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

“That’s right. He was generally careful in his use of violence. He rarely left marks anywhere that couldn’t be covered up.” 

“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. 

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

“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?” 

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. 

“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. 

"Imagine you’re dreaming, and realize that you’re in a dream,” the girl illustrated. “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.” 

“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… 

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I wasn’t thinking.” 

“My sister.” 

“Sounds like you didn’t live in a very pleasant household.” 

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. 

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 of the outside. 

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

“Don’t tell me, you’re feeling ill?” 

“But weren’t you rather distant from home two days ago?” 

“I understand. I’ll cure it.” 

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

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. 

“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 nicotine-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. 

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

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

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

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?” 

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. 

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

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

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 your sister do to you?” 

“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?” 

“I don’t. You seem pretty normal to me.” 

“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.”

“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…”

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 self-described mother of two. "My daughters of six and eight get along so well that even I’m astonished. But for Mother’s Day this year, they prepared a surprise present…”“ 

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

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. 

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. 

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 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. 

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

"Nice house,” I said. 

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

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. 

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. 

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

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. 

She’d done a very good job of it. There wasn’t even a scream. 

She’d achieved her objective with astonishing speed. 

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

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. 

This became more interesting to watch than the dodgeball game, 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. 

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. 

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. 

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 wounded boy uncomfortably lying on the floor of the gymnasium and the woman collapsed in front of us now overlapped in my mind. 

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

“I didn’t. But I don’t recall saying I wasn’t going to kill her.” 

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

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. 

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. 

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 horrible than this one. 

After taking a step back to keep the blood off my shoes, I spoke. 

“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 atemporary 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. 

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. 

“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. 

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. 

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. 

“No. …I guess it was a good thing I brought you along after all. Now carry me back to the car.” 

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. 

I remained silent, not even acknowledging her statement. 

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

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. 

“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 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?” 

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 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. 

A smell of death, at any rate. 

"It’s cold,” the girl said. 

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

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. 

“Who was that girl?”, she asked. 

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?” 

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

“Go ahead.” 

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

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

“Thank you.” 

“By the way, what’s with that stain?” 

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

“Well, whatever stain it is, you should wash it off quickly. See you.” 

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

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

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

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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

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.” 

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

“Just my voice you like, huh.” 

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

“So you called me just to tease me?” 

“What would that be?” 

“That is troublesome.” 

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

“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?” 

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. 

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


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