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The cigarette is lit. It’s what that person left behind after they passed by and talked to me. Was that person “something” to me?
If things had gone well with her, I probably wouldn’t have met that mother and child here, so from that perspective, it’s certainly interesting.
Salvation for me? No way. Or maybe… the future laid a foreshadowing for the me of now?
“The future decides the past, huh?”
“No way.”
That’s like the way of thinking of someone who’s gone around the world once, or a sculptor with a rolling stone.
If that were true…
Then it would mean that woman meeting me here and sharing her theory was also decided by the distant future.
And to cultivate someone’s determined future, there would be a reason for me to visit here today.
Things don’t just work out that conveniently.
I’m not that much of a Pollyanna. Though I often don’t think about the consequences.
A petty commoner, so caught up in what’s right in front of me that I don’t have the luxury of considering the future.
As long as I live today and don’t die tomorrow, that’s good enough.
And if, in between, I fall in love with someone and get all giddy, isn’t that the best?
Trying to look cool, I hold the cigarette between two fingers.
I inhale the unfulfilling smoke, choke again, and tear up.
The fire burned quietly at the tip in my mouth.
Yamana Misato
5:05 PM
Since I’d decided not to die today, there was no reason to ignore my hunger.
So, I came down to the first basement floor where the restaurants were lined up. There were things that bothered me, like what that old guy upstairs was doing, but I decided I had no more part to play in that story.
I need to put a pin in my own story for now, too. To do that, I’ll eat a ton. Get full, take a bath, sleep like a log, greet tomorrow, and put a period at the end of the story called “today.”
If the pain in my knee would also subside, that’d be perfect. This is, like, seriously insane. I’m not familiar with it, but I tried to act like a young person. I think I got it mostly wrong.
Dragging my right leg, I headed from the front desk to the basement. The elevator here always stops when you pass the front desk, so I just end up getting off. I could just stay on until the basement, though. I don’t dislike taking the escalator and being carried down to the basement like I'm drifting along.
Elevators are like warping, bland, but on escalators, the scenery flows. You can really feel that you’re moving. I might like it if a high-class hotel had glass-walled elevators.
Stepping out into the basement, I wandered around. I spotted a few groups of people moving, so I decided to follow their flow and find a suitable restaurant. What should I eat? Lunch was curry, I think… hmm.
I glanced sideways: an Italian restaurant. A ramen shop. A garlic cuisine restaurant. An eel restaurant. A Chinese restaurant.
Surprisingly, they already have customers. Even though it’s only five o’clock. In the countryside, it’s not unusual to eat at this time. So, does that mean everyone in this basement right now is from the same rural area as me? I thought about jumping to that conclusion, but then decided it didn’t really matter.
The intermingled smells of various dishes stimulated my appetite and the pit of my stomach. If I died, I might not feel hungry. But eating would probably be impossible too. If I died hungry, maybe I’d stay hungry forever. Thinking that, I ate until I was full before trying to kill myself during the day.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t die today, I suddenly regretted.
I passed by the restaurants and headed to the restroom first. My parents taught me it’s bad manners to go to the restroom during a meal, and that still seems to be ingrained in me. My older sister, who didn’t get along with our parents, also followed that rule. Also, things like, never leave even a single grain of rice. Why is rice treated so specially?
The restroom, located away from the bustling restaurants, was, as expected, devoid of liveliness and enveloped in a quiet atmosphere. The lack of human warmth made the cool temperature feel pleasant against my skin. The clamor of people, like the sounds from a theater separated by a door, receded behind me.
In front of the women’s restroom, there was a single figure. A boy. He didn’t look like a girl, but he was leaning against the wall, letting out a sigh. Hmm… his eyes are dead.
People often tell me that only my eyes are alive. Glaring, my eyeballs are like a cat in perpetual heat.
Also, the tattered red, thread-like thing dangling from the boy’s pinky finger is a little creepy.
As I tried to pass in front of him and enter the restroom, the boy, who had been looking at the ceiling, met my eyes. When our gazes locked, the boy made a gesture as if he’d gasped. His shoulders tensed up, and his eyes widened. It was as if eyeballs that had only seen dirt under a grave had been dug up and, for an instant, a light dwelled within them. But they’d die again soon.
The eyeballs of a dismembered cow stared at me. The boy, looking abashed, said, “Oh, um,” and scratched his cheek with a finger, seeming to gradually process the shock he’d experienced.
I’ll neatly steamroll the possibility that he fell in love with me at first sight. I’m pretty sure I’ve never encountered this boy before. Besides, I don’t have the kind of face that instills fear in everyone who sees it.
The silence and the air temperature dropped. Towards me, who wasn’t moving, the boy looked down once. “Ah, am I in your way here?” the boy asked, then covered his eyes with the base of his hands and pressed hard. Watching that gesture, somehow, it was like…
I felt like something had pushed my back. And my mouth moved, drawling lazily.
“Peeping in the restroom?”
The boy, though showing confusion at being spoken to, didn’t take long to reply.
“I’m waiting for my girlfriend.”
“Ohh.” Don’t brag about your girlfriend. I’m gonna kill myself.
“There’s no way I can go into a public women’s restroom with her, after all.”
The boy said it self-deprecatingly. What the heck is he talking about, I gave up trying to understand.
When I smiled vaguely and let it go, the boy detached himself from the support of the wall and resisted gravity with just his two legs.
Straightening his usually slouched back, the boy fixed his gaze on me, the thread-like lint on his pinky finger swaying.
“I…”
“Hm?”
“I feel like I know someone who looks like you.”
As he said it, the boy averted his eyes.
“Really?” I tilted my head, clasping my hands in front of my stomach. Someone who looks like me, huh. My sister?
The boy muttered, as if securing an escape route, “I think it’s just a coincidental resemblance, though,” and followed a person entering the men’s restroom with his eyes.
If it’s not someone I know, then maybe it really is my sister?
But considering my sister’s age when she committed suicide, this boy in front of me would have met her when he was ten or younger. It didn’t seem like my sister had any friends that age before she was hospitalized. No, in the first place, my sister wasn’t really fond of children. …Hmm?
“Hitting on me?” I tried saying the conclusion I’d reached out loud. The boy’s cheeks contorted as if he’d failed to form a smile, and he shrugged.
“But it’s fine, though.”
His tone was so light it was clearly a lie. The boy’s way of speaking had that kind of flimsy, paper-mâché quality to it, and I felt it was somehow similar to my own irresponsible statements.
“Hey, you. My sister, or…” “Ah, looks like she’s out.” The boy, who had glanced towards the restroom entrance and confirmed a figure washing hands, deliberately raised his voice as if to cut off my words.
Drawn by him, I peeked into the restroom and saw a slightly petite, beautiful girl washing her hands. The mirror reflecting her Noh-mask face gave the impression that it might also capture a ghost or Hanako-san in a candid shot.
“That was nothing just now. I’m sorry for saying something strange.”
The boy bowed his head slightly, apologizing for his incomprehensible remark. Then, he no longer turned his face towards me, but stared intently at the girl, averting his gaze from me.
…Well, we’re strangers, so that’s fine, I guess.
But, somehow. To have someone give off such a mysterious vibe, and then for them to run away…
It just doesn’t leave me feeling satisfied.
…Besides.
Is it because the boy’s eyes look like they’re about to die?
Is it because he was a handsome boy exuding the aura of an older-woman killer? (That’s irrelevant.)
Or was it because, as a first step towards becoming a respectable adult, I wanted to act cool?
What came out of my mouth was a cheap, older-sisterly remark that viewers would probably heckle me for, telling me I’m one to talk. “Don’t kill yourself.”
The boy, turning around, expressed even more surprise than when our eyes had first met.
Oh, what’s this, what’s this? Were you really planning to go through with suicide?
A kindred spirit? Someone who looks like me = a sense of affinity with myself? If so, you’ve got good eyes.
But that thread-lint on your pinky finger won’t hang a neck.
The boy lost his composure and stomped on the floor twice. His shoulders remained stiff as he looked down at the ground, his breathing becoming ragged. The boy, harboring a dangerousness that seemed about to explode…
I started to regret that maybe I’d touched on something I shouldn’t have.
But when he looked up.
The boy’s cheeks took on a shape unfittingly childish for his age.
Though he looked like he was about to cry, he was unbelievably bright.
After smiling so very cheerfully…
“Which one is it?”
It was a light, bright remark, as if he were also retorting to someone other than me.
It doesn’t suit you, I burst out laughing at the opacity of his eyes.
He’s sweating.
And then, the girl who came out and the boy t-i-e-d the thread on their pinkies (ughk) and walked off side-by-side towards the restaurants. The boy’s profile looked strangely satisfied, so I guess it was worth saying. I was able to get a good dose of self-satisfaction. Ahh, not a bad feeling.
When the mood is like this, things often seem to revolve around me. I should act while it lasts.
Those kids seemed to be heading for the Chinese restaurant buffet, so I will too.
Oh, I’m being passive. A showcase of a suggestible nature.
“Oops.” I twisted my body, which was about to turn around, even further. Gotta go to the restroom first. Sometimes I forget like this and end up fighting the urge to pee throughout a meal, finishing my food without properly tasting anything. That builds bladder endurance, but if you fail, it’s a lifetime of shame.
The elated feeling, like a transparent hand grasping a desired fate, stretched out and bounced above my head.
After this, besides food, maybe I can also buffet on something wonderful (a handsome Chinese-flavored guy).
“………Nah, nah.”
[………
Besides, I’m devoted to him. But I really should secure at least one friend.
In a world where cell phones ring so much, I can’t just let mine gather dust.
Today will end with me alive.
Tomorrow, I might want to kill myself again.
…]
Without denying it, I’ll seriously consider whether that’s a meaningful thing to do or not.
I’ll live until it’s my time to die.
I’ll abandon difficult things and try to solve only simple puzzles with my clumsy hands.
Today, all sorts of things happened, I encountered them, and they existed.
And because I didn’t die, I was able to give advice to that boy and save his preeeecious life (tentatively).
Hooooray!
For that, I lived, the old guy entered the room, and the boy was here too.
If I just decide that’s how it was, everyone gets a happy ending.
Tha-a-a-a-a-at’s whyyyyyy “I’m liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive, yessssssssssssssssssssssss! YEAHHHHHHHHH!”
I unleashed a year’s worth of screams, ever since he died, into the entire hallway.
Sakurayama Eko
4:50 PM
“You’re ××ing right now, aren’t you, darling?”
“Good grief… Getting involved leads to nothing but trouble. True, it was more than interesting enough, but if the danger is equally matched, it’s less than even. I shouldn’t have played at being a family observer.”
“You’re ××ing right now, aren’t you, darling?”
“I’m making maximum use of the human heart, but, hmm, it’s hard to get appreciated by the world, I guess.”
“You’re ××ing right now, aren’t you, darling?”
“No matter how interesting it seemed, I ended up killing one person myself just to participate… That, even if it was to borrow clothes, was a mistake. It goes against my beliefs. …What’s done is done, but it looks like it’s about time I made my escape. Before that, what should I do about her, still in the hotel?”
“You’re ××ing right now, aren’t you, darling?”
“Well, the husband will probably manage to retrieve his wife’s corpse somehow, so I guess I can be glad that part didn’t become a hassle.”
“You’re ××ing right now, aren’t you, darling?”
“Ah, what have you been trying to say all this time? Let me loosen your throat a little.”
The thumb that had been pressing the center of my throat loosened slightly, and the strangulation was released.
The haze and flow of air that my eyeballs had been reflecting thinned, and a little trickled towards my mouth. Saliva, flying from my cough, landed on the man’s finger. Blood and death that had been clogging up to the back of my nose flooded into my mouth.
“You’re killing me right now, darling.”
Glaring fiercely, I repeated the words I’d been saying.
“Yes, I’m killing. Goodbye, Ms. Sakurayama Eko.”
His thumb touched my neck again, trying to plug it. Ugh, filthy. It’s too disgusting to have my skin touched all over by men or pigs other than my husband. I want to strangle him with my right hand, but my body won’t move.
I searched with dry eyes for any sign of animals I could use nearby, but found none.
My thoughts have dulled, and for a while now, only one phrase has come to mind.
“By the way, what meaning are you imbuing that assertion with?”
The Blue-green Algae Man asked before completely sealing off my neck. With my oxygen-deprived brain, I tried to understand his inhuman words, but it was too difficult, and I couldn’t answer.
“You’re killing me right now, darling.”
“When you say something so obvious over and over like that, it kind of makes one curious, doesn’t it?”
“You’re killing me right now, darling.”
“Hmm… Are you omitting something? Like ‘bosukete’ (help me)?”
“You’re killing me right now, darling.”
“Are you Licca-chan?”
“You’re killing me right now, darling.”
“Phew…………”
“Darli—”
Along with his sigh, upon my neck,
his left hand was gently placed, and, ah… o-oh, ah, ahhhhhh!
YOU’RE KI-I-I-I-I-LLING MEEEEE, NOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!
I gasp for breath, just for a second! If it’s not meaningless, I can resist as much as I want, you idiot!
Huh?
A lie?
“Really?”
I slapped my left hand onto Blue-green Algae’s left hand. I found it, that injury! Thaaaaat bluuuuuue maaaaaark! You’ve been hiding it all this time, you microorganism!
“Geh!” The moment Blue-green Algae’s hand, groaning from both the blunder and intense pain, came off my neck, my feet were moving without conscious thought. I slammed a kick into his side, sending Blue-green Algae flying.
Released, I couldn’t withstand the recoil either and tumbled backward, collapsing. Thud. Clatter. Thump-thump. Scrapes appeared, and I was enveloped by the sensation of blood flowing from somewhere on my body. My legs, trying to stand, lacked strength due to oxygen deprivation and were useless, just sliding on the ground.
Coughing, tears streaming down my face, I didn’t care and just glared at the object in front of me. You’re killing me right now, darling, that alone is unwavering, so just you wait.
“Ouch, ow… I failed to kill again. If that detective found out, he’d probably laugh his head off at this state.”
The Blue-green Algae Man, hiding his left hand behind him, stood up before I did. Single-celled organisms are so simple, it’s annoying. I wish he’d hurry up and become a multi-celled organism like my husband and get himself killed.
“Let’s stop this. Killing someone who has lost something important… I’ve realized it goes against my justice, let’s just say that.”
The Blue-green Algae Man said so, then extracted the part “justice” and muttered it again. And then he smirked.
“Yes, yes. Being an ally of justice is a boy’s dream. Even at my age, it makes my heart race.”
I can’t understand Blue-green Algae’s words. Formulate some grammar before you talk to humans.
“Besides, honestly, you scare me. At this rate, I might get killed.”
The amoeba-like Blue Man, muttering something, stooped down to meet the eyes of my crushed form.
“Do you promise not to attack me any further?”
“You’re killing me right now, darling.” I can still kill, I thought, trying to reach out.
“If you promise, I’ll tell you the name of the person who killed your husband.”
You killing me right now can wait a bit.
I sidle up. I cling. I grab his leg, crush it.
“I can’t tell you any more than that, though.”
“If you’re lying, I’ll kill you again.”
“So, go and confirm it with your own eyes.”
The light reflecting off the hotel window dyed the man’s shoulders, hair, and smile silver.
Sublime. Sublime. God. A God. A God in physical form, helping me?
“Are you… God?”
“Unfortunately, I’m just a human. Well, being a god sounds like it could be interesting, though. After I die and stop being human, if I can become one, I’ll try.”
Oh, God. If not, then just Blue-green Algae after all. But I have to pretty up my appearance.
“After my husband, I will ×× you.”
I swear it, as if scattering seeds. After my husband, lined up are Blue-green Algae, camel, hippo, mutton, pig, and even cow; it’s like a dumpling state of the animal kingdom. As if I could rank you animals. I’m an egalitarian.
You wait, darling. It was a mistake that I was killing you now, but I’m going to go kill the one who killed you very soon.
Blue-green Algae stood up, as if shaking off my clinging form, then smiled like he was telling a child a secret.
And the name uttered from those callow lips was carved into every cell of my brain, the pain searing it into my memory.
“Alright, the name of the person who killed your husband is…”
Nakazaki Zakuro
(Murderer)
11:30 AM
If anything, I was confident in my leg strength.
I never belonged to any particular sports club, but during my university days, I once broke the record for the 50-meter dash. It was exhilarating to overtake everyone else participating in that race. I think it was during my third year. When I first enrolled, my legs and hips were unimpressive and slack, so they must have firmed up over two years, and my muscles experienced rapid growth. The cause of that, as far as I remember, was the subway and the sixth period class.
The sixth period lecture ended at 7:40 PM. And the subway arrived at the nearest station at 7:43 PM. If I didn’t catch this train, then transfer to the 8:15 PM rapid train to Nagoya, my journey home would be significantly delayed. My family home was in an incredibly rural area, so if I didn’t adhere to that time schedule, it would be difficult to get home within the day. Therefore, when the lecture ended, I had to dash down the slope from the university lecture building, which was pointlessly located on a hill, and run several hundred meters to the station entrance, pushing past other students. As a result of continuously running to catch the train, without being able to worry about my makeup smudging or the gazes of those around me, my leg muscles were naturally toned.
Continuing that for two years, and furthermore, with the increased number of times I went up and down stairs compared to high school, my legs got thicker. This was the worst, but that aside. It’s self-praise, but it was also true that the favorable condition of having longer legs than others worked in my favor and provided me with top speed.
However, not content with that, I considered my body’s balance and started to additionally train my arms. The scarcity of friends to hang out with on holidays didn’t put a stop to my arm strength improvement.
As a result, it seems that even back then, my arm strength surpassed that of an adult male.
It’s been several years now, secretly priding myself on rarely losing to people in short-distance races.
At twenty-six, having been buffeted by society enough to feel nostalgic for student life, I had my first experience in a hotel.
I apologize for the misleading phrasing, but this is the seventeenth floor. And what I experienced was murder.
I strangled my male work partner with my bare hands. It was undoubtedly me who, with both hands exerting about two thousand times the power of silk floss, deprived him of his freedom from the neck up and sent him to the next world. I can even see a hallucination of another me, sitting in the corner of the room, deriding the me who is pacing the room in a truly unsightly, flustered manner. This hallucination, what’s nasty about it is that even if I expose its true nature, it will never disappear from my eyeballs. Maybe it’s not really in the corner of the room, but has taken up residence behind my eyelids, parasitizing me like a mite. Finding its bothersomeness annoying, I crush my eyelid with my finger. Nothing comes off, but I can’t see anything either. For a while, I press my left eye with my finger and listen only to my own ragged breathing.
The corpse lying on the floor. It has an ugly face. This is because, deprived of oxygen supply, it solidified with an expression full of agony. Before being strangled, he had a rather neat face, one I always felt was perfectly suited for deceiving women. However, I never once fell for him. I knew that the woman attached to this man was quite a crazy person. Even in matters of love, I don’t yield the top spot to anyone but myself. I don’t try to create priorities higher than myself. That’s why I always fail, someone pointed out to me a long time ago. While affirming that it’s probably mostly correct, there are no signs of improvement.
If I left my restless feet unattended, I felt like I would fall (if I fell on top of the corpse or something, I probably would have screamed and run around in panic), so first, I sat down on the bed. To calm my body.
There’s probably hardly any time to be calm. But it’s not zero. To make the most of this brief time,
“Corpse density, too high…” My own mouth grumbled about the situation I was in. In this room, ‘1701’, there’s even the corpse of a woman in her forties stuffed into a shoe. That corpse isn’t one I created here. This, um… what was his name again? I forgot. It’s irritating. I think I received his business card before. Instead of trying to recall the name in isolation in my head, I try to remember its connection to the situation and attempt to revive the memory. Taking a deep breath, I unconsciously regulate my breathing. …That’s right, a man with a surname like Sakurayama. I just can’t remember his first name, it’s like there’s a mosaic over it on the business card. That man named Sakurayama was the one who stuffed the folded corpse into a trunk case and brought it here.
My and Sakurayama’s job was mainly corpse exchange. We would kill someone important to an unknown stranger living in the city, carefully and without damaging them, and first process them into a corpse. Then, we would approach that someone whose important person had been taken, and propose: “Wouldn’t you like to exchange the corpse that is important to you for cash, which we love?”
A corpse exchange you want to exchange. Sakurayama often made such lame puns.
If you refuse, we’ll even ‘kill’ the corpse. We can also carefully film that process and send it to you, what shall we do? That’s how we threaten them. Though, this sales talk isn’t true. Sakurayama and I insist that we merely “discovered” the corpse.
Actually, the corpse processing part is outside of my and Sakurayama’s job scope. Our responsibility is the handover and cash collection. This job itself was conceived by that corpse processor. Apparently, the origin of the idea was a surprisingly domestic reason for a madman: “I killed them, but now I’m troubled with how to dispose of the body.” Sakurayama once told me that this person had killed three people so far. However, that was just the number of publicly known cases; the person themselves had apparently boasted in a casual chat that they had actually killed many, many more. I’ve never met that murderer even once. Sakurayama usually handled the work meetings, so I didn’t have much of a role. Also, I think another reason is that the person in charge of murder almost never interfered with our work.
Before our first job, I heard the murderer’s voice over the phone. It sounded like a gentleman, a tone of voice that red didn’t suit. With a soft, reassuring way of speaking, I couldn’t imagine what dissatisfaction in this world could lead them to indulge in murder. Well, it’s scarier to be able to trace the thoughts of a murderer, though. Saying that, the fact that I’ve now joined the ranks of murderers is scary.
The name of the person in charge of murder was Arashiro, or was it Shinjo? I doubt it’s even their real name. They wouldn’t do something like reveal their identity, as they could be betrayed and reported by us; that was Sakurayama’s and my consensus. Though, Sakurayama and I ourselves had only met for the first time that day. It’s unclear how the person in charge of murder investigated, but they had gotten hold of Sakurayama’s and my personal information and called us to gather. The commonality between the two chosen was that we were in financial trouble.
And then, the person in charge of murder proposed an effective way to use the corpses. They didn’t particularly need a reward; as long as it could be disposed of, that was fine. So they said, asking for our cooperation.
Sakurayama and I were initially dumbfounded. It was our first time talking to a murderer, and the situation of becoming an accomplice to a crime was a realm we hadn’t even imagined five minutes before the proposition. The person in charge of murder calmly waited for our reply, not even letting a sigh escape over the phone.
In the end, we agreed, thinking it would help fill the gaps in each other’s circumstances, and started this job. When we received the trunk containing the first old woman’s corpse in front of the station (the place and time were designated, and the person in charge of murder didn’t show up), I truly felt like I was going to get sick from the goosebumps and chills. Sakurayama, too, despite his usually easygoing personality, lost all expression as if a steel ball was tied to him, and took it with a brusque attitude.