Published at 31st of August 2019 1:09 am

Volume 1, Lingering Pain - V

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

I arrive at Miss Tōko’s office to find Shiki there as well. Me bringing an outsider into Miss Tōko’s office quickly sends her into a panic, but I explain the situation as fast as I can, and she begrudgingly accepts Keita Minato’s plea for shelter. She takes him to her bedroom to let him sleep on a sofa, and returns quickly to the office room where me and Shiki waited, me sit- ting in the office room couch and Shiki leaning with her back to a wall. Both of us say nothing until Miss Tōko is seated on her own chair. Then, almost as if they had planned to beforehand, they say in unison:

“You big softy.”

“Yeah, I knew something like that was coming my way,” I reply.

“If you knew, then you should have had some second thoughts about getting involved. You are such an easy mark for these people.”

“Well, what did you expect me to do, ma’am, leave someone to die? You know the circumstances.”

Miss Tōko only responds with a curt wave of dismissal. She might be a bit annoyed, but I know her well enough to say that she’s not the kind of person who callously throws away an opportunity to help a person in real need. Keita would surely be safe here, under Miss Tōko’s many means of protection, and if I had to suffer her mild disappointment, then so be it. Shiki is a different story, however. She’d objected vehemently earlier when I brought Keita in, saying that this would only complicate matters, but Miss Tōko had overruled her. I can practically feel the angry eyefuck she’s throw- ing my way.

“Well, this is a special case, considering the circumstances,” Miss Tōko says. “What do you plan on doing now? Don’t tell me you’re going out to find Fujino Asagami and try to persuade her.”

“Realistically speaking, we can’t hide Keita Minato forever,” I reply. “Fuji- no Asagami won’t stop the murders until he finds her, and that’s unaccept- able. I think the best course of action now would be to meet with her and talk things over.”

At this, Shiki finally talks. “You know the reason we say you’re an easy mark? This is pretty much it. You’re living in fantasy land if you think that’s going to work.” While Shiki has never been one to massage her words when she felt the need to talk, she was being especially antagonistic today. She really must be angry at me. “You’re not gonna get through to her head, I’m telling you,” she continues. “That girl’s too far gone. She won’t stop even if she does get to Keita. He’s just an excuse to keep killing at this point, and when she’s done with him, she’ll find another excuse just as convenient.” “Yeah, right, as if you know her.”

“Oh, but I do, and met her to boot. Azaka brought her along to Ahnen- erbe yesterday.”

That catches me by surprise. How would Azaka know Fujino? The people I talked to placed her around or above high school age, so it’s possible she could be studying at Reien Girl’s Academy. Wait a minute—

“It’s a bit of a surprise that you’re behind on this one, Kokutō,” Miss Tōko declares. “You still haven’t made any inquiries about Fujino Asagami?”

“I hope you’ll excuse me for not looking into a person I just heard of not two hours ago, ma’am. I can’t very well drag a person with me around town while a known killer is looking for him.” Something bothers me, and not just because Azaka keeps terrible company and could have been involved, but something else, like when you keep remembering something you want so hard to put out of your mind. “So does this mean that she’s still going to school?” I ask. “Why don’t we just ask the school?”

“No, that’s a dead end. She started cutting classes and not going home since the night of the incident. She’s a wanderer now. I called Azaka up and she says she hasn’t seen her since the day they met.”

“Wait. When did you check that out, Miss Tōko?”

“A little while ago. When Shiki told me last night that Fujino was with Azaka, I called her right away, but it seems she didn’t notice anything was out of place with her friend.”

The mention of Azaka and Fujino in the café again makes me think in hindsight. Maybe if I had promised to meet Azaka a day later, or if I’d found Keita a day earlier, a meaningless murder might have been avoided.

“That said, Keita Minato’s presence here isn’t totally useless to us,” says Miss Tōko. “We can just use him as bait to lure her out. It might turn violent after that, so I’d advise you to stay here with Keita.”

“Wait, what’s going on? Why are you so interested in Fujino Asagami anyway? And what do you mean ‘violent’? What are the both of you plan- ning?”

Miss Tōko exhales a sharp sigh and replies. “We might have to fight her, if the circumstances dictate it. The truth, Kokutō, is that we have a new job, and the client wants Fujino killed, silently and with no mess. And so our job is to kill her before it all becomes public.”

Wait, hold on a second! It’s not like she’s killing indiscriminately! She can still be reasoned with,” I reply abruptly. Now I finally understand why Miss Tōko took Shiki under her employ. She has use for her talents, and this is it.

“There’s one thing you don’t know yet, Kokutō, something that makes that a difficult course of action. Right before I put Keita Minato to sleep, I made him tell me the whole story. The ringleader of their little crew appar- ently brought a knife that fateful night, and she stabbed Fujino with it deep. Keita said that was the exact moment she made with the twisting. That’s when her revenge started.”

“But I don’t see how that could be reason that she’s beyond negotiating with.”

“The problem stems from that point, however. Fujino was stabbed on the stomach the night of the 20th.”

“Stabbed in the stomach…” I mutter out of hearing of both Shiki and Miss Tōko. Now I connect the dots. The night of the 20th, a student of Reien Girl’s Academy, and a stab wound in the stomach. I try my damndest to reach a different conclusion, but it’s useless. That’s where it all points to.

“According to Keita, she keeps calling him, saying that the pain from the wound is what drives her forward. Any wound that produces that much pain is bound to be obvious. You’d look paler from blood loss, your gait would change from trying to accommodate the pain, things of that nature. But when both Azaka and Shiki met her only two days from the night when she was supposedly stabbed, none of them observed anything out of the ordinary about her. I don’t know how but it seems like she’s made a full recovery. Here’s my theory: every time she remembers being raped, the pain from her stab wound returns. It’s just a phantom pain, the wound being long gone, but to her it’s every bit as real and painful as that night. And every time she feels the pain, she kills another. Who’s to say that won’t happen if you happen to be talking to her?”

But at the same time, doesn’t that mean that if we can get rid of her phantom pain, then we can talk to her? Before I can say this, however, Shiki offers her own observations.

“You’re wrong, Tōko. Her pain is real, and it’s still in her body.”

“But how could that be? Are you retracting what you said about her being unwounded?”

“Not really. Her stab wound’s completely healed, that much we can be sure of. But, fact remains that she’s still in pain. Now I’m not saying she’s got a rusty metal rebar stuck in her intestines or anything like that. It’s just that, to my observation, her pain flares up and disappears on occasion. I saw her when she was in pain, and she was holding her sides like you would if you were stabbed, and that point she’s beyond any reasoning. But then I also saw her pain disappear, as if she just completely forgot about it, and at that point she just bores me. I can’t enjoy killing her like that, so I just let her go.”

“Okay, Shiki, first off, she wouldn’t even last a day with a rebar in her intestines.” Miss Tōko comments. “A wound that keeps hurting…even after it’s completely healed, huh?” she muses, slowly and pensively. She takes out a cigarette, her favored companion when thinking things over hard.

I, too, am puzzled by Shiki’s observation of Fujino Asagami. It’s natural for a wound to hurt until it heals, but why would a wound that’s completely healed suddenly come back from time to time? It’s almost like she could dull her nerves and stay the pain, making it linger.

And then I suddenly remember the little trivial detail in Keita Minato’s bizarre story, when I asked him what was so weird about her. It isn’t an answer to her condition, but anything helps at this point. The recollection comes so suddenly that I shout an “Oh!” unintentionally.

“’O’ was always my favorite vowel. It’s very well-rounded,” says Shiki in response.

“Very funny, Shiki. Actually, I remembered something Keita told me that might be related.” Miss Tōko looks at me with an eyebrow cocked, curious now. “He told me that they did all sorts of things to her, including beat- ing her to within an inch of her life, and she wouldn’t so much as make a frown. At first, when Keita told me this, I thought that she was just a really strong girl and that she just didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they angered her. But now I realize that isn’t it at all.”

“Oh, yeah right, as if you know her,” says Shiki sarcastically in a mockery of my voice while looking sharply in my direction. “Sound familiar?”

“Okay, fine, maybe I don’t know her, but isn’t there a sickness that makes you insensitive to pain? Maybe she could have one of those. I know it’s a rare condition, but that would explain all of this.”

“It would explain some things,” Miss Tōko agrees, “but not all. If she was really insensitive to pain, then the wound wouldn’t really hurt. That’s not the way Keita described it, though. At any rate, we’d need to investigate it for sure; whether or not it was congenital and things like that. Well, assum- ing she is insensitive to pain, then was there anything that could have changed that? I’m talking about things that mess up your nerves like being whacked hard in the back or getting a large dose of steroids in the neck.”

“A hit on the back? Well, I don’t really know how hard it was, but Keita told me one of his friends took a metal bat and swung it at her back at one point.” I try to restrain my voice to hold back how angry the whole story made me. Miss Tōko emits a strange laugh.

“You know what? That could actually be it. The way you and Keita describe these guys, it’s likely they fractured her back bone and that some- how jolted her nervous system back into working condition. Then, with Fujino still disoriented as to what that new sensation was, they violated her. So her first experience of pain was a confused flavor of blunt force trauma and rape. Knowing this, I’m surprised you even sought shelter for Keita Minato. I’d have left him to die on the spot,” Miss Tōko says with a grin. Normally, I’d have opposed her attempts at verbally annoying me, but I’m too worn out in thinking about this bizarre case to offer her any more coherent a counter to it than to hang my head and focus my eyes intently on the floor.

“So, do her back bone and her insensitivity to pain have any relation?” I ask.

“There certainly is. The spinal cord is a conduit for all sensations. Prob- lems that lead to pain insensitivity, such as syringomyelia, usually originate in the spine. Now let me paint a scenario for you. See, there are two types of senses: your superficial sense is what you feel outside, such as touch, pain, and temperature. Deep sensation is pain, pressure, and tension felt inside. Now, can you describe to me what it would be like if you had no sensation whatsoever?”

“I guess it’d be like if you can’t feel what you touch and can’t taste any food, right?”

Miss Tōko nods her head and smiles, clearly enjoying this exercise. “Exactly the sort of answer someone used to sensation would give. We think that because that just because they still have bodies, that their expe- rience is largely the same as ours, if perhaps less visceral. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Understand, Kokutō, that to have no sensation is to lack the ability to truly assimilate experience.”

I don’t really understand. I mean, she can still hold things and talk to people. It’s just that when she touches something, it’s probably a less vis- ceral experience, right? Why wouldn’t she be able to assimilate experi- ence? It’s not like she doesn’t have a body. I’d think it’d be worse to have a part of your body cut off, in fact.

It’s then that I realize it. She doesn’t have a body. Or at least, it’s some- thing close to it as to be indistinguishable. She feels nothing. The only way to prove to herself that she’s touching anything is to look at her hands. It’s the same as reading a book, lacking the tactile sensation of the charac- ters. Running, for her, is just like moving the point of view in a camera in some movie. She doesn’t feel the soil on her feet, or the sharp, sometimes painful, rebounding of force, or the wind on her skin, or the wild pain on your muscles as your heart struggles to pump blood. Only her eyes say that she’s running at all. That’s what having no sensation is like: to be without a body, as if you’re ethereal, floating like a ghost; to not feel alive. “Seeing is believing” is doubly applicable to someone like her.

“That’s…pain insensitivity, huh?” The words almost eave my mouth in a shiver, so shaken am I by the thought.

“Now you’re catching on,” Miss Tōko says, as if she’s been reading my mind. Knowing her, I wouldn’t put it past her. “Now, assuming that Fujino Asagami was temporarily cured of this affliction when she was struck across the back with a metal bat, then that would have been her first experience of pain. Her instinct might have been to lash out. How ironic that her return to sensation transformed her into a killer.”

“To me, the worst thing that Keita and his friends did is that Fujino now equates the pain to living since it’s her first and only sensation so far. So she’s out there, right now, seeking more and more pain because it makes her feel alive. They’ve irreparably damaged her soul,” I say.

Without waiting for Miss Tōko, Shiki offers a disparaging laugh as a retort. “Oh, please, her soul? Can we not go there?”

I admit, in my mind, that perhaps I put it a bit too poetic and sentimen- tal, especially for this crowd. I don’t think I have an answer that can satisfy Shiki, but fortunately Miss Tōko does.

“Come now, Shiki. Surely you’ve heard of those incidents where people die from mental stress. It might be true, it might not be, but if it’s true for the person, then it can be hurt as surely as you can stab a person’s hand.” Shiki, looking even more sullen than before, folds her arms across her chest. “Oh, so now you’re with Mikiya here on how to handle Fujino Asa- gami? Is no one hearing me when I say that she is a walking bomb waiting

to explode?”

“Keep your hat on, Shiki, I’m still with you on that score.” After saying that, she turns back to me again. “Listen, Kokutō. What I’m thinking is that she’s never come to love or hate anything precisely because she can’t feel anything. I’ve already told you how different she sees the world from us. It might not be wise to apply common sense to her. The unfortunate cir- cumstances of her recovery combined with the abilities it gave her compel us to use haste in this situation. It’s unfortunate, and I understand your hesitation, but that’s what it is.”

That last sentence rung out like a final declaration. “Please don’t talk like that when you haven’t even met her.” Unable to stand being here any longer, I stand up.

“I could say the same to you,” she parries.

“We’re all assuming that her insensitivity to pain was there from birth. What if that isn’t the case?”

“You’re the one that brought it up,” Miss Tōko says, without a hint of rebuke on her voice. How could she be so indifferent to Fujino Asagami’s plight? “Actually, now that I think about it, there could be certain scenarios where Fujino would be the victim. The question is which was first?” I want- ed to ask Miss Tōko what she meant by that, but she spoke it in a murmur, so I probably misheard it anyway. “Mmm…I’m not sure. What do you think, Shiki?” asks Miss Tōko to the girl who now has her back turned on the two of us.

“I’ll go with whatever you come up with. I don’t care either way. I just want to take Fujino out. The thought of her killing another person makes me sick.”

“No honor among murderers, huh? I guess your kind really can’t toler- ate each other.”

I decide to be on my way to get a head start on this case. “So I guess I’ll follow the paper trail on Fujino Asagami. My own way if I have to. Can I see anything you’ve got on her?” Miss Tōko hands me her file. I can see that her surname changed from “Asakami” to “Asagami”, roughly around the time she entered junior high. Her mother remarried, meaning her father right now isn’t her real one. She also lived in Nagano Prefecture during elementary school, before she moved when entering junior high. I guess that’s as good a place as any to start. “I’m gonna be gone for some time. I might not be back tomorrow. Is that alright, Miss Tōko?”

“No problem. You’re part of the job now after all.”

I had one last question to her, one that had been bugging me since Keita told me about it. “Miss Tōko, what Keita said, about Fujino being able to move things with her mind; is that parapsychology stuff true?”

“I’m surprised you’re still a doubter at this point when you have me and Shiki right here. One look at that murder scene should tell you that Fujino has powers of some sort. The term parapsychology encompasses a lot of subjects, so if you want to learn more about it, I can point you to the clos- est thing to an expert.” With that, she takes one of her business cards and writes the address of this “expert” on the back.

“So you don’t know anything about it?”

“No. We mages study the Art of magic as a discipline, but what she has is a result of the lineage and upbringing of her dynasty, one that has been kept secret from mages, and thus, one that has no field of study or history apart from their own. She’s the kind of magic user I hate: one that got her power from a petty dynasty scrapping together what little potential they can muster in their magical lineage, with no training in the responsibilities it implies. Unlike better men, she didn’t deserve it.” Her last sentence was surely no lie, as it was said with her glasses on, the time where she is least deceptive.

I take Miss Tōko’s business card, and then approach Shiki, who’s been whiling away the time by looking outside the window. “Well, see you later, I guess. Don’t get reckless while I’m gone.”

“You’re the one being reckless here. Shame there’s no cure for stupid- ity,” she snaps back. She nods, though, and grumbles an “I’ll try,” almost silently.

With that, I leave the office, relieved a little bit at Shiki’s reassurance. She’s been quite agitated to go after Fujino Asagami, and I suppose I can understand why. I hope it doesn’t come to violence, but if it does, and they fight, I wonder if Shiki will finally realize that she’s never liked murder. She and Fujino Asagami are more alike than even the both of them realize.

As for my own safety, well, I’m gonna have to say I’ve got great odds. I’ve only tempted death once. Shiki’s forgotten all about that incident ever since she woke up from the coma, but it’s probably better that she doesn’t know. I haven’t told her that she’s the one that almost killed me.

I probably never will.

It is the 24th of July, a day after Mikiya Kokutō went out of town to fol- low the paper trail on Fujino Asagami’s past, and it is a day that has so far proven to be, by all estimation, rather uneventful. The only really news- worthy stories for the day are an incoming wallop of a storm predicted to make landfall this evening, and a traffic accident involving a seventeen- year old driving without a license.

Shiki Ryōgi whiles away the lazy morning hours by staring outside the window of Tōko Aozaki’s office. Her eyes are fixed on the sky, so blue and cloudless today, with the sun alone being it’s only noticeable feature. It seems almost a bad joke that this otherwise stereotypical summer day would soon be disturbed by an invasion of storm clouds. The soundscape is less than idyllic however, as the noise of heavy machinery from the iron factory a few blocks down rings in Shiki’s ears without any sign of letting up. She glances at Tōko, somewhat impressed at how she can still conduct the telephone conversation she’s in right now without any hint of distrac- tion. With her glasses on, and the receiver in her ear, she spouts a steady stream of words.

“Yes, I’m inquiring about the accident…I see, so the driver had already died before the collision...his head twisted off?...well, with no passengers in the vehicle it does seem like an accident…that’s quite alright. Any detec- tive would have a hard time with a moving sealed room case, after all…oh, thank you, but that’s all I needed to ask. I must apologize for bothering you like this detective Akimi. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

Tōko on the phone with her glasses on is a show of politeness, a far cry from her usual harsh tones. After hanging up the phone, she adjusts her glasses just a pinch to lie below her eyes, enough to say that they no longer cover them.

“That’d be the seventh now, Shiki. She’s definitely taken the lead from the serial killer two years ago.” Shiki moves away from the window towards Tōko’s desk. A shame. She’d wanted to see the storm clouds gather in the sky.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Shiki states bluntly. “Now she’s killing peo- ple that she doesn’t even know.”

“Seems that way. This ‘Shōichi Takaki’ fellow”, she says—the name of Fujino’s latest victim—“seems unconnected to Keita Minato as well. This is a murder unrelated to her so-called revenge.”

Shiki grinds her teeth in impatience. She grabs her red leather jacket and dons it over her white kimono in a single, rough motion. “If that’s the case, then I’m sure as hell not sitting around here. Any ideas where I can start looking for her, Tōko?”

“No clue. I can figure two, maybe three areas where she could be hid- ing. If you’re going to try and find her, you’re just going to have to hit all of them.” She produces three small cards from her desk drawer and tosses them to Shiki, who catches them out of the air. Shiki gives them a quick once-over.

“ID cards from Asagami Construction? Who’s this ‘Sōren Alaya’ charac- ter?” The cards each have a magstripe on them, indicating they’re used for identification.

“Those’ll get you into the construction sites that Asagami Construction currently have their hands in. The name’s from a long gone friend, since I couldn’t think up a random name at the time I had those made, but never mind that. Fujino Asagami must be hiding in a place she thinks is secure, and there’s nothing more secure than the family business. She’s got cards like that too, I imagine, to sneak into the places at night. If she’s hiding anywhere, it’s probably going to be in those places. This is going to mean trouble, so if you’re going to do it, do it before Kokutō comes back.”

Shiki glares at Tōko, her normally empty eyes now giving the mage a piercing look. It is a wordless objection at the last advice she chose to impart, but in the end Shiki turns around to leave. She’ll follow Tōko’s lead on this one, even if that means leaving Mikiya in the dark. Shiki leaves the office in no particular hurry, the gentle clacking echo of her boots audible even after she walks out of the door. As the little footsteps fade, it is now Tōko’s turn to look out the window.

“Kokutō’s too late on this one, huh?” the mage murmurs to herself. “Two storms out there tonight, and I don’t know which of them will come and which of them will break first. Shiki might not last the night alone, Ryōgi.”

Past noon, the weather starts to take a turn for the worse when dull, ash-colored clouds slowly begin to creep along the sky. The wind is picking up as well, and the people on the streets quicken their paces, all of them seem to be talking about a coming storm. While I walk, burning pain shoots through my abdomen even as I clutch it tighter. Preoccupied as I was with my hunt for Keita Minato’s friends, I heard no news about the storm. It will make it difficult to search, so I decide to call it off for tonight. I spend the last, fleeting hours of the afternoon making my way across town to the port, and I see the city slowly lower its tempo over the hours, and the volume of people steadily decrease.

Though it is only 7:00 in the evening in summertime, the sky had long since become dark. Even the seasons grow mad at the coming of the storm. My body shares the sentiment, as it continues to become sluggish and my reactions become slower with each passing day. With effort, I finally arrive at the Broad Bridge, Father’s pet project, which bridges this coast and the one across the bay. With four lanes on either side and passages and walk- ways for people underneath, it is quite the structure. The “basement” is a shopping mall. The main entryway into the bridge is guarded, but I know the same isn’t true for the shopping mall entrance. Having made my way there, I take one of the cards that I stole from the manor, and swipe it through the receiver.

The door opens welcomingly to a dark passageway. The structure and the interior design of the mall had already been finished, but the lights were yet to be connected, making the entire thing look like a subway sta- tion about to close up for the day. The lack of light made the mall prom- enade stretch onward for what seemed like an interminable distance, with shops of various products flanking it. After walking about five hundred meters, however, the surroundings abruptly change, indicating that I had reached the parking lot. The wall that divided it and the mall was unfin- ished, so I didn’t notice it. As a matter of fact, the entire parking lot was still under construction. The iron rebars on the walls, exposed as they are like a person’s bones, make the entire structure look fragile. Some of the wall sections are, as yet, unbuilt, making the room exposed to the outside if not for the simple tarpaulin covering the breaches.

It’s been an hour since I entered the bridge interior, and the storm is already raging. The howling wind is especially audible here in the parking lot, where the violent flapping of the canvas, the roar of the waves, and the pitter-patter of the raindrops like machine gun fire combine to make a cacophony I can barely endure. It was raining that day too, on the night of my first murder. I let the warm raindrops wash over me and watched as the dirt, the grime, and the slick blood trickled from my hands. And then I met him, the man who I had last met in junior high, who had shared with me only a single conversation.

No other memory do I treasure more than the day I first met him, when the horizon looked almost ablaze in the sunset. A cross-schoolevent had only just finished, and I was still in the school playing field because of a sprained ankle. Not being able to feel pain, I could try to move, but I saw how swollen my ankle already was, and if I tried to push it any further, I knew it would get to the point where I would damage it beyond recovery. And I didn’t want to call out for help, either, because they would all ask me the same questions, asking me about the pain I didn’t feel, like I’m some sort of attraction. So I just sat there, alone, staring at the setting sun with a vaguely disinterested expression on my face, praying that no one would notice. No one should ever notice. Not mother, not father, not my teach- ers, not my friends, no one. I need to be the Fujino that they wanted, the Fujino that was normal.

Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I never felt it, but I heard his hand land close to my ear. I turned around and there he stood; an upperclass- man from another school. His unassuming eyes are of someone refresh- ingly ignorant of my condition, and yet, on that first time I met him, I think I must have hated him for bothering me.

“Does it hurt?” he said, and I dreaded what would come next. The curi- osity. The prying. The false praise that implied fear and disbelief. I shook my head no. He glanced at the name tag on my PE uniform, examined my sprained ankle briefly, and then finally frowned at me. I knew that he was going to ask something I didn’t like next, so I just closed my eyes, deter- mined to just ignore the thoughtless questions that were going to come from someone normal. I didn’t want to hear them. But instead, he said something altogether different.

“Not too bright, are we? Listen, you’re not supposed to hold the pain inside, but show it outside. That way, people can help you, little Fujino.”

He carried me to the nurse’s office without so much as a complaint, and there we parted ways. I might have fallen for him then, for how he worried about me and my suffering like no one else did. It’s a memory that seems more and more like a faint dream with each throb of the pain. The same pain that now brings me back to reality, and dispels the thought from my mind like melting ice. It almost feels as if I’m not…worthy to even remember it, sullied as my hands are in the blood of many people. But the rain has helped me before, like holy water absolving me of sin, and there is no better rain than the one this huge storm brings.

I drag my slowing body to the parking lot ramp leading to the upper portion of the bridge, yearning for the sweet sensation of the summer rain on my skin.

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