What is a fatal wound?
Cutting off someone's head.
Yeah, obviously that's one.
Crushing someone's heart.
Again, obvious.
Destroying someone's brain.
Naturally.
Stopping their breathing.
That's another good method. Pretty final, too.
But when I say "fatal wound," I'm not referring to these trivial sorts of things.
I'm thinking of something else. A fatal wound is an impact so intense, so devastating, that you fall into a state where you're no longer a human — even though you are. You're no longer able to lead a life even though you're living. It means being ground to bits after falling victim to a relative paradox created by reason itself.
That is a fatal wound.
In other words, failure.
The key here is the fact that even after a profound failure, we go on.
The world is brutally tepid.
It's so kind that it's cruel. It's a devil's Heaven.
To put it plainly, you don't die by making a big mistake.
Or maybe I should say you can't die.
Yeah, you don't die.
You just suffer.
You simply suffer in agony.
And you go on. Forever, wherever.
Meaninglessly, you just go on.
Life isn't a video game, not because there's no reset button, but because there's no Game Over. Even though it was "over" long ago, tomorrow shows up anyway. Even when night falls, morning comes again after it. When winter ends, spring rolls in. Life is wonderful.
It's an absolute paradox — even though you've taken a fatal blow, you can't die. It's like asking what a person sees when he looks backward while traveling faster than the speed of light. An unthinkable question.
Even though the potential to be you has long since been cut off, you go on. You do it all over, again and again. You redo your life again and again.
But it's like making a million crappy copies, and each time you make one, your "self" gets a little bit shoddier.
And eventually, you get to thinking...
Am I really me, or...
...Did I become something else long ago?
Have I devolved?
Just as the central figure in an incident can't all of a sudden become just a disinterested bystander, you can't become your own spectator.
And that, my friends, is what's truly fatal.
"In other words, it's like mind over matter..." I muttered. As I pondered these fruitless ponderings, I was trying the new McDonald's burger. The five hundred twenty-five yen value combo.
The kimchee must have worked because my sense of taste had returned to normal. A McDonald's hamburger tasted pretty luscious again. After all, as a Japanese person, there was no way I could have gone on with my life if unable to enjoy McDonald's.
The time was 7:30 in the evening.
The place: Shijôkawara-machi, Shinkyôgoku Street.
After the fifth period had ended, I decided I wanted to see those mobile police Mikoko-chan was talking about for myself, and my feet had taken me this far in an effort to kill time.
Next to the tray with the hamburger on it was a single magazine. What they call a "weekly infozine." I had bought it at the co-op, and on the cover, it said, "Feature Story: Jack the Ripper Resurrected in the Devil's City!"
"Pretty tasteless."
The ridiculously apocalyptic feel of the magazine was actually the second reason why I had bought it. The first was that it featured a big story on the "prowler" incidents Mikoko-chan had been telling me about.
I shoved two fries in my mouth, added a straw as well, and sucked down some cola. I started flipping through the magazine. The first page was set with an all too vivid picture of a corpse as the background, and in big, Gothic letters, it read: "The Homicidal Monster Who Shook Kyoto!"
Ominous, indeed.
"So they let you show photos like this..." I muttered as I flipped through the pages. I had already scanned through the details of the articles, so I at least knew something about the incidents now, if not everything.
The media had dubbed the crime spree the "Kyoto Prowler Serial Killings." Not the most imaginative name in the world, but then again, maybe a case like this didn't need one. Still, the word "prowler" hardly seemed to be an accurate description of the criminal. I always thought of "prowler" as a sort of stalker, someone who stalks people on the street and causes them harm. But in this case, the culprit was luring the victims into desolate areas, killing them with a sharp blade, and finally dismembering the corpses. It seemed like maybe "serial killer" was a better description than prowler. And you could definitely make an analogy with the Jack the Ripper murders.
"Six people now, huh? Not bad," I muttered as I stuffed the magazine back into my bag.
Yeah, six people. Just as Mikoko-chan had said, six people in less than two weeks' time were quite a death toll. It was probably unprecedented. By the third murder, the police force had been dispatched all over the region for surveillance. Even the riot police had been dispatched, and yet the murders went on as if the killer were laughing at them.
The victims had no apparent connections. They were young and old, male, and female: The killer showed no mercy to anyone. The police (and everyone else, for that matter) had deemed these incidents merely a series of acts of random violence.
Therefore, the sixth victim probably wouldn't be the last. The killings would go on. As long as this monster remained on the loose — or until he decided to stop of his own volition — there would be more murders. Perhaps even tonight. Perhaps even right now.
"It's all nonsense in the end, huh?" I stared out at Shinkyô-Goku Street from the entrance of McDonald's.
It was the same scenery as always. Fewer tourists and students on field trips, but it was still pretty crowded — a lot of kids with dyed hair were milling around. I suppose you could say that this was when they came out to mark their territory.
Nobody, absolutely nobody walking along this street right now was seriously considering the notion that they could be the next victim.
Of course, everyone was still being a little cautious. Some were visibly unsettled by the mobile police units scattered here and there. "What a mess," they might think, but that about covers it. At most, they would go home a little earlier than usual.
But deep in their hearts, everyone believed they would be going home.
That's how it is with these things. There are very few people who can accept as a hard reality the possibility that they might be the next to die.
It was true that the probability of becoming the next victim was negligibly low: "Those victims must've had been really unlucky." A terrible thought, but what else could people think?
Anyway... Perhaps I should go ahead and mingle in with this unguarded crowd? With that in mind, I got up from my seat only to feel my phone vibrating in my right pocket. I wasn't familiar with the number on the display. But I didn't want to just ignore it. I went ahead and pushed send.
"Ciao! Mikoko-chan here!"
Hyper from the get-go. It was easy to imagine her giving me the thumbs-up on the other end, even though I guess she probably wasn't actually doing that. But without even knowing who she was talking to, she was so bubbly and friendly. What would she have done if this was the wrong number? A small fire ignited in my inquiring mind.
"Eh? Hey, it's Mikoko-chan. What's wrong?"
I didn't reply.
"Uhh... This is Ikkun, right?"
Again, I was silent.
"Hellooo? This is Ikkun, right?"
I persisted in not replying.
"Did I mess up? Huh? I messed up!"
I kept up the silent treatment.
"Gahhh! It's like getting all prepped for the next radio calisthenics session — you know, that exercise show broadcast over the radio — only to have them go 'We're outta time, so just do the chicken dance'! I'm sorry, I dialed the wrong number!"
At that, I finally said something: "No, this is right. What's up?"
"Uwa!" she shrieked in surprise when I spoke. "Huh? Wha?" she sputtered, confused. Eventually, she let out a sigh, so I figured she had calmed down a bit. I also figured that it was only a matter of seconds before her relief turned to anger.
"For crying out loud! It's the phone! You have to say something! I'll freak out if you don't! Ikkun, you jerk! You snake! You... You monster!"
I didn't think I'd done anything that bad.
"Sorry, sorry, I was just kidding around."
I hadn't meant to stay quiet for so long, but I also had never expected she'd provide such a hilarious response either. Before I knew it, my timing had been thrown off.
"God... It's fine, I guess. Since it's you and all."
She let out a moan. It was hard not to feel a little sorry for her. "Umm," she started again, back to her normal self. "This is a business call! Regarding tomorrow's business!"
"You know, you don't have to yell. It's quiet here."
"Hmm? Where are you now?" she asked.
"Ah, uh, I'm at home. At the boarding lodge."
"Oh. I'm still at school. I had to talk to Inokawa-sensei about something, so I just got out of the research room. Isn't that place incredible?! Books everywhere!"
Inokawa-sensei led the general-education class. A slightly eccentric assistant professor. He was popular enough with his students if you were willing to set aside the fact that he was way too strict about punctuality. (If you weren't in your seat by the time the bell started ringing — even if you were in the classroom and were in the act of sitting down while it was ringing — he'd mark you absent).
"Umm, right, so about tomorrow. Will you be home tomorrow?"
"Yeah, that's right. Are we meeting somewhere?" I asked. "Uh-uh. If we set a meeting place, we might miss each other, right? That's no good, so I'll come meet you at your boarding lodge. I bought a scooter and I kinda wanna take it for a spin. So, let's say... Four o'clock. Can I go to your place at four?"
"Yeah, it's fine, but... You know where the boarding lodge is?"
"Huh? Oh, no problem there." She seemed flustered. "I mean, because we made that address list when classes first started, so I know it."
"Is just the address enough?"
"I know Kyoto well, so we're a-okay. You're at Senbon Nakadachiuri, right?"
"Huh?" I asked. There was something suspicious about the way she was acting, but if she said she knew it, I figured there was no problem.
"Fine by me," I replied.
"Okay. That settles that, then. Hmm, I'd like to talk more since I went to the trouble of calling, but I've got to go to driving school from here. I made an appointment, and if I don't go now, I'll be late."
"Huh. You're going to driving school."
"Yep. How about you? Got a license?"
"I do. Just for automatic, though."
If it wasn't such a big hassle to get a license, I could actually drive anything, but that was a secret.
"I see," she said. "I'm going for a manual. I'm reaching that age where I want my own set of wheels, you know? My dad said he'll get me a car once I get my license. Yup. Anyway, see ya tomorrow. Bbbbyeee!"
She giggled and hung up. I stared at the phone for a while before putting it back in my pants pocket.
Right. We did have plans tomorrow, didn't we? It hadn't completely slipped my mind, but it was close enough. At this rate, I might forget again by tomorrow. Maybe it would have been best to write "Plans with Mikoko-chan tomorrow" on the palm of my hand, like an unusually dim-witted elementary school student.
Oh, but if she was coming to meet me at my house, it didn't really matter if I remembered or not, I thought. I was just going to be there all day anyway.
I returned my pen case to my bag.
This time I really did actually walk out of the McDonald's. It was already almost eight o'clock, and the shops outside were preparing to close.
Suddenly, something occurred to me.
"Ah, that's right. It's a birthday thing."
In that case, I should probably take the opportunity to buy a present while I was out and about. It was only common sense — not that I ever thought of myself as someone with a lot of common sense.
Then again, I'd been sort of half-forced into going. Maybe I didn't have to go out of my way to be a good guy or anything. As I thought it over, I peeped into a nearby souvenir shop.
Emoto Tomoe.
Now, what kind of character was she? I didn't have a single memory of her. Once I actually saw her face, I might remember her. But no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn't remember a single thing about her. Which meant she probably wasn't a particularly eccentric or remarkable person. Maybe she was a little more subdued than most. The kind of person who reads a book before the start of the class instead of messing with her cell phone.
Wait... But hadn't Mikoko-chan said she was a striking girl who always wore shiny things? Huh. I had no idea after all. Not even a vague image.
Then there were those other two: Atemiya Muimi-chan and Usami Akiharu-kun, right? I tried to recall them as well, but with no success.
"Eh, I guess if they're Mikoko-chan's friends, they can't be all that weird."
"Tell me what company thou keepst, and I'll tell thee what thou art." Cervantes said it, but surely you could've switched it around and it would still make sense. Nothing to worry about too much.
As my mind wandered, I picked up a box of snacks from a display. They were yatsuhashi cinnamon cookies folded into triangles and stuffed with red bean paste. A wholly conventional Japanese snack. Thirty pieces, one thousand two hundred yen.
"Hmm..."
Kyoto and yatsuhashi — a confection made from rice flour, cinnamon, and sugar — were synonymous with each other. If there were no yatsuhashi, it wasn't Kyoto, which meant that if there were yatsuhashi, it was. Compared to yatsuhashi, Kiyomizu Temple, the Daimonji Fire Festival, and the Big Three festivals didn't even matter. Shrines and Buddhist temples were irrelevant. If you didn't eat yatsuhashi, you didn't know 80% of Kyoto.
'Okay, then,' I thought.
And so it was settled that Tomo-chan would receive snack food for her birthday. I didn't want to burden her with something non-disposable, and I figured it would be the perfect thing to eat while drinking. Or wait, did sweet stuff go with alcohol? I didn't drink, so I didn't know. At any rate, it wasn't like they would be inedible.
And then, my back shivered.
It felt as though liquid nitrogen had been poured into my spinal cord. As if my entire body had been frozen to absolute zero and the heat of the outside air was about to scorch me. Only a basic level of brain functionality remained. And then, I felt an intense pressure crushing me. If I couldn't maintain my composure, surely I would be pulverized.
But I didn't look back. I just tried to collect myself as coolly as possible and thrust the box of yatsuhashi at the store clerk. The clerk had a brown earring, a brown ponytail, and a smile that wasn't very professional.
"Welcome, now." The clerk wrapped up the treats for me, which I accepted as I fished for the exact change. "Please come again there, now," the clerk said cheerfully with a little head bob. Surely, it was this kind of heartfelt service that captured the hearts of tourists, I thought, a little irrelevantly, as I left the store and began on my way to Shijô Street.
And then, I felt it.
A gaze so intense, it couldn't be ignored once detected; a gaze so ferocious, there was no way not to be aware of it.
No, this was more than a gaze.
This was the intent to murder.
It was a 100 percent pure murderous desire.
Nothing — not one of a million emotions; not animosity, aggression, or a sense of mischief — diluted the purity of this desire.
My entire body ached with a terrible feeling. This feeling was long past the point of unpleasant or unsettling.
I walked.
The feeling followed me.
I walked some more.
The feeling still followed.
"In other words, I'm being followed," I muttered to myself.
Since when? From where?
I had no idea.
It was so blatant that I didn't even need to look back.
It was so blatant that I didn't even need to sense it.
That meant that whoever it was had surely noticed that I had noticed. The fact that they continued to tail me anyway was the most blatant thing of all.
"This ain't good," I sighed as I weaved my way through the crowd. It was strange. I really thought I'd left all danger behind me... Back on that island on the other side of the sea. Being tracked all the way to this country, to this city, no less, seemed unthinkable, much less being killed. I had already employed Kunagisa's skills to confirm that.
In which case...
This was a random act.
The first thing that came to mind was the feature story from the magazine in my bag.
The slasher.
"Aw, hell no," I said to myself. What cruel fate had brought me to this pass? If I were to put it like Mikoko-chan, I might have said something like, "It's like forming a second Onyanko Club, but everyone's a backup dancer." On second thought, I have no idea what that means. I guess you shouldn't try to be something you're not, I thought. Clearly, I was panicking.
But even supposing the person one thousand feet behind me right now was the famous prowler, or even supposing it was just your run-of-the-mill psycho killer, or even supposing that it was someone with a grudge against me...
Something was off. This just didn't make sense. It was unfathomable and absurd.
What I felt was uneasiness. Yes, like the uneasiness you feel when you notice that reflection in the mirror is looking back at you, that kind of absolutely mistaken textbook explanation. I had now confirmed that that red line that's usually in front was, suddenly, behind.
"More nonsense?" Of course, this was an illusion.
What mattered right now was that someone was following me. This much was certain. That and, sometime soon, I would be killed. This much was also certain. With these two essentially definite facts in mind right now, I had no leeway to be distracted by any other sensations. Ultimately, my options were limited.
Give, or take.
"Ahhh, this is becoming a freaking hassle," I muttered.
I made my way from Shinkyôgoku Street onto Shijô Street. On the other side of a cluster of cabs was a long line of cars. Shijô Street was extremely congested at this time of day, to the point that it was actually faster to walk than to drive. In a town like Kyoto, which had so many traffic lights it wasn't even funny, a bicycle was by far the number one most effective way to get around.
Number two, incidentally, was on foot. Maybe number three was a boogie board.
I had come to school by bus, so number two was my only option. I debated for only an instant about which way to go before heading east.
After a pause at a red light, I crossed Kawara-machi Street. If I kept straight on this road, it would take me to Yasaka Shrine. From there, if I broke south, I would reach Kiyomizu Temple. It was a textbook route for the Kyoto temple sightseer. But I was no sightseer, and I had no intention of going as far as Yasaka Shrine.
I was on pins and needles. I felt that high-pressure gaze edging ever closer.
And if it ever caught up to me, that pressure would erupt into plain, simple violence.
"Ah... This is gonna be close." It was May already and here I was in a cold sweat. Just how long had it been since I had been this nervous? Surely, not since I'd left that odd little island. Yet at the same time, what I felt now was somehow distinctly different from what I had felt back then.
I am nervous, therefore I am at peace.
I became aware of the fact that for me in this nervous state, failure was something wholly improbable.
"Phew..."
And so, I arrived at the Kamo River.
Instead of crossing the big Shijô Bridge, I made my way down the staircase beside it and emerged on the riverbank. Whenever the sun came out, countless young couples would start crowding the riverbank. In my personal opinion, this riverbank, lined with perfectly spaced out boy-girl pairs, was one of the top three must-see attractions of Kyoto. When the moon was out, the riverbank offered itself as an after-bender hangout for drunks. After drinking the night away, they could come here to sleep it off. The drunks ranged from college students all the way up to salarymen.
The drunks and lovers had one thing in common: They were both complete nuisances who went around shoving their happiness in other people's faces. But there was no time to wax philosophical about. No matter what I thought about the drunks and young lovers, only one thing mattered right now. It happened to be that one brief moment of the day when the riverbank was empty. The lovers had already gone home, and the drunks were still getting drunk.
In other words, it was a perfect situation.
And being underneath a bridge made it even better, right?
I entered the shadow of the bridge as soon as I had descended to the riverbank. The sounds of passing cars rushed overhead. The chatter of people crossing the bridge. It was one hell of a ruckus. But it wasn't enough to cover this guy's footsteps.
Shuffle.
The sound of scraping grit.
I muttered something and turned around.
He made an incoherent noise as he faced me.
My feelings at that point were probably pure and simple confusion. Ordinary, everyday confusion, and nothing more.
There was a mirror in front of me.
Or so I thought.
His height was a bit under five feet, and he was long-limbed and slender as a flower stem. He wore tiger-striped shorts; nonskid rustic boots; a red, long-sleeved, hooded parka; and a black tactical vest. Both hands were clad with gloves, but they obviously weren't for something as cowardly as covering his fingerprints, as they were fingerless gloves. It was my guess that they served a much more sinister purpose — to stop the knife from slipping on sweat.
His long hair was tied up in the back and buzzed on the sides as if he were a dancer. His right ear had a triple piercing, and two straps that looked like they belonged on a cell phone, dangled from his left ear. His stylish sunglasses rendered his expression unreadable, but the sinister-looking, obviously real tattoo running down the right side of his face communicated this person's eccentricity loud and clear.
He was unlike me in almost every conceivable way. Our similarities ended with age and gender.
And yet, I felt like I was looking into a mirror.
So naturally, I was confused.
And my new friend appeared to be just as confused.
Still, he made the first move. He inserted his right hand into a pocket of the vest, and an instant later, he was brandishing a small, five-centimeter-wide knife. He made not a single wasted motion. It was as if he had surpassed the limits of mere humans. Light and sound seemed distorted around him.
Even supposing I had been observing all this from the point of view of an uninvolved bystander — even knowing that this was a murderer, his technique was so perfect that I could've only described it as artful.
There was no escaping it. There was no accepting it.
But I managed to dodge the knife by pulling my upper body back. Of course, normally, this would be impossible. I wouldn't say I'm any less athletic than average, but I'm certainly no Mary Lou Retton either. I had neither the quick eye nor agile body needed to elude a plausible contender for the title of the world's fastest knife fighter.
However, supposing a dump truck was coming straight at you at a hundred miles an hour, but you became aware of this when it was a few miles away, I think we can all agree that dodging it would be a simple task.
Likewise, I'd been anticipating my assailant's slash attack. It was so obvious that it was coming that it was as if I had been expecting it for the past five years.
I groped wildly for my bag, then swung it around, hoping to smash him in the face. But with no more than a simple motion of the neck, he managed to dodge my attack as if he had been expecting it for ten years.
Because I had strained to dodge his attack, I tumbled backward. Of course, I didn't do anything as foolish as trying to roll back to my feet. Even a single-arm wasted on such a maneuver would surely have created a prime opportunity for the killer. Just as I feared, he wheeled back from his initial miss and came straight for my carotid artery. Not good. There was no way to dodge from this position. I guess I could have theoretically performed a stupid-looking roll and dodge this one attack. But the next moment, or the moment after that, regardless of how pathetically I scrambled around on the ground, he would plunge that knife into my spine. I could imagine it so clearly that I felt like a certain clairvoyant I once knew. In which case, dodging was beside the point. The key was simply taking it. I swung my right elbow up at the knife.
My opponent twisted his wrist, altering the direction of his swing. Consequently, the excess momentum from my elbow had me swinging at nothing. This left my entire front side, including all of my organs, not least notable of which were the heart and lungs, completely exposed to the enemy.
Behind the sunglasses, his eyes seemed to smile ever so faintly.
With another twist of the knife, he aimed it directly at my heart.
A moment's pause.
And then, the tactical knife swung down at double speed. So strong was his will to destroy human life that it made his body move at speeds that couldn't be detected by the human eye.
He left me not even time enough to gasp. That's right: I didn't even have time to gasp.
But I had known this one had been coming before I'd even been born.
!!
The knife tore through a single layer of my clothing and stopped. My left index and middle fingers had stopped it — by pushing up my assailant's sunglasses.
A stalemate.
He had my heart and I had his eyes. If you put the two on a scale, their weights obviously differed, but this was no matter to be weighed on a scale. For my opponent, tearing through my flesh and bone to demolish my heart was simpler than taking candy from a baby. But it would leave just enough time for me to pulverize his eyeballs.
The opposite was also true. I could sacrifice my own heart to destroy his eyeballs, and he could sacrifice his eyes to obliterate my heart. Hence, a stalemate.
We stayed that way for as long as five hours, or maybe it was five seconds, and then: "This is a masterpiece," he said, tossing his knife aside.
"It's nonsense is what it is." I retracted my fingers.
He backed away from me, and I rose to my feet slowly, shaking the grit off my clothes and slowly straightening out my posture.
Our fight had been a farce — but it had gone so harmoniously, it was as if it had all been predestined. I felt overcome by an incredible faintness.
"I'm Zerozaki," my opponent said as he straightened his crooked glasses. "Zerozaki Hitoshiki. So who the hell are you, Mr. Doppelgänger?"
The question left a sour taste in my mouth. It was like seeing myself asking someone else for my own name.
And that — that was the first encounter between the passive onlooker and the homicidal monster.
Strangely enough, it was Friday the thirteenth.