Kara no Kyoukai:Chapter05 09
/9 (Spiral Paradox 5)
TN: 2 More chapters to go until end of volume 1
... Click, click, click, click.
When I woke up, I found myself in Ryougi's room.
In that desolate room that I hadn't set foot in after that night when I confessed to her about killing my parents.
Outside the sun is setting. That clock that still grates on my ears, it's pointing towards six o'clock.
--- My head hurts.
Has it been 9 days or so since I cut relations with Ryougi. I've been living like a hobo on the streets that have just greeted November. Skipping meals, I've just been looking out for the news that my parents' bodies have been discovered.
Maybe it was because I've been living as the lowest grade of human, but my headache got worse day by day. Not only that but my body's started creaking. It could be because I haven't been paying much attention to my health, but every joint that could be called a joint was heavy.
"... What the hell am I doing?"
I mumble as I hug my knees.
It had been my intention to never set foot in this place again.
But right now --- I wanted to hear Ryougi's voice.
Clatter clatter, my teeth were trembling.
As if I had gotten terrified and was asking for help, before I knew it I was here.
How long did I stay in the darkness like that.
Suddenly, the world was filled with light.
"What the heck are you doing Enjoh? Do you like lurking in the dark like that or something?"
So speaks the girl in the white kimono and red leather jacket.
She doesn't even think it strange that I am here.
From her shoulder length black hair, those deep black eyes, to her boyish way of speaking.
Exactly the same in every respect as before, Ryougi came into the room as if it was a natural thing to do.
"Even so your timing is too good, it's perfect."
Mumbling something like that Ryougi puts the bundle in her hands on the bed. Going straight into the unused room, she brings out a long and thin wooden box.
"Just a minute, I have to fit this on somehow."
Ryougi unwraps the bundle. Inside there is only a long sword.
The kimono girl opens the wooden box with practiced hands and takes out a scabbard and a hilt, a big coin like thing that she puts onto the sword.
"Eh? The habaki (Habaki: A little metal piece you put on the top and bottom of the hilt to hold the blade in place) is too small. Ah damn it, why doesn't it fit. ... What a nuisance, this is the only habaki I have."
Grumbling discontentedly, Ryougi chucks the sword that has transformed from a simple blade to a magnificent katana onto the bed, and looks in my direction.
"Done. You have something to say right?"
In contrast to her words Ryougi's face is still indifferent.
I --- couldn't think of what to say or how to say it. I only knew that I had been wanting to ask someone for help.
... Nothing's changed.
From the first time I met Ryougi, I didn't even know what kind of help I wanted to receive from her.
"--- I don't know. I think something’s happened to me. I can't have any confidence in myself."
Ryougi doesn't say anything, and stares at me with fixed eyes.
All I can do is keep talking like I have been.
"Today, I saw my mother on the street. At first I thought it was someone who resembled her. But ... It was definitely my mother. I followed her you see and... It doesn't make any sense --- she returned to the mansion ---."
Not knowing what to do with my trembling body, I kept rattling on.
--- And then.
Ryougi said, Is that so, and stood up.
"So you are saying your parents are still alive. It didn't get reported in the news either, so it could be so."
"There's no way that could be right! I definitely killed my mother. I killed my father too. That is an absolute fact. The ones who are wrong are the ones who are still alive!"
That's right, so how is it that they are still living as usual.
How is it that they are going home as always.
To that, blood-spattered home which has become a scene out of hell, how ---.
"Ho, it's wrong is it? Then let's go check."
"--- Wha, what?"
"I'm saying, all we have to do is go to that mansion and check. Whether Enjoh's parents are dead or alive. We would know for sure then."
As if it was all decided, Ryougi starts moving again.
She puts a long knife in the inner pocket of her leather jacket and hides a second knife in the belt of her kimono.
Even though she goes through such grand preparations, as lightly if she's just going out to buy a pack of cigarettes, the white kimono girl starts walking.
It seems Ryougi is prepared to go by herself at least.
I didn't feel like being around her, but I couldn't let this brat go off by herself so I decided to tag along.
"Enjoh, do you know how to ride a motorbike?"
"... As much as anyone else."
"Then, let's do it like that. The one I just rode back on is still there so let's take it."
Ryougi moves to the underground parking lot.
The fact that a small apartment like this has an underground parking lot is amazing in itself, but the motorbike Ryougi had prepared was amazing too.
A sidecar is attached to a huge Harley-level motorbike. Without hesitating Ryougi got into the sidecar.
Having already abandoned myself to the flow I got on the oversized motorbike and headed to the port-district mansion I had lived in until just 1 month ago.
Because of the unfamiliar huge motorbike it was past seven at night when we arrived at the mansion.
Under a sky so cold it was impossible to think of it as November, rises the round building that seems like it could scrape the moon. The building that stands out clearly from its box-like neighbours. This strange building has a peculiar structure, and is divided into an East building and a West building. Our house was number 4 of the East building. No, the West building never had any inhabitants. There weren't many residents so it is not used.
From what I've heard there were a lot of people who hoped to get rooms, but the owner of the mansion was picky so he only filled about half of the total number.
... The reason my house is in such a fancy mansion is because my father and the owner were acquaintances.
"We are here."
I say to Ryougi who is sitting in the sidecar.
Ryougi is staring at the mansion as if she's seen a ghost.
"What, is that" that one question, is the only thing she utters.
I left the motorbike on the side of the road and entered the mansion grounds.
Surrounded by brick walls the grounds are about the size of a fairly big primary school. The building itself is round so it doesn't take up much space, but the size of the garden around it is staggering.
Like a slash cutting that garden in two, a sealed path stretches to the mansion.
I entered the lobby with Ryougi who had shut herself up.
Walking into the lobby, we arrive at the huge column dominating the centre of the mansion. Inside the column is an elevator, and beside it is a rarely used spiral staircase.
I summoned the elevator.
Click, click, click, click.
... It's an unpleasant feeling.
My heart is beating faster than usual, I can't breathe properly.
Is it only to be expected? Since we are about to go into the room where the corpses of those I have killed are lying.
The elevator arrives.
I go inside it. Ryougi follows as well. The door closes.
Buu---------------------------------------ooong.
With a running noise that's quite familiar to my ears the elevator goes up.
"--- It's twisted."
Out of nowhere, Ryougi mumbles that.
The elevator arrived at the fourth floor. Getting off the elevator I started walking through the corridor that faced us as we got off, going in a South direction.
When I walked out towards the outer side of the mansion, the path bent diagonally. The corridor goes around the East building. On the left are the individual residences, and on the right is the outside. There is a chest height steel railing so that no one falls 4 floors to the ground.
"That's my house on the dead end over there."
We walk there. The mansion is quiet as usual, and while you can hear people inside the rooms it's rare to meet them in the corridors.
Coming to the room at the end of the corridor I stopped.
--- Am I, really going inside?
My arm doesn't move. My eyesight gets hazy so I can't grasp the door handle. Oh wait, before that I have to ring the doorbell.
Even if I do have the key, if I go in without ringing the doorbell my mother would get scared. There was once an incident where some debt collectors came charging into our house, after that time she would get scared whenever I came in without ringing the bell.
My finger drifts over to the bell.
Ryougi's hand stops me.
"Don't bother with the bell. Let's go inside Enjoh."
"--- What are you saying. Are you planning to just go in there as you please?"
"Who cares, it's your house originally isn't it? It would be better to avoid hitting any switches anyway. We won't be able to see what kind of design it is then. You have a key don't you? Give it here for a sec."
Ryougi received the key to our house from me then, with a click, turned the key.
The door opens. ... Inside, the sound of a television.
There's, someone here.
Empty of emotion, the forms of a family conversation can be heard.
The voice of my dad who blames the way we are living upon my mother and the world.
The voice of my mom who listens without replying, just nodding to the words.
"---."
That is without doubt the daily life of Enjoh Tomoe.
Ryougi slips inside without a sound. I too --- followed in her footsteps.
Past the corridor, we open the door to the lounge.
A cheap table and television that doesn't suit this excellent room. The dirty room that is filthy because it never gets cleaned properly.
The people sitting there were without a doubt my parents.
"Oi. Is Tomoe still not back? It's 8 o'clock already, one whole hour since he finished work. What the hell is he doing out there, that good for nothing!"
"I wonder, who knows."
"The reason that kid doesn't think of his parents as parents is all because you are too soft on him. Goddamnit, he thinks he doesn't have to pay his debts, not one coin comes my way. Just who does he think feeds and shelters him, that brat!"
"I wonder, who knows."
--- What.
What, is this.
My parents are here. My dad who firmly believes he is a bigshot in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, and my mother who plays along with him.
Two people who should definitely be dead, they are still alive and living as if nothing has happened.
Or, aren't they.
These people, why aren't they looking around at us who just came in --- ?!
"What time do you usually come home Enjoh?"
Ryougi asks from beside my ear. I reply that it's around nine.
"So one more hour is it. Let's wait until then."
"What? This, Just what's going on Ryougi!"
When I got angry at her too laid back attitude, Ryougi cast me a contemptuous glare as if to say I was annoying her.
"All that's happening is that we didn't ring the doorbell or knock on the door, so they aren't meeting the guests. We didn't press the switch that let's them respond to an event outside the set pattern. So the situation is that there aren't guests, Enjoh's parents are just living as they normally do."
Once she finishes talking, Ryougi confidently cut across the lounge to the small room beside it. ... That is, my room.
After torturing myself with indecision for a moment I went into my room while avoiding my parents' eyes.
I stand there like a tree. Ryougi too is leaning on a wall and waiting for the time to pass.
Inside the unlit room, Ryougi and I just keep waiting.
For what?
Hu, isn't is obvious. Something like that, what else is there but the normal return of Enjoh Tomoe.
At the place where I had committed murder before, I waited for myself.
That was a strange time.
Agony that felt like it lasted for an eternity and an instant. That which we call our sense of realism melted down, and the clock was turning backwards.
In the end, I came back.
I finally came back. I already came back.
In the middle of those two conflicting emotions, Tomoe came into the room without speaking a word to his parents.
The slightly curly red hair. The frail body. The delicate face that got him treated as a girl until middle school. This Tomoe who looked like he resented the world, took one deep breath.
... It's a bit like meditating.
As if I believed that by doing that all the difficult things I had encountered that day could be erased, that was my own little ritual.
That Tomoe too, doesn't recognise this Tomoe.
It's as if Ryougi and I have become ghosts.
Soon, Tomoe lays out the futons and goes to bed.
For a long time, with no thoughts on the matter although I knew what would happen next, I was watching Enjoh Tomoe.
I could hear the sounds of a fight coming from the lounge.
My dad's voice, and the passionate voice of my mother that I am hearing for the first time.
My mother is attacking my father while letting out a harsh metallic screech.
That was a barking dog, not a human.
Or maybe it was some mysterious being from Venus.
... For the first time I realised that a woman's hysteria was similar to the convulsions of a drug addict.
This is some ridiculous first-hand experience I'm getting.
Thud, an unpleasant sound.
A rough breathing that I think belongs to mother can be heard through the door.
Click, click, click, click.
"... Stop it."
Even if I murmur that, nothing changes.
This is, of course.
Click, click, click, click.
The door opens. Tomoe opens his eyes. My mother stops in the doorway with a big kitchen knife in her hands.
"Tomoe, die."
A woman's voice, void of emotion as if something has snapped.
Click, click, click, click.
Tomoe would have been looking into the glare.
Mother, she's really.
Crying, in apparent sadness.
Cli, ck.
Mother is wildly stabbing Tomoe. Stomach, chest, neck, arm, leg, thigh, finger, ear, nose, eye, and lastly the forehead as well.
The kitchen knife breaks there, and with the broken blade mother cuts her own throat.
--- Echoing through that room, pock, a dull noise.
Clickclick, clickclick.
Clickclick, clickclick.
Clickcli, ck. Cli, ck. Click, cli, ckclick.
........................ Clickclickclickclickclickclick!
Ahah, just what ---
"--- It's a horrible dream."
My nightmare which has become reality.
But I'm fine with any explanation about how it's come to pass.
Except, it's too real so I can't suppress my urge to vomit.
Srrrk, the white kimono moves.
Ryougi is planning to leave the room.
"If your curiosity is satisfied let's go. We have no more business here."
"... No more business, what! There are people --- I'm, lying dead here."
"What nonsense are you spouting. Hey, pay attention now. There's not one drop of blood. When morning comes around they will open their eyes. This is a 「loop」where they are born in the morning and die at night. The one lying over there isn't Enjoh. The one who is alive like this is you."
Ryougi's words woke me up and I looked around the terrible scene.
... Really, although there was such an awful event there is not one drop of blood.
"Hu, how ---."
"I don't know. I don't know why anyone would do something like this. Anyway we are done here. Now, let's go to the next one."
Tocktock, Ryougi walks out.
Unable to stand it, I ask her back.
"What do you mean the next one --- Where are you going now, Ryougi!"
"Isn't it obvious? To your real house, Enjoh."
To make it a clean break --- Ryougi tells me as if to drive out the ghost called confusion that has covered me.
When we returned to the central lobby, Ryougi did not get on the elevator but instead went around the back of it. The back of the elevator... To the north is the corridor leading to the West building.
The East and West buildings have the same structure.
By the (unspoken rule? personality?) of this mansion, the people of the East building did not go into the West building. I lived here for half a year, but I only realised this obvious fact now.
We walk through the connecting corridor.
The time is past 10 o'clock, and the wind was cold enough to bite the skin.
Winter darkness, where the moonlight was the only thing we could depend on.
Ryougi charges confidently along that uninhabited corridor. Number 6, number 7, number 8, number 9. ... When she got to number 10 which lies at a dead end, she stopped.
"What I thought was a bit strange, to tell the truth it was a small thing."
Suddenly, while glaring at the door Ryougi starts telling a story.
"You said you were in number 405 didn't you? But Mikiya said your name last. A meticulous guy like him wouldn't have changed the order for no reason. In that case, it would be weird if the Enjoh family weren't in the last room of the fourth floor, namely number 410."
"--- What?"
"That elevator didn't work for a while did it? It only began moving about the time the resident had moved in and started to get used to the mansion. That was the signal for everything to begin. It was a mechanism to reverse North and South. The reason the elevator is round, and has such a loud running noise, it's all one great disguise. That's also the reason the second floor isn't used. They would have needed at least one floor's worth of room to half-turn the people inside without them noticing."
North and South --- get reversed. ... ?
Is she saying there really is such a childish toy-like mechanism. But what would I do if there was?
The corridor that faces you as you get off the elevator leads to the East building. That fact is so obvious that it's unthinkable to suspect it.
In that case --- if you didn't notice that the elevator had turned 180 degrees, going down the corridor that faces you when you get off the elevator is the normal thing to do.
Supposing that the elevator really had turned without you noticing it so that South had become North, then that would mean that all this time I've been heading to the West building. The structure of this lobby's Northern and Southern end are exactly the same. The corridors that lead to each building both turn to the left at a right angle as well, so there's no way you could notice anything was wrong.
"Then --- are you saying that this is my house?"
"Yeah. To be precise, the house you were in for a month after you came in. After the elevator started working it would have been that place from before. Without a doubt they would have skewed the stairs around to match the operation of the elevator too. It wouldn't make sense if they didn't reverse the staircase exits too. The stairs in this place, they are a spiral aren't they?"
Ahh, they really are. I can't even give her a nod.
"But that must be a lie. You would normally notice something like this!"
I rebutted because I didn't want to accept it all, but as expected Ryougi negated my statement while keeping up that unworried pose of hers.
"This place isn't normal. It's a twisted dimension. The surroundings are full of boxy mansions so there's not much difference in the view, and walls cut off the inside of the mansion. There are suspicious patterns embedded into the cream coloured walls here and there, they are putting an unconscious burden upon the retina. --- It's not Touko's. But this is one meticulous ward. There aren't any small abnormalities, so you can't perceive the great abnormality."
Ryougi puts a hand upon the door handle.
"I'm opening it. Enjoh, you are coming home for the first time in half a year."
Ryougi says that as if she's happy.
I --- had a thought that we shouldn't open that door.
Inside number 10, was a sticky darkness.
There's nothing but darkness.
Clickclickclick.
Inside my ears I can hear a noise like that.
My, joints, are heavy.
"The light --- is it this one?"
In the darkness I can hear Ryougi's voice.
Click, the light comes on.
"----------" I swallow my breath.
But, I wasn't surprised. Since I knew that was there ages ago.
"It's been about half a year since they died huh," Ryougi's steady voice.
It would be about that long.
There are two human corpses in the lounge that we entered.
Dirty skeletons and a lightly attached skin-like substance. The watery, rotting flesh is lying piled on the floor, so it's become a rubbish heap that you can't know the contents of.
Enjoh Takauchi and Enjoh Kaede --- the corpses of my mother and father.
The corpses of the parents I killed one month ago, all because I didn't want to see the nightmare of my murder anymore. But the corpses are from half a year ago. And then there's the Enjoh family in the East building who are still alive ---.
I can no longer think on the paradox those things represent.
Like Ryougi who is just standing there blankly, I'm not surprised, and am looking down at the corpses with a blank mind as if I'm looking at the sand in a hourglass fall.
The scene from before --- compared to the playback of the nightmare I saw every night, a finished corpse like this is merely disgusting. There isn't even much of a shock.
Human corpses that were done away with a long time ago.
A pile of bones, from which it is no longer possible to distinguish who was who.
The part that housed the eyes are now dark, cave-like holes, staring into the air.
... There's no worth to this. Dying so pointlessly, without any recompense, these people who died like idiots are my parents.
Unable to stand the persecution from those around her, as well as being unable to deny her husband who stubbornly insisted that it wasn't his fault, finally driven to murder my father by the suffering that was repeated everyday, my mother who died in the end as well.
"---."
That's all there is, but, I can't take my eyes off it.
What is this.
What's happened to me.
--- Saying that I didn't need my father or my mother.
It's just that those people I so loathed are dead, so why have I become like some wooden doll --- ?
At that moment, the sound of an opening door came from the entrance.
"Hou, are they saying they want to go for it?"
Ryougi spoke as if smiling and pulls a knife out from inside her jumper.
Someone slowly came into the lounge.
The lightly treading shadow that appeared without making a sound, it was a middle-aged man who would have belonged anywhere. His blank face and empty eyes paradoxically let us sense that this is a dangerous person.
That man who I thought I had seen somewhere tried to attack us straight away. Like some puppet being controlled by its strings, without any warning.
But Ryougi easily kills him.
One person. Two people. Three people. Four people. She kills the mansion residents who are flooding in through the front door with an easy grace that makes it look like she is dancing. There were no useless motions in that dance.
Before long the lounge was full of corpses.
Ryougi grabs my hand and starts running.
"It's not good to be in this place for long, let's go."
Ryougi is Ryougi.
I --- had become a little unsteady after seeing my parents' corpses, but even then I couldn't forgive this situation.
Why --- why is this brat killing people for no reason?
"Ryougi, you --- !"
"Let's talk later. By the way, those things aren't human. Even I can't tell how many times they've died. Things like those, they aren't humans or even corpses but mere dolls. This one and that one, they all want to die so I'm feeling sick."
For the first time --- With a face full of hatred Ryougi runs.
I hesitated for a second, then stepped over the corpses of the crowd Ryougi had murdered and came out into the corridor.
When I came out to the corridor, there were already five or so people on the ground. In the time that I spent looking from one to another, Ryougi was cutting down a somethingeth human in front of number 8.
--- Strong.
It's overwhelming. For some reason these don't seem like they came from the east building, but they don't move slowly like the zombies you see in movies. With a human-like quickness they leap towards us.
Regardless, Ryougi doesn't bat an eyelash and easily takes care of them. Is they reason they aren't bleeding because they aren't human, like Ryougi said?
Killing people without spilling a drop of blood, Ryougi looked like a white god of death as she opened a path to the central lobby.
I look towards the end of the pack of people Ryougi is cutting down.
The light of a lamp leaks out from the lobby. In the lightless West building's lobby a black shadow stands with his back to the corridor entrance from which the light is coming.
It's different from these will-less residents.
That mass that I almost mistook for a black monolith, it was a man in a black coat.
The moment I saw that, my consciousness froze and I became unable to move a finger like some puppet whose strings had been cut.
I shouldn't have seen him. No, that's wrong. I shouldn't have come to this place. In that case I wouldn't have met him.
I wouldn't have met that thing that fitted in so well with this quiet and terrible event, that devil-like black shadow ---.
