Chapter 2―The Scholars (Part 2)

In the afternoon the next day—a Saturday—Shiraishi headed to Café Merry.

Synthetic leather sofas gleamed darkly under a row of tulip-shaped lampshades. The house plants (all of them plastic) reminded her of the tropics. Everything in the café carried a sense of history, from the abstract geometric paintings to the scuffed menus on the tables.

The Scholars were already gathered at the table in the back when she walked through the door. Ikeuchi was concentrated on flipping through his notes, while Beretman was slowly working on a piece of buttered toast, and Boney was fastidiously wiping his glasses clean. It was Madam, smoking a skinny cigar as she looked around the café, who spotted Shiraishi first. She put a hand on the shoulder of Ikeuchi, who looked up from his notes with a quick smile.

“Thank you for coming. Please, have a seat.”

Shiraishi joined the group, all of whom were clearly sizing her up. The mood felt quite strange, and she began to wonder whether she shouldn’t have come after all.

“This is Shiraishi,” said Ikeuchi, finally seeming to have remembered that he had invited her. “She works at a hobby shop in this building.”

This prompted the other members to introduce themselves. Beretman was Nakatsugawa Hiroaki, a collector of antique books with an office in Jimbōchō. Boney was a college student here in Tokyo by the name of Shinjō Minoru. But Madam gave only her name, Umino Chiyo, and nothing more. “Call me Chiyo,” she said.

It had been Chiyo and Ikeuchi who had started the group. Their investigation into The Tropics had led them to others who had read the book―Nakatsugawa and Shinjō. And once the four of them were assembled, Nakatsugawa had dubbed the group “The Scholars.”

“So, miss,” drawled Nakatsugawa, “How much do you remember?”

Shiraishi felt like she was being interrogated.

“Not very much…”

“Perhaps you could just start with what you do know,” Ikeuchi gently prodded, and Shiraishi hesitantly began to talk.

The Tropics begins with an amnesiac young man washing ashore on a tropical island and being rescued by a resident of that island named Sayama Shōichi. Sayama tells him that the waters around the island are governed by the Sorcerer-King, a being who uses the Magic of Creation to create and destroy islands on a whim. Sayama has been dispatched by an organization known as the Scholars to steal the secret of that magic, and eventually the young man joins him to infiltrate the Sorcerer-King’s archipelago.

But that was as far as she could confidently set forth. “There’s an island, with, um, a gun battery,” she stammered. “And an island with…a prisoner?”

Her audience was clearly crestfallen.

“Hmph. She didn’t even make it to the Doldrums,” muttered Shinjō.

“What are the Doldrums?” she asked.

“All in good time,” Ikeuchi assured her, before turning to placate the other members of the Scholars. “It is clear that Shiraishi has indeed read The Tropics. Surely we cannot reproach her for a lack of precision. I myself could hardly recall a thing when I met Chiyo. It was our discussions which jogged my memory, and I am sure the same will happen with Shiraishi. Perhaps what she remembers will lead us to recall things which we had forgotten. And isn’t helping each other the very purpose of the Scholars?”

“I suppose you’re right,” admitted Nakatsugawa. “We’ve already wrung our own brains as dry as sponges.”

Chiyo whispered in Shiraishi’s ear, “I’m looking forward to what you’ll come up with.”

Shiraishi had no idea what these people were talking about. With some hesitation she raised a hand.

“Can I ask a question? None of you finished the book?”

“That is exactly right,” replied Nakatsugawa. “No one knows how it ends.”

“Really? That seems like a really strange coincidence.”

“But coincidences happen all the time.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” muttered Shinjō. “There has to be a reason.”

Nakatsugawa grinned. “Shinjō here is our very own detective wunderkind. But I’m afraid he has been puttering in circles for the last year, so we’ve all rather lost faith in his pet theory. And I do not think the young lady will be of much more aid.”

A wave of indignation rushed over Shiraishi.

“And how do you know that?”

“We certainly do not,” interjected Ikeuchi, attempting to smooth things over. “We’ve only just begun. Let us acquaint her with Salvage.”

Nakatsugawa reached into his bag and pulled out a piece of paper. Once he had unrolled it out on the table Shiraishi saw that it was a giant timeline, made of multiple A4 sheets glued together. The Scholars had spent their existence plumbing their memories and piecing together the fragments which they dredged up into this chronology. From the many addendums which littered the paper, it was evident that its compilation had been quite a painstaking process. Through this Salvage effort the Scholars sought to faithfully reconstruct The Tropics.

“This is incredible!” exclaimed Shiraishi.

“I’m glad you think so,” Ikeuchi said, sounding pleased.

Shiraishi leaned over the paper, her eyes racing over the densely packed text. The beginning was assembled into a narrative which matched what she herself could recall from having read the book those many years ago. As she read on, long-forgotten images rose up in her mind, like drowned ruins emerging from beneath the water, and with them came a feeling of elation. Yes, this utterly strange story was the The Tropics she had once read.

But the further she proceeded, the more confused the narrative became, splitting into multiple branches, interrupted by blank gaps, and peppered with question marks. In the end the plot unravelled into a shoal of fragmentary notes:

Underground world. Beneath Nautilus island

Sunken forest. Woodland sage

Weird creatures emerge from bottom of ocean. People eaters

Ordered by Sorcerer-King to fight a tiger. Freak show

Shiraishi didn’t remember any of those things from her own reading. They floated there, like scattered islands in the warm seas of the Tropics.

She pointed at those fragments and asked, “Why is it all disjointed here?”

“Those are the Doldrums we mentioned earlier,” said Ikeuchi. “By stitching together what we each remember we’ve created a narrative that can be followed cohesively, see? But about halfway through the book that strategy falls apart. All of our memories become progressively fuzzier, and no matter how methodically we scrutinize them we cannot line the pieces up correctly. We don’t know which way the story goes. That’s why we have dubbed this jumbled-up region ‘The Doldrums.’”

“I see. But what does it mean?”

“All you told us barely even scratches the surface,” lamented Shinjō. “And here I was hoping that we could make a breakthrough in the Doldrums…”

“Well I’m sorry I didn’t meet your expectations.”

Ikeuchi broke the uncomfortable silence that followed.

“It isn’t every day that we get a new member. It is only natural that she recalls but little. With some luck, Salvage may well be the key to unlocking the mystery of the Doldrums, and bringing us one step closer to the identity of the author.”

Shiraishi stared at the paper unfurled upon the table. Once more she retraced the story of The Tropics.

The protagonist who had lost his memory. The tropical observatory. The Scholar known as Sayama Shōichi. The Sorcerer-King and his nautical domain. The prisoner in the underground gaol. The Sorcerer-King’s daughter and her library visits. The confrontation with the Sorcerer-King. The banishment into the north. From that point her memory began to fade.

But as she dug deep into her memories another scene swam into her mind’s eye. Her eyes scanned every inch of the paper, but nowhere was it recorded in those notes.

She screwed up her courage.

“This doesn’t mention the Desert Palace.”

“The Desert Palace?” The Scholars looked at one another.

“I don’t remember exactly what happens, but I remember the palace. It’s in the middle of a gigantic wasteland surrounded by sand dunes. The protagonist goes there to meet someone.”

“I recall nothing of the sort,” Nakatsugawa sniffed. “The Tropics is set in a tropical sea, if you will recall. How could there possibly be a desert?”

“Are you sure you’re not mixing it up with a different book?” asked Shinjō.

“I’m absolutely positive. Sayama Shōichi shows up there,” countered Shiraishi. “And he’s definitely from The Tropics.”

Ikeuchi eagerly produced a ball pen and wrote down Desert Palace in the Doldrums.

“Salvage in action,” he told her with a little smile. “This is where our work begins.”

◯

Shiraishi spent a quiet New Year’s at home in Koishikawa. But even when she was making the first shrine visit with her family, or writing notes snuggled in the kotatsu, her thoughts would drift back to that strange book club. The Scholars, the Doldrums, Salvage―for whatever reason she felt a little embarrassed at having taken those things so seriously. Yet she couldn’t deny that she had enjoyed that afternoon of discussion: it had been a long time since she had so much fun.

The next meeting would be at the end of January. As they went their separate ways, Ikeuchi had said, “If you think of anything else I would recommend you write it down.”

“Icy.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what you gave me the notebook for, isn’t it?”

A little flush of embarrassment rose into Ikeuchi’s face.

Shiraishi smiled. “Have a Happy New Year.”

“And the same to you,” Ikeuchi replied.

The daffodil yellow notebook gradually filled up with notes. Every time she remembered a detail from The Tropics she jotted it down. Ikeuchi’s advice was sound: the very act of writing stimulated new discoveries to surface from her memory, and as the fragments began to link into cohesive sequences, the book that she had once read began to take shape once more. Yet the more she read, the more mystified she became, like she was walking deeper into the shadow of the jungle.

Ikeuchi visited the store almost as soon as the New Year’s holiday was over.

“New Year’s greetings to you.”

“And a Happy New Year to you,” replied Shiraishi.

Ikeuchi smiled when she showed him the notebook.

“Splendid,” he said.

Some of her memories matched his, while others did not. But she had a good feeling that with a little more perseverance they’d be able to reconcile it all and emerge on the other side of the Doldrums.

“I can’t wait for the end of the month to come,” remarked Shiraishi, but Ikeuchi responded with an enigmatic smile.

“Do you, now?” he said. “We’re stealing a march on the others, talking like this. Perhaps someone else will want to borrow you for another private conversation.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“Each of the Scholars was drawn here by the mystery of The Tropics. We’ve all agreed to share any clues we come across. But it is not compulsory, nor could we force anyone to share anything they do not wish. Nakatsugawa, Chiyo, Shinjō: I have a suspicion that each of them has secrets of their own. They all want to keep The Tropics to themselves.”

“What about you? Are you hiding anything?”

“Of course.”

“Can I convince you to let me in on it?”

“I regret to say that it is not for me to disclose.”

Shiraishi took that to mean that it was the same secret that the rest of the Scholars were hiding.

She was rather crestfallen: she was having so much fun exploring the mystery of The Tropics that she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to keep it all to themself.

“I don’t need any secrets,” she declared. “If I’m going to do this I’m going to be an open book.”

A few days later she received a most unexpected visit. She was minding the shop as she always did, when a woman wearing gloves and a black coat swept into the shop like a perfumed breeze. She was decidedly not the usual type of customer that frequented the shop, and Shiraishi was just musing that she looked like she had walked off out of an old black-and-white movie when she realized that it was Chiyo.

“Hello there, Miss Shiraishi,” Chiyo said, taking off her sunglasses. She had looked quite young in the café, but now Shiraishi noticed that she must be older than her mother.

“Are you very familiar with Ikeuchi?”

“Familiar? Well…he’s a regular here at the store. That’s all.”

“Humph,” said Chiyo, and she looked at Shiraishi. “You two must get to quite some gabbing. Shinjō was saying that you two are leaving the rest of us in the dark.”

“What does that mean? Was he spying on us?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say. It’s none of my business.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Everyone keeps their cards close to the chest. Ikeuchi is no different, darling. He’s a perfect gentleman on the outside, but on the inside he’s just as desperate to unravel The Tropics as the rest of us. We don’t see ourselves as a united group. This isn’t a social club, see?”

Chiyo leaned forward.

“Let’s build an alliance, just you and me. Come to my home the next time you’ve got a day off, and we’ll have a nice long chat.”

“But…”

“When is your next day off?”

“Um, er, next Monday.”

“Monday it is. I sleep until noon, so mornings won’t do. Take the Marunouchi Line to Myōgadani Station at 2 P.M. Call this number when you arrive.”

At the end of this torrent of words Chiyo placed a business card with her phone number on the counter. Shiraishi was too stunned to speak.

“Ta-ta,” said Chiyo, donning her sunglasses once more, and with an elegant wave of her hand she exited the store. Feeling as though she had just been accosted by an extraterrestrial, Shiraishi blearily watched her go.

“Ikeuchi was right,” she murmured to herself, looking down at the business card.

In the days that followed Chiyo’s visit, Shiraishi’s annoyance only grew―the absolute nerve of her―and by the time Ikeuchi came by on Friday she was in a positively foul mood. But to the contrary, Ikeuchi was immensely interested to learn of Chiyo’s invitation.

“How fascinating. I thought something of the sort might occur.”

“Can you believe how rude she was?”

“Chiyo always has marched to the beat of her own drum.”

“But still…”

“You are entirely right to feel affronted, but I assure you that she means no harm. Not once has she ever invited any of the Scholars to meet with her alone. There must be something more to it. I am of the belief that you should accept the invitation.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“I hear that she grew up and went to college in Kyoto, after which she spent her time in Tokyo and abroad, travelling back and forth. She is a regular client at the firm where I work, which is how I met her. Her partner’s name is Umino; he runs a construction firm.”

“I’m not feeling too sure about this.”

“It may well lead you to a secret.”

“I told you, I’m not interested in keeping any secrets.”

After a moment’s thought, Ikeuchi took out his own business card and put it on the counter.

“On Monday I will be waiting nearby. If you run into any trouble at all, give me a call.”

“But don’t you have to go to work?”

“I must confess that I am dying to know what secrets Chiyo possesses. Will you help me find them?”

Shiraishi felt a prickle of curiosity.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were recruiting me to be a spy.”

“That is exactly what I am doing.”