Bile rushed up to his throat, and despite his attempts to beat it back, Ariyama gagged and fell to his knees. Heat rose from his chest and erupted from his mouth. He threw up all over the nice white tiles.
As he spat and had tears running down his face, Ariyama gasped for his words.
"Sorry. I'm sorry, Matsune. I just…"
Distantly, he heard her voice.
"I hate to admit it, but when I first went through this, I had the same reaction. Don't worry, we can clean up later."
Also distantly, he heard the sound of creaking metal as Matsune must have pushed the steel bed back into the unit. As Ariyama wiped his mouth and refocused on Matsune, she was just closing the seal. Upon seeing his weakened face, she approached and offered him a hand. He gratefully took it and stood on his noodle-like legs. The unbalance he felt made him only feel like puking again.
"So, uh, what exactly was the point of showing me that?"
"Well, I couldn't have known you'd react like that, Ariyama-kun. Even if I suspected you would. Anyways, as you probably realized by now, that's the body of Genichirou. The Society tries its hardest to bring in the unregistered Tributes alive, but sometimes they have to be eliminated. Now, I don't know the details of what happened that night exactly, but I have faith that you made the right decision. Since that hooded man you and I fought was also Genichirou, I can tell you that from that battle, I surmised that he was dangerous. He likely would've been too volatile to be kept alive, I'd wager."
"Yeah, I suppose…"
Was that her way of trying to make him feel better? By justifying his killing of Genichirou by saying he would've been too dangerous to be kept alive? Well, Ariyama knew that. He knew Genichirou was turning crazy within those last few minutes of his life. Ariyama killed him, mainly due to the rage that bubbled up from within him, but also because he knew it had to be done.
He remembered that he'd said to himself that 'he was sure they preferred a dead unregistered Tribute to an unregistered Tribute continuing to be let loose'. He thought even back then that what he did was justified.
So, justification wasn't the issue.
It was that he felt so terrible. Sure, Genichirou's death was necessary – and Ariyama knew that – but the fact he'd taken another human's life still held him down. It was a feeling he didn't know how to describe – it was cold, and hot, and a rush but also a chill. He imagined Genichirou, as a young child, with parents and maybe siblings or a dog or a childhood best friend like Ariyama had the honor of having.
He didn't even know why Genichirou was doing what he did, or what he was doing in the first place. But something had changed, somewhere in his life, that had robbed him of his natural human decency and degraded him into that type of person. And he was only seventeen or eighteen, right? He seemed to fit right in with the other third years, so Ariyama hadn't even known that he probably only transferred there for some nefarious reason.
Then a thought flashed in his head.
A memory.
On the first day the two had met, when Genichirou stood before the open school gates and students were piling in, Ariyama had noticed something. Something that set him apart from all the other students.
He had no bag with him.
Ariyama's blood ran cold as he glanced at the refrigeration unit that held the blonde's corpse.
So, was he ever actually enrolled in the school at all? Ariyama had never seen him in class. If that was the case, maybe everything was coordinated, from their first meeting to Genichirou 'randomly' walking in on Ariyama and Kazura as they discussed their plan, using Kazura's obvious crush on him to get himself into their group.
Ariyama felt a subzero shiver race down his back and he shuddered, his arms rippling with goosebumps.
A hand on his arm shook him from his melancholy. This happened enough times that he knew it was Matsune, even without looking her in the eyes.
Her voice sounded worried, and she whispered as she held her arm supportively.
"Ariyama-kun? If you need to step out for some air, we can continue this later…"
Ariyama cut her off with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Nah, it's OK. I'm… OK. So, back to my previous question. Why did you show me that?"
Matsune, probably seeing that he was OK now, slowly retracted her hand from his arm, before following his gaze and glancing back at the refrigeration unit.
"Since you were the one who dealt the final blow to him, I was tasked with bringing you down here so you could confirm the death. We've had cases in the past where Tribute had manufactured dead bodies to be taken by the Society, while the real them escaped. So, we just need confirmation, and perhaps any more info you can give us on him."
Ariyama thought up a censored version of the still corpse that had been laying on that metal slab. The right eye was gone. The left hand was gone. He was about to tell Matsune that, yes, this was Genichirou's corpse, but then another thing was added onto Ariyama's made-up image.
The hole in his chest.
How had that gotten there?
Ariyama's breath caught in his chest and he wheezed dryly as tried to inhale nothing.
How had that gotten there?
The burnt skin and charred stains across his figure made sense. Ariyama was honestly surprised he hadn't been fully evaporated by Jallarbor Godrend engulfing him with high-density, white-hot heat. But there was no way a hole that shape could've been burned through his torso, right?
Still struggling to breathe, Ariyama slowly shook his head.
"I don't… Wait, Matsune, do you have a cause of death? As in, what was the fatal wound?"
"It was the gaping hole in his stomach, I believe."
Ariyama nearly fell over. Jallarbor Godrend couldn't have torn through the guy's body like that, not without doing it to his entire body. The blast had been too big.
"Oh…"
"What is it, Ariyama-kun?"
Ariyama pointed to the unit that held the embalmed corpse of Genichirou Shoei.
"I didn't cause that hole in him. I'm sure of it. So, that means someone else was there. Someone else waited until after I'd burned him and then killed him themselves."