Chapter 4: Coward Murderer

Chapter 4: Coward Murderer

The girl was awoken by the smell of coffee. Seeing the thick slices of honey toast, the bisected soft-boiled egg, and the green salad spread out on the table, she sat down drowsily and slowly ate it all. She didn’t look at me whatsoever while doing so.

“What are you going to do now?”, I asked.

She indicated the wound on her palm. “I think I’ll get payback for this next.”

“Sounds like it wasn’t your father who gave you that one, then.” “That’s right. He was generally careful in his use of violence. He rarely left marks anywhere that couldn’t be covered up.”

“Other than him, about how many other people do you want revenge on, would you say?”

“I’ve narrowed it down to five. Five people who have all left permanent scars on me.”

So then there were five more wounds she was still postponing? Actually, there could be more than one per person. At least five more wounds was how I should think of it.

This led me to a realization. “Might I be one of your five targets of revenge?”

“Obviously,” she replied aloofly. “Once I’ve enacted revenge on the other four, I’ll subject you to a suitable fate too.”

“…Well, works for me.” Even so, I scratched my face.

“But don’t worry. No matter what I do to you, when the postponement of the accident - that is, the postponement of my

death - wears off, everything that I’ve caused after my death will have never happened.”

“I don’t know if I quite understand that part,” I responded, voicing a concern I’d had for a while. “Does that mean you hitting your father with a hammer, once the postponement of my accident wears off, will be undone?”

“Of course. Because before I could enact any revenge, you ran me over and I died.”

That was when she told me the story about her first postponement, with the gray cat.

Finding the corpse of a cat she’d adored, going to see it again that night, seeing the corpse and blood gone, being scratched by the cat and getting a fever, then suddenly being cured of the scratch and fever, and gaining contradictory memories.

“So comparing it to the revenge on your father, you’d be the cat, and the hammer would be its claws.”

“Yes, I think you have the idea.”

So then, no matter how much harm the girl inflicted on others from here on out, all of it would be gone once the effects of her postponement ended.

“Is there a point to a revenge like that?”, I wondered aloud, airing some honest doubts. “Absolutely anything you do will just be undone in the end. And “the end” being in ten… uh, nine days.” “Imagine you’re dreaming, and realize that you’re in a dream,” the girl explained. “Would you think, “Nothing I do will have an effect on reality, so why bother?”, or would you think “Nothing I do will have an effect on reality, so I’ll do whatever I want”?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had any dreams like that,” I shrugged. “I’m just thinking about what’s best for you. Bringing pain to the people who made you unhappy won’t bring back your lost happiness. I’m not trying to trample on your anger and resentment, but really, revenge is just meaningless.”

“Thinking about what’s best for me?”, the girl repeated, emphasizing each word. “Well then, if not revenge, what do you think would be best for me?”

“Well, there’s gotta be other stuff to do with this valuable time. Go around meeting your friends and people who helped you out, confess to people you like, or maybe used to like…”

“There isn’t,” she interrupted sharply. “There was no one kind to me, helpful to me, no boys I like or used to like, no one. What you just said couldn’t possibly be any more ironic to me.”

Are you sure you’re not just blinded by your anger? Just think about it, I’m sure you’ll remember someone who was nice…

I wanted to say something like that, but I couldn’t deny the possibility that what she was saying was 100% true, so I swallowed my words.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I wasn’t thinking.” “Yes, you should be more careful about that.”

“…So, who’s your next target?” “My sister.”

First her father, then her sister. Would her mother be next? “Sounds like you didn’t live in a very pleasant household.”

“Quit while you’re ahead,” the girl replied.

----------

Until the moment I put my hand on the doorknob, I’d been convinced I was completely cured of my illness. But as I put on my boots and prepared to go out, I felt all the energy leave my body, and I froze up.

If someone who didn’t know the situation were to pass by, they might think the doorknob had an electric current running through it.

I stood in place. My pulse quickened, and my chest tightened and hurt. In particular, the pit of my stomach and my arms and legs were numb and completely lacked strength.

I tried just waiting there for a while, but things showed no sign of returning to normal. These were the symptoms. I’d thought my shock from the car accident had quickly cured it, but I still hadn’t conquered my fear for the outside.

The girl noticed me stopping like I’d run out of battery and furrowed her brow. “What is this, a joke?”

I guess it would’ve looked like I was messing around to her. Gradually, nausea welled up in me like my stomach was being filled with rocks. A cold sweat ran down me.

“Sorry, can you give me some more time?” “Don’t tell me, you’re feeling ill?”

“No, I’m not good with going out. I’ve been living a life of only going

out in the dead of night for nearly six months.” “But two days ago, weren’t you way out there?” “Yeah. And maybe that’s the reason I’m scared.”

“First that thing after the accident, now this? How horribly weak- minded are you?”, the girl remarked in disbelief. “Just cure yourself of that quickly, whatever it takes. If it’s been twenty minutes and you’re still hopeless, I’m going without you. Nothing’s stopping me from carrying out the plan alone.”

“I understand. I’ll cure it.”

I collapsed face-up on the bed. My quickened pulse and the numbness hadn’t gone away.

Lying still, I noticed the sheets smelled faintly different, likely because the girl had slept here. I felt like my territory had been invaded.

Wanting to be alone even if it was only by way of a single wall, I hid away in the dim bathroom, lying my face on the toilet seat and covering it with both hands.

I took a big breath of the aromatic air, held it for a few seconds, breathed out, and repeated. Doing this very slightly eased me. But it was going to take quite some time to recover enough to go outside.

I left the bathroom and pulled some flip-up sunglasses out of a closet drawer. Shindo had bought them as a joke and left them with me. Anyone who wore them instantly looked like a foolish hippie.

I wiped off the lenses and put them on, then stood in front of the mirror. I looked even dumber than I could’ve imagined. I felt my

shoulders ease up.

“What are those awful glasses?”, the girl asked. “They couldn’t fit you any worse.”

“That’s what I like about them,” I laughed. With these sunglasses, I could laugh naturally. I still felt nauseous, but I was sure it’d clear up eventually. “Sorry about the holdup. Let’s go.”

I swung open the door with excessive force and went down the stairs. Getting in my forever cigarette-smelling car, I turned the key. The girl gave me a map on which she’d written a route and detailed comments in red pen.

“With all this preparation, I guess you’ve been planning this revenge for quite a while.”

She continued to stare at the map. “I lived thinking about nothing else.”

----------

The roads were congested in the morning. They were flooded with cars in both directions, and school commuters coming out of the station filled the sidewalks. Everyone carried umbrellas of all colors in preparation for rain.

When the car was stopped at the red light, some of the students walking across the crosswalk glanced at us, and I felt uncomfortable.

How must we have looked to them? I hoped that maybe I looked like someone on his way to college, taking his sister to high school on the way. The girl slid low into her seat to avoid being seen.

Turning toward the driver-side window, I saw a small flower shop surrounded by colorful flowers, and with four jack-o’-lanterns carved from pumpkins out in front.

All of the pumpkins had bright flowers blooming out of the hole on top, so they served as stylish flower pots.

I recalled now, of all times, that Halloween was at the end of October. It was nearly time for the local high school’s culture festival, too. An exhilarating season for many, to be sure.

“I just had a thought,” I said. “Can you be certain your sister is home? I find it unlikely your father wouldn’t have notified her about the beating you gave him. And if she’s aware you have a grudge against her, she might have fled elsewhere.”

The girl seemed annoyed. “I don’t think she’s been contacted. That man’s disowned her. Even if he wanted to contact her, I doubt he even knows her phone number.”

“I see,” I nodded. “How far is it to our destination?” “About three hours.”

This was going to be a long drive. All the radio stations were boring, and none of the CDs in the glovebox were something that struck me as suiting the tastes of a high school girl.

“…I know I can’t be the only one surprised by the dip in temperature lately,” a radio personality said. “What’s the deal with the cold this year? This morning I saw someone wearing a winter coat, and I gotta say, it’s just the climate for it. I’m no good with the cold, you know, so not only do I wear a scarf and gloves, I simply

have to double up the layers. Can you even believe it? But surprisingly enough…”

While we were stuck in traffic, I asked the girl if I could smoke. “Fine, but give me one too,” she said.

I had no reason to refuse. Trying to preach to the person I’d killed about her health would be a laugh.

“Make sure no one outside sees,” I warned, then took a cigarette out of the pack and handed it to her after rubbing the leaf end.

Watching a girl in a high school uniform smoke a cigarette inside a car was unnatural to the extreme. With zero familiarity in her movement, she lit it using the cigarette lighter, took in some smoke, and coughed violently.

“You can just take in about a teaspoon of smoke,” I suggested. “That might have a better taste at first.”

She switched to my suggested method, but still choked after taking in the smoke.

I considered telling her she might not be made for smoking, but watching her stubbornly try again and again, I decided to let her do as she pleased.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” I prefaced, “but what did you sister do to you?”

“I don’t want to answer.” “Okay.”

Putting the cigarette butt in the ashtray, she said “It’s not something I can explain briefly. At any rate, she’s someone who

drove me to a point from which I could never recover. Just remember that for now.”

“What do you mean you could never recover?”

“There are hopeless faults in my personality. You know that, right?” “I don’t. You seem pretty normal to me.”

“Already trying to score points with me? Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”

“That wasn’t the idea.” So I claimed, though I’d hoped those words would cheer her up.

“You said you’d consider me normal? Then let me show you proof to the contrary.”

She reached into her school bag and took out a teddy bear. It wore a red military uniform and a black cap. It looked like a nice, soft toy.

“Despite my age, I still can’t part with this. If I don’t touch it from time to time, I’m overcome with anxiety. …Am I making you shiver yet?”, she spat out. She seemed to be considerably troubled by the fact.

“Like Linus and his blanket? It happens all the time, nothing to be embarrassed about,” I interjected. “I used to know a guy a long time ago who named a doll and talked to it all the time. Really creepy. Compared to that, just having to touch it…”

“Oh, I’m sorry for creeping you out.” She glared at me and put the bear away.

Should’ve kept quiet, I realized too late. I’d only ridiculed her in the most effective way possible. But really, who could have imagined a girl with such a cold glare naming a teddy bear and talking to it…

An awkward silence prevailed.

“…On that note, the theme for today’s write-ins is “moments that make me glad I’m alive!”,” the radio host said. “Our first letter is from a miss Mother of Two. “My daughters of six and eight get along so well that even I’m astonished. But on Mother’s Day this year, they prepared a surprise present…””

The girl reached out to turn down the volume on the car radio before I could.

It was a subject too dizzying for us right now.

----------

We escaped the traffic, spent two hours speeding down a stunningly autumn-colored road over a mountain pass, and arrived at the town where the girl’s older sister lived.

After getting a light meal at a hamburger shop and driving a few more minutes, we arrived at her house.

It was a very tidy house. Behind brick fencing, there was a well-kept garden with roses from all seasons, and in the corner of it was a swing with a roof on top of stone pavement.

The outside walls were a blue that seemed to melt into the sky, and the three windows on the second floor were white with round tops. Such a happy-looking house. This is where the girl’s newlywed sister lived, she told me.

Nothing like my parents’ house, I thought.

Not to say that the house I used to live in didn’t have any money put into it, but its outer appearance demonstrated the mental ruin of the owners.

The walls were covered in vines, and beneath them were scattered things that had long ago become unusable: a tricycle, rollerskates, a stroller, steel drums.

The front yard was big, but infested with so many weeds as to suggest the house was vacant, becoming a subpar place for stray cats to gather.

Maybe for a brief time after I was born, it was a happy enough house for me. Either way, by the time I gained self-awareness, my parents had come to consider the house not worth it.

Even though I was an only child, they considered me a heavy burden. Why did these people decide to start a family at all?, I always wondered.

When my mother left, it was relieving. It was the more natural way for things to be.

“Nice house,” I said.

“You stand by outside the gate. I’d say there’s an 80, 90% chance I won’t need your help. Just be prepared to drive off right away.”

The girl took off her jacket and left it with me, went under the arch to the front door, and rang the bell hanging on the wall. The clear metallic sound rang out.

The wooden door opened slowly. From behind it came a woman around the age of 25.

I observed her from behind a tree. She wore a dark green knit

pullover with gray parents. She wore her hair dyed chocolate- colored in a single-curl perm.

Her eyes looked wise, and her movements opening the door were graceful.

So she’s the girl’s sister, I pondered. They had some facial similarities, with their somewhat-colorless eyes and thin lips.

But I felt like their ages were too far apart for sisters, and I couldn’t imagine her being someone who would slash the girl’s palm with a knife.

I couldn’t hear their conversation, but it didn’t seem to be turning into an argument. I leaned back on the gate and dug around in my pocket for a cigarette, but I’d left them in the car.

I wondered, though, in what way did the girl intend to get revenge? Right before arriving, I’d taken a look in her bag and was certain she hadn’t hidden away any dangerous weapons.

She’d attacked her father with a hammer, so would she do the same to her sister? Or did she have some other weapon prepared?

I never got to think about it, though. My questions were quickly answered.

Almost exactly when I finished and looked toward the front door again, I saw the girl fall on top of her sister.

The sister quickly tried to catch her, but couldn’t hold her, and they fell over together. So it appeared.

Yet while the girl got back up, her sister showed no sign of getting up again. And she didn’t ever get up.

I ran over to the girl, and the scene made me doubt my eyes.

Large dressmaking scissors had been stabbed into her sister’s chest. One blade of the open scissors had been pushed all the way into her.

She’d done a very good job of it. There wasn’t even a scream. Blood filled the entryway, flowing through the gaps in the floor. She’d achieved her objective with astonishing speed.

That stunned silence reminded me of an incident of my own.

When I was in fourth grade, and we had 30 more minutes left in PE, the teacher said we’d spend the remaining time playing dodgeball, and the children rejoiced.

This had become a semi-common event. I meandered over to the corner of the gym and mixed in with the other students watching the match.

Once about half of each team had been hit by the ball, some of the people who were out started getting bored. Ignoring the outcome of the game, they started playing around in their own ways.

One person did a clean frontflip on a part of the floor without a mat, and not to be bested, five or six other boys attempted to do the same.

This became more interesting to watch than the dodgeball, so my eyes followed the boys hopping and flipping around.

One boy flubbed his landing and hit his head on the floor. It was loud enough that I could hear it from a few meters away.

Everyone stopped moving. The one who hit his head didn’t get up for a while.

After about ten seconds, he held his head and started to wail in pain - but he was only making a lot of noise to distract from his embarrassment, as it didn’t seem to be that serious.

Those surrounding him, too, to do away with the brief worry that crossed their minds, pointed at laughed at the fallen boy, hitting and kicking him.

I was the first to notice a boy who wasn’t part of that circle, and was lying down in a strange position. Everyone’s attention was on the one who hit his head, so no one had had seen the moment when a boy with particularly slow reflexes broke his neck.

One by one, people became eerily aware of the boy not moving a muscle and stopped to look at him. Finally, the PE teacher noticed something was wrong and ran over.

Speaking so calmly as to seem too calm, the teacher told the students not to touch him, not to move him at all, and sped out into the hall.

Someone remarked “Of course the teachers get to run in the halls,” but no one responded.

That boy never came back to school. We were told he’d damaged his spinal cord, but as fourth-graders, we could only think “I guess he hit his Achilles heel or something.”

But our teacher, to emphasize the severity of the matter, explained that “he’ll be wheelchair-bound his whole life” (a softened explanation, now that I think about it - he was already fully paralyzed and hooked up to a ventilator), and some of the girls started crying.

That’s so sad. We should have been paying attention. Others

dutifully began to cry as well, and people suggested “Let’s go visit him,” “Let’s make him a thousand paper cranes.” The classroom was distressed, full of goodwill and selflessness.

The next month, the teacher told us in homeroom that he’d died. That wounded boy uncomfortably lying on the floor of the gymnasium and the woman collapsed in front of us now overlapped in my mind.

At times, life can be lost so easily, as if swept away in the wind.

The girl put her fingers in the scissor handles, took a breath, and further opened the wound. She had clearly intended to kill. With an animalistic groan, the fallen body trembled and convulsed.

Upon cutting what I suppose was the stomach aorta, a spray of blood flew up, reaching to my feet two meters away.

The girl turned around, and her white blouse was soaked red with blood.

“…You didn’t say you’d go that far,” I said at last. I meant to sound unaffected, but my voice weakly trembled.

“I didn’t. But I don’t recall saying I wasn’t going to kill her.” Wiping some blood off her cheek, she sat down on the floor.

I took off my sunglasses and looked down at the girl’s sister. Her face was so contorted in anguish as to look nothing it did before.

A flute-like sound came from her throat, and she coughed up blood. It was now impossible to tell her pullover’s original color.

A putrid smell distinct from the mere smell of blood lingered; like compacted garbage, or a bathtub full of vomit. Whatever it was, it

was a powerful smell of death that I’d never forget after just one sniff.

I trembled violently, and tried to breathe calmly to keep myself from throwing up.

My vision widened, and I saw how the entryway had become a sea of blood. If it were a scene in a TV show, it would be enough blood to demand an extremely exaggerated reaction.

People must be sacks of nothing but blood, I figured, for there to be this much. I knew it was only making me feel worse, but my eyes couldn’t look away from the torn stomach.

The blood was blacker than I thought blood was, though what had spilled out was an unmistakable bright color. A color remarkably close to a geranium poking out from a vase on top of a shoebox.

It brought to mind the poor roadkill I’d always see while driving down the road in the morning.

Whether they looked beautiful or terrible, were an animal or a human, they were all the same once you tore away a layer of skin.

Yeah, I thought with surprising calm. This is what death is. What I’d done to the girl was fundamentally no different from the tragedy I saw before me now.

Though it had yet to feel or even become real because of her postponement, I had turned the girl into a lifeless lump of flesh. Maybe her corpse would be even more tragic than this one.

After taking a step back to keep the blood off my shoes, I spoke. “Listen, I’m going along with this to make up for my crime of

running you over. …But helping you kill people totally undermines that. I don’t want to be washing blood with blood.”

“You don’t have to go along with it if you don’t want to. I don’t recall forcing you into anything,” the girl noted. “And once the length of my postponement ends, my actions will all go to nothing. As much as I struggle, I can only give people a temporary death. So whatever I do, isn’t it fine in the end?”

So it was. This girl was already dead. No matter what she did after October 27th, the day of the accident, she would come to no longer exist during that time.

A girl who doesn’t exist can’t kill anyone. She could kill hundreds of people after October 27th, because once the postponement came to an end, it wouldn’t count.

Like a player who was still on the court after being disqualified. They could rack up points, but by the end of the game, they’d just lose without regard for any of it.

Thus, like the girl said, she felt she could do whatever she wanted. By the end, it would amount to nothing but harmless self- satisfaction. No significant difference from being a killer purely in your imagination.

So then, wouldn’t it be all right to have one chance to do anything you please before death? No, but even if it is only temporary, you’re stabbing people, making them bleed and suffer. A killer is a killer. Those acts can never be forgiven, can they?

This wasn’t the time to be mulling over it endlessly, though. Our top priority was to get away from the corpse as soon as possible; such a

discussion had no place here.

“Let’s get away from here for now. It’ll be bad if someone sees that blood on you.”

The girl nodded. I took off my jacket and put it on her shoulders. Zipping up the stand-up collar nylon jacket, you couldn’t tell she was bloodstained underneath from a distance.

It was a nice pricey jacket, but I didn’t need to worry, as everything would go back to normal once the postponement ended.

I looked around at the gate to confirm there was no one around and signaled to the girl.

But she was still just sitting there on the floor, unmoving.

“Come on, what’s keeping you? Hurry up.” I hurried back to her and grabbed her hand to pull her up.

But she collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

“I see. So this is it’s like for your legs to give out,” she muttered as if observing a stranger. “I guess I can’t laugh at you for this anymore. Pathetic…”

The girl sat up. With no energy in her legs, she crawled along the ground with her arms. She looked like a mermaid struggling to come ashore.

Though she maintained composure, it seemed she was in quite a panic.

“Not gonna be able to stand up anytime soon?”

“No. …I guess it was a good thing I brought you along after all. Now

carry me back to the car.”

She thrust both arms at me with haughtiness entirely distanced from the shameful plight she was in. But her hands trembled like a child thrown out into the freezing snow.

I delicately lifted her up. She was heavier than she looked, but light enough that I could run with her on my back if need be. She was covered in a cold sweat.

Reconfirming that there was no one around, I took her to the passenger’s seat.

Carefully observing the speed limit, I chose to drive on roads with as few people as possible. My hands were sweaty on the wheel. Noticing how regularly I was checking the back mirror, the girl told me “You don’t need to worry about it. Even if we get arrested for what happened back there, I believe I’ll be able to undo it. I can put off any bad things that way.”

I remained silent, not even acknowledging her statement.

“Is there something you want to say?”, the girl asked.

“…Did you really need to kill her?”, I inquired, forgetting about getting in her good books. “I know you said your sister did something terrible to you. But was she evil enough to kill? You couldn’t just give her the same kind of wound on her palm? What did she do? I just want a good explanation.”

“Let me ask you this. Would you permit murder if there were a suitable reason?”, she pressed. “For instance, suppose that in trying to stop a fight between my mother and sister, I was cut with a knife,

rendering me unable to play piano, a thing I lived for. Or that the people my sister brought home every week forced me to drink strong alcohol, and whenever I puked it up, they used a taser on me. Or that my drunk father singed my hair with lit cigarettes, telling me I was a waste of space who should kill herself already. Or that at school, I was pushed around and made to drink dirty water, was strangled for fun, had my hair and clothes cut up in the name of “dissection,” was pushed into a freezing pool in winter with my legs tied up… If I told you that were the situation, would you have at least the slightest approval for revenge?”

If she had told me this at any other time, it might have been hard to believe. I might have taken it as an empty lie, or at least an extreme exaggeration.

But having not long ago seen her murder her sister, I could easily accept it as truth.

“…I take it back. I’m sorry. I guess I brought back bad memories,” I apologized.

“I didn’t say I was actually talking about myself.” “Right. Strictly hypothetical.”

“I’m not taking revenge out of a desire to punish them. The fear they instilled in me could only go away if they vanished from the world entirely. It’s like a curse. I’ll never have a peaceful sleep as long as it’s there, and I can’t deeply enjoy anything. I’m getting revenge to conquer my fear. At least once before I die, I just want to sleep soundly in a world where they’re gone.”

“I think I get it,” I nodded. “By the way, did you kill your father too?”

“I wonder.” She shook her head, and as if to clear her mind, she took a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard, lit it, and coughed.

She said she’d used a hammer when taking revenge on her father. Depending on where you hit them, you could easily kill a person with that.

I couldn’t remember if it was the back of the head or the hollow in the neck, but if you hit around that area, even a young woman could easily murder a grown man, I’d heard.

“Say, are your legs better now?”

“…I think walking will still be hard,” she said with a puff of smoke, knitting her brows. “The plan was to go straight to my next target of revenge, but I’m pretty hopeless right now. It’s inconvenient, but let’s go back to the apartment.”

I had a sudden realization. “Can you not postpone something as minor as that?”

The girl closed her eyes to carefully pick her words. “If this were a significant injury or illness, I could do that. But it’s extremely hard to postpone something that will just fix itself. My desire is too weak in that case. My soul needs to be screaming “I can’t bear for this to happen.””

I accepted that explanation. A scream of the soul, huh.

It took a while to notice the smell of blood filling the interior of the

car. The blood that had sprayed onto the girl.

I opened the window to air it out, but the smell like rusty guitar strings boiled with rotten fish permeated the car and wouldn’t leave.

She had torn open her sister’s stomach. Maybe it wasn’t just the smell of blood, but also a mix of fat and spinal fluid and digestive juices.

A smell of death, at any rate.

“It’s cold,” the girl said.

I gave up on airing out the smell, closed the windows, and turned on the heater.

----------

For a night on which I’d witnessed a murder up close, the stars were entirely too pretty.

Luckily, we made it back to the apartment without anyone stopping us. Hurrying up the dusty staircase, I tried to open the door to my room, but had a hard time getting the key to fit. Right on cue, I heard someone coming upstairs.

Looking down at the key, I realized I was trying to jam my car key into the lock. I clicked my tongue, switched the keys to unlock the door, and pushed the girl inside.

The one coming up the stairs was my neighbor, the art student. When she saw me, she weakly raised her hand in greeting.

“Went out on your own? That’s unusual,” I casually remarked. “Who was that girl?”, she asked.

Even if a lie could have gotten me out of the situation, it was a case where that would only make things worse later. Answering honestly was the right choice here.

“A girl whose name I don’t know.” After saying that, it occurred to me that this also described the girl in front of me. Well, I know I’d heard it once or twice, but it just completely slipped my mind.

I’d always been terrible at remembering names. Since I rarely had the chance to use them.

“Hmph,” the art student grunted scornfully. “I see. So mister shut-in brought a minor to his room?”

“You’ve got me. Um, how should I explain this…”

“Thirsting for the blood of young girls?”, she guessed with a small smile.

“Just… listen to my explanation.” “Go ahead.”

“It’s kind of complicated. She needs help right now, and I’m the only one she can rely on.”

After a few seconds of silence, she spoke quietly. “Could this possibly be related to the “accident”?”

“Yes. Helping her will make up for things. …Maybe.”

“Huh,” she nodded. She was generally an understanding sort. “Then I won’t interfere any more. But tell me if you have any trouble. I doubt I can provide much help, though.”

“Thank you.”

“By the way, what’s with that stain?”

The art student was looking down at my feet. There was about a four-centimeter patch of dark red on the knee of my faded jeans. I hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out.

“What kind of stain is that? When did you get it?”

My surprise was evident, but I tried to pretend I had no idea how it got there. Even so, I knew my reaction probably told the whole story.

“Well, whatever stain it is, you should wash it off quickly. See you.” With that, the art student returned to her room.

I stroked my chest in relief and opened the door to my own room. The lights were already on.

The girl called from the laundry room. “Where do you keep the detergent?”

She was washing her blood-stained blouse, it seemed; I heard the basin filling with water.

“It should be by your feet,” I said just loud enough for her to hear. “Do you have a change of clothes?”

“No. Lend me something.”

“Just take anything that’s dried. Which should be almost everything.”

I heard the sound of the washing machine door, then the shower door opening.

While she was taking a shower, I lied down on the sofa thinking back on what had happened just hours ago.

The moment the girl stabbed her sister with scissors, the weak coughing of the woman stabbed in the gut, the blouse stained by bloodspray, the smell from her internal organs, the pool of dark red

blood spreading across the floor, and the eerily quiet night.

It was all burned into the back of my mind. “Sent chills down my spine” wasn’t quite right; maybe that was appropriate, maybe not. Either way, my mind was shaken to the core witnessing, for the first time in my life, a stranger’s personal affairs.

The strange thing was, it wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant sensation. I respected Peckinpah and Tarantino and Takeshi Kitano, and I thought if I were really faced with a bloody scene like in one of their films, I’d get nauseous and faint.

But what was the reality? I wasn’t really feeling much uneasiness, fear, or self-blame; instead, I felt the same kind of catharsis I’d get from watching a carnivore eat its prey, or a massive disaster scene.

I recognized that it was something to be ashamed of, though.

I didn’t know any way to calm myself other than with alcohol. I poured half a glass of whiskey, added the same amount of water, and drank. I didn’t do anything afterward, just listened to the clock tick.

The girl came back after drying her hair wearing some of my pajamas and an overly-long gray parka. It was too big even for me, but it went down to her thighs, serving as a one-piece for her.

“Make sure to dry my clothes,” she told me. “I’m going to bed.”

She practically collapsed onto the bed, but then remembering something, sat up, got something from her back, and dove back under the covers with it.

It was no doubt the teddy bear. Holding it tight underneath her chin, she closed her eyes.

I took the blouse out of the washer and dried it with a hair dryer. I could’ve used the dryer at a laundromat, but walking around outside with a single article of clothing from which the blood hadn’t completely come out of seemed… awkward.

It’d be wise to buy her some clothes tomorrow, I thought. She’d probably be getting more things bloody yet.

Revenge. I absolutely couldn’t understand how the girl felt. I’d never felt anger strong enough to want to kill anyone. My life had long been ruined, but not by others. The one who ruined me was none other than me.

On top of that, I’d been extremely poor at expressing the feeling of “anger” since an early age. And I wouldn’t say it indicated powerful self-restraint; I just didn’t trust the manifestation of my anger to have any effect on others.

Whenever I got pissed, I’d preemptively give up and convince myself lashing out would do no good, many times stopping myself in situations when I should have clearly been angry.

Though that habit was useful for avoiding trouble, in the long run, I think it contributed to my lack of zest for life.

I was envious of people who could display their anger without a moment’s hesitation. In that sense, though only partial, I felt some envy toward the girl.

Though of course, I also sympathized with her plight, and felt lucky I didn’t have to live such a life myself.

Once I was done drying the girl’s blouse, I folded it up and put it

next to the bed.

Back in the laundry room, I changed into my pajamas, but felt too awake to sleep. Shivering in the cold, I waited on the veranda for the art student to show up.

But on days like these, she wouldn’t come out. Not too far away, I heard ambulance sirens.

Right as I decided to head back inside, the cellphone in my pocket vibrated with a dull sound.

The girl was inside sleeping, and Shindo was dead, so it didn’t seem like there could be a single person who would willingly call me now.

“Hello?”, I answered.

“Where are you now?”, the art student said.

“Didn’t you just see me in the hall? I’m at my apartment. You?” “I’m at my apartment too, of course.”

So we were talking over the phone despite being in rooms right next to each other.

“Then come out on the veranda. I was just coming out for a smoke.” “No thanks. It’s cold.”

“Don’t you think this is a waste of your phone bill?”

“I like talking with people over the phone. It’s relaxing. You can close your eyes and just listen to their voice. I also like how your voice sounds over the phone.”

“Just my voice you like, huh.” The art student laughed.

“Things going well with that girl you brought home?”

“I think you’re under a misunderstanding here, so let me just say…”, I began emphatically. “I definitely don’t carry any affection for this girl. Just so we’re clear.”

“I was just teasing. Of course I can tell you don’t have that kind of thing going.”

I furrowed my brow at her, even though she wasn’t there.

“So you called me just to tease me?”

“There’s that. But I’m also in a troublesome state of mind.” “What would that be?”

“I don’t want to see anyone, but I want to talk to someone.” “That is troublesome.”

“Only when it comes to that would I bother you, though. I can see you’re busy.”

“So sorry.” I bowed my head toward the wall. “I mean, I’m usually deathly bored.”

“Yeah, well, my fault for getting lonely at just the wrong time. Still…

I don’t like it.”

“Don’t like what?”

“How should I put it… I guess, well, you don’t seem like yourself today.” There were a few seconds of thoughtful silence. “Yeah, that’s it, normally you have these eyes like you don’t want to go anywhere. Eyes that aren’t really focused on anything, that are both looking at everything and not looking at anything, careless eyes. That’s the reason I can relax around you. But… when we met in the hall, that’s not how your eyes looked.”

“Then what were they like?”

“I can’t tell you,” she hurriedly said. “That girl’s already asleep, isn’t she? If you’re too loud, you might wake her up. So let’s call it here. Though I’ll call again if I change my mind. Good night.”

Then she hung up.

I stayed out on the veranda for about an hour. But when I came back into the room, the girl still hadn’t fallen asleep.

She wasn’t crying tonight. Instead, she was shivering. Curled up on the bed, tightly holding the pillow and her bear, breathing irregularly. And it was clear it wasn’t the cold to blame.

If she was going to get scared, she shouldn’t have been killing people to begin with, I thought. But that wasn’t going to fly. As she said, she lived thinking about nothing else.

It wasn’t just that she wanted revenge. She also had nothing else to do.