Mikomi grabbed a light jacket. While it was still September, the nights were starting to turn a bit cool. The two of them exited and house and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Serah began to walk away as if she had no intention of waiting for him. Realizing that he was being left behind, Mikomi quickened his steps so he could get caught up to her. Serah remained pretty silent as the two of them walked down the road.
When Serah said that she had lived closed by, she wasn’t kidding. Normally, Mikomi would walk the entire distance of this road and then turn left to go to Ryan’s. Here, they had only made it to the second street on the right from his house before Serah changed directions. In fact, when Mikomi looked back, he could still make out his front yard from the end of Serah’s street.
“Could this be why she knew where I lived? I didn’t realize that she lived so close by. Although, I never leave for school through the front door since cutting through my backyard is quicker. That rules out her watching me leave in the mornings. I come home the same way, too, so she wouldn’t have spotted me that way, either. I do sometimes leave through the front door if I’m going to the mall with Ryan, though. Maybe she saw me then? It’s possible but… something still seems off about it all.”
As Mikomi mulled it over in his head, they had arrived. When he sensed that she had stopped moving, he looked up and took notice of her house. The lights were off and there weren’t any cars in the driveway. Mikomi gave the house a good once over and noticed that there was a lot of work that needed to be done to it. The gutters needed to be cleaned, and some weeds on the side of the house needed to be picked. The front lawn looked freshly mowed, though, so it wasn’t as if the house was completely unkempt but it could also use a new paint job. The front door was also a bit rusty around its hinges. It wasn’t the worst house Mikomi had seen but it was enough to make him wonder.
“Say.. .are your parent’s out or something?” asked Mikomi.
“...Y...Yeah. They’re always out. I’m used to it,” she replied in her typical gentle tone.
“And she’s back to being timid and shy.”
“So Serah... I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask you. How did you know where I lived?”
Serah began to walk up the path without giving Mikomi an answer. She pulled a key out of her back pocket and unlocked her front door. She opened it and turned to face Mikomi and replied in her typical soft voice.”
“I followed you home.”
Serah quickly went into her house and slammed the door shut. Mikomi stood there a bit wide-eyed.
“Seriously creepy!”
Mikomi rubbed the back of his head as he tried to make sense of everything. What’s done was done and it wasn’t as if he was going to get a more detailed answer out of her. Letting out a sigh, he shook his head and began the return journey back home. When he got there, he went straight to his room and opened the drawer on his bedside table. He pulled out the letter he wrote to his father and held it in his hands. He stared at it as he pondered how he was going to get the letter to his father.
“I can’t just put it in our mailbox. With mom staying home all day, she’ll notice that I’m putting something in there. The letter is pretty suspicious-looking as it is. If she were to see this, she’ll open it and read it. How would I explain that if she did? I could bring it to the post office and mail it but that’s quite the hike. The post office is in the city and we’re on the outskirts of the suburbs. There’s no way in hell I’d be able to walk there and back and not explain where I’ve been for so long. If only dad could come home for just one day then everything would be perfect but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. The school’s mailbox is kept under lock and key to prevent students from tampering with it and… WAIT! There are still public mailboxes in which you can drop letters off at!”
“Wow… the answer was so obvious that I’m surprised I didn’t think of it sooner. I’ve always been the kind of person who overthinks things, so I guess it’s not uncommon that I overlooked it. In a time where email has become so easily accessible and convenient, it’s pretty easy to forget that such things exist!”
“There’s a mailbox at the convenience store on the way to school. I could just drop it off there tomorrow! Tomorrow is Friday so this would be my last chance to try and sneak it into the mail until Monday and by then, it may already be too late. The only hitch to this is that Ryan is going to jump me in the morning unless I leave a few minutes early. He’ll think I’ve ditched him but I can worry about coming up with an excuse for that later. The only other option would be to do it on Saturday by feigning a trip to the mall but I’d rather get this out as soon as possible. The sooner I get this information to my father, the sooner the company will be saved.”
“It’s settled. I’ll just have to get up early tomorrow morning. I’m sorry, Ryan, but it looks like I’m not going to walk with you to school tomorrow.”
Mikomi noticed that it was about 8:15 PM. Typically, he goes to bed around 9:30 but if he was going to leave for school early, he was going to have to turn in now. Mikomi got under his covers and even though it was a bit of a struggle, he managed to fall asleep; however, morning didn’t come fast as Mikomi was suddenly awakened by the sound of a door shutting.
The first thing he noticed was that there was light pouring in underneath his door. He glanced over at the clock which read 12:03 AM. He heard someone’s voice and although it was a bit muffled, he recognized it as his father’s.
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“I’m sorry, honey. I’m only here to take a quick shower and get a change of clothes. I need to head back to the office.”
“You look terrible! Are you getting any sleep at all?”
“I’ve been sleeping at my desk. The amount of research we’ve been doing has been very tiresome. We can’t figure out the problem and every hour that goes by is more and more money we’re spending on this. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere so I’m trying to make moves to keep the company going without damaging it too much. This entire thing is just one big headache!”
“How much longer until it all gets sorted out?”
“I don’t know. Could be a week, could be a month. I’m starting to question why I even started this project in the first place. It was a pretty ambitious project that we’ve already poured a lot of money into. Now that I’ve hired Alice, that’s more money I’m spending on payroll and it’s causing our budget to slowly slip toward the red. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, to be honest.”
“Dad hired Alice!? While the news about the budget is certainly unsettling, it’s great to hear that he went through with bringing Alice into the company! At least one piece of the puzzle got put back into place! As for the other, it seems I’m now racing against dad’s budget. I REALLY need to get that letter into the mail. Just hang in there dad, I’ll get you out of this!”
Mikomi’s eyes snapped wide open.
‘WAIT! I don’t have to wait until tomorrow. I just came up with the perfect solution to where I can get the letter to dad now!”
Mikomi opened the drawer on the table next to his bed and pulled out the letter. He opened the door and strolled out into the living room, still a bit groggy. Ryunosuke turned to Mikomi with a worried look on his face.
“I’m sorry son, did our discussion wake you?”
“Yeah but it’s fine. I’m glad you woke me up because there was a letter that came for you today.”
Mikomi handed the envelope to his father.
“I don’t remember seeing that envelope with today’s mail,” said Karoline.
“There’s the line I’ve been waiting for. Time for the perfect explanation.”
“When I came back from walking Serah home, I noticed that our mailbox was slightly ajar. It wasn’t that way when we left. I opened it up and I saw that letter stuck inside. It looked pretty weird since it only had dad’s name on it. I was going to give it to him the next time he came home, but I didn’t know when that would be so I held onto it for now. I even wondered if I should have mailed it to his office.”
“I have to remember to pat myself on the back. That was a foolproof excuse! Now all dad has to do is open that letter and read it and everything will be okay!”
Ryunosuke did just that. He tapped the envelope so that the letter would fall to one side and then he tore the opposite side open. He extracted the letter and began to read it to himself. His eyes moved back and forth across the paper and with each word, his eyes widened more and more. He quickly scrambled to the second page where the solution to the coding issue began. He covered his mouth in awe as he continued to read through the message. He moved to each page with excitement until he reached the end of the letter.
“My word…” he muttered
“What is it, dear?”
“Mikomi... Did you notice anybody close by when you took this letter out? Was anybody watching you?”
Mikomi shook his head no.
“This is the answer to the problem. It all makes sense. The entire code was wrong from the start. I can see the path clearly now.”
His father was taken aback a bit by the information he was reading. He quickly went back to the second page of the letter and began to re-read everything just to make sure that he hadn’t mistaken the information. His face became elated with joy as he confirmed that the information made complete and total sense! Ryunosuke was so happy, he was on the verge of tears! Even though he was happy, thoughts of who could have sent him this letter still drifted through his mind. He let out a sigh knowing that he may never come face to the face with the person who wrote the letter.
“It’s a shame you didn’t see anyone, Mikomi. Whoever wrote this letter just saved our company. With this… we can complete our project and, perhaps, even do it ahead of schedule! I just wish I knew who did this and or how they even knew. It had to have been someone within the company… somebody who knows where I live but why didn’t they come forward sooner? Did they not know until just now? I have so many questions, but… this is like hitting the lottery! I...I have to get back to the office. I need to start this right away!”
“What about your shower and change of clothes?” asked Karoline.
“Right… Perhaps I should do that first.”
Ryunosuke walked over to Mikomi and gave him a big fatherly hug.
“Thank you, son. Thank you for holding on to this and giving it to me. We’re going to be all right now!”
With that, his father shot Mikomi a gleaming smile and headed for the bathroom. The door closed and as soon as the water turned on, Mikomi wished his mother goodnight and went to walk away. All of a sudden, he was stopped dead in his tracks.
“Hold on, Mikomi.”
Mikomi paused and turned around.
“Where did you really get that letter from?”
“CRAP! Was my explanation not flawless!? How in the world did she see through my lie!? How do I explain this!? I mean… I could just fortify the lie until she accepts it as truth, but she obviously sensed something is amiss here. This is certainly not good!”