We Don't Open Anywhere: Shuuichi Akiyama's Closed World (I)

Shuuichi Akiyama's Closed World (I)

“People are like garbage.”

Whenever I saw people gathered, this line from a famous animated movie sprung to mind. And I suspected that there were no shortage of people who shared my sentiment.

While this may not hold true for individuals, when people come together in groups it is due to hatred. They perceive other people as combustible waste and drop bombs in the place of incinerators. In any case, they can’t help their desire to set garbage alight.

Let us suppose that the entity known as God truly exists. That He is a being that transcends humanity and gazes out over Earth from above. If we hold that to be the case, then it follows that chaos and disorder please Him. God does not desire tranquility. This is surely because He is displeased when such inferior creatures lose themselves in delusions of grandeur. With His invisible hand, he leads humanity to the slaughter. He does this not for amusement, nor to stave off boredom, but because of a visceral disgust, much the kind that you or I would feel upon gazing on an outbreak of insects.

I suddenly noticed that my reverie had delayed me in my task of duplicating the words on the blackboard, and I began frantically scrawling.

I reflected upon my irregular thoughts. These thoughts were certainly not desirable. Perhaps the reason I was having them was because we had been learning about how the strong systematically weeded out all others across history?

That was divergent from my ideals. The strong and the weak certainly did exist. That was why I was determined to become strong and, instead of plundering from the weak, extend them a hand of salvation. To lead them justly. That was the only method by which true peace could be attained.

What stood in my way, then, was the kind of evil that would consume mankind in irrationality. I had to destroy it. ...I see, my thoughts just now were the result of my hatred towards evil becoming misdirected towards humanity itself.

Evil, huh.

I gazed at the seat behind me. It appeared he was absent today, so the seat was empty. It was the seat belonging to a man who could very well be described as evil incarnate.

In my sixteen years of life, I had never met a man so thoroughly twisted as Masato Yahara. The reason for that lay not in his depravity, nor in his stupidity. There were likely countless men more opposed to society and more idiotic than him.

But upon drawing Yahara’s jeers, I recognized wicked nature for what it was. Masato Yahara was quite literally a monster. He consumes people in as direct a way as possible. His tentacles reach deep within people’s souls. His value system is so warped that the only way he can confirm his own existence is through the destruction of others.

The runaway train that is Yahara long since became derailed. And he believes that by running people over, he can right his course. But such a thing is of course absurd. A derailed train cannot find its way back onto the tracks. It will simply destroy and kill everything in its path, only stopping once it crashes and destroys itself.

If left to his own devices, he will no doubt continue consuming people. Like a candy he’s grown bored of, he will chew up and spit out those precious, irreplaceable souls.

Modern-day laws are too lenient on such wrong-doers. But even though we all harbor such feeling of dissatisfaction, society refuses to change. A rotten human cannot be rehabilitated and will continue to rot, and much the rotten orange from a line in a certain school-based drama will rot everything around it as well.

But the filthy rabble of our world continue wriggling about with nary a care. It’s repulsive beyond belief.

Thus the strong have a duty to root out evil. In that act, they elegantly save the weak.

Ahh, it’s almost embarrassing how much I love justice, how much I want to become a hero.

On that night, I spotted Masato Yahara on my way home from prep school.

In the end, I tested him. It was a test to determine if his life had worth. He failed spectacularly; in fact, he scored zero points.

And so I justly killed him.

The first thing I had to figure out was how to dispose of the body. No matter how just my actions were, even if everyone approved of them, today’s laws would never acquit a murderer. Thus I had to cover it up.

Because he was planning on killing me in the first place, Yahara was kind enough to die in a place where he would not be quickly found. The optimal outcome for me would be for his death itself not to come to light and for him to simply be treated as a missing person, with nobody knowing the truth of the incident.

But it was difficult to imagine the body going forever without being found. This defunct factory had traces of people coming and going, with lanterns and blankets and such lying around. The people who came and went were likely filth of Yahara’s ilk.

It would be best to dispose of the body somewhere harder to come across. If the body was found like this, it would be treated as evidence of a crime, autopsied, and the entire affair would then be handled as a murder investigation.

Ideally the body wouldn’t be found, and it wouldn’t become an incident. If I could dump the body in the mountains without being seen, I could avoid being caught.

But because I was only sixteen, I didn’t have a driver’s license. I couldn’t think of any way to transport my grim baggage without being seen.

I needed an accomplice. But who? My parents... even if they acknowledged my justice, the sight of a corpse would cause them to lose their nerve and recommend that I turn myself in. Even if they held strong convictions, people who were faint of heart wouldn’t do.

I could think of a few adults I respected, but any of them would get cold feet once they saw a corpse, and without looking at the big picture would recommend that I turn myself in. Nobody had as strong a sense of justice as I did, nor would helping me provide any benefit for them.

I was at a loss. I couldn’t think of anyone.

I couldn’t figure out my next step, so with some reluctance I temporarily left the scene. If somebody happened upon this place, that alone would be curtains for me.

I wiped up the blood from the knife and wiped down the places I had touched with a handkerchief to get rid of my fingerprints. Thankfully, you couldn’t see the spurts of blood against my black uniform. After leaving the factory, I was able to make my way to the station without running into anyone.

All in it, it was quite a mental burden on me. As soon as I got home and layed down on my bed, I slept like a log.

I woke up. Instantly, the gears in my head began turning. The first thing I did was check on my smartphone to see whether or not Yahara’s body had been discovered. I checked a number of news sites, but there didn’t appear to be any articles indicating as such. A real-time search didn’t show any traces either.

After descending the stairs and offering rushed greetings to my family, I hopped in the shower. As I lathered my hair, I racked my brains for a way to dispose of the unfortunate corpse.

I could dismember it. But while that was the conventional way to transport a body, I wasn’t exactly inclined to. Even if it was originally the monster that was Yahara, it was unmistakably a human body. The psychological burden would likely be substantial. And in the one-in-a-million chance the body was discovered, the fact that it could no longer pass for an accident was another strike against this method.

So I was back to wanting to transport the body as it was to somewhere people wouldn’t find it, then disposing of it. That conclusion hadn’t changed.

There was no school on Saturdays, so I ran searches for terms related to the incident on my phone while watching the news in the living room. It was odd for me to be fiddling with my phone instead of studying, so my family seemed somewhat suspicious, but I doubted they suspected me of murder. I needn’t pay them much mind.

I wanted to transport the body by vehicle, but I still couldn’t come up with an accomplice. Although it was of course too late at this point, events already proceeding as they were, I began to regret having killing Yahara. If I had killed him in a more thought-out manner, I could have avoided this whole mess.

The next time I have to kill someone, I’ll make sure to think it out first.

Someone I have to kill, on the same level as Masato Yahara. I wonder who that could be?

“―”

With that thought fresh in my mind, I thought of a partner. Returning to my room, I began to think of ways to sway him to my side. At the moment, he and I had essentially no common ground.

But then I thought of an extremely simple method.

I spent the rest of Saturday preparing, and then it was Sunday. At three in the afternoon on the dot, I stood in front of a local convenience store. I entered the shop, and after a few uses of the ATM had successfully withdrawn a million yen. After consistently saving my allowance and my New Year’s money, that sum amounted to my net worth.

Not seeing the man I was searching for, I headed outside and was greeted with the sight of my target wearing the shop’s uniform and listlessly taking out the trash. He didn’t seem to be on break, but he was smoking regardless. Because I lived nearby, I happened to know that he would be working part-time at this hour on Sundays.

“Yamazaki-senpai.”

Ryuusuke Yamazaki turned to me while holding his cigarette in his mouth, his expression sullen. At any rate, it looked like his vulgar blond hair was taking a few points off his IQ.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Shuuichi Akiyama, the representative of class 1-2.”

“No, like, who the fuck are you? What business would a high and mighty class rep like you have with someone like me? Don’t fuckin’ tell me you’re gonna rat me out to the school for smoking.”

Ignoring his idiotic question, I got straight to the point.

“I heard that you know how to drive. Do you have your own car?”

I had seen him drive a black station wagon to get her, but I wanted to confirm it just in case.

Likely excited to brag about his car, Yamazaki’s face lit up.

“Yeah, I’m working here to pay ‘er off. ...What’s your deal, you like my car? You wanna go for a ride in the passenger seat, huh? Sorry man, that seat’s reserved for chicks who put out. I’m not into that fag stuff.”

Not wanting to play along with his vulgar banter, I pulled out the million I had just withdrawn and handed it to him. At the sight of such a large quantity of cash, Yamazaki’s eyes went wide.

“Wha... You...! The fuck’s this cash for?”

His reaction was exactly what I expected, and I struggled to stifle my laughter.

With his mouth hanging open and a stupid expression plastered on his face, Yamazaki didn’t even wait for a proper explanation to begin counting the bills. With his glittering eyes and his agitated, wild breathing, he was the very image of a swine unable to contain itself at the sight of slop. Unable to defy his brain’s newfound addiction, he would no doubt act exactly as I needed him to.

“I have a favor I need to ask of you. Would you be willing to undertake it?”

Yamazaki stopped the car in the parking lot of a defunct convenience store near the site of the factory. I was slightly concerned about being seen, but thanks to the various illegally-parked cars we weren’t exactly conspicuous. If we didn’t stay long, I doubted it would be a problem.

“So Akiyama, you’re really gonna pay me a mil for one day’s work? Also, where the hell are we?”

After stopping the car, Yamazaki was understandably on guard as he surveyed the area.

“I didn’t lie. More importantly, did you prepare everything I asked you to?”

Wanting to avoid creating links between myself and Yamazaki, I hadn’t told him my phone number or LINE ID. He seemed like a somewhat careless man, so I was concerned he hadn’t bought everything I had requested.

“Yeah, it’s all in the trunk. Whatcha gonna do with all that?”

I verified the contents of the trunk. Inside was a large black vinyl sheet, a roll of cloth tape, and some rope. Tools to transport a corpse.

“Everything seems to be in order. We’ll be carrying it all to the site of that factory.”

“...No complaints here, I guess.”

Although he had some misgivings, the million yen sapped his desire to object and he walked inside the building.

“Fuck, it stinks in here!”

Just as Yamazaki said, the moment we stepped inside we were greeted by a smell reminiscent of a mound of rotting fish. It was so like Yahara to resemble trash to the end. Of course he would stink if he rotted — and as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I reflected. I left the corpse here all this time, but due to the smell the odds of it being discovered were higher than I had projected.

“Wait, that’s-”

The body was lying there, wrapped in blankets. The blankets were stained red with blood.

“It’s a corpse.”

Yamazaki’s face initially contorted, but eventually settled into a vulgar grin.

“I get it. Now I get what you’re havin’ me do.”

On the off chance that he had gotten cold feet when faced with a corpse, it was thinkable that he would reject my request. Showing him the cash up front was a countermeasure against that. While people can put up with losing an opportunity to gain something, they exhibit extreme resistance to giving up something they initially thought was theirs.

But it seemed my fear had been unfounded.

“Makes sense that you’d pull out that mil, then. Hell, you’re practically gettin’ off cheap.”

I hadn’t been expecting him to suggest I turn myself in. So that was his response, hmm. He didn’t examine my complexion, nor did he take interest in the corpse itself — his first instinct was to try and wring more money out of me.

Thank goodness he was so faithful to his desires.

“You the one who offed him?”

“That was the result, yes. It was legitimate self-defence, but there isn’t anybody who can verify that.”

“I getcha, I getcha. So you got no choice but to hide it.”

The corners of his mouth upturned, Yamazaki drew near the corpse with no sign of hesitation. To my surprise, he turned over the blankets himself. His lack of resistance made me doubt whether or not he might be a psychopath.

“Huh? ...Yo, Akiyama! This fucker’s Masato Yahara!

“That is indeed my classmate Masato Yahara. You can piece together why I had to come all the way out here, I gather?”

“This guy jumped you, and when you fought back he ended up eatin’ it, something along those lines, right? Damn, I always had him pegged for one of those guys who wouldn’t die even if you killed ‘em, but he up and died pretty damn easily, huh?”

“Did you and Masato Yahara know each other?”

“Nah, I just heard that he was one bad motherfucker and steered clear of him. Y’know, there were those rumors that he took down a whole gang and that he was the leader of some prostitution ring. And I heard that one of my senpai’s friends tried to get up in this guy’s business for being cheeky or some shit, and this guy almost stabbed him.”

I was assaulted by waves of repugnance. It would appear my decision to kill him had been correct.

“So what’s up next, boss?”

“First, we’ll conceal the body in the blankets and vinyl sheet and carry it out. We’ll take the weapon with us too. I’m pretty sure I wiped off all the blood already, but I’ll double-check so that on the off chance there’s any left I can wipe it off. Once all that is finished, it shouldn’t be possible for anyone to narrow the scene of the crime down to this location.”

“Other than me, that is.”

I wondered if that was a veiled threat.

“Heh heh.”

Without thinking, I laughed inwardly.

He reacted just as I suspected he would, without a micron of deviation.

Ahh, thank goodness.

Choosing Ryuusuke Yamazaki as my partner truly was the right decision.

Once we had loaded the body into his trunk, I left the transportation and disposal to Yamazaki and headed home. After travelling by train, bus, foot the previous day, I had found an ideal disposal site deep in the mountains. If Yamazaki followed my instructions and dug a hole and buried him in it, it was unlikely Yahara’s corpse would ever be discovered. Leaving that task to Yamazaki alone caused me no end of anxiety, but it was less dangerous than me being seen in his car, so I didn’t have much choice. In a perfect world, nobody would think that Yamazaki and I had any relationship.

But one of my calculations was off.

I had underestimated how incompetent Yamazaki was.

One week had passed since Yamazaki took the body up into the mountains. It was Monday morning, and as had become a habit for me I was scrolling through a real-time news feed on my phone when my drowsiness was blasted away. There was a posting about a body being discovered in the aforementioned mountains. Leaping from my bed, I ran into the living room and clung to the television. The news was reporting that Masato Yahara’s body had been discovered by a hiker. I listened in shock as the announcer described how his identity had been confirmed by the student ID card in his pocket.

Ryuusuke Yamazaki. Not only did that incompetent not bury the body, he even ignored my order to strip it. And on top of that, he left the student ID? How incompetent could one man be? If he had thought about it for half a second, he’d realize just how problematic that was! Even if dumping a body was a crime, just how overactive was this guy’s sense of danger?

“Shuu! You look awful, what happened?”

My mother shouted in a shrill soprano. As always, her voice rattled around in my head.

Frantically controlling my breathing, I spoke with feigned composure.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Mother. ...I’ll be heading to school now.”

But my voice was trembling. Just as my mother had pointed out, my face was white as a sheet.

“Don’t be ridiculous! With you looking like that, there’s no way there’s nothing wrong!”

In reality, I was fighting back fury. Fear and anxiety were secondary. Contempt. Hatred. Resentment. Such emotions were the cause of my trembling.

All that filth can do is weigh down the excellent, it seemed. Far beyond being useless, they were hindrances. Their very existence soiled the earth.

“Shuu... You’re staying home today.”

Upon seeing my abnormal condition, my mother, who would normally insist I go to school even if I had a fever, commanded me. While this was odd in and of itself, it was surpassed by the suspicion I would no doubt arise if I didn’t attend school today.

I took a deep breath to settle myself.

Visions of that defunct factory invaded my mind. Ever since I stabbed Masato Yahara, I couldn’t break my mind free of that place. It was like it was binding my soul against my will. Why should I, who acted in accordance with justice, have to go through all this?

Suddenly, my mind was plunged into black and white and I was assailed with pain deep within my eyes. Black and white particles crawled along my skin and penetrated my pores, filling me with an itching sensation as they violated me.

Ahh, back at that factory there was a press I couldn’t figure out the purpose of. What was it capable of crushing? What was it capable of crushing?

What did it want to crush?

A gigantic press. A press to thoroughly crush them. A press to thoroughly crush their eyeballs and their bones and their nails and their organs and their genitals and their blood into pulp. We could collect up that formless meat with bulldozers. Splat, splat, splat. We could intentionally do it loudly. The noise is pleasantly obscene, after all. Splat, splat, splat. We could envision their soundless screams as we gleefully make meatballs from their meat. Perhaps the meatballs would be black, or red, or pink. It would be cannibalism. We would force-feed them the meatballs. While crying, they would break out into a mad dance at how delicious they were. They’re delicious, aren’t they? All squishy and sticky and squishy. While making vulgar noises, they would feast. While descending into madness, they would feast. Once they realized what the meatballs were made of, they wouldn’t even wait for the press before consuming their comrades. They would be so tasty they wouldn’t be able to help themselves. They would be unable to help themselves when faced with their desires. They would be eaten alive. They would scream in pain. Nobody would save them. People like them have no empathy, so they can’t comprehend the pain of others. I would laugh as I gazed out upon them. Meatballs. In the end, you filth were nothing but meatballs. Just like the giant meatball there, you all are nothing but bundles of meat. Bundles without souls. The final survivor of the cannibalism would cry out. Where are the delicious meatballs? He would ask me. Please bring me more! Please bring me more meatballs! He would entreat me. And I would point to where the meatball was. And he would eat the meatball I was pointing at. He would eat it with great relish. He would eat with delight, he would eat with madness. He would eat his own meat. He would eat himself. I would clutch my stomach and laugh. Indeed. All you people do is consume yourselves. I would point that out out of kindness. I would point out what kind of beings you are.

“Shuu!”

My mother’s shout brought me back from my world of delusions.

“It looks like you’re right, I’d better stay home today...”

After whispering that, I tottered back to my room. I couldn’t walk straight. And as if I had released too much energy in that last vision, I couldn’t think straight either.

As I layed on my bed, I took deep breaths to settle down my heart. But the electrical signals in my brain were going haywire, and I was so itchy I practically scratched my head off.

I couldn’t settle down. The grotesque images wouldn’t stop.

A thousand knives. A shower of blood. Flesh warped like clay.

I shook my head to try to drive out the delusions. If my mind went blank, they would get inside me!

—Get inside me?

Wouldn’t that imply that they weren’t my thoughts in the first place?

I could sense it myself. The fact that these thoughts were both dangerous and abnormal. That they were undesirable. So why wouldn’t they stop?

I didn’t know. I myself didn’t know.

“Heh heh heh...”

Suddenly, I could hear laughter. Contemptuous, disparaging laughter.

“Man, how defective are you? You don’t know?”

Leaping out of my bed, I scanned the room.

I was at a loss for words.

Where was I? What was going on?

It felt like I was standing atop the heart of a tremendous beast. Everywhere I looked was reddish-brown and pulsing. Magma that smelled of blood was spurting. It smelled like something was decomposing, too. The air was filled with refuse, making it impossible to see clearly. Something important to the world was clearly stagnating.

Ahh, it was so unsightly it make me sick.

And yet something strangely excited me. My breath grew wild, and I wanted to leap in the air.

I see, this must be that factory. Is this real? Is this a delusion? I don’t know. The boundary between the two seemed vague.

“You’ve done yourself a pretty good job of crushing us, I see.”

Masato Yahara stood in front of me. His entrance was abrupt, but to me it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

“I crushed you. Certainly, I did crush you. But what of it? All of this is simply a delusion.”

“A delusion, huh? Quite the fucked-up delusion you cooked up there. Weren’t you supposed to be all upright and clean handed and shit?”

Yahara’s face contorted into a sneer.

“...Shut your mouth, meat-man. If this is the world of my delusions, everything should go according to my whim. I’ll simply crush you into delicious meatballs.”

“Heh... Just fuckin’ try, I dare you.”

He put up no resistance, and I dropped the massive press on him. Splat! The sound of something soft being crushed rang out, and the vicinity was painted red. It was over too soon.

My being crushed was over too soon.

“Why?”

There was no consistency or anything in my mental image. Yet I ended up being crushed. Despite no longer having vocal cords, I whispered “why?” one more time.

“It’s one fucked-up delusion, right?”

Why, even though it was a delusion, had it come to such a grotesque end? Why was Masato Yahara standing there as if it were natural?

“It can’t be...!”

I finally understood the meaning of Yahara’s words.

“You got the feeling that you were being violated a minute ago, right? It’s simple. I don’t have a body, so it’s easy as hell for me to get inside you.”

Yahara’s discontent sneer didn’t fade.

“This ain’t your delusion. Your thoughts ain’t your own. You ain’t even yourself any more.”

I was no more than a piece of meat now, and he trampled me underfoot.

“I’m in control of this world now.”

I opened my eyes. I felt awful. I had an unpleasant dream, but I couldn’t remember what it was about.

Why was it, I wondered? I was certain the dream had been unpleasant, yet I felt oddly refreshed. It was like the exhilarating sensation you got after overcoming a nasty fever. But it was clear to me that I had lost something in exchange for that exhilaration. I had lost it entirely. And I could never get it back.

But that was fine. I had been freed from a needless attachment. People were creatures that feared change, but that reaction was no more than an unthinking dismissal.

My strict adherence to ethics vanished.

Ahh... it welcomes me.

It was opening in front of me—

—a new world.

Perhaps that odd dream was a gift from God? From then on, everything I did went perfectly. Solving problem sets, my reading comprehension, advancing projects I was working on, everything was going brilliantly. My ability to concentrate was clearly improving as well. Not letting it get mixed in with the noise, nor getting distracted, I could immerse myself in a single task.

It was like I finally had my priorities all in order. It wasn’t anything conscious. But it felt like I had built a solid set of unconscious rules.

It was after school. The classroom was illuminated by the setting sun, making my classmates’ shadows stand out. But I could no longer make their faces out from each other. My mind shirked its duties, deciding that this point was of little importance.

Amongst them, one person’s face remained clear.

I had to verify his character.

“Hiiragi, I have something I would like to ask you. Could I have a moment of your time?”

Kouta Hiiragi. As far as I knew, he was Masato Yahara’s one and only friend.

From his appearance he was the epitome of normality, far removed from the kind of person I was obligated to eliminate. But his closeness to Yahara merited caution.

“When he was still with us, would it be correct to say that you were the one who with the closest with Yahara?”

I began probing him. If he was of the same breed as Yahara, it naturally fell upon me to cull him.

“I wonder, was it true that Yahara was involved in some rather unwholesome affairs? Well...I refer to affairs in the broad sense, by the way. Perhaps that alone makes it not unusual he was involved in this incident. There were various things published about him in those periodicals, weren’t there? Were you completely unaware of all that?”

“I knew about the stimulants. But he never mentioned anything about any gangs or prostitution rings or anything. He didn’t show any signs of being involved with them, either. I’m pretty sure that’s all just misinformation.”

“Perhaps you weren’t close enough to Yahara to involve you in things like that? Are you saying that he never to bring you into his group of delinquent companions?”

“Pretty much. He didn’t involve me in sketchy stuff like that. He never even ate lunch with me, let alone tried to get me to smoke or anything. If we were around each other we’d chat, if the timing worked out we’d walk home together. But he definitely never tried to coerce me, and he never invited me anywhere. That was about the extent of our relationship. I’m sure that if I ever stopped wanting to spend time around him and started avoiding him, he wouldn’t have so much as spoken to me.”

I scrutinized his words, but other than the fact that he had kept silent about the stimulants nothing he was saying seemed particularly problematic. However, there remained the possibility that he was playing dumb so as not to fall under suspicion.

Furthermore, the fact that had adored Yahara was clear.

My initial conclusion was that there was no need to prioritize marking him. Something along those lines.

“So, why do you ask?”

A phrase floated to the front of my mind.

It would not be so strange for you to be killed as well.

He might be evil enough to warrant elimination.

Indeed, it was imperative that I identify those people that warranted elimination. That was the decree I had been given upon killing Masato Yahara and evolving past the ordinary.

But putting that to words would be problematic. Although I had utmost faith in my sense of justice, I was under no pretenses that the rest of the world would accept it so readily. Long ago, Galileo was put to trial for his advocacy of the heliocentric model.

“I suspect that the reason that Yahara was killed was the fact that he was sticking his hand in dangerous places. Following that reasoning, I felt it was possible that you, as his friend, might be in danger of meeting a similar fate. Am I mistaken?”

It was possible he would misconstrue my reply, so I followed up with my true feelings.

“In fact, I was thinking—that it would not be so strange for you to be killed as well.”

Hiiragi wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, so I thought it unlikely that he would pick up on my true goal.

But contrary to my expectations, Hiiragi reacted to my words.

“...What makes you space out so?”

“I, I’m not-”

Perhaps he was more clever than I gave him credit for? Was he simply assuming a facade of mediocrity? Had he been hiding the fact that he was of the same breed as Yahara, that he was a person that I needed to eliminate?

It seemed that my guard had been too lax a moment ago.

In any case, it would be best to end this conversation peacefully, in order to keep up appearances. But the moment I thought to make preparations to depart, something unthinkable happened.

“Oy, is Akiyama around?”

That incompetent loudly called out for me.

You have to be joking. After all the warnings I gave him about avoiding been seen together, for him to brazenly show up like this... My opinion of him as incompetent remained unrevised.

But I couldn’t simply ignore him. Leaving Hiiragi with some empty words, I headed to Yamazaki.

Saying that he wanted to go somewhere away from others, Yamazaki lead me to the audiovisual room. Normally the door would be locked, but Yamazaki threaded a wire into the keyhole and the door opened in no time. The long desk was already adorned with open snack wrappers and empty bottles, so I conjectured that Yamazaki and his compatriots made frequent use of the room.

Standing in front of a large projector, Yamazaki spread his hands like a politician giving a speech.

“Let’s chat about my circumstances a bit. My mom and I live alone. She got tricked by some jackass who ghosted her, and had me when she was just seventeen. Around that time, her folks, meaning my gram and gramps, cut ties with her, so she had to raise me all by her lonesome. She’s running fuckin’ ragged, man, she mans a register at a supermarket in the afternoon and has to work a nightclub in the evenings. I just wanna treat her, you feel me? Like, I wanna take her out for barbeque or somethin’. That’s where I’m comin’ from.”

A story the world could do without hearing.

“Would you mind if I helped you cut to the chase? To put it plainly, you’re looking for more money, correct?”

“Damn, you catch on quick! That’s our favorite class rep for ya’!”

I could tell from his reaction to seeing the corpse that he would eventually try to extort more money out of me. Here it was.

Of course, I had no money left. The million I had already given him was my entire net worth, the result of years of scrimping and saving.

“Yamazaki-senpai. I do not have any more money.”

“Oh?”

“And although it pains me to point out the failures of another, the body was discovered because you failed to follow my instructions and bury it properly. While we both have our dissatisfactions, shall we simply call it good at that?”

“The fuck? You got any damn proof I didn’t bury it right? Who knows, maybe some wild animals dug it up or somethin’? And besides, there’s no need to get your panties in a bunch. If they can’t figure out where the guy was offed, there’s no way in hell they could pin it on you.”

Had this man never heard of crisis management?

“Well, I guess if I hadn’t transported it for ya they’d have figured you out in a heartbeat. And now I gotta deal with all this guilt and shit. It’s keeping me up at night, man. The fuck kinda person are you, tellin’ me to go dump poor little Maa in the mountains. Fuck, now I feel like turnin’ myself in.”

“Senpai, we would both be in a deal of trouble of the truth of the incident came out. Dumping a body is a serious crime, you know.”

Yamazaki laughed mockingly.

“Don’t make me fuckin’ laugh. Yeah, I’d be in some trouble. But who gives a shit about that. But you absolutely can’t let the truth get out. That’s the only thing you can afford to give a shit about. Even if it’s the tiniest fuckin’ chance, you can’t ignore it.”

Apparently his cunning was the only thing this man was good for. As he surmised, my previous words had been a hollow threat. It was like telling a man holding you at gunpoint that he’d go to jail if he shot you. It went without saying who had the initiative.

“...How much do you want?”

“Another million, for now.”

For now.

Those words stuck in my head, words that indicated that more demands would eventually be forthcoming.

“Do you really think a high schooler like myself could quickly come up with a sum like that?”

“You say some funny shit, man. The hell’s that got to do with me?”

The bell rang. Yamazaki smirked as he thumped me on the back.

“I’m countin’ on ya, killer.”

After saying that, he raised one hand and left the audiovisual room.

The sound of the door closing echoed throughout the room, cutting through the silence. The silence in the room felt like it was reproaching my own silence, so I forced my mouth open.

“Haha...”

My joy leaked out.

And when it did,

“Ahahahahahahahahahaha!”

It was too funny.

“The hell does that have to do with him? The hell does that have to do with him indeed!”

Yamazaki hadn’t doubted me in the slightest. He hadn’t doubted that he was on the side doing the taking. A million yen? There was no way I would pay such a sum. Yamazaki said some amusing things. I absolutely couldn’t let the truth get out. That was the only thing I could afford to give a shit about.

Quite so.

Nothing, least of all money, has anything to do with a man who is about to die.

I had decided on it from the very beginning. When I couldn’t find a noble individual to request transportation from, when I couldn’t find an accomplice, I realized something.

As long as the transporter was also someone I could eliminate, I wouldn’t have any problems.

Yamazaki, the finest scum known to man, was the last piece of evidence I needed to destroy. There would be nobody left who knew the truth.

But for him to mistake himself for being in a commanding position, oh, how precious I could laugh.

Ryuusuke Yamazaki.

You will fall into the hole I dug and die.

It’s that factory. I was at that defunct factory again.

Just like last time, I exterminated him. I wielded a knife with the intent to kill him.

Not hesitating with the knife, he provoked me by stabbing at my heart. But that wasn’t enough to cause me to draw back. I had resolved to kill him from the get-go.

I thrusted back and stabbed him in the chest.

There was almost no resistance. But I could sense that it was the real thing. Human flesh was softer than I had expected, and it gave surprisingly little resistance.

I quietly drew the knife from Yahara. Blood spurted out. The blood got on my face, covering up my sight. The warm liquid was sticky and unpleasant.

Yahara’s body toppled to the floor.

“You needed to be eliminated. The world would be better off before you committed a sin that could not be undone.”

“Is that so?”

“What...?”

His wound should have been fatal, but he simply stood back up as if nothing had happened.

“What, you don’t follow? I’m saying you ain’t able to do stuff like that.”

Although he was still dripping with blood, Yahara looked down on me.

“Just shut up and die already, damn you!”

I stabbed him again. Actually, unsatisfied by his flesh’s give, I stabbed him over and over.

But Yahara just stood up again and again, laughing like a madman all the while. He seemed completely unfazed by his countless wounds.

“Quit messing with me... Why won’t you die! Just die! Die! Die!”

Stab. Stab. Stab.

Rise. Rise. Rise.

“Why... why, goddamnit!”

No matter how many times I stabbed him, Yahara refused to die. He was vomiting blood, his bowels were hanging out, yet he just kept gazing at me with his protruding eye and sneering.

“You can’t kill me. Not as long as you’re alive, anyway. That’s just how it works.”

He spoke with his tongue hanging out and pointed at me.

I gazed down at myself in suspicion.

“Wh-!”

My body had been ripped to shreds. Similar to Yahara’s... no, exactly like Yahara’s.

“Why? Why is this happening to me! What did you do to me, Yahara?”

“Wait, I did something? Heh... I didn’t do jack shit, man.”

“Then... then what’s going on? Why am I covered in wounds?”

“Well hot damn. You still don’t know what’s going on? Who’s the one holding the knife here? Who’s the one stabbing away? Who’s the nutcase here?”

It went without saying, it was—

“Right, it’s you. You’re the one fucking yourself up.”

Yahara caressed my cheek with a blood-soaked hand.

“C’mon, brother. If you wanna kill me, all you gotta go do is drag your sorry ass to the top of a cliff and take a dive.”

Once I realized the meaning of his words, my dumbfounded face must have been quite the sight. Unable to hold it in, Yahara clutched his viscera-drenched stomach and gave a booming laugh.

“Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!”

He kept laughing.

“Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!”

Before I realized it, I was laughing too.

It was so funny I couldn’t help but laugh.

It was the same thing, after all.

Yahara laughing and me laughing were the same thing, after all.

Our voices overlapped and joined into one. They were the same from the very start. There was no way Yahara, who didn’t have a body, could laugh, which meant that I was simply laughing by myself.

If you put the two of us side-by-side in a mirror, we were reverses of each other. We were like opposites. But when looked at from the right angle, opposites were actually identical. It was like how hatred, the opposite of love, was close enough to its counterpart that they could practically be called the same emotion.

Black and white assimilated with each other.

In recognizing that, I made it my strength.

I had affirmed who I was.

I found a suitable “stepping stone,” so I set my plan into action. It wasn’t something I had planned, but rather a stroke of good fortune. My mind was clear, and I wasn’t about to let a chance like that slip away from me. All that was left to do was fasten a rope to the roof and place Yamazaki atop the “stepping stone”.

Exalted at this favorable turn of events, I was beginning to make my way home when I spotted something that surpassed all my expectations.

I gasped reflexively.

Was that Kouta Hiiragi and Ririko Matsumi having a conversation?

Ririko Matsumi. One of the people I was cautious around. While she wasn’t exactly evil, she was an inorganic substance whose existence held no meaning. Because she was inorganic, she couldn’t interact with humans.

But even in the face of such an inorganic entity, Hiiragi was speaking to Ririko Matsumi as if they were old friends.

What exactly was going on here?

This wasn’t something I could simply overlook. I rushed over to Hiiragi and asked him about his relationship with Ririko Matsumi.

“I don’t know about close, but we’ve talked a few times.”

He’s talked with that inorganic substance “a few times”? How was that even possible?

An odd sense of unease washed over me. The fact that Hiiragi was abnormal in that regard was a conclusion I arrived at not from reason, but from instinct.

“Do have a habit of getting involved with people like her?”

Concealing my emotions, I dug deeper.

“‘People like her’?”

“Forgive my wording, but people with problems. Ririko Matsumi, Masato Yahara, and perhaps we should count Miki Kouzuki as well.”

“It’s not like I’m intentionally hanging out with weird people...”

“But you’re awfully close to a number of them. And you don’t seem to be particularly close to anyone else.”

“I mean, it’s true that I don’t have many close friends...”

“And you say that you don’t seek those kind of people out deliberately? If that’s the case, then perhaps you hold some sort of fascination from their perspective?”

Hiiragi was the kind of person who seemed harmless at a glance. His interactions with Masato Yahara initially put me on guard, but if it hadn’t been for that I likely wouldn’t inspected him at all.

But that was exactly why it was such a serious problem.

If it turned out that Hiiragi was truly a man who needed to be eliminated like Yahara or Yamazaki, then that meant that a problem individual was hiding within somebody I couldn’t currently get a read on. If that was the case, then that meant that the range of people I needed to kill was much wider than I thought. There would be no end to them.

How long would I have to carry this purge out for?

Suddenly, Hiiragi realized that I was looking at him with wide eyes. That wouldn’t do. My emotions were showing.

I exhaled and calmed my expression.

“I apologize. It would appear I’ve said some rather untoward things. Please forget I said any of that. I guess the incident has just made me a little high-strung.”

If I was simply high-strung, how high-strung should I be?

The first thing I needed to consider was why Hiiragi had gotten so close with Yahara. There were as many detriments to being around him as there were stars in the sky. As a matter of fact, Hiiragi had earned the trepidation of his classmates, and had been unable to make any close friends since. And by spending time with a delinquent, he found himself in the teachers’ bad books as well.

But in spite of all that, he had gotten close to Yahara. Such a thing would be unthinkable would proportionally large benefits.

Occam’s razor would dictate that there was some manner of utility value in that relationship.

—Utility value. Was he was interested in the stimulants? Was he interesting in sleeping with women Yahara could provide him? No... a man with desires so base would have been outed as evil in an instant. The fact that he was not obviously evil was the problem.

What other benefits could there be, then? What could Masato Yahara even be used for, save stirring the flames of his homicidal urges in order to have him kill somebody? And nobody save a demon would wish for—

—wait, have him kill somebody?

Was that line of thinking truly so irrational as to be worthy of immediate rejection? At any rate, I myself was on the brink of being killed. That was the unwavering truth.

...What if, and this is only a hypothetical, what if it was possible to manipulate Yahara’s actions?

I had to remember the scene I had just seen. Kouta Hiiragi was talking familiarly with the machine girl, Ririko Matsumi. He was even going out with the self-proclaimed magus Miki Kouzuki. Was it possible that the two of them had been teaching him ways to manipulate others? Was I leaping to conclusions? ...But even if it wasn’t to that extent, the fact that Hiiragi’s circumstances were peculiar was true beyond a doubt.

Indeed, something about Kouta Hiiragi was clearly making me uneasy. There was something about him that was different from other people.

“I’m worried about you, Hiiragi.”

With those words, I tested Hiiragi. If he was the kind of person I needed to worry about, he might understand what I truly meant.

I prayed that Hiiragi would take my words normally. I didn’t want to believe that there was a strain of evil in this world so wily that I couldn’t immediately identify it.

But much to my regret, Hiiragi’s face scrunched up at my words’ disagreeable nature. He had clearly picked up on their implication.

“What do you mean by ‘worried about’?”

Perhaps trying to trick me, he asked an innocent-sounding question.

“Hmm? I mean that I’m worried about you getting caught up in this incident, of course. What else might I mean?”

I considered Hiiragi’s reactions up until this point. It seemed likely that he possessed powerful mind-reading abilities. There were too many things that didn’t make sense otherwise.

Now, let’s examine the facts once more.

Would it have been possible for Hiiragi to have been manipulating Yahara?

The answer was that it would. Given his level of mind-reading ability, it would be possible to anticipate how the other party would react to what you did and said. If you applied this knowledge, you could intentionally say and do things to influence the other party.

I wasn’t sure as to what extent this ability could accomplish. But there was one thing I was sure of.

Kouta Hiiragi would have been capable of meddling with Masato Yahara’s murder.

The motive was straightforward. When possessing that much power, it would be only human to want to test it. And it went without saying that manipulating a deviant like Yahara would be far more entertaining that manipulating an average person.

Hiiragi was putting his revulsion towards me on full display, so I asked him a question.

“What’s the matter?”

“...I have to get going.”

He left without answering, practically fleeing. He might have caught a glimpse at my thoughts just now.

I didn’t know the degree to which Hiiragi had influenced Yahara’s actions. But the conclusion was clear.

—The fact that I was almost killed was Hiiragi’s fault.

A difficult wrong to forgive.

A villain I needed to eliminate.

“...He’s next.”

After Ryuusuke Yamazaki, the next person I would eliminate was Kouta Hiiragi.

Now then, a decision becoming reality warrants but a short digression.

That night, Ryuusuke Yamazaki fell from the school roof and died.

He died because he had to die.

That’s all there was to it.

As I emotionlessly watched Yamazaki’s fall from the school parking lot, I considered how best to corner Kouta Hiiragi.

Translator's Notes and References

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