Chapter 3: Spring: Among Showers of Blossoms
on a Spring Festival day 4
Just then his RUICA gleamed in golden color. It was a message from Oharu. She said she was waiting for him in temple precincts. Her RUICA was adjusted to be able to operate by subtle movement of her fingers and voice so that she could send messages to a few people including Ryoko and Kanalu. She was waiting for him there. There were a lot of colored carp in a brook, canal for irrigation, and they were beautiful contrasting favorably with lanterns light.
"What happened Oharu?"
"I have something to tell to you." said Oharu. She showed her hands movements.
"Now I can move my hands like this. I owed you, and Ryoko. Thank you very much."
"It is wonderful. So now you can do many things by yourself."
"Yes, I used this machine, RUICA. Please see the memo I recorded from this location."
Oharu insisted.
"Well" "Can you see the places I passed? I want you to know something."
Although Kanalu felt strange, he did not ask further questions
because there were such people who wanted to show their memos when they started using RUICA.
The first memo was issued in the temple precincts with the time of 16:12 and a blurred picture.
The second one was from the sacred arch at the shrine with the time of 15:00 yesterday and a picture of a shrine gate.
It was funny. What did she want to say? The third memo was issued from the spot near the balustrade of the red bridge.
The time was 10:15 today. The attached picture showed many people. Kanalu wondered.
There were more memos but had no significant meaning.
Kanalu returned to his office. What was this puzzle? He untared Oharu's memo record on the WebGIS screen. There were shrine, temple, sake brewer, old street, Japanese confectionary, while tracing these records, he noticed one thing. There were other memos someone wrote beside Oharu. He wondered whether Oharu stored someone's data when she wrote her memos.
" Those memos did not have signature, nor protection, therefore, they were free for anyone to access. Those memos had pictures and haikus. The pictures were crowds of people seemingly taken from far away and they were not clear. Those pictures did not infringe on privacy that was why he did not notice when checking the data in the site. Most haikus were about love. He picked all the memos the person had posted and realized that the person had posted haikus for long.
The person wrote about the wind which blew in winter.
"His face is everywhere, in the sky and on the earth, the wind blew chasing his image through the withered field."
One haiku uploaded at the end of February read:
"As long as you live there, I have no other desire in the world."
Kanalu felt the person written about in the haikus was himself.
Another haiku composed in April read:
"Knowing that my romance never comes true, I wore a red dress to work."He found Ruica's silk costume.
"Oh..!" He was gradually convinced that Ryoko wrote these memos. There was a memo written yesterday. The photo showed the balustrade of the red bridge with his back shot. Ryoko has been taking his back shots for long time without noticing.
