Kawaminami Takaaki scurried through the downpour until finally he found his destination and quickly entered the building. He took his pocket watch from his coat. It was a memento of his grandfather, who had passed away two years ago. Since then he had given up his wristwatch, and used this old-fashioned timepiece instead.
It was almost half-past four. He was already more than twenty minutes late. He thought he had left home in plenty of time, but it seemed he still wasn’t quite used to life in the city. Changing trains had turned out to be more troublesome than expected. And when he left the station, he had met with a deluge. Buying an umbrella had eaten up more time, as had his trouble trying to follow the directions from the station.
He felt especially bad about being late given the identity of the man with whom he was finally going to be reunited.
But, Kawaminami reassured himself, the person he was going to meet was not the type to be offended by tardiness. He would just smile and forgive him, whether Kawaminami was late by twenty minutes or two hours.
Kawaminami closed his umbrella and shook off the rain droplets as he looked around the dimly lit building. He was standing in the lobby of “Green Heights”, a block of flats located in a quiet residential area of Kaminoge, in Tokyo’s Setagaya district. Like many buildings in the city, its name was in English.
He glanced at the silver letter boxes lined up against the wall to his right. He quickly scanned them for the name of the person he had come to visit, making sure he got the right number: 409.
Kawaminami felt the warm glow of nostalgia as the swarthy face of the man he hadn’t seen in three years took shape in his mind. He had a large, hooked noose, slightly drooping, deep-set eyes and a sharp chin. When he furrowed his brow and pouted, he gave the impression of being a brooding, morose individual. But Kawaminami knew for a fact that he was actually quite cheerful and talkative. He remembered fondly the innocent, boyish smile that sometimes illuminated his features.
However, while Kawaminami was glad about their impending reunion, he couldn’t ignore the fact that, in a corner of his mind, there was a hesitation. A kind of lurking anxiousness.
He understood very well why he harboured such feelings. To put it simply, he was afraid. Not of the man himself; what he was afraid of were his memories of the incident that had occurred three years ago. Memories that would inevitably come alive again once the two of them came into contact. He suspected that the real explanation for his failure to reach out to the man in the intervening time lay in those feelings of fear.
Of course, he knew only too well that he shouldn’t dwell on the past. Three years ago, many of his friends had died. The psychologi- cal shock inflicted upon him had been tremendous, and the case had changed his life immensely.
But it was time to escape from the shadow of the last three years. You can’t change the past, no matter how much you want to. Those who have passed away will not come back to life. Not unless you obtain the power to turn back time itself – time that is eternally in motion, moving from the past and towards the future.
Was it this wretched rain that was making even his mind feel drenched? Kawaminami felt suddenly as though he were slipping down an emotional slide. He shook his head in an effort to stop himself from falling even deeper into the abyss.
He walked to a lift he had spotted at the far end of the lobby. Shaking the last remaining drops from his umbrella, he reached for the call button. But just before his finger made contact, the lift doors opened, and a woman stepped out of the cage.
She was tall and wore an ecru hemp suit over a light-purple blouse. Her light-brown, wavy hair was neatly cut, stopping just above her shoulders. Kawaminami squinted when the necklace hanging from her fair neck flashed gold for a moment. Her rather distinctive perfume was discernible amid the damp air in the lobby. It made him almost drowsy. The woman’s eyes were downcast as she made her way past Kawaminami. He glanced at her face – and started inwardly in surprise. She was wearing heavy make-up and large, dark sunglasses. She looked to be around thirty years old. He couldn’t get a good look at her features due to the shades – though he was at least sure she was quite attractive. But nevertheless he had the feeling that he had seen her before. They hadn’t actually met, but he seemed to remember her
from a picture…
Distracted, he turned around to have another look at the woman instead of entering the lift. She was peering inside the letter box next to the one numbered 409, which Kawaminami had just been looking at. She took a few letters out, put them in her bag and then walked towards the glass doors of the lobby.
After she had disappeared into the unrelenting rain, Kawaminami turned his gaze back to the letter boxes.
She had been looking inside the one for number 408, the neighbour of the man he was going to visit. When he saw the name printed on the plate, he was startled.
Kōmyōji Mikoto
He stepped away from the lift, which was waiting for him with open doors, and took a few steps back towards the letter boxes to have a better look, to make sure he had not misread the name.
The paper tag on the box did indeed say “Kōmyōji Mikoto” – not a common name by any means. It had to be
the Kōmyōji Mikoto. Which would also explain why he thought he recognized her face.
Kawaminami stepped inside the lift, still pondering this remark- able coincidence. The faint smell of her perfume lingered inside the cage.
When he rang the bell of number 409, the door opened almost immediately. A slender man dressed in a pair of jeans and a wrinkled black T-shirt was standing on the threshold. His face had not changed.
“Ah, Conan! Welcome.”
Just as he had three years ago, the man fondly addressed Kawaminami as “Conan”, a nickname derived from the alternative readings of the kanji characters in his name.
“Hello. It’s been a while,” Kawaminami said nervously as he bowed. “Sorry I’m late.”
The man looked puzzled. “What? We said four, didn’t we?” “Yeah…”
“Then you’re not late, are you?”
“Er…” Now it was Kawaminami who was confused. He took out his pocket watch. “But it’s already half-past.”
“That’s odd. It’s only four according to my clock.”
Perhaps he had only just woken up. He rubbed his tired eyes as he turned around to the sitting room.
“See?”
There was an old-fashioned octagonal clock hanging from the far wall. Its hands were indeed positioned just before four o’clock.
“Oh, but it’s not moving…”
The man blurted it out himself before Kawaminami could say any- thing. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his unkempt hair.
“I can’t believe it. I bought that clock only recently at an antique shop, you know.”
“Ah.”
“And I wound it just yesterday. I suppose that means it’s broken.”
Kawaminami could barely stop himself from laughing at the man’s baffled reaction to this turn of events.
“Oh well, I’ll sort it out later,” he said as he turned back to Kawaminami. The man – Shimada Kiyoshi, or, as he was also known, the novice mystery writer Shishiya Kadomi – wore the same boyish smile that he had often bestowed on Kawaminami three years ago.
“I’m thrilled you’re here,” Shimada said. “You’ve become quite the dapper chap, haven’t you? Anyway, come inside.”
Copyright © 2026 by Yukito Ayatsuji. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
