Published at 4th of December 2019 10:06 am

Volume 2, Part V: Paradox Spiral I

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

In the first few days of October, the streets already blow over with the bitter cold.

Winds with fingers of ice grant gentle caresses to the lamp posts and dumpsters. Usually, the city still looked alive at this hour, at 10 o’clock in the evening. But tonight is different. Tonight, scattered pools of light in the streets, from display stores to the street lamps, only serve to accentuate the little shadows and silhouettes playing across them. Winter is coming early this year, and considering the temperature, it wouldn’t be at all out of place to discover snow falling tonight. The silhouettes of people exiting the train station, jackets worn and collars fluttering in the wind, lack all the life they normally have. Like automatons, they walk at brisk paces to their homes, not stopping for a look at a display window or a warm cup of coffee. They hurry because they all want the warmth and familiarity of their homes.

From the wave of people, to the heat that refuses to gather, and even the shops whose lights seem just a little bit dimmer; the boy witnesses all of it. He sits beside a vending machine situated in a little nook beside the avenue, idly watching the people exiting the train station. Almost as if to hide himself, he sits hugging his legs to his chest, and he cuts a pitifully thin figure that makes it hard to determine his gender from afar. His hair, arranged like a bundle of unkempt straw, is dyed red. He looks to be around the age of sixteen or seventeen. His eyes are narrowed, yet they don’t seem to be particularly interested in anything. He shivers under strange clothes: dirty jeans and a blue jacket one or two sizes too big for him, with nothing else to cover his top. It isn’t surprising to see him with teeth chattering.

He sits there for a long time, and just when the number of people exiting the station begins to thin noticeably, he finds himself surrounded by a number of other people.

“Yo, Tomoe,” says one of them, not even attempting to hide the scorn in it. The red-haired boy doesn’t respond.

“Ah c’mon, Enjō, don’t be a dick and ignore us,” he persists. Lifting the boy by his jacket, he forces the boy from the ground. The boy saw all of them now, five people surrounding him, stand at almost the same height as he does, and it is easy to tell their ages are not so far apart. “What, just ‘cuz you stopped going to school, we strangers now?” The same person continues. “Oh, now I get it. Our little Tomoe is a fucking grown up now, so he don’t talk to kids like us anymore, eh?”

The rest of his companions all snicker in response. But when the noise dies down, Tomoe continues to ignore them. Frustrated, the boy holding Tomoe by the jacket lets it go with a grunt, only to bring his hand back up in a fist, punching Tomoe in the face. He collapses back to the ground, and he hears a distinct clinking sound of something metallic falling out of his pocket.

“Hey, don’t even think about sleeping’, man.” More laughter. Hearing that clinking sound seems to jolt Tomoe Enjō from whatever state of shock he had been suffering up to now. He whispers his own name, like some sort of resuscitative ritual, remembering who he was, why he was here. With senses regained, he looks at the boys surrounding him, finally remembering them as his classmates, former “friends.” Normal students who played at being adult.

Preying on weak people like me, Tomoe thinks.

“Aikawa, right?” says Tomoe. “Hell you doing here at this hour?” “Right back at you, man. We all been worried you be suckin’ dick behind the restaurants just to get by. I mean, seeing as you’re such a girl. Am I right?” He gestures and looks over his shoulder toward his compatriots.

Because of his overly thin build, Tomoe has been called a girl in school for as long as he can remember. He never paid any heed to it, and that is largely how he reacts now. However, he does pick up the empty aluminum can he had been drinking from some minutes ago.

“Hey, Aikawa,” Tomoe calls. Aikawa returns his attention to him. “Wha—“

As soon as Tomoe sees that pimple-ridden face turn towards him, mouth half open to speak, he thrusts the can violently into it, twisting the can as deeply as he can inside Aikawa’s mouth. He quickly follows it up by slapping the can as hard as he can muster. Now it is Aikawa’s turn to collapse. Tomoe’s slap partially crushed the can, causing the surface to bend sharply in places, and when Aikawa coughs it up on the ground, both the can and his mouth are dripping with blood.

Aikawa’s companions are dumbstruck. They thought they would just mess with their former classmate, maybe even take some of his money. It never occurred to them that it would turn to violence.

“Still shit for brains, I see,” Tomoe remarks wryly. Then he kicks him sharply and repeatedly in the head, almost like he wants to kill him, a stark contrast to his seemingly uninterested demeanor earlier. Aikawa doesn’t move an inch, though whether it’s because he’s unconscious or his neck is broken, Tomoe doesn’t know. After a few quick kicks, Tomoe makes a break for it, before Aikawa or his cronies can come to their senses. Thinking the crowd will just slow him down, Tomoe turns instead towards one of the side alleys where he can make good his escape in the sharp, confusing turns. It’s only a second or two after he starts running that the group he left behind start to process what just happened before them. He hears their angry calls as they start after him.

“Asshole thinks he can just do this to us? Let’s kill that son of a bitch!” says a voice echoing in the alleyways, whipping his companions into a frenzy. Through the capillaries of the city, they chase Tomoe like live game, baying for blood.

“Kill that son of a bitch.”

I let the words bounce around in my head, and I laugh heartily to myself. I heard the verve in their voice, heard how serious they were, and they would probably follow through on it when they catch up to me. But they’re faking it, as much as anyone else who says it jokingly. They don’t know what happens to you after you do it for the first time. They don’t know what killing someone does to a person. But see, I do.

I killed someone, just before I went to the train station. I remember gripping the knife, and feeling the tenderness each time I stabbed. Just thinking back on it makes me shiver and want to throw up. My teeth start to chatter again, and my mind recoils on the memory with the force of a hurricane. Those guys don’t understand how far it removes you, and that’s why they can say they’ll “kill” as if they’re just going for a little walk.

Guess I’ll be the one to teach them, then. I focus my mind and allow my laughter to recede into a little smile. I don’t consider myself a particularly violent guy. I believe in an eye for an eye, but tonight’s the first time I’ve ever busted someone up who just hit me. Disproportional response. It ain’t like me, but I did it. Maybe because I actually liked the feeling of not holding back.

I come to a narrow alley sandwiched between two buildings, far from the main road and any curious eyes or ears. I stop here, right at the corner, thinking it a prime spot for the act. Before long, they catch up, and things happen in snapshots of time. One of them, ahead of the others, rounds the corner of the alley, and I take a fraction of a second to confirm it’s who I want it to be before I spring on him. The palm of my left hand shoots up to connect with his jaw. I think fast. In an amateur fistfight, it often comes down to endurance in an exchange of blows. I know I don’t have a hair’s breadth of a chance winning like that, especially outnumbered, so if I’m going to do this, I do it to kill them one by one, without hesitation, before I’m surrounded.

The guy I just hit tries to return the favor, but before that happens, I thrust a finger into his left eye. It feels kind of like slightly hard jell-o when I twist my finger around.

His scream is enough to send a chill down anyone’s spine. Before he has time to regain their composure, though, I grab the guy’s head and, putting my whole body behind it, finish him off by slamming the head into the wall. A dull thud as it makes impact with the concrete, and when I let go of him, his body slides against the wall towards the ground, the back of his head leaving a lazy blood trail on the wall and his left eye a dripping, bloody mess. Still, he’s probably not dead from just that. I pull my eyes away from him to meet the other four still coming, and if I’m lucky, they’ll be just that little bit hesitant after they heard their friend screaming his guts out.

When the rest of them turn the corner, they are immediately taken aback at the sight of their friend. Just as I thought, they are unprepared. They’ve probably seen their share of accidentally spilled blood in street fights, but they’ve never seen a body that looks like it’s bleeding its life out on the asphalt. Wasting no time, I attack the nearest guy, slapping him, and then grabbing him by the hair. I lower his head fast, then bring my knee up to his kindly waiting face. A low crunching sound tells me that I may have broken his nose. I give him three more kneeings for good measure, then bring my elbow down at his skull. The impact is a painful shockwave traversing my arm for a brief moment.

Two down. My knee is a dark red, soaked in the second man’s blood. “Enjō, you motherfucker!”

That last one finally pushes the rest of them over the edge. Without any sense of reason or forethought, they jump into the brawl all at the same time. That’s when I know I’m done. I can’t take on three guys at the same time, and they prove me right.

They lash out punches and kicks, pushing me back against the same wall I slammed their friend against not moments ago until they force me to the ground. I feel the knuckles digging into my cheeks, and I reel from every kick that lands on my stomach. Nevertheless, they’re not fighting the same way I did earlier. No ferocity. They’re not gonna kill me. They don’t want to. And yet, if they keep this up, they will eventually kill me. They won’t know that they’ll break bones, cause internal bleeding, and make it more difficult for me to breathe. The fact that my death will be a slow slide into nothingness instead of a quick and easy one grants me a measure of anguish.

See? Even if they don’t mean to, people still end up killing other people.

As the hits continue to land on my body, I wonder: Between people like me who truly seek to kill, and people like them who will just commit an unintentional homicide, who carries it heavier in the end?

My body is already covered in bruises, but the pain is becoming routine, almost welcoming now. I’m sure that bunch are getting really into it in their own way, too. It won’t be long before they start to enjoy it, and they won’t be able to stop themselves.

“Now don’t we look cute with that face, Enjō?” says one of them. He thrusts his foot keenly into my chest, and my violent coughing immediately afterwards leaves the taste of blood in my mouth. I’m down for the count, and I realize I have maybe a precious few seconds before they complete- ly beat the life out of me, the same life that I never valued as anything above expendable. A fist hits my eye, and half my vision goes dark. At that moment, I hear a faint sound. Then a beat of silence. Another beat. They don’t seem to be moving.

The noise resounds again like a bell: the singular, clacking tone of wood. With pained eyes I see the three guys, heads already turned towards the sound emanating from the alley’s entrance. I train my vision to the same direction even as the swelling in my eyes grow more painful as I move them.

My mind stops.

Silhouetted against the mouth of the alley is a person who clearly doesn’t belong here. The clacking sound we’d all heard earlier comes from the person’s wooden geta footwear; the dark finish, red strap, and oval shape clear even from this distance. A woman’s geta. The clothing on the figure is peculiar to say the least: a red leather jacket atop a dead plain orange kimono.

The shadow advances, each step like a reverberating wooden bell. The person’s movement is a hypnotic sway of clothes and carelessly cut ink- black hair that invite surrender, and I almost forget myself. Wraithlike white skin, and eyes of clear void. Surely not the usual everyday sight in a back- lane filled with scattered bottle shards and discarded syringes.

A woman…a girl. I almost can’t tell her gender, but somehow, I know she’s a girl.

“Hey,” she calls out, continuing to venture deeper into the alley and closer to us. The three who had surrounded me now break off to meet her. It’s painfully obvious what they’re planning on doing to the girl.

“Ain’t nothing for you here, lady.” The trio flex their fingers for a new round of violence, the excitement in their gait barely contained. They move to surround the lone girl. Unable to move more than an inch, and with my speech coming out as strained gasps of air, I can do nothing except to curse them in my mind. I chose this place so as not to involve anyone else, and yet here she is in defiance of all probability. And now, no doubt only because she chose to turn the wrong alley for a shortcut home, she’ll be a victim as well.

“I ain’t playing, girl!” one of the three shouts. “Don’t you got ears to hear what I just said?”

The girl is silent again now, but in a flash, she extends a hand, using it to grab the arm of one of the approaching boys. She pulls. Her posture changes subtly to one that puts her entire weight behind the action, and her purchase on the boy’s arm then forces him to the ground in one violent motion. Watching it from where I lie, the entire thing seemed to go frame- by-frame, as if I was turning the hand crank on an old viewing machine.

The remaining two attempt to close in on the girl, and she immediately strikes the closest one in the chest with her palm, causing him to crumple like a ragdoll to the ground, unconscious. It amazes me that she knocks them out of commission with such ease, all in the space of about five or so seconds, while I exerted so much effort to take out an equal number of people. The last one must have realized this fact as well, since as soon as the second man is down he starts to turn on his heels and run screaming. She soon ends that with a swift roundhouse kick delivered straight to the guy’s head, with barely the noise of rustling clothes to its credit. Like the previous two, he is rendered unconscious.

“Ouch. Literally hard head on that last one,” she grumbles as she fixes the creases on her kimono. I keep my eyes fixed on her, wondering if she’s even going to talk to me. It’s strange but not altogether uncomforting that I can still slightly distinguish her form in this isolated place, even in the absence of light. “Hey, mister punching bag,” she calls out as she turns to me. I try to speak but it only results in me coughing. She reaches inside a pocket in her leather jacket and pulls a small object out, throwing it on the ground within my reach. “Dropped it back there on the street. S’yours, right?”

I turn my eyes sideways to look at it, and see a single, shining key. It must have fallen out of my pocket when the guys were roughing me up. My key to a house that I’ve already tried to stop caring about. She must have come here just to give it back to me.

She turns her back on me without a single word and starts to make her way back out of the alley with all the airiness of her previous entrance: the relaxed gait of a casual night stroll, leaving me lying on the ground to fend for myself.

“Wai—,” the word comes half-formed out of my mouth, and I reach out my hand towards her. Though I’m hesitant to call more attention than I needed to from a girl who just took out three guys in the time it took me to take out one, I couldn’t stand just being left here like a fake toy, lost among the refuse of the city.

“Wait.” The word comes out, though in a weak breath. I try to redouble the strength in my voice and shout. “Just wait, for crying out loud!”

I try to stand, and every bone in my body throbs with pain from the attempt. I end up having to support my half-standing posture with a hand on the wall, itself aching from having to exert pressure. At least my noise- making manages to stop the girl, who now directs her cold gaze in my direction.

“What now?” she says, her voice still as calm as before. “Look, if you dropped anything else, good luck finding it.”

“Are you just going to leave these dudes here?” I manage to protest in between bouts of labored breathing. The girl in the kimono takes in the scene around her, casting her eyes downwards almost as if it’s her first time looking at it. Her sight lingers on the two persons who I took care of in my haphazard, improvised fashion, then finally looks back at me with upturned eyes and a curious sigh.

“You don’t have to worry about them. That one,” she says, motioning her head towards the first of the two, “will probably get an eyepatch and be doomed to do pirate impressions for the rest of his life. The other will have trouble breathing with his nose for a while. But no one’s dead. I’d be much more worried about what the first guy who wakes up will do to you. And yet, here you are, implying that we should get them some help?”

“I…guess?” I respond.

“Well see, that puts us in a pickle. Who do we call, hmm? The police? An ambulance, maybe?” Her eyes narrow with each sentence that prods me. I wasn’t thinking about calling the police. Maybe the hospital. But they’d ask questions. If I mentioned self-defense…maybe the police would be faster, but—

“Five-oh are out of the question.”

“And why is that?” she asks, but it feels like she already knows the answer. Her eyes continue to bore into me. There’s no use in hiding it anymore. She’s got me, and if I tried to hide it, she’ll just ask more questions. And so I say it.

“Because…I’m a murderer.” As I say it out loud, as much to myself as to her, time seems to stop and all things grow silent. Far from my expectation of her being shocked, however, she only walks toward me. Her eyes scan me up and down.

“Well, you don’t look like one.” She looks me over, an eyebrow cocked and a hand on chin and lip paused in pensive observation. Overtaken by the moment, and feeling quite shocked by her doubt, I feel compelled to explain.

“It’s true! It weren’t a few hours ago, I swear. I took a kitchen knife and stabbed her over and over in the stomach until everything was all wet and mushy, then I cut off her head. You can’t tell me she ain’t dead after that!” I start to snicker in spite of myself. “The five-oh are all probably in my house wondering where the fuck I’ve gone, all scratching their heads ‘cause of another late night job. Just you wait, I’ll be all over the morning news tomorrow!”

It took me a while to notice that I was making a sort of strange laugh after I said that, the kind of noise that lies somewhere in that ambiguous space between laughter and sobbing. The kimono-clad girl gives me time to calm myself down before talking again.

“Right,” she says, unsurprised. “Well, cool, I guess. You’ve convinced me. Let’s put off contacting anyone unless you want your mornings to have significantly more iron bars than usual. Guess that explains why you’re shirtless. I thought that was what all the cool kids run with these days.”

Her cold fingers brush over my chest with a light, almost curious touch. “Hey,” I say, but with little force behind it. She was right. I dumped my shirt since it was covered in so much blood I’d get noticed easily. I just grabbed my jacket to compensate as I ran out of the house. “Ain’t you even gonna say something about me? I really did kill someone. You think I’m just gonna let you go, knowing what you know? Ain’t no difference between killing one person or two.”

That seems to grab her attention. She brings her face closer to mine, eyes half-closed in disappointment. “Yes,” she sighs. “There is.”

“There is what?” “A difference.”

Her presence is almost overpowering, even though I stand a head higher than her and she’s the one looking up at me. Her empty eyes never stop staring at me, and I gulp involuntarily. I’ve never seen anything like them before. The black irises are a tempting well that threatens to drown you endlessly. In my seventeen years, I’ve thought people can be many things: cruel, deceptive. But never beautiful. So overwhelmingly beautiful that I almost forget myself.

“I’m…a murderer,” I declare again. I feel that there is nothing more to say. The girl casts her bewitching glance away from me and lowers her head.

“I know. I’m one of those, too.” She doesn’t explain further. There is no need to. She turns on her heels, and with the wind ruffling her clothes and the sound of her geta on the asphalt she starts to leave. I didn’t want her to disappear. Not tonight.

“Wait!” I run to catch up to her, but with my injuries still getting the better of me, I fall to the ground. I stand up again, and look straight at the girl, unwavering. “If we really are the same breed of person, then help me,” I yell with such uncharacteristically reckless abandon, casting away reason and shame. The girl’s eyes open in surprise.

“Same breed? Well, I certainly know what it feels like to have that empty space in your chest. But what do you expect me to help you with? The crime of your murder, or taking care of your wounds? Either way, I can’t do anything for you.”

“Sooner or later, someone will spot us here. Maybe you could hide me.” She ponders the suggestion with a scratch of her head and annoyed grumbling, probably the most human thing she’s done so far.

“Are you saying I should help you go find some place where you can hole up?”

“Yeah, someplace no one would think to try and find me.”

“It isn’t like there aren’t eyes all over this city, man. The only place you’re really ever likely to find any privacy is your own home,” she says, making a perplexed expression.

“Aren’t you fucking listening?” I inadvertently shout. “I’m asking you ‘cause I can’t go back to my house! Maybe you could, oh, I dunno, take me to your house, asshole!” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. The pain is making me lose my temper. At first I think I’m going to regret saying that, but the girl just nods in understanding, letting the entire thing slide.

“That it? Well, that’s a simple request. If my house is fine with you, then you’re welcome to stay.”

Without even helping me to stand up by myself or offering a helping hand, she starts to walk again, the movement of her back telling me to keep close and follow. With renewed strength to my step that I didn’t know from where in my battered body I obtained, I pursue her. The sound of her clacking steps, and the sensation of the asphalt and broken bottle glass beneath my feet seemed to make both the pain on my body and mind ebb. Though I haven’t even asked her if she lived alone, or even what her name was, I think it too insignificant for the moment. I only see her silhouette, dimly lighted, guiding me like fate. It is the only thing I can see.

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