The following evening, the lights of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport spread a warm yellow glow through the night. Carrying the briefcase containing the Black Rope, Kashimo boarded the plane as Miguel and the others saw him off. Miguel stood outside the security checkpoint, his beret tilted and his hands in his pockets. He waved to Kashimo and seemed to say something, but the airport announcements drowned him out. Kashimo only saw his lips move a few times before Miguel smiled, turned, and left.
Bauer was much more proper. He bowed.
The flight lasted only a few hours. Kashimo dozed in his seat for a while, and when he woke, Japan's coastline was already outside the window.
By the time the plane landed, dusk was creeping up from the horizon, tinting Tokyo's sky a hazy orange-purple. When he walked out of the arrivals hall, the Assistant Supervisor sent to pick him up was already waiting at the exit, standing ramrod straight in the same dark suit he always wore. He held no sign. In the entire arrivals hall, he was the only person scanning the face of every passenger who emerged, as though searching for a photograph he had studied countless times.
"Mr. Kashimo," the Assistant Supervisor said as he approached and took his suitcase with the practiced ease of someone who had done it many times before. "Thank you for your hard work."
"Mm." Kashimo shifted the briefcase to his left hand and followed the Assistant Supervisor toward the parking lot. The rumble of wheels over asphalt mingled with the endlessly repeated flight information from the airport speakers, noisy and monotonous. After walking for a while, he suddenly spoke.
"Those two brats' mission-is it over?"
The Assistant Supervisor's steps faltered briefly, so briefly that an ordinary person would never have