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Q.E.D. iff, vol. 12, by Katou Motohiro. Grade: B
1 Oku en to Tabisuru Otoko (The Wanderer with 100,000,000 yen, Shonen Magajin R, 2019)
One night, a police patrol car finds an old man wandering the streets in his pajamas. The officers ask to look in the bag he's carrying, and find 100,000,000 yen in wrapped stacks of bills. 2 months later, Kana is called into a care center, where one of the female workers tells her about the man, and the fact that he has no memory. They've identified him as Tarou Urashima, age about 60. His address places him at a very expensive apartment complex (mansion) near the main train station. The worker says that the cause of memory loss is a car accident a long time ago. He'd been in a coma for years, and his wife, Naoko Urajima, had been caring for him, keeping him on an IV drip, and bringing in physical therapists to keep his body from atrophying. For some reason, Naoko kept the bag of money on the floor near the bed. When one therapist asked about that being safe, she replied that Tarou would need the money when he woke up. Three years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer, and then died the previous year. 2 months after her passing, Tarou woke up. Kana visits the man and asks if he remembers anything. He mentions a music box Naoko used to play next to his bed. He adds that in a dream, she told him to find Otoguchi.
Kana decides to learn more, and tries to enlist Touma's help. There's little on either Urashima online, but Touma does locate one Masaoshi Otoguchi - a prosecutor who handled a murder case 29 years ago. Turns out, the case involved Tarou Urashima. Kana goes to the library to look up old newspapers, discovering that Tarou had a hard upbringing. At age nine, both parents were killed in a car accident, and he was passed on to an alcoholic gambler uncle. When Tarou was old enough to find a job, the uncle would show up at the office demanding cash. He'd get into fights and expect Tarou to bail him out. When Tarou met and fell in love with Naoko, the uncle told Naoko's parents that he expected them to "treat him well." Eventually, someone broke into the uncle's apartment and stabbed him to death. He had plenty of enemies, but after one year, the prosecutor's office decided to arrest Tarou and charged him with the murder. Tarou and Naoko both claimed he was in Ehime at the time, but the prosecutor presented security camera video footage of Tarou getting out of his car at a coin parking lot next to the uncle's apartment.
The judges sentenced Tarou to 15 years for the crime, and added 3 years for lying about his whereabouts. Kana also talks to Tarou's defense lawyer, who adds that Tarou and Naoko had gotten married while he was still in jail. Kana does some more footwork, taking pictures of the area near the crime scene, which is unchanged from 30 years ago. Then she goes to the prosecutor's office to check their records. Problem is, there are no records. All of the files have been expunged. There is some information about when he was released, though. He was met by Naoko. Unfortunately, he apparently was unable to start a new life and committed suicide by hanging himself in the couple's apartment 4 years later. And, there's no information on Masaoshi Otoguchi starting from about 26 years ago.
Questions: Who is the old man, if he's not Tarou? Since Naoko knows who her husband is, where did the story of the suicide come from? Why did the police take 1 year to arrest Tarou for the murder of his uncle? Where did all the money come from? Why was the prosecutor able to break Tarou's alibi?
Science and math: Nothing.
***** Spoilers *****
The surveillance footage of the parking lot showed only one streetlight, and part of the claim against Tarou was that no one else was seen in the area that night, even though there was no lighting in front of the apartment. But, comparing Kana's picture of the coin parking lot in front of the apartment, and the video camera still, it's obvious that the street lights are in different locations. Conclusion? The prosecutor, Masaoshi Otoguchi, took the video footage at the lot in Ehime, and claimed that was actually from the Tokyo parking lot. Afterward, Masaoshi was found out by someone in his office, and all the evidence from the case destroyed to protect their reputation. Kana goes back to the old man, tells him what she's found (you're innocent of the crime, the prosecutor faked the evidence), and takes him to Naoko's grave. There, they spot the music box. Tarou takes the box to his apartment and plays it. At the end of the song, a little drawer pops open, revealing a piece of paper and a key.
Questions: What's on the paper? What does the key unlock? Has Touma been 100% truthful with Kana?
***** More Spoilers *****
Touma goes to the defense lawyer's home and makes him promise to complete silence about this case. Naoko knew that Tarou was innocent of the crime, because she'd been with him in Ehime, so the prosecutor must have faked the evidence. One night, she drugged Otoguchi, stuffed him in a car and drove him to her apartment, where she kept him doped up. The real Tarou got out of jail, couldn't take the strain and hung himself. Naoko kept tending to Otoguchi, eventually bringing in other therapists to maintain the illusion that this was Tarou after losing his memory from a car crash. When she knew she would die from cancer, she switched the IV bags so they were not drugged. The message for "Tarou" when he woke up was "look for yourself." The paper has his old address on it, and the key is for his door. Otoguchi finds his old apartment completely lined with photos and newspaper clippings documenting everything, and he goes insane. The money was the final twist of the knife - the government pays the wrongly accused a certain amount per day spent in jail, which Naoko calculated to be $1 million total for the time incapacitated. Money the government denied the real Tarou. Touma says that since the defense lawyer is the only one who still remembers what Tarou looked like, he wants to make sure Kana never learns what really happened at the end.
Note, 100,000,000 yen is about $1 million USD.
Memori (Memory Stick, Shonen Magajin R, 2019)
Fan Son was an international student at MIT when Touma was still there. He was a brilliant theoretical physics undergrad, but he tended to violence, and often relied on Touma to post his bail. At the time, he was working on 2-slit experiments, and couldn't figure out why the results weren't coming out right. Touma helped explain the problem, making him one of Fan's only friends. Fan was born in a Russian-controlled part of Korea, and grew up on a farm until showing his skills at math and winning international math competitions, which let him enroll in MIT. He had a younger sister, Fan Hai-shin, who was taken to China when she was very young when their parents broke up. Fan Son eventually left MIT and started working on quantum encryption (using quantum states of photons for password protecting encrypted data), and there's a very strong indication that he succeeded. Unfortunately, on one of his annual fishing trips to Alaska, his boat overturned and he died in the accident. Six months later, Touma receives a letter telling him to come to Alaska and not be late.
The caretaker of the cabin Fan stayed at says that a lot of strange men in dark suits and sunglasses have been in and out of the area, but whatever they were looking for, they didn't find it. Remembering the part about "don't be late," Touma notices a coo coo clock that has a front plate resembling the nearby window and mountain and tree outside. The clock hands point to the tree. Touma goes out, sees a cavity in the tree, and discovers the frog head memory stick keychain Fan always carried with him around his neck like a necklace ornament.
Back in Tokyo, Shunji Nashida, the Internal Affairs officer who had bumped elbows with Touma before, shows up at Touma's house, and says he knows the boy has Fan's memory card. It's well-known Fan had been working on quantum encryption as a hobby, and now China, Russia and the U.S. all want the card. Japan is caught in the middle of what looks like could turn into a diplomatic disaster. Touma says that the rightful owner is Fan Hai-shin, Son's only living relative, and that he'll give the card to her once DNA testing proves she's a true relative. The story jumps between two plot lines, the first being Touma's and Loki's interactions with Fan in MIT, and the other the current line with Touma and Kana trying to safely hide the memory stick. In the past, Fan was abusive and confrontational with everyone, and even setting up a deal with Russian agents to sell them research data. Loki hears a rumor that someone had seen Fan copying data off of Touma's laptop to the memory stick. Touma tells his friend to keep quiet about this, and he'll check this on his own. Eventually, Fan is approached by the police, but when they inspect the frog head keychain stick, it's completely blank. Fan never figures out how Touma tricked him. He also tells Touma that he'd seen people die because of alcohol and cold three times before; as a child when an old man got drunk and froze to death in the winter, and another when a drunk laborer was messing around on a large stack of logs, slipped and got crushed under them. This is what got Fan to buckle down, study, and get out of the village. Now, for him, it's all about hard work and survival.
In the present, Kana and Touma set up deadman traps around the school grounds and parks, then make a public appearance with the stick. Agents from Russia, China and the U.S. all try to intercept the two, but Kana is too much for them. After much shenanigans, the two kids arrive at a bank and lock the stick in a safety deposit box. The Chinese government approaches Fan Hai-Shin, and offers her a massive amount of money if she turns the stick over to them. She agrees. She then goes to Tokyo, where she is taken to a hospital and swabbed. The DNA results come back saying she's 99% likely to be Son's sister. Word also goes out that an Indian broker living in Singapore, Carbina Shin, is promising to get the stick and sell it to the highest bidder. He comes to Tokyo and causes the U.S. and Russia to join in a bidding war, but at $120,000 USD, it's still small potatoes for something that promises to be worth billions to the winner.
When Hai-Shin's DNA results are announced, Touma sets the date and place for the hand-over - an outdoor amusement park in the middle of a busy day. All the actors are given time to move into place, dressed up as animal mascots, carnies, and security guards. Touma is sitting on a park bench, when he is approached by a dark-haired young woman claiming to be Hai-Shin (same one shown receiving the DNA swab test). Touma says "This is for you, your brother wants you to be happy." Hai-Shin takes the stick to the Chinese agent, presses a button on a tablet computer to transfer $1 million USD to a Swiss bank account in her name, and then all chaos breaks loose. Carbina swoops in on a merry-go-round horse to grab the stick, and runs through a parade and fog machines only to be intercepted by the American team. The Russians knock the stick loose, maybe, while one of the Americans runs off with it until Hai-Shin rams him with a bench, and gives the stick to the Chinese agents again. The squabbling goes on for a while. Finally, the scene shifts to a shipping dock, where Fan Son apologizes for stealing the data. He knows he copied it to the stick, but when the police looked at it, the stick was clean. He wants to know how Touma tricked him.
Questions: How did Touma trick Son? How does this relate to the handover of the stick to Hai-Shin? Who ultimately gets the quantum encryption algorithms? Do the algorithms work? What happens next?
Science: Just a very brief mention of quantum encryption, and how this threatens to overturn the entire computer security industry. Plus, a visual proof for how sin(a + b) = cos(a)*sin(b) + sin(a)*cos(b), and cos(a + b) = cos(a)*cos(b) - sin(a)*sin(b).
***** Spoilers *****
First, the empty USB flash card trick. Touma knew that people were going to try stealing his data, so he gimmicked his laptop such that only the USB port at the back worked, and he had an ultra-small flash memory plug-in in that port which fit flush with the back of the case in a way no one would normally notice it. Then, he disabled the front and side ports. Whenever anyone tried to copy data, they'd click on "To USB Drive", and it would just go to the micro-stick at the back.
Next, for the hand-over, Touma wanted the other actors to believe that Carbina and Hai-Shin were who they said they were, hence the DNA test and the in-person negotiations with the Indian broker. During the scuffle, the Americans got the stick first, and then Carbina threw out a second stick which the Russians grabbed. Supposedly, the American also had a fake stick prepped up, and that was the one Hai-Shin grabbed from him after ramming him with the bench, and that's what she gave the Chinese agent. Shunji, the Japanese Internal Affairs officer thinks that America has the real stick. Touma says, "No, they're all fake." But, each government is afraid of admitting that their stick is blank, and instead is intent on getting the real one from either of the two other countries. How did Touma know this? Because he and Kana were Carbina and Hai-Shin in disguise (the DNA data had been faked). Now, the three governments will be watching each other and will leave Hai-Shin alone.
Some time later, Touma visits the real Hai-Shin in Hong Kong (she doesn't look anything like Kana in a black wig), who thanks him for helping her brother. Son had sent her a letter, saying that if anything were to happen to him, she should wait 6 months and then mail a letter to Touma. She asks if the saliva she'd sent him had arrived in time, and Touma replies, "yes, you helped everything go perfectly." He gives her the Swiss bank account book and frog head memory stick, saying that he's already memorized Son's notes. Hai-Shin puts the bank book and stick on an altar with paper money that she burns as an offering to her brother in heaven. Later, Touma goes to an outdoor cafe, where his is visited by Son's spirit. Son demands to know if his ideas on quantum encryption are perfect or not, and the boy tells him to be quiet, because he has to think.
Summary: Motohiro has a tendency to write plot elements that copy themselves between C.M.B. and Q.E.D., this time, it's having his main heroines fighting vastly superior enemies, and winning more-or-less easily. 1 Oku En is an interesting twist on the "abducted victim" trope, but there's the unanswered question of why none of Otoguchi's family noticed him missing, or why the police wouldn't investigate Naoko due to her relationship with someone Otoguchi had recently prosecuted. That, and apparently she was never prosecuted for perjury in the "fake" alibi. Regarding Memory, I have become very interested in cryptography, and breaking simple cryptograms as produced by the American Cryptogram Association (ACA). I've read the chapter on quantum encryption in Simon Singh's The Code Book, and I'm "familiar in passing" with the concept. Motohiro never goes into any detail - his explanation is just empty hand waving. The gimmick with the trick laptop USB port would have required a major patch to the operating system to look convincing. Since the manga first started in 1997, with Touma just graduating from MIT, he would supposedly be using Win 95, or possibly a Sun portable workstation, and the micro flash drive Touma claims to have used apparently was USB type 2 revised, which wasn't adopted commercially until after 2001. I assume Motohiro is retconning the manga so that Touma didn't graduate until 2016 or something, since the boy has never been stated to have graduated from high School in Japan yet. Ignoring all of the above, the artwork is good, the character designs are the same as ever, and story pacing is good (although, the fake Hai-Shin looks like Tatsuki from C.M.B., and Carbina looks like Tatsuki's grandfather). Recommended if you like the series.
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