We Don't Open Anywhere: Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (III)

Kouta Hiiragi's Closed World (III)

According to Miki, the school has a barrier around it.

Apparently it’s designed such that people that aren’t related to the school just naturally avoid it. This applies equally both in the afternoon when students were there and at nights when they weren’t. Although alumni, who had a built-in resistance to the barrier, could sneak in during the summer to set off fireworks, in general the more common sense a person had the less likely they were to enter the school.

So it made sense that there wouldn’t have been any witnesses when Ryuusuke Yamazaki fell to his death.

The police didn’t find anything resembling a note or a will, so it was determined that the likelihood that it was a suicide was low. It didn’t look like it had been caused intentionally either, so it was essentially being investigated as a accidental death. As evidence to support this theory, the fact that the old fencing had been removed so that it could be replaced was brought up, as this meant that it was easy for an accident to occur.

How half-assed. I’d like to hear one respectable reason for someone to visit the Building One roof late at night, and an explanation for what exactly he was trying to do when he took his spill. I didn’t want to just fall back on the explanation that it was just possible because he was a delinquent.

No matter what the police said, he had been murdered. And by the same guy who killed Masato, no less.

I was sure of it, despite lacking a shred of evidence. Any other possibilities were unthinkable.

Was I delusional? And even if I was, was there anything wrong with that?

After being closed for a week, the school reopened. The day the school opened, yesterday, it seemed that everyone was spouting unfounded rumors regarding Yamazaki’s death, but by today his death had more or less faded as a topic of discussion. It had faded from people’s interest fast than the latest celebrity scandal.

It was just like what happened with Masato. Because he was perceived as a delinquent who didn’t involve himself with them, they didn’t have any stake in his death.

If you turned on your phone, social networking sites would let you instantly get in touch with huge numbers of people. Between a person you’d never met but had exchanged messages with on the daily and a delinquent who went to the same school as you but you’d never talked to, who were you closer to? In order to survive in our increasingly connected society, the art of apathy was a necessary one. Treating Masato and Yamazaki as the “other” was comparatively straightforward. Online or in real life, if somebody was annoying you you could just block them.

The classroom grew lively as the school day came to a close. As I silently cleaned the floor, Miki’s face greeted me from the window facing the hallway. Ever since that day, she had never done up her hair, instead leaving it hanging down.

“See you later, Kouta.”

Saying only that, she left without waiting for me like before.

Since the day she had kissed me, our relationship had changed. We hadn’t walked home or eaten lunch together once since then.

It wasn’t like we had formally broken up or anything. Our relationship up until now had simply been an unnatural creation of Miki’s. The amount of distance between us now was entirely appropriate.

I finished my cleaning and made for home.

How best to proceed from here? Naturally I wanted to find out who killed Masato, but what could a layman like myself hope to accomplish?

Once I reached the front gate, I was greeting by something of a crowd. Were the news crews here again? Even people who weren’t part of the throng were sneaking glances as they passed by. Not wanting to be left out, I stopped to look as well.

Cowering in the middle was not a news crew but a girl from another school with an agonized look on her face. It appeared that the onlookers were at a loss for what to do, and as to whether or not they should help her.

“...Huh.”

Wasn’t that the girl who had been asking around about Masato the other day?

On account of her hearing my unintentional remark, her eyes met mine. Her face was deathly pale, and when she saw who I was, her eyes grew wide in surprise. As a result, the crowd’s attention turned to me.

“Kouta... Hiiragi, right?”

Although I was confused that she knew my name, I nodded.

“The Kouta Hiiragi who knew Masato Yahara?”

Sitting perpendicular from each other, the two of us were the only ones in the old-fashioned coffee shop aside from a single old man puffing away at a cigarette. Increasing feeling out of place, I observed the girl as I sipped at my water.

Apparently the reason she had been squatting earlier was because she had been assailed by a sudden bout of vertigo. Although she looked to be over it now, she was still trembling nervously.

“Um... my name is Shiho Sudou.”

Her name was unfamiliar.

“This is the first time we’ve met, right? Why do you know mine?”

“That’s—”

For some reason she looked away guiltily before going on. “Your name came up because I was gathering information on Masato Yahara.”

Her words seemed strained, but I didn’t think she was lying.

“I came looking for you because I thought you might know about him, being his friend and all.”

“Even though you’re in such bad shape?”

“...I’m sorry. I haven’t been feeling well lately, and I keep getting these dizzy spells.”

“So basically, in spite of your condition, you want to find out about Masato?”

Sudou quietly nodded.

“Why do you wanna know so bad?”

“...The murder happened pretty near me, so I kind of got caught up in my curiosity—”

“That’s a lie.”

There’s no way I would fall for such a transparent lie.

“You’re too frantic to chalk it up to mere curiosity, Sudou. You definitely have a more serious reason for wanting to know about him.”

At my rebuttal, Sudou paled again.

I then realized something. What if she knew something about Masato’s death? Was that why she was so invested in the incident?

“Could you keep what I’m about to tell you a secret? Actually, I was talking to him just before his estimated time of death. It was a Friday, the 26th. And, um... we actually weren’t just chatting, I was hanging out with him.”

“What? If you were hanging out with him, does that mean you were a friend of his?”

Sudou shook her head.

“I... well... Masato Yahara kind of... picked me up or something along those lines, and we were messing around. That was the first time I had met him. Um, I normally don’t do stuff like that! But I kind of had a lot going on that day, so...”

I didn’t care about her excuses. But her testimony was important.

The last time anyone had seen Masato was supposedly on May 25th, when he had threatened to kill a female company worker. Sudou had met him the day after that. And if they had been hanging out, it was unlikely that she was mistaken.

“But I didn’t want it to get out that he picked me up and we were messing around, so... I couldn’t tell anyone. But the fact that he was killed after we split up... When I think about it like that, I just can’t get it out of my head... I have to find out what happened... I feel like I have to find out what happened...!”

It seemed that she too was obsessed with Masato.

The reason she was willing to go so far was because she was spurred on by doubts as to whether the truth of the incident would ever come out. It was like the killer had forcibly stolen a piece of herself. As long as the incident remained unresolved, she could never reclaim it, which was why she was prowling around like a zombie.

“I’ll help you as much as I can. But I’ll need to ask you a couple things in return. On that day, did anything about Masato seem off to you? Did he give off any signs that he was going to get involved in this incident?”

“...No.”

“Cut the lies.”

“Eek!”

I replied instantly, and she froze in fear. For a moment she simply pressed her lips together and trembled, but at my continued gaze she eventually gave up on her silence. She faltered, but spoke nonetheless.

“...Actually, right before Masato Yahara and I split up, we ran into an acquaintance of his. From what they were talking about, I think they were classmates. He was skinny and about average height, and he was wearing glasses.”

“So just like you, he saw Masato after that lady that testified did, right?”

“...I suppose so.”

Then why didn’t he come forward as a witness? Did he also have personal circumstances involved, like Sudou did?

“What was his name?”

“...I don’t know.”

Her reply was clearly evasive.

“What kind of mood did you get from their conversation?”

“...They didn’t seem to get along. It felt kind of like they both held the other in contempt or something...”

Masato would have acted like that towards anyone. That half wasn’t useful.

But as for the other party...?

“Wait, the person Masato was talking to also acted like they held Masato in contempt? He was actively antagonistic to Masato?”

“Well... that’s what it looked like to me, at least.”

Sudou had said that the spectacled man was probably a classmate of Masato’s. Even if she was mistaken about that, at the very least that meant that he was an acquaintance of Masato’s of about the same age.

If that was the case, then their behavior was abnormal. Most would instinctively flinch at the dangerous atmosphere Masato gave off.

“What kind of impression did the bespectacled guy give off?”

“Well... He seemed smart, and really diligent. But he was also a little bit creepy.”

“Diligent, and creepy?

Normally people didn’t give off both of those impressions at once.

“In what way? For example, did he seem like he was looking down on others?”

“Yeah... He kind of gave off that impression. But that wasn’t what caught my attention... Um, he was saying some really respectable things. He was giving this really sound reasoning with a straight face. I don’t know if I’d say that I found it strange... or that it was annoying... he kind of just gave off this odd unpleasant vibe. Oh... I’m coming across as weird, aren’t I?”

“Don’t worry, you’re not.”

I thought it odd that a guy our age would be casually spouting “sound reasoning”. Most adults have little sympathy for stout-hearted public statements. When faced with sophistry that the speaker themselves doesn’t believe, the default response is generally backlash. And high schoolers despise such shallow adults despite feeling themselves become more and more like them.

Although adults have no choice in the matter, anyone our age who would willfully voice such reasoning must be somewhat distorted.

Ah, yes — the distortion called an honors student.

“Did that person... speak really formally?”

Ahh.

The image of a certain man springs to mind.

“Really formally? Um, I think so, probably...”

I knew that I was jumping to conclusions. But the answer I had arrived at stuck in my brain like a piece of gum that had been run over by countless cars.

The answer.

—Shuuichi Akiyama killed Masato Yahara.

—Shuuichi Akiyama killed Masato Yahara.

—Shuuichi Akiyama killed Masato Yahara.

That infinitely-repeating thought resounded in my mind, creating a fissure in my head when I could bear it no longer. Something that felt like it was boiling flowed out, bubbling with heat and viscous to the touch.

“—aaAAAA!”

Flickering. Lights. Flickering. Lights. It broke. My lines of sight crossed and split the world in two. Flickering. “I’ll kill you.” A red stain that expanded without limit. Or perhaps it was ultramarine. A hue stained in nothing but black. The ultramarine expanded. The despair expanded.

For some reason, something metallic was twining around my body. It clicked and clacked as it pressed down painfully on my body. But more than painful, it was unpleasant. Click clack, clickity clackity.

“—Kou, can you hear me?”

Yeah.

“I” could hear him.

I wouldn’t ever forget him.

“Are you alright? D...did something happen?”

I returned to my senses.

Sudou was gazing at me with a little bit of worry and a lot of discomfort in her eyes.

“It’s nothing.”

Somehow stuffing “that” back into my head, I turned my focus to the person in front of me.

“More importantly, why didn’t you tell anyone about the bespectacled guy? You had to have had a reason, right?”

Even though she had said so much already, she seemed to be taken by an odd hesitation. She was hiding something from me.

“I... I was scared... I saw him.”

“Start from your main point.”

“Ah, I’m sorry... You just seemed kind of scary there for a moment... Another person from your school died the other day, right? A guy named Yamazaki. It turns out, I was actually at your school the night he died.”

“At the school? Even if you went to the school late at night, you wouldn’t expect to find any clues, would you?”

“Umm, I wanted to check out Masato Yahara’s seat and belongings and stuff. But that’s not important... What I’m trying to say is, the bespectacled guy was at your school that night.”

The bespectacled guy — Shuuichi Akiyama was at the school the night Yamazaki was killed?

And although I wouldn’t have thought the two to have any common ground, I myself saw Yamazaki call Akiyama over for some reason.

“You didn’t see the moment he pushed him off or anything, did you?”

“Of course not... You see, the thing I’m worried about is that the bespectacled guy might have seen me. After all, he never testified to the police about Masato’s death or about that Yamazaki guy’s death! Doesn’t that basically mean that...”

“I see. So you’re saying that the bespectacled guy was involved in both incidents. And if he is the killer, you’re worried that he might come after you to seal your lips, given that you were a witness to both of them.”

Sudou nodded rapidly.

“What should I do... What should I do...”

Sudou, whose complexion still hadn’t improved, scratched at her head.

Her best option at this point would be to simply forget about Masato and not get any more involved than she already was. But that would be inconvenient for me, so I kept my mouth shut.

After all — if I used her correctly, I could definitely get to the bottom of all this.

“I actually have a hunch as to who the bespectacled guy is. Maybe I should go ask him why he was on the roof when Yamazaki died.”

“Ah, wait a second! That’s not right!”

“Not right? What isn’t?”

“When this Yamazaki fell, he wasn’t on the roof. He was in a parking lot near the campus.”

We left the coffee shop and headed back to the school to check out the parking lot she had seen the bespectacled guy at.

Sudou’s face was so white that it looked like her blood had just straight-up forgotten that it was supposed to flow, but I pretended not to notice and continued listening to her.

Back when Sudou had been trespassing on the school, she had heard someone shout “Gyah!” at pretty much the same time she spotted the bespectacled guy in the parking lot. Despite her misgivings, she headed towards the location of the scream and found Yamazaki’s corpse with its head split open. Baffled and terrified, she fled the scene without calling for help. Due to having her hands full with fleeing, she didn’t have time to look for the bespectacled guy again.

That was her testimony.

“What kind of scream did it seem like?”

“Huh? Um... a normal scream, I guess.”

Unable to contain my irritation, I followed up. “What do you mean by normal?”

“Well... normal is like... they were scared, so they raised their voice, you know? I don’t remember anything too specific, really. I was pretty frantic.”

She wasn’t going to be of much use. Based on the texture of the scream, it would have been possible to discern if it was an accident or a murder.

But if he was screaming, it probably wasn’t suicide.

“I guess the bespectacled guy might not be the killer after all... I mean, you can’t really make somebody fall from where he was.”

This parking lot was indeed quite far from the Building One roof, where Yamazaki had fallen from. But there was a clear view of that roof here, and although the lights were unreliable they would indeed have let you seen the fall from here.

“If our bespectacled friend isn’t the killer, why didn’t he give his eyewitness account? Unless he ran away in fear like you did, it would make sense for him to report it.”

“Maybe he just didn’t notice the scream? Like, if he was deep in thought or something.”

Well, that example aside it was conceivable that there were some circumstances that kept him from noticing. Assuming that he was related to the incident just because he was at the school was too simplistic.

But the killer was Shuuichi Akiyama.

I had already decided that.

Was there a way to make somebody fall while you were down here? In mysteries, you sometimes saw timed traps that used ice, but... no, if the method was timed, there wouldn’t have been any reason for him to come all the way out to this parking lot. If he was at home with his family, it would make for a better alibi.

So there must have been some reason why Akiyama had to be here.

“I guess it really is impossible... Which means that he won’t really come after me...”

As I remained silent, Sudou spoke as if to reassure herself.

I tried to put up with it out of sympathy for the fact that she had gotten involved in a murder case, but I was at my limit. She was getting under my skin. Her insecurity and indecisive personality played a large role in that, but they weren’t the only things about her that made me uncomfortable.

“...Sudou. Would you mind if I took some of your time tomorrow?”

“Hm? Why? I...I don’t really have any more reason to spend time with you...”

“You want to know the whole story about Masato’s murder, don’t you?”

“O...of course...”

She gave a cautious affirmation.

I grinned and responded.

“If you come again tomorrow, I’ll explain everything.”

Sudou’s eyes went wide. There was no doubt that she was possessed by Masato. If I phrased it like that, no matter how fishy she thought it sounded she would be unable to refuse.

Now then, the sacrifice was secured.

I had a pretty good handle on the answer. I wasn’t the protagonist of a detective novel, nor was I a policeman who needed evidence before he could issue an arrest. I had no interest in elegant tricks, and I had no need for proof.

But even so, I knew the truth. With the materials I had, I could use this “apparatus” to find out the truth whenever I wanted.

Anyways.

My objective had never been to find the truth anyways.

After promising to meet tomorrow and parting ways with Sudou, I headed for home. In the shutter town where I had last spoken with Masato, signs of uniformed students had all but vanished. In fact, despite the time there were no passersby whatsoever. It was like a ghost town. I stood still under the flickering, near-dead street lights, and the air around me swarmed with bugs.

—Ahh, I could finally reach it.

An ominous sense of exaltation bubbled up within me. I could feel a painful burning sensation deep within my eyes. My heart was pulsing violently, as if I had just ran with all my strength. An impetus. Right now, I was being assailed by some manner of impetus. Had I always had this inside me?

That impetus became like a large wall closing in on me. After being thoroughly crushed and scattered to the winds, I sought a means of reformation. I faced the impetus and became one with it.

I wanted to escape. I wanted to get out. Unable to bear it any more, I began running. Ignoring all the red lights, I ran. The impetus resembled lust, and I lost my ability to ignore it. Cracks formed all along my body, I shattered, and it leaked out.

The world turned on its head. Everything was upside down.

Impetus. IMPETUS. I-M-P-E-T-U-S. Guns were built to shoot people, simply waiting for a reason to have their triggers pulled. Waiting and waiting for their moment to burst into action, intoxicating us with their sweet temptations.

When? When was it that this impetus took root within me?

Where did it come from?

“Huff...huff...”

Having been running for no reason, the pain in my feet and my labored breathing caused me to stop once more. Because I stopped, it caught up. My impetus caught up with me.

When it did, I could hear it.

I could hear it. I could hear the sound of metal. Where was it ringing from? It sounded like it was coming from everywhere in the world. It was the first time I had heard it, yet the sound was strangely nostalgic.

The sound that had always bound me. The sound that had always bound Masato Yahara.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

The sound — resembled that of chains.

People don’t need reasons to continue liking or disliking things. Once you’re attached to something, you don’t just keep liking it, your affection often ends up growing.

I couldn’t stop hating Shuuichi Akiyama. His looks, his tone of voice, his personality, I interpreted everything about him in the least favorable way, distorting my perception.

I, who was supposed to be ambivalent towards all other people, learned something for the first time.

This was what it meant to hate someone.

“Hiiragi.”

So when he called out to me during the break after first period, I wanted to let out a groan. He seemed to talking to me an awful lot lately.

Although I let my resentment show on my face, Akiyama paid it no need.

“I apologize for bothering so many times, but I had another question relating to Yahara that I wanted to ask you.”

That was fundamentally the only business Akiyama had with me. Although recently, it seemed like he was merely using it as a pretext to measure something about me.

“This line of inquiry may seem a little peculiar, but please bear with me. Hiiragi, have you ever felt that you were being manipulated?”

I wasn’t sure what he was asking about, and I wasn’t sure why he was asking it.

Akiyama was putting on an air of nonchalance, but something deep within his eyes was burning dimly, refusing to overlook any slight change in my emotions.

“Let me put a little more straightforwardly. Hmm... Let’s suppose that across a person’s life, there are several junctures where crucial choices are laid out for them. Of course, their choice is left to their own will. But even if they don’t perceive it immediately, they will always be left with a nagging doubt. Was that truly my own will? Or was I simply induced to choose what I did?”

“...I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at.”

“For instance, choosing which high school entrance exams to take. Although you are of course the one who makes the final decision, your family, your friends, and your middle school teachers all influence that decision as well. There’s no way to tell the extent to which your true desires were reflected in your decision. You could say that, to a certain extent, the influence of your surroundings lead you to whatever school you ended up attending. And the number of times in a person’s life where their decisions are influenced by others in this manner are countless.”

“Would you mind putting it a little more simply?”

“No problem. Have you considered that Yahara’s actions may have been brought about by a third party’s intervention? The circumstances are of course complicated, but it is possible that somebody exerted a great deal of influence over him. If that influence was wielded intentionally, he could very well be said to have been manipulated.”

“...What exactly are you saying?”

To my disgust, Akiyama was no longer making any effort to conceal his observation and was staring straight at me. It was unsettling.

“What I’m trying to say is this. There is a real possibility that Yahara’s death was brought about as a result of somebody’s manipulation.”

“Almost like magic, huh.”

Akiyama didn’t notice my sarcasm.

“I agree. But upon thinking it over again, something else caught my attention. In the days before he died, Yahara hadn’t been attending school, correct? He wasn’t emotionally stable. In that unstable state, it would have been relatively easy to induce him to take certain actions. At worst, if the person manipulating him was somebody close to him they made have even taken steps to create that instability. Of course, no normal person would be capable of such a thing. But for someone specialized in manipulation, such a thing might not be unthinkable.”

—Wait, what did he just say?

If anyone but Akiyama had said it, I could have written it off. But because it was none other than Akiyama, there was no way I could let that sentence slide.

He wasn’t emotionally stable.

That might be speculation due to Masato’s absence from school. But it wasn’t. The certainty in his words could only be the result of firsthand experience.

Ahh, I was certain of it. Akiyama had run into Masato after he’d stopped coming to school. I was certain that the bespectacled guy Sudou had been referring to was Akiyama.

But he was keeping silent about having seen Masato. He hadn’t breathed a word. And such an action couldn’t possibly mesh with an honors student’s sense of duty.

Which meant that he had to have a reason for doing so.

“Hiiragi, is something the matter? You appear to be trembling.”

Akiyama asked his question while concealing his animosity behind a mask of a smile. He acted as if my response was exactly in accordance with his expectations.

The two of us didn’t mesh with each other. We stared at each other with distrustful eyes filled with naked hostility. Ahh... good grief, we truly are locked away in our closed worlds. We’re looking at the same things, but interpreting them completely differently.

What’s the next stage this man has prepared?

Who does he plan on killing next?

“Akiyama.”

I suddenly recall a conversation I once had at a park in the dead of night. What pattern did he see in the moon?

Feels like there’s a monster baring its fangs above me.

“Akiyama, what do you see when you look at the moon?”

Akiyama answered with a puzzled look on his face.

“At the moon? I see a rabbit pounding mochi, isn’t that obvious?”

Of course. Akiyama could answer like that without a shred of doubt in his mind. Out of the infinite possible interpretations, he applied the one that hewed to common sense.

I responded without thinking.

“You make me fuckin’ sick.”

The same jeer someone else had used before.

—Rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle.

I could no longer get that noise out of my ears.

Translator's Notes and References

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