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Kara no Kyoukai (Light Novel) - Volume 1, Part II: The First Homicide Inquiry - VI
Volume 1, Part II: The First Homicide Inquiry - VI
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Only when the sun had finally retreated and it became dark, just as I was making my way to Shiki’s house, did the rain finally start to pour. Nice of it to wait like that. It isn’t a torrential downfall, but it isn’t a light drizzle either. The small, pattering sounds of the raindrops on the stone path, and on the leaves, and on my umbrella made this a night full of noise. The rain water itself is still cold, a leftover of the winter that the coming of March had not yet completely erased. Together with the bamboo leaves and trees as my sole companions tonight, I keep my eyes trained on the mansion and the gate. My umbrella hand is turning red, growing numb from the cold.
I sigh, a big long one. I can’t keep this thing up forever, obviously. First thing, it feels like I’m a stalker. Second thing, it’s doing a number on my ability to keep awake in class. I’m gonna give it another week, and then I’ll probably call it quits. It’d be nice if the killer was caught in that time, though.
I should have thought it would be the rain that would make me give in. It kinda feels like the cold and the rain are double teaming me just to lay off the creepy stake outs.
I sigh, another long one. It’s not the rain that has me depressed though, but today’s verbal sparring with Shiki. “What part of me can you believe in?” she said. If she thinks I don’t believe her, than what have I actually been trying to do all this time? Anyone could tell from her face this after- noon that she was agonizing over something. She even looked like she was ready to cry; that, or tell you off. You never can tell with her.
The rain doesn’t look like it’ll end soon. The raindrops make ripples even on the little puddles of water. If you can learn to selectively ignore the noise the raindrops are making, I’m sure it might even be a peaceful, serene night. But to me it’s just noise. And yet, even in all that noise, a sin- gular splash, a single footfall behind me reverberates across the bamboo brush. I turn around to see only a solitary figure in a red kimono. It was her.
She’d been out in the rain for a long time, that much was obvious. She was drenched from top to bottom, her short, black hair sticking to her cheeks and face, casting a dark shadow over her eyes.
“Shiki.” I make my way to her. She must have been out here since the rain started. Her red kimono is so damp it’s sticking to her body, and her skin is so cold to the touch. I hold out my umbrella to cover the both of us while I rifle through my bag, searching for a towel.
“Here, wipe yourself with this.” I extend my arm, towel draped over my hand. “What the hell are you doing out here in the rain when your house is right there?”
She takes one glance at my outstretched arm, and laughs a bitter, queer laugh. It is punctuated by a keening sound slicing through the empty night air.
“Wh…” It happened faster than my eye could see. I feel something warm in my arm, and instinctively take a step back. The red warmth in my arm is flowing downwards like a snake, splitting in two and dripping.
My arm?
Acut?
Why?
The pain pierces me, courses through my arm, hurting like nothing I’ve
ever felt before. It makes me numb. No time to think. No time to even panic.
She takes a step forward, I take a step back. Calmly. Have to run. Have to get away.
No.
No time to get away. I move fast, but she is faster, like a monster. Anoth- er keening sound, this time in my leg.
Red. Red mixes with the puddles in the path. My red blood, rippling outwards from the impact of raindrops. I see it, see the cut on my leg, feel the pain. I collapse, face-up, seeing the sky, the falling rain. My back hits the stone path. I gasp at the sudden impact.
She climbs on top of me, and points her knife at my throat. Calm. No time for panic. The noise of the rainfall retreats, ignored. Just calm.
I look up, and see the darkness of the sky, and her, set against that dark- ness. Her eyes are black and implacable, like an abyss, and I see myself reflected in that void.
I can feel the tip of the knife, just below my chin, steel cold to the touch like her skin. Like the blood on my leg, little water drops snake down her face, a face framed by her black hair; like a mask, it is blank, terrifying, and pitiful all at the same time.
“I…don’t want…to die.”
Somehow, I felt I wasn’t saying this to Shiki, but to the death that was now coming for me.
She smiles.
“I…I want to kill you.”
It was a very gentle smile.
