III

Yuri did not struggle against the policemen, nor did she try to scream, shout, or explain to them what was going on.
  A pair of offices loomed over her at the police station, bemused looks on their faces.
  The police had found her father’s car. In fact, it had been simple to track down.
  After the police had searched his house, they used family photographs, the most recent being a family portrait, taken probably a year or so before Yuri’s mother died. They plastered it over the news, the story’s tragic element of child abandonment and the heart-wrenching actions of a father desperate to escape the mob. It was pure dramatics.
  However, in Yuri’s eyes, it was something she felt her father had planned. He had packed her things in such a rush, and left her on the station platform for a reason. She had begun to think is what so that she would be found. And, that he would be found, or at least his vehicle would be.
  In the media storm, following the trail of sightings of a man matching her father’s description in a Honda. The care she had seen her father leave in so many times when she was a younger girl. They found his car on the road side, near Aokigahara. She knew it was a sign that there was nothing left for her, a deliberate scheme to ensure that everyone knew, or thought they knew, he was dead. It was a presumption of course. Being chased by the mob meant that he may have hidden there to throw police off the scent, and the mob. That is what Yuri wished for anyway.
  She looked down to her suit case, then up to the two officers standing over her.
  “We’re sorry Yuri. We have to presume he has gone into Aokigahara.” The officer on the right squeamishly broke the news to her.
  Yuri bowed her head silently.
  The officer on the right scowled at his younger counterpart, then looked down to the young lady, his scowl softening to a gentle, sympathetic smile.
  “If there anything we can do for you Yuri? Anyone we can contact?”
  Yuri shook her head.
  “No. My family are mostly dead.”
  The kind officer’s eyes blinked in surprise.
  “Horrible. No friends you could stay with?”
  Yuri shook her head.
  “I have friends, but they live on the other side of town. I can’t just drop in on them like this. I don’t really want to be around people anyway.”
  She gripped her suitcase closer to her.
  The two officers nodded, looking at one another in confusion.
  “Yuri, we’ll have to find a place for you to stay. How about you stay here for a while, we’ll find a nice quiet area in the precinct to keep you, if not for the rest of the night until things calm down and you have some sleep?” The kind officer replied.
  Yuri did not reply, but she did not react negatively to this. She remained tone cold towards the two officers.
  The officers looked to each other again. The younger, clumsier one scratched his head, tipping his hat slightly to the side of his head to do so. The other simply grunted, exhaling a long, drawn out breath. They walked away, leaving the young lady alone.
  As the men walked away, Yuri could hear them muttering something, the words ‘orphanage’, ‘foster’ and ‘adoption’ coming up in their conversation.
  Yuri knew she had to get away.
  Opening her suitcase, she made sure that her clothes were in there. She had not seen her father pack it, so she could not be sure what he had put in.
  All of the basics apparently.
  Pants, socks, a few pairs of jeans, a formal dress, some plain shirts and going-out shirts. As she sifted through her the neatly stacked clothes, she wondered why he had done this. Then, as she reach to the bottom layer, where the pockets built into the lining were, she felt a thick and lumpy brick-like thing in the suitcases pocket.
  She held her breath.
  Fumbling with the zipper, she dragged it along the teeth slowly, the zriiip sounding painfully loud and obvious. As she opened the pouch, she found a white envelope, a solid square lump that packed it out into a thick brick. She gently slid it out of the pouch, looking at both sides, the folded end and the bare front. Nothing was written on it. She peeled open gently the fold of the envelope, the sticky glue peeling away with ease from it’s over stuffing.
  She gasped.
  In the envelope was a large sum of yen.
  She could only presume that it was part of the ¥5,000,000 that her father had stolen, if not the whole lot. She pulled the notes out, carefully trying not to make too much noise or draw too much attention to herself.
  No one was paying attention.
  Wedged around the notes was a tatty, hastily written-on piece of paper. On it, a scrawled message.
  ‘Half of the ¥5,000,000. Run with it, while you still can.’
  This was her opportunity. A final, unselfish act from her father, performed in the most selfish way.
  She carefully zipped up the pouch again, taking care to ensure that the clothes were able to fit back into the suitcase.
  She looked about her, suddenly feeling like a criminal. In a way, to her mind, she way, as she held mobster money in her bag.
  She took a deep breath.
  Calmly, she stood up, placing the suitcase onto the ground gently, pulling up the handle to pull it along. With great care, she slipped away, reaching the sliding doors of the precinct following a group of fellow civilians, obviously here to meet one of the soon-to-be convicted. She walked away, back straight, head held up high, keeping close to the trees that lined the precinct. She looked back for a moment, to see if anyone was following.  Apart from a small flow of people, toing and froing from the front entrance, the automatic door opening and closing, the building spitting people out and swallowing people in, no one had appeared to notice her exit.
  She could make a new start. Slip away.
 

That was the night Yuri Kikuchi disappeared from under police protection.
  The precinct had been thrown into chaos as their star victim had taken flight into the night.
  Yuri decided her next move. She would find a train, and hop on to a direct line to somewhere remote. Maybe Hokkaido after all? Anywhere away from the prying eyes of people.
  She had enough money to rent out a hotel room, or a B&B as a permanent guest for some time. Until her face dropped to obscurity, a faded and crumple laminated poster on a street lamp in some Tokyo prefecture.  
  This was the night Yuri Kikuchi disappeared for two years.    

Next Chapter: Part 2 - Leaves: I