End of the Innocence: Full Circle

    "But I saw the body..."

    "I would like to make arrangements to have the boy properly buried on my expense.  Even a common house pet would be given a more dignified burial."

    He stared down at his emptied cup for awhile and said nothing.

    "Why do you care about this so much?" He finally said.

   I smiled.  "It has more to do with my self-interest than Arashi's.  Let's leave it at that."

    He contemplated a little longer and nodded.  

    "I'll do what I can.  I'm sure it's what father would like to have happened as well."

    I went down to the central hospital and went through the birth certificates that had been archived on the micro film.  I wanted to find Yuki's birth certificate.  I wanted a tangible proof he had existed.  I spent the rest of the afternoon and into the night in the basement of the hospital, staring at thousands of slides.  I had gone through two year before Arashi's established birth date and found nothing.  

    I was forced to leave when the office closed for the day.  After a couple of drinks in a local bar, I caught a cab and returned to the hotel.  I found two messages waiting for me at the front desk when I picked up my room key.  Utsuki had called and asked me to phone him.  I folded the paper in half and threw it in the trash can before I entered the elevator.  The other message was from Anderson.  Briefly I wondered if Utsuki had finally intervened and forced Anderson out of the safe house.  A worse thought occurred to me when I remembered Utuski had threatened to give Aoshi over to Dr. Tenkoku once.  Losing me from the case only would mean Utsuki lost a couple of weeks' work from the case.  It would be easy for him to fire me from the case and probably file for a permanent suspension of my license then start over again.  He didn't know what I knew.  He probably  guessed I knew nothing.

    As soon as I got into the room, I called Anderson.  He sounded worried but it had nothing to do with Utsuki.

    "He tried to kill himself early this morning," Anderson said.  "He slit open his left arm with a shaving razor -- opened himself up from the crook of his arm down to his wrist while he sat in the hot bath."

    "How is he?"

    "He might have done some nerve damage to the arm but he's not in any life-threatening danger.  The cop called Utsuki and an on-call doctor in.  He sewed up Aoshi's arm and gave him some sedatives.  They refuse to move him to a hospital for proper treatment."

    "They wouldn't.  They would even take a chance to let Aoshi die in that house before they move him out of there."

    "The doctor left me straps for Aoshi's bed."

    "Please don't use it.  Tying him to the bed is the last thing he need right now."

    "He won't be as long as I am here."

    "How did Utsuki react to you?"

    "He didn't.  He barely even looked at me.  He stood by the door and watched the doctor work on him.  When they wrapped up, he left an additional cop and nurse and drove off with the doctor.  It almost seemed like everything went back as usual."

    "I see..." I said.  "I need another day or two here."

    "What for?" Anderson sounded angry.

    I told him about Yuki and my search to find the official paperwork to validate the existence of that child.

    "It's mighty chivalrous of you to do this, but you are needed here now to work on a living human being than dig for a dead one.  Even if you found the papers to go with the body, it will do nothing to the Shinomori family.  The woman who killed the child's long dead and all of your work will be hidden then eventually forgotten.  The most damage you will do is cause them a mild embarrassment."

   "It's more than causing a blemish on their good name," I said quietly.  "Although I did start out wanting to bring a child murder to the attention of the city who had highly regarded this family.  Now I need to do this for Aoshi or he will never be whole."

   "Meaning?"

   "Aoshi's almost come around to a full circle," I said.  "He is no longer wearing the bandage around his throat, is he?"

   "He hasn't, since the day you left."

   "That meant he's starting to remember.  I can't say I know why he wanted to kill himself but I have theories.  For now, I need to piece together the last bits of his life and give him that....or he will eventually succeed killing himself."

   Anderson didn't say anything for awhile.

   "What would you like for me to do?"

   "Asides the obvious, please don't let anyone speak to him.  If Utsuki learns Aoshi is starting to recover his memory, he'll take him."

   He agreed and hung up.  The headache I woke with never went away, and now, it had become progressively worse.  I made myself some hot tea but I fell asleep before I had a chance to drink it.

    I dreamt of two little boys with dark brown hair kneeling at a double glass door with the French frame.  They were wearing identical pale blue cotton pajamas with feet.  The pajamas were patterned with white rabbits with ribbons around its necks.  Their little hands were flat against the glass pane as they watched a heavy snow storm outside.  Although their backs were turned to me, I knew who they were.  By the size of their hands, I guessed the children to be no older than three years-old.  I leaned down and put my hands on their heads and stroked their hair.  One of them looked up at me.  I woke to the sight of Aoshi's tear-streaked face.  After I collected my breath, I looked at the clock on the night stand and realized I had slept only for half an hour.

   I thought about ordering wine to my room but settled for a visit to the bars in Gion instead.  This time, I drank only enough to stumble into a cab by myself.

    I returned to the research at the hospital the next morning with a minor hangover.  This time, I searched for Yuki's name four years before Arashi was born.  I found nothing.  It didn't seem conceivable for Yuki and Arashi's age gap to be more than four years.  Any earlier, Aoshi would have been only 16 or 17 years-old when he became a father -- which contradicted the graduation papers which stated Aoshi was 21 when he finished his study in England.  Aoshi had studied in England for two years.  It was highly unlikely for the Shinomori to alter a paper which had originated from London.  Ryohei said Aoshi returned from Europe with a pregnant woman...which could only mean the first child was not even born yet.

    I slumped back against the chair and wished I had taken up smoking.  Maybe doing something mindless like smoking a cigarette would shed some insight into the dead-ends I kept on running into.  Perhaps the Shinomori clan had outdone themselves and really did wipe out all traces of the paperwork leading to Yuki.  Then I wondered why I couldn't find Arashi's original birth certificate.

    "You Tokyo doctors are certainly messy," someone said.

    I looked over and saw a middle-aged man in a white lab coat push aside boxes of film I had stacked on the floor.  I watched him put back each box into its marked slots on the shelves.  When he finished, he walked toward me and half sat, half leaned on the desk I was working at.  According to his hospital identification clipped at his breast pocket, he was Dr. Tohjo, senior medical staff.

    "Utsuki-san told me to look for a crazy psychiatrist who would be in the basement scouring through birth certificates.  I guess that would be you."

    We exchanged handshakes while I said, "Dr. Kanoe, crazy psychiatrist."

    "I suppose it's pointless to tell you now that he was down here with a couple of his men, looking for the same thing three months ago."

    "You could have told me this before I lost 20 hours down here."

    He smiled.

    "Would you have taken my word for it, if I'd just said you wouldn't find anything?"

    "Do you know what I am looking for?"

    "Arashi's birth certificate?"

    "Actually, I'm looking for his brother's.  His name was Yuki?"

    Tohjo scratched his chin thoughtfully.

    "I didn't know he had a brother.  Did the Shinomori family say there was a brother?"

    "Ryohei didn't deny there weren't," I said.  "And why couldn't I also find Arashi's records?  Isn't this the place where all of Kyoto's birth certificates are archived?"

    He nodded.  

    "There was a flood about 24 years ago that also wiped out a lot of paperwork,"  Tohjo said.  "That was when the governor ordered whatever paperwork that still could be salvaged or legible, to be entered into the films before they yellowed or mildewed.  Arashi's paperwork could have been in the ten-feet stack that was reduced to pulp paper in the flood."

    "There can't be just one single piece of paper the hospital produces to document a birth," I said.  "Many doctors I know often kept personal records of the babies they delivered or the patients who entered their care."

    "The doctors in Kyoto are not required to do so, but I suppose that's a possibility," he said.  "You are not suggesting calling out to hundreds of--"

    "I am," I said. 

    He scratched at his chin a little more as he thought a little harder.

    "I can't promise anything," he said and straightened.  He smoothed the wrinkles on his lab coat and re-aligned his name tag.  "Are you done here?"

    I nodded and pushed myself away from the desk.  He walked me out and asked one of the nurses to put back the boxes of film I had pulled out of the shelves.  

    "What you are doing is admirable, but I don't think it will become much of anything.  The Shinomori family's quite powerful politically and socially."

    "Maybe here, but not in Tokyo."

    I gave him my card with Tokyo address and told him I plan to leave in the morning.  He put the card in his pocket and offered his hand out to me.  I took it and we shook hands.  Meaningless professional protocol.  When he turned and walked off, I put away my smile and left the hospital.

    I returned to the hotel and packed.  There were no leads and I didn't want to stay in Kyoto any longer.  When I wasn't thinking about drinking, I was thinking about Aoshi and the arm he had slit open.  I phoned Anderson to tell him I would be on the first train out of Kyoto in the morning.  I should be back in Nikko by noon.  

    "I hope to get a complete list of doctors in the area who might have kept a copy of the original birth certificate for both Arashi and Yuki.  Then the matter of contacting them and asking them to scour their archives will probably take another few weeks....if they comply.  I might as well begin some counseling on Aoshi while I wait."

    "What about Yuki's body?"

    "When Goro recovers the body and can safely take it out of the estate, he'll send it to the city morgue.  I've left word with the senior coroner to do a routine autopsy then send the remains up to my office.  I would like to bury the child in Tokyo.  I would also like Aoshi to witness a proper burial given to his brother."

    After the call, I showered and turned in early.  My train was due to leave at 5 am.  That night, I dreamt about the little boys again although I could not see them.  Someone with their back turned to me was busily digging with a small shovel.  The only light came from a paper lantern that was set on the grass next to a small blue bundle.  The man with the shovel didn't seemed to notice me as I crouched down next to the tightly wrapped bundle.  I felt for the knot that held the folds together and I found it knitted tightly in the center.  I pulled at the knot with the desperation to open it.  The knot refused to give and I was becoming progressively angry.  A pair of small arms slipped around my neck from behind.  In that instant, a calm washed over me.  A small voice sang the snow song in my ear.  He sang until the song was replaced with an intrusive buzz of the alarm clock that woke me. 

    The song resonated in my head, complete with the angelic voice that reminded me of a fragile glass wind chime, for the rest of the morning.  I didn't like hearing it.  Perhaps because I knew what had become of the happy child who sang that song.

    "Someone had sent this at one-thirty this morning," the desk clerk said after I finished the check-out.  He handed me a brown envelope with the Kyoto Central Hospital return address stamped in the corner.  "We didn't want to wake you, so--"

    "Thank you," I said and shoved it into my briefcase without opening it.  The bellhop took my bag to the first waiting taxi lined up along the curb and loaded it while I slid into the back of the cab.  For the first time since I came to Kyoto, I felt happy.  Not only because I was leaving the city I had come to despise, but I had fresh leads.  I would have giggled like a child with a present if I had a sense of humor.  Thank God I didn't.

    The list was 312 names long.  Tohjo had highlighted the names of the doctors who were in practice during the time frame Yuki might have been born.  He had narrowed the list down to 66.  I studied the list and made another call list on the train.  

    Instead of changing trains to go to Nikko as I had originally planned, I went to my office and spent five hours calling the names Tohjo had highlighted.  I repeated the same request verbatim to each of the doctor or their assistants and asked them to fax their results to the safe house.  I had lost most of my voice by the time I finished.  

    By the time I did reach Nikko and walk into the safe house, it was well after 9 PM.  Anderson looked at me then at his watch when I came in. 

    "Sorry.  There was something I needed to do first."

    "What happened to your voice?"

    "It went with the something I needed to do."

    He gave me a half smile and said he would like to return to his hotel room in Shinjuku.  He wasn't used to sleeping on the futon and his sore back ached for a bed with box springs.  One of the cops gave him a ride to the station.  

    Aoshi was asleep when I checked on him.  His left arm was heavily bandaged and strapped to the bed to immobilize it.  He looked considerably thinner and paler than the last time I saw him.  It had been only a week and already he looked wasted away.  I laid my head down next to his right arm and fell asleep.

    I woke to the comfortable sensation of someone stroking my hair.  It didn't occur to me who was doing it until I suddenly remember where I was.  I raised my head and looked at Aoshi.

    "You came back," he said.  His voice sounded worse than mine.

    "Of course," I said and sat up.  I looked at my watch.  It was three in the morning. 

    "I thought you left me too."

    I got up and walked over to his other side to check on his bandage.  Spots of blood had surfaced.  

    "I wouldn't do that," I said and searched the room for fresh bandages.  "I had some out of town business.  I'm sorry if I made you worry."

    I found the rolls of gauze and a small bottle of antibacterial solution in a small wooden box on the desk.  I set the box down on the night stand and unstrapped his bandaged arm.

    "Are you angry with me?" He asked.  

    "No," I said.  I lifted his arm up slightly and began to unwind the long strip of gauze.  "I am curious why you would hurt yourself though."

    He didn't say anything.

    "Can you tell me why?" I asked.

    "I don't know."

    "I believe you do and you've thought about this quite thoroughly.  Not many people know to slit their arm along the run of the artery.  Most people simply tried to cut themselves across the wrist instead.  You also did this in a hot bath -- to get the blood flowing even faster."

    "Are you angry with me?" He said again.

    "Of course not."

    He looked down at the arm I had finished unwrapping from the gauze.  From the crook of his elbow down to the heel of his wrist was carefully sewn together with small stitches.  The black threads made the injury look even worse.  I laid the arm down carefully and dabbed some solution onto a small cotton pad.  He didn't even flinch as I cleaned dried blood that had collected around the stitches.

    "Do you remember your father?" I asked him after long silence.  

    He nodded but he didn't look at me.  

    "Did you do this to yourself because I left?" I asked.  "That you might have displeased me in some way and caused me to leave?"

    He bit down on his lower lip and chewed on it thoughtfully instead of answering my question.

    "Your father died because of something your grandmother did to him.  You and your brother were only the unfortunate witnesses to his way of ending his own pain.  He killed himself when he learned he would lose you and your brother."

    I picked up a fresh roll of gauze and began to unfold it, starting from the crook of his arm.

    "Did you find Yuki?" He asked in a small voice.  He kept his head down and his eyes fixed on his wounded arm.  

    "I think I did," I said.  "If things go the way I expect, in a week or two, his body will be sent up to Tokyo for a proper burial.  Would you like that?"

    He nodded.  A single drop of tear fell and soaked into the gauze I had just unrolled.  It quickly disappeared into the cotton.  Then another drop fell near it.  I lifted his face up by his chin and I was a little startled to see the same tear-stained face I saw in my dream.

    "I'm sorry, daddy..." he said.  "I'm sorry..."

    I leaned over and gave him a kiss on his lips.

    "This is not your fault."

    He hooked his right arm around my neck and pressed his face into my shoulder and cried into it.  I let him.

    Goro called me next day from a pay phone.  He spoke in a whisper, although the noise of the city was behind him.  He informed me that he would not have a chance to do the excavation for another three days at least.  He would do it when Ryohei was due to leave for a weekend to attend a wedding in Hawaii.  After he repeated the instructions for Yuki's remains to my satisfactory, I asked him about the snow song.  

    "Does that song have any specific significance?"

    He held the phone away from him and he asked the question to someone next to him.  All I heard were unintelligible murmurs in between Goro feeding more coins into the machine.

    "Father said it's a song Aoshi-sama used to sang to the boys when they were very little."

    "Why that song?"

    Goro held the phone away again and asked the question to his father.

    "Because the song matched their names," Goro said.  "I don't know what that meant."

    In spite of the frenzied coin feedings, Goro said he will try to call me again after he did as I asked then he was abruptly cut off.

    I spent the day thinking about the song.  There was something about it that nagged at me.  Not to mention the song being sang by a little boy echoed in my head whenever I thought about it.  I went to bed annoyed with myself.

    Two days went by with only faxes of "no finding" from the doctors' offices.  I looked forlornly at the second call list I had made while I was on the train.  That list had 152 names on it.  I tried to prepare myself for hours of phone calls and redundant speeches by trying to draw the husky puppy in the yard in the margin of the call list.  Then the images of the postcard perfect scene of the two little boys staring out at the snow from my dream jarred a thought that took me awhile to comprehend it.

    The sense of urgency overtook my vast dislike for Utsuki and I called him.  He sounded surprised that I called him.

    "I don't have time to explain anything right now.  I want you to run a report of survey on snow storms from the last 17 to 25 years.  I need the exact months of when they were, and which ones were the worst."

    "You want me to run a fucking weather report for you?"

    "Yes. Fax it here when you have it."

    I hung up before he could make another incredulous remark.  Utsuki worked fast.  He probably put several men on the search and had results for me within two hours.  I marked the month and year of the birth date I had theorized.  I had speculated the wrong year all that time.   I phoned Tohjo and asked him to look into the films of the new date and month I had deduced from the data Utsuki sent me.

    "The documentations might have been altered, even if they are found."

    "Maybe so, but the certificate should still have the name of the doctor who did the delivery."

    "You got this date from a name?" He sounded amused.

    "Names," I said.  

    "And you don't think it's strange for your patient to forget what his brother looks like?"

    "On the contrary.  It's an expected reaction for someone who had endured that kind of trauma so young."

    "Tell you what," he said.  "I'll handle this personally just so I can see what kind of results a psychiatrist from the big city can yield.  If there's any findings, I'll fax it over right away."

    That night, I slept well. I didn't even notice Aoshi had crept into my room and laid next to me.  I woke with him in my arms.  He was still sleeping as I carefully extracted myself from his arms.  I checked his bandage.  He didn't bleed through but he had leaned half of his weight on it when he slept curled against me.  I tucked him in and stepped out to the living room.  One of the young nurses was setting the table for breakfast.  She blushed and said good morning nervously when she saw me.  I nodded at her and walked past her, toward where the fax machine sat.  

    On the floor, there were several sheets of paper.  I collected them and looked at the headers for each one until I came across the cover sheet from Tohjo's office.  He had scribbled "snow storm" in English letters with a smiley face in the body of the cover sheet.  He had faxed me two birth certificates.  One for each of Aoshi's baby.  Yuki was the older of the two, and the babies had been born four and half minutes apart.  Arashi was actually eight months younger than he believed he was.  His birthday was on the 6th of February.  In the year Kyoto had seen its worst snow storm in over 50 years.  The babies were named appropriately for the unusual weather.  

    Tohjo was correct in his assumption that the hospital's master archive didn't have the certificates.  The copies came from a doctor who had long retired, but thankfully, kept immaculate records of all his patients.  The confirmation didn't bring any resolutions.  It only validated a theory I had.  Briefly I wondered why no one had mentioned or remembered the brothers were identical twins.    

    I woke Aoshi for breakfast.  While we ate, he looked at the scattered sheets of fax paper on the floor and on the desk.  He didn't ask what they were, although he looked curious.  After we finished breakfast and the dishes were cleared away from the table, I laid the copies of the birth certificates in front of him.

    "Do you remember Yuki?" I asked.

    Before he could answer, my cell phone rang.  The caller ID placed the call from Kyoto and I answered it.  It was Goro.  

    "I called you to tell you that I dug the spot where Yuki was buried at.  Father said he marked the spot with a stone he had scratched Yuki's name.  I found the stone. There's no body."

    "Perhaps the stone has been moved?"

    "Not recently anyway.  The stone's set in the spot quite deeply.  I dug around a few feet around the marked spot and found nothing."

    "Did your father say he actually buried the body?"

    "What do you mean? Of course he did, I was there."

    "You saw him making the grave and you saw a cloth bundle that you assumed was Yuki."

    "Father said he did put him there..."

    "Did you ask him why the body's no longer there?"

    Goro was quiet for awhile.

    "When I asked him that this morning, he only smiled and said the boys were with their parents in Europe.  And he was assured of the boys' health when he spoke to him...or rather, you, last week."

    "The only person who knew what happened to Yuki that night was your father."

    "All I can do is keep asking him.  He has been ill for sometime, sir.  He still believed you are really Aoshi-sama, even though he knew on a conscious level that you weren't.  I don't know how much weight you can put on his answers, even if he had them."

    I looked over to Aoshi.  He had crushed the sheets of paper in his hands and crumbled them in his fist.  He looked furious as he tore at the papers and threw them on the floor.  

    "Ao--" I said.

    He clawed at his bandaged arm and started to rip the bandages off.  I told Goro to call me back later and hung up.  I grabbed Aoshi just as he had loosened the gauze and he nearly hooked his nails onto the stitches at his wrist.  He kicked at me and tried to thrust out of my grip.  In the commotion, he kicked over the chairs.  A nurse peered into the room and saw me throw him down on the floor.

    "Get a sedative," I told her.  She was frozen for a few seconds, then she bolted off.  I pinned Aoshi beneath me and held his arms over his head.  His left arm was bleeding through its stitches.  The wound threatened to burst out of its seams.  

    "Hurry up!" I screamed at the nurse.

    The nurse reappeared with a small bottle and needle.  Aoshi panicked even more when he saw the nurse prepare the needle and it gave him another burst of energy.  Aoshi managed to maneuver enough leverage to bite into my forearm.  I fought the instinct to release my hold on his wrists and tear away.  I didn't have to look to know he had broken the skin and I was bleeding.  The nurse jabbed the needle into the side of his neck and gradually, the painful pressure on my arm eased.  It took another 20 seconds before Aoshi to completely go unconscious.

    "Are you okay, doctor Kanoe?" The nurse asked nervously.

    I pressed on the wound to stop the bleeding and nodded.    

    "Can you get the on-call doctor? He will need some of the stitches re-done."

    She nodded and dashed off.  I wrapped up Aoshi's arm the best I could back in the gauze strip he had loosened then carried him to his room.  I waited until Dr. Yamaguchi came up to tend to Aoshi's arm before I left to take care of the bite.

    The wound wasn't bad, but the pain and the amount of blood felt otherwise.  I washed it out then bandaged it.  When I stepped into Aoshi's room, Dr. Yamaguchi had repaired the stitches and had begun to wrap the arm in fresh gauze.

    "What happened to upset him so much?"

    "I'm not sure."

    "Utsuki-san will not be too pleased to hear about this."

    "Then don't tell him," I said.

    "Not tell him?"

    "Utsuki might order him to be strapped down."

    "Given the situation, that's not a bad idea."

    "Being tied down is not the best option for someone who had endured a month of it in the company of a sadist."

    He shrugged.  "If you say so."

    He finished wrapping the arm and left.  I took a seat across the room and watched Aoshi sleep.  I thought about Yuki's missing body and Goro's father's failed memory.  I thought about Aoshi's sudden anger at the papers bearing his and his brother's real birth dates.  I thought about Ryohei and his bitter words.  I thought about why was it necessary to change Aoshi's birth date when it would have been considerably easier to just delete Yuki's papers.  

    Aoshi slept for about six hours before he stirred, then woke.  For awhile, we looked at each other but not really seeing each other.  Both of us were immersed in our own thoughts.

    "Why were you so angry?" I asked him.

    He tried to sit up but his left arm was strapped to the bed.  I got up and undid the clasp the held the arm down.

    "I hate you," he said.  "I hate you for making me remember."

    "What do you remember?"

    He shook his head.  I cupped his face in my hands and made him look at me.

    "You knew who did this to you, don't you?" I said.  "You remembered his face--"

    He started to cry.  The tears streamed down and pooled at the heels of my hands before they dripped down onto the sheets.

    "I don't want to.  Please, daddy.  I don't want to."

    His sudden regression into a child mystified me.

    "Why don't you want to?" I said with a softened voice.

    He cried harder and kept on saying he didn't want to.

    "Do you trust me?" I whispered.

    He nodded.

    "Do you know who did this to you?"

    "Please daddy...." he said as he shook his head.

    I leaned in and kissed him on his mouth.  I let him have a few minutes to calm down.  When he did, I kissed him again.

    "Tell daddy who hurt you," I said.

    For a few moments, he said nothing and didn't move.  Then he took my hand as he slipped off the bed.  He led me into the room where I slept and paused in the center of it.  There was nothing in the room except for an antique mirror framed in oak that stood in the corner.

    "My god..." I said softly as the realization of the answer sank in.  It was as if I had always known the answer, but I did not want to believe it.  And now, I am forced to accept it in the same way I had forced Aoshi to come to terms with it. 

    He raised his right hand and looked at me with his tear-filled eyes as he pointed at the mirror.

    "I'm sorry, daddy..." he said.