"It was probably Hattori. He noticed that Mr. Kusukawa had written something on the memo pad, but the page with the writing had been torn off. So he wanted to use the impressions on the next sheet to see what Mr. Kusukawa had written... An old but common method."
As he spoke, Jiang Xia picked up a pencil and shaded over the page as well.
Kusukawa Taro had a habit of pressing very hard when he wrote. The impressions had actually gone through two sheets of paper.
As the pencil was rubbed flat across the page, the words the memo pad's owner had written gradually appeared—
Kenbashi Town, Ito.
There were also some scattered numbers underneath, which looked like a phone number. But with a sheet of paper between them, the impressions were too unclear to make out.
"They should have gone here." Jiang Xia waved the shaded page. "Let's go take a look. We can't make out the number, but at least we have a name and an area."
Like a treasure hunt following a map, the four people, each with their own thoughts, followed the clue and took a car to Kenbashi Town.
"Ito" was not a particularly rare surname. After arriving near Kenbashi Town and looking around a little, they spotted two door plates bearing the name "Ito." With a more thorough search, there would surely be more.
After knocking on a round of doors, they still failed to find Hattori Heiji and Toyama Kazuha. And since the Itos had already been disturbed by people knocking at their doors once at noon, several of them seemed especially impatient.
For a while, Okiya Subaru felt that the impatient ones were acting guilty. Then he felt that the ones who were too calm were the ones with something