Published at 31st of August 2019 1:12 am

Volume 1, Lingering Pain - VII

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The storm is just hitting the height of its ferocity when I get back into town. Braving the rain, I immediately make my way to the office, and when I enter, Miss Tōko greets me by accidentally letting the cigarette in her mouth fall off because of her surprised look.

“Well, that sure was fast. It’s only been a day,” she remarks.

“As soon as I heard there was a storm coming, I came back before they stopped public transportation.”

“I…see,” Miss Tōko says with apprehension. Her eyebrows are scrunched up in a look of consternation. Did something happen? Before that, how- ever, there are more pressing concerns she needs to know about.

“Ma’am, I’ve checked back on stuff about Fujino Asagami, and found out that her pain insensitivity is acquired, not congenital. She was normal until she was six years old.”

“Wait a minute, that can’t be right. Look, if she wasn’t born with the damn condition, then it has to be something like syringomyelia, but that causes you to have physical complications, which Fujino doesn’t have. A rare case like hers where only the pain sensitivity is gone can’t be anything but congenital.”

“I know. Her doctor said the same thing. Let me explain a few things,” I reply. It would be nice to tell her the whole story I learned from going to Nagano, but since we don’t have time I’ll just have to go over the more important parts, when Fujino was still a part of the Asakami family.

“The Asakami family, Fujino’s original family, was a well-known dynasty in Nagano, but they fell into bankruptcy around when Fujino was twelve years old. Fujino’s mother than remarried into the Asagami family, a dis- tant branch of the Asakami’s. The Asagami’s, for their part, only wanted the Asakami land, and shouldered the debt only for that purpose. In her childhood days, Fujino was still sensitive to pain, but the people I talked to said she also had a strange power. She could make things bend without touching them.”

Miss Tōko lights up a cigarette and inhales a long one. She sits down behind her desk before waving the cigarette at me, motioning me to con- tinue.

“She was treated like a demon child, and was shunned and even abused by most of the other kids, verbally and physically. But when she was around six, the power went out of her for some reason, along with her sense of pain.” Miss Tōko narrows her eyes in interest, and I see the subtle beginnings of a smile playing at the tips of her mouth. “I found out that the Asakamis hired a personal doctor for Fujino around that time too, but no one could tell me who he was, and the Asakami manor was unoccupied and abandoned, so I couldn’t ask there.”

“Wait, are we done? Don’t tell me that’s all the dirt you got?” “Patience is a virtue, ma’am, so let me finish. I followed up on some

police and local government records and found him pretty easily. The doc- tor was a guy named Akita. He’s an unlicensed doctor, which I guess is just how the Asakami’s preferred it. Took me the better part of a day to pry a story out of him.”

“See, now you might really get paid this month. When I eventually fire you, Kokutō, you might want to consider being a detective. I’d even hire you from time to time.”

“Gee, thanks,” I reply in sarcastic monotone, and then continue the story. “Seems this doctor was more like a pharmacist, since he only sold medicine. Asprins, indomethacin, steroids, stuff like that. He didn’t know how Fujino became pain insensitive either, because apparently the father did it himself.”

“Wait, what do you mean? That Fujino’s father cured her by himself, or administered the medicine by himself?” A subtle difference, one I recog- nize by nodding my head.

“The latter, of course. The father apparently had no intention of cur- ing Fujino of her pain insensitivity, but the doctor diagnosed her all the same. He said the possibility of her having something called ‘neuromyelitis optica’ was high.”

“Neuromyelitis optica…Devic’s disease, huh?”

“I’m sorry ma’am, but you’re going to have to enlighten me on this one.” “It’s a type of myelitis, and another disease where your senses slowly go numb, apart from weakening your legs and a gradual degradation of eye- sight, all the way until you’re blind. They usually give you steroids early on to treat it, and indomethacin to lessen the pain.” Miss Tōko giggles lightly, the same kind of laugh she always does when she comes up with a solu- tion to a difficult problem. It’s always a bit scary, kind of like the professor I talked to yesterday. “Now I see. Yeah, no wonder she became like that. Hers isn’t congenital or acquired, but something artificial. She was made to lose her sense of pain. I see what that family tried to do now. Exactly the

opposite of what the Ryōgi dynasty does.”

I try to brace myself for the wave of half-monologue, half-dialogue that she is inevitably entering, and ask for more clarification. “So what exactly is this ‘indomethacin’ stuff?”

“A drug for pain relief. See, whatever kind of wound you get, you get pain, and it’s a reaction to outside influences that are impeding you. Your body produces some chemicals that stimulate some nerves that send a signal to your brain saying ‘Oh my God, I am going to die,’ and that’s how you get pain. Aspirins and indomethacin work by controlling your pros- taglandin production, and in turn your arachidonic acid, which sensitizes your neurons to pain. A large enough dose of indomethacin can basically take away your pain.”

Miss Tōko says all of this in almost one breath, and her face has that rare look of enjoyment that she finally has an opportunity to explain all of this. Honestly, though, these “arachidons” and stuff all sound like dinosaur names, and it’s really all Greek to me. “So in other words, it’s medicine that numbs you to pain, right?”

“Well, not exactly,” she replies. “Opioids would probably be much better. Stuff works like endorphins in your brain: gets you right up, and makes your central nervous system work smooth as butter, but—” I glare at her sharply to indicate that she should probably hold back on explaining more medical terms. “Oh…well, we’ll leave that subject alone for now, I guess. Point is, Fujino’s father knew that her power was tied to her sense of pain, and he wanted to block it I suppose, but Fujino’s capability for sensation had to go with it. That’s why the father made Fujino OD on painkillers. Quite unlike the Ryōgi dynasty, who until this day still perform tireless rituals to get heirs close to magical potential. Sadly, the only result is that Fujino’s power wasn’t snuffed out, only suppressed for a time, and now it’s coming back in a big way. Kind of like when the mages around northern Africa sew their eyes shut, the paradigm being that it prevents mana from ‘leaking out’, except with Fujino it’s possibly less disturbing.”

Surprisingly enough, I recognize some of what Miss Tōko is saying. The same dubious rumors circulated when I was in Nagano: of the old Asaka- mi family occasionally producing children who, like the professor put it, played an entirely different card game. These children, born with super- natural capabilities, were shunned. So they finally resorted to medicines to artificially dull the pain, and the powers.

“The worst part is how she can never go back to normal,” I respond. “Whether she’s taking the medicine and loses her power, or not taking them and getting the powers back. The professor you referred me to called her a ‘living paradox’, because she doesn’t have the necessary subcon- scious ability to assimilate experience like others do, like you said, and so she can’t sympathize with anybody. If only she was still pain insensitive at on that night, then just maybe she wouldn’t have started to kill.”

“Come now, let’s not denigrate pain,” Miss Tōko says, cutting me off. “You blame one thing, you make sure it’s the wound. No matter how much it hurts, we need pain. Do you think you pull your hand out of the fire because it’s on fire? No, you pull it out because it’s hot and it hurts. If we didn’t have pain, we wouldn’t pull our hands out until it’s a smolder- ing stump. Just look at Fujino Asagami, who, as soon as her sense of pain returned from being struck in the back, proceeded immediately to defend herself. For the first time, she recognized those people were dangerous, and were hurting her. Still, killing them might have been going a bit too far.”

“Ma’am, my question from the last time we met still stands. Isn’t there anything we can do to help her? Can’t she be cured?”

“A wound you can’t cure only means death. Unfortunately, I think that’s the case we’re dealing with now.”

Sometimes I really have no idea how Miss Tōko can say things like that. She just put a human life on the spot, and here I am thinking she can still be saved, if only we understood the nature of her pain, if only we—

“Kokutō, I’m going to say it once more, with feeling. Hers is the kind of pain that can no longer be healed. Well, it’d be more accurate to say that she wasn’t wounded from the start.”

“Wait, I’m…not sure I know what you mean.”

“Tear your mind away from trying to be the good guy for a second and think about the wound itself. When was the last time you heard a deep stab wound fix itself up in two days?”

“Well, sure that’s true, but…” Wait. If what she’s saying is true, then haven’t we been operating from a mistaken perspective all this time? I must have the most puzzled look on my face since Miss Tōko is covering her mouth with a hand, barely holding back her laughter.

“While I applaud you for researching Fujino Asagami’s past, you neglect- ed looking up what she’s been up to in the present. She’s been seeing a doctor in the city for a month or two now, but she’s neglected to show up in the past twenty days.”

“Whoa, wait a minute. A doctor, here in Tokyo?!”

Miss Tōko cocks an eyebrow in surprise. “Kokutō, you’re good in investi- gation and following a lead, but you miss out on some of the most obvious things. The thing that people insensitive to pain are most scared about is something wrong going on in their bodies. Lacking pain, they don’t have the benefit of an early warning system on most of the weird hijinks a body can get into, so they go visit a doctor, much more often than an average person, just so they can get a look-see.”

I have to admit that I missed that one, so driven was I to find out anything in Fujino’s past that might tell me something about her motivations. Fujino acting in secret means that, at the very least, Fujino’s parents don’t know what Fujino has become now.

“To bring us back to Fujino and the mystery of her wound,” Miss Tōko begins again. “Fujino killing her abusers was the result of a simple mis- understanding, Kokutō. Those boys forced Fujino down, and their leader brought out a knife. Fujino thought she was going to get stabbed—andshe really was going to!—but she had already recovered her sense of pain at that point, and she probably unconsciously used her power. Between the stab and the twisting, Fujino’s was faster. What I’m seeing is that she twisted the head off of that guy like a fucking screw, and the blood spatter struck Fujino, making her think she was stabbed.”

I shake my head, trying to rid my mind of the visceral images Miss Tōko’s story is conjuring up. “There’s something wrong with that story. If Fujino’s sense of pain had returned, then she wouldn’t make that misunderstand- ing. There wouldn’t be any pain if she wasn’t really stabbed.”

“Fujino was in pain from the start, really,” Miss Tōko immediately replies. “I made the doctor that Fujino saw recently show me her clinical records. She’s has chronic caecitis, more commonly known as appendicitis. The pain in her abdomen isn’t from a knife, but from inside her body. If her sense of pain returned right before she was stabbed, the pain in her stomach told her mind that she was already stabbed. It must have happened so fast, Fujino was confused. Having been raised for most of her life not knowing pain, she didn’t even check to see if she actually was stabbed, because she didn’t have the experience of hurting real bad before, and the steps that people normally take in those situations. She’d look at her stomach and interpret the lack of a wound as a sign that it was already healed.”

“So it’s all just one big misunderstanding?”

“The wound itself is. But it doesn’t change the facts: Fujino’s been pushed over the edge. Ignoring whether or not she was even stabbed, the fact that the leader had brought a knife that night meant that he was seri- ous about killing Fujino. The only way she could have escaped that bar was to kill them. Unfortunately for Fujino, Keita Minato escaped. If everything was settled on that night, she might not have gone this far.” Miss Tōko snuffs out the cigarette she’s smoking and reaches into her pack for a fresh one. “Like Shiki said, she’s beyond help now.”

“Both of you keep saying that, but why is she?” I say, anger rising in my voice.

“Shiki was probably talking about the mental side of things. Fujino’s quest for revenge against the five people who violated her is, while murder, still somewhat justifiable. She crossed the line when she started kill- ing people unrelated to that incident. It’s the lack of any sense or reason behind it that truly made Shiki after Fujino’s blood. Despite having a taste for murder, I think Shiki still understands the weight of death, and the toll murder takes on someone. Notice how she doesn’t just slaughter people on the street willy-nilly. Fujino indulged her more primal passions, and Shiki can’t forgive her for that.”

Is Fujino really indulging, I wonder, or is she just running away? Miss Tōko continues:

“That’s Shiki’s reasoning, but I’m talking how she’s ‘beyond help’ physi- cally. Appendicitis, when left alone, can rupture your appendix and cause peritonitis. The inflammation results in extreme pain, probably comparable to being stabbed with a knife. Then you start getting fevers, cyanosis, shock from low blood pressure, all that good stuff. When it reaches the duode- num, you can die in half a day. It’s already been five days since the night of the 20th, and the appendix should long have ruptured now. Sad, but it’s terminal—she’s gonna bite it.” She says it clinically, with all the weight and delicacy of someone reporting on a science class. I’ll never be able to understand how she does that.

“Maybe if we hurry, we can still find her and—“

“Kokutō, the client for this job is Fujino Asagami’s father. The patriarch of the Asagami family told me himself. They can’t risk a scandal like this leaking out to the public, not with their well cultivated business reputa- tion on the line. The father must’ve known the family secret, and recog- nized the true nature of the incident on the bar as Fujino’s doing. He hired us to take her out, a ‘monster’ by his own words. Strange, isn’t it? The father is supposed to shelter their daughter. But now he’s the one taking a check out of his wallet to let us kill her. The world really is against her.” She concludes with a long, exasperated sigh. “We finish this job tonight. Shiki already left.”

Unbelievable. I tried to stop this, but now it’s actually happening.

“Son of a bitch,” I utter inadvertently. Whether it is directed to myself, Miss Tōko, Shiki, Fujino’s father, or Fujino herself, even I don’t know.

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