Her Revenge
To get straight to the point, we proceeded to take the lives of seventeen people all told, including the first three.
The fourth victim was the girl’s former homeroom teacher. After killing the man who, now in his sixties, had been battling with stomach cancer, she stated “Let’s take this as far as we can go.”
The gender statistics: eleven women, six men. How they were killed: eight died immediately, four ran, two tried to talk it out, three resisted. Those were the final results.
Not everything went exactly to plan. In fact, we failed many, many times. In getting to the seventeenth murder, our targets ran five times, the police arrested us four times, and we suffered major wounds twice.
That’s not to say none of the victims left any impression on me. Still, it wasn’t who was being killed that was important to me, but the girl’s every action in carrying it out.
And on the fifteenth day, when all seventeen were dead, the effect seemed to somehow hang on.
When I saw her innocent smile, I felt like I finally understood the greatness of having accomplishing something.
And when the postponement came to an end, that smile would be lost forever.
By this time, I could feel such a pain in my chest at last.
Once the girl was done expressing her endless joy, she came back to her senses and let go of my hands awkwardly.
“I feel lucky for that,” I replied. “That makes seventeen, right?”
We’d tailed her on her way home from work and spoken to her once she was alone. She appeared to not remember the girl she had once tormented, but the moment she pulled out the scissors, the woman sensed danger and fled.
While her swift movements and her pinpoint accuracy with the scissors were beautiful, it was a little sad no longer seeing her get bloody and weary.
“Once I’m out of targets to take revenge on, I doubt I’ll have a very strong will to keep my postponement going,” the girl remarked. “In essence, your death will mean mine.”
“I’d better not delay it too long. …I’ll have revenge on you tomorrow. That will put an end to it all.”
And indeed, for the girl, the end of the world was nearing.
“I hate formal places, and I don’t know anything about manners,” explained the girl. “I don’t want to be so nervous for our last meal that I can’t taste the food.”
She was exactly right. So in the end, we ordered steak at our usual family restaurant and toasted with soft-drink-like wine.
“Your thoughts?”
“I know how you feel. I wish I didn’t learn so late how fun it was to eat with a girl I like.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to forget. Just wanted to know sooner.”
“Right you are,” I nodded.
Looking displeased, the girl put her elbows on the table and pointlessly swirled her wine glass.
“Right, keep on getting angrier at me. That grudge is what you’re going to kill me with tomorrow.”
“Fine by me.”
The time for worrying had passed days ago. Now I was just looking forward to the moment she stabbed me with her scissors.
I just wanted her to successfully take revenge on as many people as she could, and offered myself to be the last.
And, strictly speaking, I wouldn’t die. I’d only temporarily die for the duration of the postponement’s effect.
As long as that other me didn’t commit suicide, I would get to keep living.
However, the one who would keep living was one who would never know the girl while she still lived.
“Yes?”, she replied, slightly tilting her head.
“…Who knows. It’s pointless to consider.”
I couldn’t stop myself from imagining, though. What if I hadn’t run her over?
I rewinded back to that night. After buying beer at the supermarket, drinking it, and starting to drive, a slip of the wheel would drive me into the gutter, and I wouldn’t be able to get the car out.
Though finding it strange, I would ask her, “Hey, can I borrow your cellphone? My car’s stuck, as you can see.” She’d shake her head; “I don’t have a cellphone.” “Oh, too bad… Say, aren’t you cold?” “I am.” “Do you want to warm up in my car?” “No. That’s very suspicious.” “Personally, I think you’re pretty suspicious, walking around on an empty road in the dead of night without an umbrella. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything weird. Suspicious persons like us should get along, right?” The girl would hesitate, then wordlessly get in the passenger’s seat, and we’d both sleep.
We’d wake up to the morning sunlight. A truck would be honking its horn. It would tow the car out of the ditch. We’d thank the truck driver.
A few days later, she and I would happen to meet again. I’d stop the car, and she’d wordlessly get in instead of going to school.
Years would pass, and the girl would push through high school to graduation, and I’d be reintegrated into society and work part-time jobs.
By going along with her revenge, I felt I came to deeply understand her. That could have been a biased impression, however.
First was hearing. I heard rain falling on the roof. Next was touch. I felt hardness with my back and the back of my head; I’d slipped off the sofa and was sleeping on the floor.
Then, something sharp was thrust at my neck. I didn’t even have to think to realize that it was the girl’s dressmaking scissors.
As soon as I realized that, I felt the reality that yes, this was the end.
“Yeah,” I responded.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” she told me. “As a last confirmation.”
“You assisted me over these fifteen days to atone for your actions. Is that right?”
“It is. I doubt I can make you believe it, but…”
“Right.” Strictly speaking, I didn’t want to die, but if those were my only two options, then it was closer to a yes.
I thought that the more I said “yes,” the more it would push her to commence with her revenge.
The questioning came to an end. My heart raced; it was happening.
I could tell her conviction was building. The scissor point advanced, albeit only millimeters. The stimulus to my pain receptors brought my attentiveness to its maximum.
The fear of death and the anticipation of beauty melted together like a drug filling my brain, causing a flood, wrapping me in an aimless ecstasy that made me want to shout.
“That’s why I won’t kill you. I refuse killing you.”
“Hey, what’s this? Are you really losing your nerve now?”, I asked provocatively. But the girl heeded it not, and threw the scissors onto the bed.
She wasn’t trying to ascertain whether her murder would be justified, but how meaningless it would be to murder me.
“…So if this fulfills your revenge,” I thought, “why hasn’t your postponement ended?”
I wanted to get up and chase after her, but my legs wouldn’t move. I could only lie on the floor and watch her go.
As the girl reached the door, she remembered something and came to a stop. She turned around and walked back.
“There is one thing I need to thank you for,” she nearly whispered. “Despite all the wounds on my body, you called me "beautiful.” I don’t know how serious you were, but… it still made me very happy.“
She got on her knees next to me and covered my eyes with her hand. With the other hand, she held my chin.
Our lips parted, and she took away her blindfolding arm and left the room.
For the first time in ten days, I lied down on an empty bed and closed my eyes.
I didn’t need to look into any proper method. I knew what to stab and how, I knew how long it would then take to die - after she’d showed me ad nauseam, I knew.
My beating pulse felt the blade. My mind was calmed by that fixed rhythm. I suddenly recalled hearing that when people died, their hearing remained to the very end. The other senses would die off, but hearing would hold on until just before death.
Putting on an unfittingly noisy song seemed more suitable for my death than a sad song that lamented it.
Come on, get a hold of yourself. You’re going to go through the whole album at this rate. And then what? “Next album?”
Fine, the next song. Once the next song is over, I’ll do away with this ridiculous life of mine.
But as the fourth song was seconds from ending, there was a knock on the front door.
“You’re a neighborhood nuisance.”
“She left. Just a while ago.”
“Yeah. I exhausted her good graces.”
It had an order of magnitude more tar than I was used to, almost like the ones Shindo used to smoke, so I nearly started to choke. Her lungs must have been pitch black.
“Where’s the ashtray?”, she asked.
After finishing her first cigarette, she started on another without a moment’s delay.
She must come here with something to say, I supposed. Being upset about the noise was just an excuse.
So she was probably in deep thought now, because she wanted to say something important to me.
Upon finishing three cigarettes, she finally spoke.
"Why not?”
Without any connecting logic, she said over her cigarette, “Winter’s coming soon.”
“You know, I was born in the south. Even when it snowed there, it was rare that it ever stayed to the next day. So I was astonished when winter first came for me here. Once the snow piles up, you don’t see the ground again until spring. And thanks to this image of snow as this light and fluffy pure-white stuff, the heaviness of snow piles, the dread of walking on icy roads, how snow looks like volcanic rock when it’s exposed to exhaust fumes, and so on… it was a little disappointing.”
I didn’t find myself thinking “what is she going on about now?”
“Right. Thank you.”
“I guess only people who start thinking about dying understand your charm.”
“That doesn’t make me very happy,” she laughed with confliction. “Hey, I’ve always wanted to ask. Did you never so much as hold my hand because you just didn’t have any interest in me? Or was that out of courtesy to dear departed Shindo?”
“…Thanks, that’s an answer that does make me happy. I think I feel a little better.”
She held out her left hand. Probably not her right because she was wary of my injury.
“Saegusa,” she told me, grabbing it. “Shiori Saegusa. First time properly using my name, eh, Mizuho Yugami? I like those kinds of non-committal relationships.”
I buttoned up my coat, tied my boots tight, and opened the door holding an umbrella.
“I’ll be lonely with you gone,” I heard miss Saegusa remark from behind me.
But there was no need. I happened to know where she was headed. She’d left me a few clues.
After considering several possibilities, I decided on this: she was looking for something I possessed, and checked my wallet because it was likely to be there.
The second clue was the “I’m sorry” she left me with. An apology directed at the person who killed her.
What was that an apology for? She’d clearly explained the “thank you” just before it: “Despite all the wounds on my body, you called me "beautiful.” I don’t know how serious you were, but… it still made me very happy.“
Maybe she had a reason for not explaining it, yet at least wanted her feelings to be known before she went. So it probably didn’t just stop at “I’m sorry.”
The third clue was back four days ago. While the girl was showering, I thought I’d continue writing my “unsent letter” to Kiriko, so I opened the headboard cupboard, but the partially-written letter was gone.
I didn’t pay it much mind then, but - having no doubt in my mind the girl had read it - why didn’t she put it back where it was?
Unless she meant to tease me and hid it in a CD case or between books, or threw it in the trash, only one possibility remained: She still had the letter.
After thinking this far, I looked back on all the days since meeting her. It was a simple puzzle.
And as I’d wondered from the start, why was she walking alone without an umbrella in that desolate place the day I ran her over?
She should have been able to hide it if she wanted to, but she left evidence of having gone through my wallet. She said “I’m sorry” as she left.
But I didn’t regret how we ended up parting. That anticlimactic end was a perfect fit for our relationship, I’m sure.
Having no car, I took one train and three buses to my destination.
I told the driver I was in a hurry, paid the fare, got off there, and walked alongside the row of congested cars.
At the bottom of a low slope, there was a flooded area spanning several hundred meters, and the water went up to my knees at its deepest part.
The cold and the atmosphere made my wounded pinky begin to ache. And thanks to the side wind, the umbrella was little more than a consolation.
Soon a strong wind came, and as I grabbed the handle of the umbrella tightly, its skeleton broke to pieces.
Every turn of the sirens illuminated the raindrops and the wet ground, turning the whole area red. Car horns echoed from the direction of the traffic jam.
As I turned the corner, a high schooler riding a bicycle holding an umbrella in one hand nearly ran me over. He noticed me just in time and hit the brakes, then the tires slipped, making him and the bike fall over.
Because this was the town where I was born.
The girl was sitting there. Naturally, she was soaked. She was wearing the knit nylon jacket I loaned her on top of her uniform. A broken umbrella leaned against the back of the bench.
I trudged through the puddles to approach her from behind and covered her eyes with my hands.
“…Don’t treat me like a child.”
She grabbed my hands and pulled them down to around her solar plexus. I fell forward and assumed the stance of hugging her from behind.
“What are you talking about?”
“…But you didn’t go to meet her,” she said. “Isn’t that right?”
“Exactly. There was no way I could go meet Kiriko. I don’t remember the exact time, but shortly after entering middle school, I started to lie in my letters. And not just one or two little white lies. My life was miserable then, not to mention insipid. I didn’t want to write things just as they were and disappoint Kiriko, or get her pity. So I faked having a perfectly healthy and fulfilling life. If I hadn’t, I thought our correspondence would have quickly ended.”
As I explained this, I began to ask myself if this would have really been the case. Would writing letters about my lonely life at a middle school where I just couldn’t fit in really be reason to stop being penpals?
She took something out of her bag and handed it to me. “I’ll give this back.”
He hated the tendency of favorably accepting anything as long as it was done in good will, even if it lacked prudence or judgement. That was taking a huge amount of responsibility, and so long as he lacked the confidence that he could handle the issue, he felt he shouldn’t say a word about other people’s lives - that was Shindo’s view.
So for him to give me some real advice worth calling advice, he must have been pretty serious about it, by his standards.
"So I decided I’d send a letter for the first time in five years. I wrote that if she was willing to forgive me, she should come meet me in the park near the elementary school we used to go to.”
I raised one of my legs to cross them, which caused a ripple in the puddle, making the blue sky shimmer at our feet.
“That’s it for my story. Now it’s your turn.”
She put her hands on her knees and stared deep in thought at the peeled bench seat.
“That’s what I came to ask,” I replied.
“What I think,” she prefaced cautiously, “is that miss Kiriko did set out for the appointed place. However, it took her considerable time to work up the resolve to do so. This time, it was she who had a reason she couldn’t go meet you. Indeed, she couldn’t look you in the face. On the other hand, learning that after five years of silence, the person who she thought had long forgotten about her still wanted to see her, she must have been happy enough to cry. After weighing her options at length, miss Kiriko decided she would go meet mister Mizuho.”
She seemed to be speaking in as indifferent a tone as she could manage. Like she was denying her words the chance to show emotion.
“However, her decision came a bit too late. She fled the house, still in her school uniform, past 7 PM on the promised day. On top of that, it was raining terribly, so the buses and trains weren’t properly functioning. Ultimately, it was around midnight that she reached her destination. Naturally, there was no one in the park. She sat on the bench, struck by the rain, and lamented her own foolishness. She finally understood just how much she had hoped to reunite with mister Mizuho. Why was she always making these mistakes? Why did she worry about useless things and neglect what was most important? Miss Kiriko, in a state of stupefaction, began to trudge back the way she had come.”
And I knew better than anyone what happened to Kiriko after that.
What’s more, neither of us had even realized it.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” I pondered. “What did you mean by "you couldn’t look me in the face?”“
“All right.”
Kiriko and I barely talked on the way back.
There should have been so much to talk about, but upon actually reuniting, it seemed as if words weren’t necessary. The all-understanding silence was comforting, and no one wanted to speed it up with excessive words.
After napping together for a few hours on the bed in the apartment, we took the rickety shuttle bus from the station to the “appropriate place,” arriving as the sun was beginning to set.
It was an amusement park on top of a mountain. After buying tickets and passing through an entryway with a jacket-wearing rabbit doll, we were met with a faded fantasy spectacle.
Behind the stands and ticket booths, a merry-go-round, and a revolving swing, I could see such attractions as a giant Ferris wheel, a pendulum ride, and a roller coaster.
Despite what a rainy day it was, there were huge crowds. It was about half-and-half between families and couples.
Kiriko looked at it all nostalgically, holding me by the hand.
After buying only the tickets we needed from an automated machine, we got onto the gondola.
As we looked down on the park, one of the lights shining in the darkness went out. I think it was a lamp near the fountain.
The postponement of the accident was ending, and at the same time death came to Kiriko, everything she had postponed was going back to normal.
Nearly all the lights were gone. The once-flourishing amusement park was now an inky black sea.
When the gondola reached the top of the wheel, my memories returned.