairs opposite her. I pretended to be working at a vacant desk while watching the scene out of the corner of my eye. "Explain to me why I had to drag myself all the way out to a place like this." Before even stating her business, the woman spoke in an irritated tone. Ogawa repeated apologies in a low-posture manner, likely echoing the rejections she must have received from other agencies before making it here: "Depending on the nature of the request, we sometimes just don't have the personnel available..." The client, who had introduced herself as Yokoyama, spat out, "Never mind," and began rummaging through the bag she held on her lap. I felt something bizarre and hard to put into words about the woman's profile. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, and while her clothes were a completely unassuming, plain-looking suit, her makeup-free face was strangely pale, making her intense hostility stand out even more. Above all, a single strand of hair tied back at the nape had fallen loose across her face, sticking to her cheek—that alone spoke volumes of her abnormality.
It wasn't just a matter of poor grooming. The real problem was the stagnation of her mental state—she couldn't possibly have been unaware of it, yet she left the strand of hair plastered against her cheek without making any move to fix it. I couldn't help feeling a strange sense of professional admiration for Ogawa, who surely must have been thinking, *Great, another annoying one walked in,* yet didn't let a single trace of it show on his face. "This is it." The client pulled something cloth-like from her bag and placed it on the table. It looked like baby clothes. "I found this in the car of the man I'm seeing." "Meaning?" "Don't be so slow. Why don't you get it?" Rebuking him with those words, the client violently zipped her bag shut. "The man told me he was single and unmarried, but it turns out he has a kid. You think I can forgive that?" "Ah. Did you borrow this from him?" "As if!" So she'd stolen it without him knowing. I pretty much understood what kind of situation this was. Even if they took her on for a background check, there was a high possibility that the very fact she harbored these suspicions had already leaked to the other party. To an amateur like me, her rash action alone seemed like more than enough reason to turn down the request. "So, what would you like us to do?" Glaring at Ogawa, the client demanded that he confirm the relationship between the man and the child. It sounded less like a request and more like an order. I was on edge, waiting for Ogawa to finally snap and kick this delusional woman out of the office.
Suddenly feeling the presence of movement, I looked around. Come to think of it, what happened to the stray cat? Acting as naturally and unobtrusively as possible, I stood up from my seat to search for it. Crouching down to peer under a desk, I spotted two glowing points in the dark. There it was. But if I tried to catch it, it would undoubtedly cause a commotion, so I decided to wait until this mismatched meeting was over. "Well. According to our agency's regulations, the rates are around this much—can you see? The basic daily fee is right here..." Glaring at what looked like a laminated price list, she snapped, "That's expensive. You're probably going to add on extra expenses like coffee at a coffee shop or something, right?" Come to think of it, we hadn't even offered the client a drink. Since Shisho was sitting right there in the same group, I wondered if serving tea was supposed to be my job, and I began to fret. Then I saw the client impatiently slap the price list and say, "Fine, whatever." At that moment, I was struck by an unsettling sensation. It felt as though the conversation right beside me was suddenly receding. Hollow, empty, and devoid of substance. What on earth is this? Only the sound of my own breathing grew loud. The client's mouth moved up and down. I couldn't hear her words clearly. When this happens, it means I'm missing something. I have to realize it quickly. My brain raced. I got it. There was no reason for Shisho to have been called in. Up to this point, while the client's personality was certainly eccentric, the request itself seemed entirely mundane.
This meant there was no point in handing a job over to Kanako-san, the specialist in "ghosts." "Well? When can you get results?" I heard the client talking as if the contract had already been finalized. "We'll need to check our schedule first to see if we can accommodate your wishes..." I noticed Shisho tugging at Ogawa's sleeve as he said this. "Excuse me for a moment," they both stood up. They walked over to the desk farthest in the back and peered into some folder together. I could tell from their eye movements that they weren't actually looking at the opened file. I approached them. Shisho lowered her voice. "You shouldn't take this." "Why not?" "That woman is lying." "What do you mean?" "There's a faint trace on the baby clothes, like someone wiped blood off." A chill ran down my spine. "And, I saw it." "Saw what?" "What was inside the baby clothes. It came here. It followed that woman." Shisho looked into my face. It clicked immediately. So it wasn't a stray cat, after all? I didn't think I'd be peeking under the desks anymore. "I don't know what she's planning, but she might be intending to have a third party 'discover' it. Anyway, it's better not to get involved."
After staring intently at Shisho's profile for a moment, Ogawa said, "Got it." "Leave the rest to me." Fidgeting with irritation, Ogawa returned alone to the client waiting in her chair. After the client stormed out, shouting as she left, we finally breathed a sigh of relief in the quieted office. "And the police?" Shisho rested her hip against a desk. "I'll leave an anonymous tip later," Ogawa said in an exhausted voice. Then, lighting a cigarette, he asked to no one in particular, "What about the baby? Is it still here?" Shisho redirected her gaze toward me. "It followed her out. Only for a second, but probably." Exhaling a puff of smoke, Ogawa made a motion like crossing his chest. The detective agency that had referred the client here, Takaya General Research, was apparently where Ogawa used to work, which was why they occasionally tossed jobs like this his way. A phone call came in from that very Takaya General Research. After chatting in a bright tone, Ogawa put the receiver down. "It didn't look like a ghost case at first, but Ms. Ichihara's sixth sense kicked in." Apparently, they had a famous office worker named Ichihara. From what I heard, she gave off the impression of a busybody old auntie. "Good play by Ms. Ichihara." Shisho said with an amused look.
898: Request - Last...
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