A Common Tragedy
Kiriko never showed up at the park.
Checking my watch to confirm that twenty-four hours had indeed gone by, I lifted myself up from the bench.
My mod coat was waterlogged and cold, my jeans clung to my legs, and my newly-bought shoes were covered in mud.
Right about as I stopped shivering, I started craving a drink. A good strong drink with lots of alcohol, perfect for drowning my sorrows.
I stopped by the late-night supermarket and bought a small bottle of whiskey and some mixed nuts.
Both of them looked like they’d just gotten out of bed, kept their pajamas on, and threw on sandals, yet I smelled perfume that seemed recently-applied.
The crackling golden oldies on the radio comforted me, as did the sound of raindrops beating on the roof. The lights in the parking lot shimmered through the rain.
But the music always ends, the bottle empties, the lights go out. As I turned off the radio and shut my eyes, I was hit with intense loneliness.
The darkness, silence, and solitude which I generally preferred, at this particular moment, ate into me instead.
Though I was determined not to get my hopes up from the start, it seemed I had been more hopeful to have a reunion with Kiriko than I even I realized. My intoxicated brain was being more honest about recognizing my true feelings than usual.
She must not have needed me anymore.
I’d have been better off not making this invitation in the first place. There was no changing that both at 17 and at 22, I was a lying loser with countless shortcomings.
I drove out of the parking lot, foot hard against the accelerator, making my old, second-hand car shriek in pain.
On rural roads, in this awful weather, at this time of night, surely there was no need to worry about other cars or pedestrians.
It was a long straightaway. Tall streetlamps made long chains along both sides.
I don’t think I was out for more than a second or two. But the moment I came back to my senses, it was too late. My car was veering into the opposite lane, and the headlights illuminated a figure mere meters ahead.
In a brief moment, I thought many things. Among them were lots of meaningless memories from my childhood that I’d long forgotten.
It was probably something like my life flashing before my eyes. I was searching through twenty-two years of memories trying to find some useful knowledge or experience to help avoid this impending crisis.
The brakes screeched shrilly. But it was unquestionably too little, too late. I gave up on it all and closed my eyes tight.
Except, there was no thump.
I looked around again, under the car too, but there wasn’t any corpse. My heart was beating like mad.
Had I swerved out of the way just in time? Had they swiftly avoided me? And then, did they just run away?
At any rate, did it mean I had made it out of the situation without running someone over?
A voice came from behind me.
She seemed more or less 17, so she was almost two heads shorter than me. And she had no umbrella, so she was soaked, her hair clinging to her face.
She was a beautiful girl. It was a kind of beauty that wasn’t marred by rain and mud - rather, such things drew more attention to it.
Before I could ask what she meant by “You didn’t,” the girl pulled off the school bag hanging from her shoulder, held it in both hands, and hurled it at my face.
As I began to open my mouth, the girl’s hand flew out and slapped my cheek, then a second time, and a third. I felt the back of my nose plugging up with blood. But I had no right to complain about what she was doing.
Because I’d killed her.
Granted, my victim was quite heartily beating the stuffing out of me still, but no doubt, I’d run her over going over 80 kilometers an hour.
She seemed to get exhausted, coughed fiercely and tried to catch her breath, and finally stopped.
That was effective; a pain shot through me like my organs had been stabbed with a stake. I felt all the air leave my lungs.
“Do you want to lie down there forever? Stand up already,” she insisted. “I’ll have you take me home. You’d better at least do that for me, murderer.”
The rain started pouring hard again. It made a sound like hundreds of birds pecking on the roof.
Shortly after doing so, a light-purple wound appeared on her pretty palm. It looked like a cut made with something sharp that had healed into a scar over the years. I couldn’t see it being something she suffered from the accident earlier.
I must have looked sufficiently dumbfounded, so she explained. “I got this cut five years ago. …You figure out the rest. You more or less know the explanation now, don’t you?”
She sighed in annoyance. “In short, I can change events that happen to me so that they never happened.”
Never happened?
“Can you make it a little simpler for me? Is that a metaphor?”
“I can’t blame you if you don’t believe me. Even I haven’t figured out why I can do it yet.”
It was a story much too distanced from reality. I’d never heard of anyone who could undo events that happened to them. It was clearly beyond human ability.
Logically, I should have run her over, yet she was spared it. And she made a wound she hadn’t had before suddenly appear out of nowhere.
It sounded like magic from a fairy tale, but I had to believe it until some other acceptable explanation presented itself.
“That’s right. If you don’t believe that, I can show you another example…” She rolled up the sleeve of her blouse.
Her shoulders sagged. “I don’t know. It’s not something I do entirely consciously. I want someone to tell me just as much.”
“And one more thing. You probably say it that way for convenience, but strictly speaking, you can’t really undo everything, right? Otherwise I can’t think of an explanation for your anger earlier.”
From the other things she said, I supposed she could at least postpone events for five years. She seemed to see through my thoughts and interrupted.
"Just so you know, I could only postpone the cut on my palm by five years because it was a light, non-threatening wound. How long it can be prolonged depends on the strength of my desire and the size of the event. A stronger desire extends the time, and a bigger event shortens it.”
“…Going off intuition, I’m guessing ten days at the most.”
Ten days.
It didn’t feel real to me. For one thing, the victim of my crime was here talking to me at this moment, and I couldn’t let go of the faint hope that this was all a bad dream.
“I’m sorry. I really don’t know how to make it up to you…”
“…Sure.”
She told me she became aware of her strange power when she was eight.
It was thought to have been someone’s pet, as it was unusually friendly and would come circle around your legs if you beckoned to it. It wouldn’t run away when pet, and wouldn’t hiss. It was something of a friend to the girl.
The cat died in a terrible way. The blood on the asphalt was blackened, but the blood that had seemingly splattered on the guardrail was bright red.
Since then, she started to hear that same song again and again. When her “postponement” succeeded, she would hear it start up in her head. And by the time the mental performance ended, whatever it was that hurt her would have been “undone.”
After doing her homework and eating her wrapped dinner, she thought, “I wonder if that cat was really the one I knew?”
Had someone already come and picked it up? Was someone unable to bear it, so they moved the corpse? But no, something seemed off. It was like there had been no corpse or blood to begin with.
As she reached to stroke the cat’s head, she felt a burning pain on the back of her hand. She quickly retracted it and found a scratch on it about the length of her pinky.
Maybe that cat was diseased, she thought. She forgot the name, but maybe it had that sickness one in ten cats have, and she got infected when it scratched her.
The fever refused to recede. Her body felt heavy, and her joints and lymph nodes hurt badly.
“I think my fever’s gone,” she informed her mother, who tilted her head and asked, “Did you have a fever?”
What are you talking about?, the girl thought. She’d been bedridden by it for days. Yesterday, and the day before that…
In those memories, she had gone to school yesterday, and the day before, and every day without fail for the past month. And she could remember everything: the lessons she had, the books she read at lunch, and all her meals.
At once, she was filled with deep confusion. Yesterday, I slept in bed all day. Yesterday, I had math class, and Japanese class, and arts and crafts, and PE, and social studies. Her memories contradicted one another.
The cat that died was the cat I knew. That cat wouldn’t scratch people.
The girl became convinced, without any reason, that she was responsible for temporarily keeping alive the cat that should have died.
But when that cat scratched me and made me sick, I wished for it to be dead instead. So the first wish lost effect, and the accident went back to “happening,” so I was never scratched.
This interpretation the girl made was exceedingly correct. To test her theory, she returned to where she found the cat’s corpse the next day.
All of this was something she told me some time afterward.
“You know, it smells weird in here.”
“I didn’t notice before because of the rain… But have you been drinking?”
“Drunk driving?”, she asked incredulously and defeatedly. “So, what? You know how many people die from it and you just think you’ll be fine?”
I had no reply. I certainly must have known the risks of drunk driving, but the dim idea I had of those risks was getting pulled over for it, or crashing into something and hurting myself.
We got onto a mountain road with no lights. I looked at the speedometer and saw I wasn’t even going 30 kilometers an hour.
My heart was beating like mad again, just like after the accident. A cold sweat dripped down my sides.
“I give. Yeah, it seems that way.”
I pulled off to the side of the road and stopped the car. Once the windshield wipers stopped, the window soon became completely covered with water.
“Sorry, but we’re taking a break here until I can drive properly again.”
A few minutes later, I heard the other seat recline, and the girl turning on her side. She wanted to sleep facing away from me, naturally.
As I lay still in the darkness, waves of regret came upon me. I’ve done something that can’t be undone, I told myself again.
People like me should just be miserable and cooped up in their rooms. Then at least they won’t bother anyone else.
“That’s my business,” she coldly spat. “Are you trying to say that even though it was an accident, I did something to deserve it?”
“Your lack of caution and bigheadedness took someone’s life. You don’t get to talk like that, murderer.”
I sighed deeply, and focused on the sound of the rain outside. I realized as I turned on my side that my body was completely exhausted. And thanks to the remaining alcohol in me, my senses were going in and out.
As I dozed off, I heard the girl sobbing to herself.
The ceiling was yellowed with nicotine, the floor was covered in burn marks, the fluorescent lights flickered, and two of the three vending machines had notices with “OUT OF ORDER” crudely written on them.
“Aha. So, how do you feel now?”, Shindo asked with great interest, sitting on a stool with a torn cushion, smoking a cigarette, and leaning on the cabinet with his elbow.
“Nothin’ to worry about. You’ve got no "life” to lose in the first place, right? You’re already living like you’re dead. Nothing to live for, no goals, no fun…“
“Stop it, you’re grossing me out. You make it sound like a lovers’ suicide.”
Whatever you had him do, Shindo was always better than average. He was quick to grasp just about everything. But on the other hand, up to the last, he was never the best in anything.
So he could never give all of himself to just one thing. I wished I could be like that.
As he handed me one, he said, “Hey, Mizuho, I wanna ask something.”
“Was that accident really something that was totally avoidable?”
I didn’t understand his question. “What do you mean?”
“Hey, now, you trying to say I had that accident on purpose?”
Shindo didn’t reply. With an intriguing smile, he tossed his cigarette, now mostly filter, into the empty coffee can and lit a new one. As if to say, “think about it some.”
He was trying to get me to notice something.
With that dreamlike lack of consistency, I was no longer in an arcade. I stood at the entrance to an amusement park.
There was noise from the attractions all around me, and shrill voices yelling. Large speakers around the park played infinitely cheery big band music, and I heard the sound of an old photoplayer among the attractions.
It didn’t seem I had come there alone. Someone was there holding my left hand.
I sensed a light beneath my eyelids. When I opened them, I found the rain had stopped, and the deep blue of night and the orange of morning were mixing near the horizon.
Illuminated by the sunrise, her eyes showed traces of having been cried out.
My fear of driving seemed only temporary after all. My hands on the wheel and my feet on the accelerator had no problems. Even so, I drove carefully down the wet roads glimmering in the morning light at around 40 kilometers an hour.
I stopped the car, but also stopped the girl as she tried to open the passenger door and leave.
She didn’t reply. She got onto the sidewalk and started walking away. I left the car and ran after her, grabbing her shoulder.
“I really know I’ve done something terrible. I want to make up for it.”
I hung on. “I’m not expecting your forgiveness. I just want to make you feel the tiniest bit better.”
I felt like anything more I said would make her angrier. I could only back off for now.
"Okay. You seem to want to be alone, so I’ll go poof for now.”
“If there’s anything you want me to do, call that number and I’ll come running.”
I wrote my phone number in the notebook again and put it in the pocket of her bag. She tore that page apart too, throwing confetti to the wind.
“All right, I get it. Now just leave. You being here just saps my energy.”
I went back to the car, stopped at the first restaurant I saw for breakfast, and drove safely home.
Thinking about it, it had been a long time since I’d been out while the sun was. Crimson cosmos grew on the roadside, blowing in the wind.