Published at 31st of August 2019 12:37 am

Volume 1, Part II: The First Homicide Inquiry

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April 1995.

I met her.

A cool breeze blows through the mansion, unexpected when it was just the end of summer. The wind carries tidings of autumn, and it makes me want to take an evening stroll again. I’m putting on my shoes, when a voice from behind me spoke.

“Lady Shiki, please do come home early this evening.”

It is Akitaka, my servant. I ignore the impositions on his ever-monoto-nous voice, as always, and make my way out of the entrance hall. Past the courtyard, past the garden, and past the large gate barring entry into the house, and I’m finally out. Darkness lay beyond this point, there being no light outside the main grounds itself. There is neither sight nor sound of any person except for me.

It was midnight, and it would soon be the first day of September. The bamboo thickets surrounding the periphery of the mansion rustled in the light breeze, bringing to mind images of wicked monsters beyond them. Walks through uneasy silences such as these are the only thing I derive pleasure from.

As the night grows deeper, the darkness draws closer. I think I walk through this lifeless town because I want to be alone. Or perhaps because I want to think I’m alone. Either way, in this world, it’d be hard to be com- pletely left alone anyway. But the city has its ways. I veer off from the main avenue, taking a detour through a narrow alleyway.

I turn sixteen this year. I’m a first year student at a private high school. It’s kind of pointless, really. No matter what I do, the mansion and the dynasty is my future. I chose the school just because it was close to my house and it would cut down on my commute time, but looking back on it, that might have been a mistake.

The alley is dark, save for one streetlight flickering nervously like a bea- con. It reminds me of someone.

I’ve been quite restless lately, even during these evening strolls. It’s all because of that guy, who keeps popping up in my head whenever I least expect it, and whenever I least like it.

Being in high school didn’t change anything. I couldn’t grow close to anyone, and they couldn’t grow close to me. I didn’t know why exactly, but maybe it’s because I easily express what I think in my behavior. That is to say, I’m a misanthrope. I couldn’t come to like people ever since I was a child. Being a person, I never liked myself either. I didn’t hate people, not really. It didn’t stop them from thinking that way, though. It wasn’t long before my schoolmates got the picture, and within a month, people stopped trying to ingratiate themselves with me.

Not that I didn’t like a quiet environment either, so that state of affairs suited me perfectly. But I should have known better than to think it would last. There is the one classmate who treated me like a friend, a person with a surname that sounded like a French poet. The one outstanding quality I can attribute to him: annoying. So very, very annoying.

I see the shadow of a person in the distant streetlight.

He pops into my mind again, him and his dumb smile.

Something about that man seemedstrange.

I tink back on it later.

Why?

I follow him into an alley.

Why did I have such a rush of excitement?

Inside the alley, it’s like an entirely different world. The alley is a cul- de-sac, with the buildings forming walls all around it. Because of this, no sunlight shone upon it even on bright afternoons. Honestly, it looked more like a room than an alley. There was once one homeless person who lived in this dead space, but not today. The walls of this alley just got a brand new paint job. There is a wet, sticky quality to the ground, and the usual smell of rotten food is commingled with an even stronger scent.

All around me is a sea of blood. Bodily fluids seep and flow through the alley, and the sweet, sticky smell pierces my nostrils. In the center of it all is the corpse. Whatever face he donned in death can’t be seen anymore. His arms were severed, and the legs became stumps around the knee area, pressurized blood pouring out of them.

A world so different, even the darkness of night was being overwhelmed by the bold crimson of blood. It made me so happy. Gracefully, elegantly, I touch the blood running on the ground, the sleeves of my light blue kimo- no turning a deep red. I streak the liquid on my lips, and a drop slips down lazily across my face. My body shakes in utter ecstasy, as if in a trance. The first lipstick I ever had.

As summer vacation draws to a close, a new semester of high school begins. Nothing really changes in life, least of all high school. The clothes of the students change to reflect the approaching cold of autumn, but apart from that small trifling thing, there is nothing else. The same old routine, day in and day out.

As for me, I’ve never worn anything other than a kimono my entire life. Akitaka tried to get me clothes “befitting a woman of my sixteen years”, but I never even thought of putting them on. Lucky for me, then, that the school I go to allows you to wear anything you want, so I actually went to school in my traditional dress. Actually, I wanted to wear the formal style of kimono, but if I did that, I’d have to spend the entirety of P.E. just to change clothes (which may not be so bad), so I made a compromise with a one-layer yukata.

I did worry a bit about what to wear in the cold winter months, but a solution presented itself yesterday. During break time he approached me in his usual crude manner, asking if I felt cold.

“Not right now, no,” I replied. “But perhaps in a few more weeks.”

He frowned, as if reading my mind. “You’re wearing that in the winter too?”

Wanting the conversation to end as quickly as possible, I answered directly. “Without fail. There’s no need to worry yourself, however. I can wear something over it, after all.”

“Wow, I didn’t figure there was anything you could possibly wear over a kimono.” With that, he walked away, puzzled at my answer. It was some- thing I thought up at the moment, but not wanting to lie, I decided to buy a warm leather jacket. I’ll wear it when winter comes, but for now, it stays in my closet.

And just like that, we ended up eating lunch together every day. He invited me, and I couldn’t refuse out of politeness. We had our meals at the roof of the school building, where there were pairs of boys and girls just like us idling their lunch time.

Today’s lunch break is just like any other, and I’m eyeing the other cou- ples when he suddenly talks to me. I had already planned to ignore him, but he says something that I couldn’t ignore.

“Murder. It happened on the last day of summer vacation. It was on the western wing of the commercial district. There’s an embargo on the media, though, so it hasn’t been reported yet.”

“…That isn’t very nice, is it?” I say nervously.

“Yeah. It’s a weird case, too. Apparently the suspect cut off the victim’s hands and feet and left him there to die. The crime scene was a mess, and they had to cordon off the entire location. What’s worse is that the suspect is still at large.”

“You say the suspect cut off the arms and legs? Can people die from just that?”

“Blood loss would cause a lack of oxygen in the body, but in this case I’d say circulatory shock came first,” he says while chewing his food. Out- wardly, he looks like a calm, innocent young man, but in the end I suppose these are the sorts of things he really wants to talk about. I suppose one of his relatives is in the police force, or at least has connections there. Surely not too high a standing, however, else he wouldn’t be leaking information out like this. “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess this has nothing to do with you, Shiki.”

“It’s quite alright…but Kokutō, this isn’t really a meal time topic, don’t you think?” I complain.

He offers only a simple nod in reply, barely even registering his faux pas. Good grief. Now, thanks to him, I can’t stomach eating the tomato sand- wich I just bought.

And so I capped of the end of summer and welcome the coming of autumn by hearing such a morbid rumor. The life that I thought would never change would soon receive a rude awakening.

It’s been raining hard since morning. The clacking of my footsteps on the school corridor mixed with the pitter-patter sound of the raindrops. School has concluded for the day, and not a single soul could be found inside the grounds at this hour. Normally, there would still be students doing club activities, but the murder incident that Kokutō told me about had finally gone public, and club activities have since been temporarily suspended.

Akitaka told me in the drive to school earlier this morning that it had already reached four murders this month alone. That’s what blew this wide open. The suspect remained as yet free from the law, and whatever per- sonality, character, or motive he might have for doing this isn’t yet known. In fact, marking the suspect as male might even be too hasty right now. There are no common points connecting the victims, except for the fact that they were all taking a walk quite late in the evening. It really is quite a different story when it’s happening to your own city instead of some remote and far away town. Students stop hanging out after school and go home immediately, and everyone goes home in groups. The vise grip the murderer has on the city is so tangible I can almost touch it. Even I’m affected, since the police go on patrols at 9 o’ clock in the evening. I can’t even go out to do my nightly strolls.

“Four murders…” I whisper under my breath. Four times, I’ve… “Ryōgi?” someone calls out suddenly. I turn towards the direction of the

voice and see a man I don’t recognize. He’s wearing blue jeans and a white shirt, both of them quite plain and unsatisfactory. He must be someone in a higher grade level than me.

“Yes, that would be me. What is it?”

“Oh, please don’t glare at me with those cold eyes of yours. Are you looking for Kokutō?”

What a foolish man. I could see right through his fake smile.

“I was about to go home. I have no idea how Kokutō factors into that.” “Is that so?” The drawl in his voice was practically audible at this point.

“That’s where you’re wrong, and you know it. That’s why you’re irritated. It isn’t good to take it out on someone else. It can be easier to blame anyone other than yourself. It’s become a habit for you, hasn’t it?” He chuckles at a joke funny only to himself, but continues. “Ryōgi… don’t you think four times is a bit too much?”

“What?!” Inadvertently, I take a step back. The man smiles yet again, a satisfied smile I now realize looks similar to my own.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long now. Now that I have, it’s time to bid you farewell.” After that, he walks away, the sound of his footsteps echoing in the dim, empty hall. It produced a vaguely disgusted feeling inside me. I don’t even want look at him, so I head towards the school entrance.

After changing out of my school shoes, I head outside only to have the rain greet me. Akitaka, who was supposed to pick me up, evidently isn’t here yet. On rainy days such as this one, he would always come by to give me a ride, but he is obviously late. I’m too lazy to bother changing shoes again, so I decide to take shelter from the rain in the shade of the entryway.

The rain looks faintly like a veil, and it makes the campus grounds look as if they were encased by fog. The winter chill makes the pale whiteness of my breath visible.

I don’t know how much time passed by, but before I could notice, Kokutō had appeared at my side.

“I have an umbrella,” he says awkwardly.

“It’s alright. I have someone picking me up. You should hurry up and head home,” I urge.

“In a moment. I thought I’d stay here until your driver got here. If that isn’t too much trouble?”

Without waiting for me to answer, he leans against the concrete wall of the entrance. I wasn’t thinking on what Kokutō was going to say or about to say. In fact, I planned on systematically ignoring him until such time that I could leave.

A miracle. He’s actually quiet for once. I can only hear the sound of the falling raindrops. Kokutō wasn’t talking at all. I turned to him only to see that, with a satisfied look on his face, he had already closed his eyes. I thought that he was sleeping, as unlikely as that may be, but I hear him singing under his breath. I know it was a famous song, but I couldn’t remember the title.

Truly a miracle. Much later when I got home, I asked Akitaka what the song was, and it turned out to be “Singing in the Rain.”

Kokutō didn’t speak. We weren’t even a meter apart. For us to be this close and not talking made me a bit unsettled. It was an awkward situation, but the silence wasn’t at all painful. Strange. Why was this silence calming? But then the silence frightened me, as suddenly as I warmed to it. Instinct raced in my mind, telling me that if it stayed like this, he would come out.

“KOKUTŌ!”

“Yes?!”

With a jump, he opens his eyes and stands straight.

“What happened? Is something wrong?” he says while looking at me oddly. I see myself reflected in his eyes. Looking at each other like that, it was probably the first time I really saw Mikiya Kokutō, still just a boy, with a boy’s face, and a gentle disposition. He had black hair which he didn’t style in any particular way, and similarly black eyes, where he wore stupid glasses that even little children would find atrocious. He wore no acces- sories, and his only concession to fashion was his insistence on wearing an all-black ensemble all the time. It has always puzzled me why he always gave a mind to anything I did.

“Where…” I look down, trying my damndest to think that the ground is the most interesting in the world. “Where were you before you came out here?”

“In the student council room. One of our upperclassmen is dropping out of school, and we held something like a farewell party for him. His name’s Lio Shirazumi. He said he’s dropping out because he found something he wanted to do. It surprised me, seeing as he was one of those quiet, un- social types.” Lio Shirazumi. I can’t say I’ve heard of the person. But Kokutō knows a lot of people I don’t. The class sees him as a friend to everyone, and he has some small popularity with the female upperclassman popula- tion.

“I invited you too, didn’t I? I told you when we said goodbye to each other yesterday, but you never showed up in the student council room. I looked for you in the classroom, but there was no one there.”

He did indeed invite me, but I would’ve just spoiled the mood by going there. That, and I thought Kokutō inviting me was just him being his usual polite self. He didn’t really expect me to go…did he?

“Oh, so you were serious?”

“Of course I was! What did you think, Shiki?” Kokutō, understandably, gets mad, not because of what I said but what I thought he said. I’ve never really experienced someone being angry at me, and it confuses me. From that moment on I sink into silence and wait with my mouth shut. I don’t think there’s ever been a day that I wanted Akitaka to come quickly as badly as this one. Not long thereafter, the car entered the front gate, and I say an awkward goodbye to Kokutō.

When the sun began to set, and it grew darker and darker, the rain finally stopped. Putting on my red leather blouson, I head outside to clear my head. The night sky overhead is in turmoil. The clouds that blanketed the sky only occasionally gave way to the moon and the stars. In the city, policemen in uniform and plainclothes alike patrolled the streets, and I made my way to the riverbank in hopes of avoiding them.

Wet asphalt reflects the dim glow of the streetlights. From afar, I hear the menacing metallic rumbling of a train. That means the train viaduct is near. Almost arbitrarily, I decide to head towards that direction, but I stop short upon reaching it when I see someone there.

Slowly and purposefully, I approach.

Another train passes overhead, probably tonight’s last ride. The noise is louder this time, since I’m closer, and it sounds like rolling thunder. The rumble reverberates as loudly as if I was in a sealed room, and I have to cover my ears if I don’t want to go deaf. After the train passes, however, a solemn sort of silence descends under the viaduct.

Without streetlight or moonlight, this place is in complete darkness. That might be for the best. Red liquid is spread all around the riverbank, yet even this is almost black because of the lack of light. This would be the fifth. The weeds around here are overgrown, but the corpse it surrounds looks like a single solitary flower, red and artificial. The face is at the center, with dismembered arms and legs surrounding it, twisted to look like flower petals, or a manji cross.

I’m starting to get used to this. I gulp, and I realize my throat is dry. Is it tension, or arousal, I wonder? My thirst burns my throat, but it doesn’t matter. This place is pregnant with death, and I smile wordlessly in spite of myself. The thirst turns into screaming ecstasy inside of me, the pleasure almost too overwhelming, but I manage to hold it back. I gaze upon the beautiful corpse once more, and feel for once that I am truly alive.

At the beginning of each month, it is customary in the Ryōgi dynasty for the head of the family and the heir to have a sword duel with live steel. In the past, different swordmasters would be invited to participate in the duel, and to teach their craft. But then, tiring of such acts, one of my ances- tors stopped this practice long ago, and created within the manor his own school of swordsmanship. Into such a tradition was I born, and even a girl of the Ryōgi dynasty must bear a certain standard with the sword.

My father was a strong man, and skillful with his weapon. In our duel, he made the sword dance like no other, and easily overpowered me. It is this disparity in skill and strength that has just made me lose the duel. After this, I waste no time in returning to the main building of the manor, which lies a fair bit of distance away from the dōjo. The wooden floor of the compound is immaculately treated, and makes no sound as my feet tread upon it.

On the way, I see Akitaka standing in a corridor waiting for me. Ten years my senior, Akitaka is the servant assigned to me by the household since my childhood days. He is a dutiful and patient man, especially with me. He’s probably waiting on me so he can change me out of my sweat-soaked clothes.

“You fought a close duel today. How is your father?”

“Goddamit, Akitaka, stop shadowing me all the time. I can at least change by myself. It’s not like we’re joined at the hip. You’d be better served suck- ing up to my brother, you know that? Males succeed the dynasty, after all.” Despite my rudeness, Akitaka smiles. “You are quite wrong, my lady. There is no successor to the dynasty but you, for you are the only one that

inherited the gift.”

The statement elicits a small chuckle from me. “A gift, is it? What I have, Akitaka, is a curse.”

Leaving Akitaka in the corridor, I continue to head toward the main build- ing. Once I reach my room, I instinctively lock the door shut and immedi- ately undress my training garments. I steal a glance of myself in the mirror, at the body of a sixteen year old girl. Actually, I only need to put in a little effort to make my face look like a guy, but I can’t cheat that way with the

rest of my body. The body that continues to grow, month after month, year after year…the body that Shiki detests more and more with each passing day.

“It might have been better for me to be a guy,” I say to no one in particular. No one is listening, except for me. Except for him. The one inside me calledShiki.

All descendants of our clan are given two different names, two different logograms, though with the same pronunciation. There is the masculine name, which belongs to yang, the positive. And then the feminine name,

which belongs to yin, the negative. As I was born a girl, I am Shiki. Had I been a boy, I would have been named Shiki. The reason we undertake

such a peculiar practice is simple to understand. The descendants of the Ryōgi dynasty have a high chance of inheriting dissociative identity disor- der, what most people would know as a split personality…in other words, someone like me.

My father once said that ours was a dynasty blessed, a state of grace that only few know. He also said it was a curse. He got the “curse” part right, at least. This isn’t a state of grace by any stretch of the imagination. It is, quite simply, an abnormality. Fortunately, I’m the first in a long time to successfully inherit the curse. Unfortunately, that only means that a lot of my relatives ended up in asylums before they were even old enough to understand what that meant. Having two personalities breaks most people eventually. The difference between dream and consciousness, the bound- ary between your memory and the other’s becomes blurred, and one so afflicted soon turns to suicide. But I was different. I didn’t become insane

like the others…and so I was trained by the family.

I like to think it’s because me and Shiki ignore each other. To me, Shiki is just another personality, one I switch to when I need it, and we exist simultaneously, aware of each other. In the duel between me and my father, I needed his aggressiveness, so I used him. But I am in control. Altogether, it’s a bit different from what people usually call a split personality. I am Shiki, but at the same time, I am also Shiki.

Father was proud, proud to have actually spawned a proper heir to the dynasty in his generation. My older brother was cast aside in the line of succession, and I took his place. And really, I’m fine with that. I don’t bite

the hand that feeds me. And I don’t mind living this poor excuse for a nor- mal life. Not like I have any choice in the matter. Even if, say, Shiki turns

into a cold-blooded killer, I can’t make him go away. There will always be something called “Shiki” inside of me, and in the end, both of us are the same. No more and no less.

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