The city skyline passed through Keshi's tired reflection in the train car window.
A year and five months.
An eternity.
He wondered if anybody had reported him missing—if his face was printed on some flyer somewhere.
"Missing" didn't feel like the right word anymore, though.
Nor did "runaway," for that matter.
It wasn't like he had any place or anyone to run away from.
Whatever he was, Keshi thought, it was only a temporary state. One that he had to endure for just a while longer—until he found Runa.
As he sat there, Keshi once again silently listed off the places he could connect her to—places that might have someone who knew her, or her father… or her mother.
Keshi knew Runa's entire family history, catalogued in detail in his mind—her parents' alma maters—where they first met—who introduced them—the school her father taught at—the area he grew up in. He knew her family's story better than he knew his own, and aside from the 13-year chapter where they moved out to the country, it was all there.
Importantly, it was also the last place he knew for certain her father had been.
If a lead existed, Keshi thought, it would be found in Tokyo. For it wasn't just Runa that had disappeared. It was the entire Matsuyoi family.
One day there—and then gone. No note left behind. No call, no letter, no text… Just…
Poof.
"This is the Yamanote Line train bound for: Meguro. The next station is: Ebisu. JY-21. The doors on the right side will open. Please change here for the Shonan-Shinjuku Line."
There were all sorts of rumors. The husband had an affair. The wife went back to her home country without telling anyone, taking their daughter with her. They'd fallen into debt and someone had helped them to disappear…
Bullshit.
Not that Keshi had any idea, either.
He was just as blindsided as anyone else—much more so, because unlike the rest of them, he knew they'd never just up and disappear.
Neighbors from the time he was born, they might as well have been family. Runa's mom, Sophie, babysat him as a kid. Changed his diapers. Taught him the alphabet. Packed school lunches for him. Even helped run the nursing home when Keshi's mom was short staffed.
Growing up, Runa's dad, Daisuke, would take the two of them on trips. Later, he sometimes took Keshi alone. He knew how to fish and catch grasshoppers, solder wires onto a circuit board, change his bicycle brakes—about the Beach Boys—all because of him.
Losing them was hard enough, but Runa…
She was more than his closest friend. She was his psychic twin. His—
A hot lump suddenly appeared in his throat.
…If Runa knew she were leaving, she'd have told him. He told the police as much, but they completely ignored him, and Keshi was forced to stand by and watch as they conducted their half-assed, small-town investigation. When they finally ruled out foul play, the barriers and tape came down, and the Matsuyoi house just sat there, empty.
One night after things had cooled down, Keshi used his spare key to sneak in. He would never forget the sight: all their things uprooted and strewn across the floor like trash. It looked more like a crime scene than before the police got involved.
It made him feel sick. As if he, too, had somehow been violated.
He spent the next week sneaking out at night and cleaning up after the cops, putting everything back in its proper place. Of course, while also looking for anything they might have overlooked.
Eventually, he got caught. His mom freaked out and scolded him. They got into a big fight and she took his spare key. He screamed at her and stormed out, spending that night in the park—but didn't get any sleep. When he came home the next morning, surprisingly, she didn't yell at him and acted like nothing had happened. Not like her at all.
Later, he regretted how he'd acted.
She'd lost a friend too.
Keshi didn't go next door anymore after that. At night in bed, he'd fantasize about sneaking out and getting on a night bus. About taking a right instead of left on his way to school and getting on a train. To do what no one else cared to.
Find them.
But he knew he couldn't leave his mom alone like that.
So he spent the next three years planning. He wrote down every detail he could about Runa and her family. Anything that might prove to be a clue down the line—stories he remembered her dad telling—jokes her mom made about their first dates—places he remembered through photographs and objects in their house. That was the start of his stupid list.
Keshi's gaze fell down to his feet.
Tokyo was so much bigger than he imagined.
And now, after all this time… Now that he'd finally made it… there was nothing.
No record of her father's tenure as a professor.
No one who'd taught her mother at university.
In Komae, no one had heard of the Matsuyoi family, or their little electronics shop.
Komae wasn't that big of an area. How could it be that not a single person he talked to knew them? All this swirled around in his head—had he misremembered the details?
It was true, Keshi's memory when it came to other things had become less and less reliable over the years—moments becoming hazier—events reordered—names and faces jumbled. Things he once knew for certain had been reduced to a series of fluid probabilities.
The day Runa disappeared, however, remained concrete—a solid, tangible, permanent object in the landscape of his mind. A monolith that marked the beginning of what would be the most painful time in his life.
A long night he was still deep in the midst of, with no end in sight.
"The next station is: Meguro. JY-22. This train terminates here. The doors on the right side will open. Please change here for the Tokyu Meguro Line. Exit here for Heiiki D-4 Checkpoint."
It wasn't just him, though. The whole world seemed to go to hell when Runa left.