Published at 4th of December 2019 10:53 am

Volume 2, Part V: Paradox Spiral - VI

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

Metal bolts feel like they’re being hammered into my head in a steady metronomic pattern. The headache becomes worse every minute. Yet right now, I can’t seem to focus on it. With wildly chattering teeth, I hug my knees and lean against the wall in a fetal position, slipping in and out of recollection as I stare blankly at the opposite wall.

Goddammit. Hasit been hours since the madness in the Ōgawa Apartments, or only a few minutes? I can’t keep track anymore.

Ryōgi fought Alaya, and I stood there still as stone unable to do anything except watch. Alaya died, that much I could see at first. Ryōgi plunged the knife in his chest and neck, as deep as it would go. It would be a monstrous thing for him to survive that kind of assault. But he did. I saw the knife stuck to the base of his neck slide ever so slightly outward. I watched in a state of simultaneous disgust and morbid fascination as his muscle, moving by its own volition, slowly forced the intruding blade out of his own flesh, until finally the knife fell to the floor and bounced lightly toward me with a neat metallic sound.

Then with a subtle drawing of air, as though he had never stopped doing it, Alaya breathed again. The sound of the knife brought me back to consciousness. As Alaya didn’t seem to be moving, nor indeed to be taking notice of me, I assumed it would be fine to carefully crawl towards the knife and take it. I held it with both hands and looked back up at Alaya’s stock still figure, only to find his fearful eyes meeting mine.

Without thought, I screamed, dispelling any thoughts of me using that knife to make good on Ryōgi’s sacrifice. In a daze, I ran. Ran as fast as I could, thinking that Alaya would chase after me, and that if he did that, I was certainly a dead man. But it didn’t happen, and I escaped the building gasping for breath but not stopping until I reached the motorcycle parked outside. With it, I fled and tried to get as far away from that tower’s looming shadow as possible. And so I came here, back to Ryōgi’s room, the owner of which has just been captured…or killed.

I’d always found the room to be a bit drab, but it brings me a sense of security now, however false it may be.

Goddamit. Word of the night. It keeps repeating itself inside my head, an admonition of how much scum I am. Because in the end, like a coward, I left Ryōgi there to die. I saw my parents, or whatever they were die again right in front of me, but it’s not registering all that well on my mind. I saw my nightmare realized before my eyes and I don’t rightly know what to feel about it yet. At least I found out what they really were, but the events of the past hours have wiped my mind clean of any thought except one.

“Goddamit.” I whisper it now. My trembling won’t stop, even though right now I can be sure I’m alone. Hah. Alone. What has my isolation served me up to now? What can I really do alone? Not help Ryōgi out, that’s for damn sure.

“Goddamit!” I yell, each syllable a mocking sound that worsens the pain in my head. Thinking about saving Ryōgi is suicide if it means I have to fight Alaya. And how can I even do that when even the memory of that man makes me draw in closer, makes the shadows just that more threatening? No, I’m in no state to even entertain the thought of rescuing her.

There is the sound of highly tuned and repeating clockwork emanating from a place I can’t trace. Pain shoots through my arm. Must’ve hit it on something when I was running. I’m tired. So tired. The headache won’t stop, the pain in my joints has been going on forever, and even breathing doesn’t seem to come any easier to me, and it becomes so hard to bear that a tear streaks down my cheek. With my knees held close, I start to cry alone and with pitiful mumbles. In the end, just like other people, I never escaped being fake. I wanted so much to be real like Ryōgi, but it turns out you can’t run from what you are.

I had the one final chance to be real. My eyes find themselves dwelling on the bed, the usual sight of a sleeping Ryōgi somehow disquieting. In her place is the sword that she had assembled and casually thrown to the bed just a few hours ago. She saved me. She believed me when I said I was a murderer, even made it sound like it wasn’t so bad, and it made me want to be with her, like kindred. It’s the last thing about me that isn’t false, and I cling to it. She’s done so much, and I can’t leave her just like I did.

“What—”, I whisper, finding many ways to finish the question in my head. What am I busting my ass for? What am I trying to protect? What the hell am I thinking? I’m not really sure just yet at this point, but it’s the first time I’ve thought of not looking out for myself. Ryōgi represents something more and something bigger than I am. I ran from my house the first time with blood on my hands and needing someone. She gave that to me, and now she needs me.

Then will you die for me? Her question returns to me, and I remember the confidence in me when I said my answer. I guess I already know what I have to do. Then what the fuck am I sitting around on my ass here for? Even if it’s borne from false conviction, I need to stand up and get out that door.

“I know what I said, Ryōgi. And if it helps you any, I’m gonna die for you,” I whisper to myself as I retrieve the knife that she once used, hoping I hold it with the same firmness with which she did.

I begin to take a step towards the door when the doorbell rings loud and clear, piercing the pervasive silence that had blanketed the room since I went inside. I freeze instantly, and raise the knife in the futile emulation of a defensive stance. Did Alaya follow me after all, or is it just a visitor? No, I know Ryōgi doesn’t get any visitors. Alaya then. Do I stay silent and pretend no one’s home? No, Alaya won’t be driven away that easily. Fuck it, I decided to do this, and I’ll do it. I’ll attack him the instant I open the door. Maybe I’ll kill him, or at least drive him away for now. Fat chance, but the only chance I’ve got.

I hold the knife raised and at the ready, approach the door, and then turn the doorknob. I swing the door open wildly and as fast as I can, catching the man on the other side of it with a grapple with my free hand. I immediately drag and throw him inside the room. He hits the linoleum floor hard, and I close the door shut with a swift nudge of my heel. Pressing my advantage while he’s still confused, I sit myself on top of him, raise the knife above me— —and stop.

The man lying dazed and blinking below me, with his black framed glasses and similarly black hair, doesn’t look even remotely threatening. And though he certainly looks a bit older than me and wears a weirdly all-black ensemble, he looks far from hostile; in fact, he looks more annoyed than anything. I look at him suspiciously as I whisper, “Who the fuck are you? You and Ryōgi know each other?”

“Yeah. And you’re Shiki’s, what, friend?” he asks with a tone that would make you think he hadn’t been pulled and forced down hard to the floor only moments earlier, but instead had just met me on the street.

“Me? I, er—” What could I answer? “Fuck that. The important thing is, Ryōgi’s not here. Get your ass back home.” I stand up, allowing him to leave, but he doesn’t, instead staring intensely at my hand. “What, fall got you bad? Look, I’m sorry for the violent greeting, alright? But I don’t have time to be messing with you just now.”

“That’s Shiki’s knife. What’s it doing with you?” he asks, his voice gaining a sudden sharpness. There is only a small pause before I can lie.

“She lent it to me for safe-keeping. No business of yours.” I try to look at something else while I say this, determined not to let him read me, but it’s useless. He stands up and looks at me straight.

“It is my business. She barely lets anyone lay so much as a finger on any of her blades, let alone that particular knife. Either Shiki changed that particular policy overnight—” He grabs my shirt collar with a force I didn’t expect. “—or you took it from her somehow. Excuse me for thinking it’s the latter.”

I fling off his hand from my collar as I look away from him again, not because I didn’t want him to read my face, but because I couldn’t stand to look at the honesty in his eyes.

“It’s not either. The truth is, she dropped the knife, which is why I need to hurry up and give it back.” I turn my back on him and head back inside the room to prepare what I need to bring when I leave.

“Wait, so you’re not one of them?” I hear him ask from behind me. I was all set to ignore him, but there’s something in his question that bugs me.

“Which ‘them’ are we talking about here?”

“The weirdos from the Ōgawa Apartments.” The mention of the ominous name caresses my mind like a soft whisper, and it stops me in my tracks. Briefly, I entertain the thought that he could be bluffing, but why would he? In the end, he interprets my lack of an answer in his own way.

“It’s true, then,” he sighs heavily. “Shiki really has been kidnapped.” He heads for the door.

“Hey!” I call out to stop him. If I’m right, I know what he’s planning to do. But I can’t let him go alone. For one, I’m pretty happy that I could have found what may be a potential ally and here he is about to run off alone when we have the same objective. I cross the room back toward the door.

“Hey, hold up!” I say as I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him before he goes out the door. Again we find ourselves in front of the doorway, but this time, I hope, in a much more different footing.

It was easy enough to make him listen once I told him we wanted the same thing, and so we explained our situations, both of us strangely forgetting to share each other’s name. Without going into too much detail, he explained that he’s a friend of Shiki’s from their high school days. Apparently, a red-coated man named Alba declared to him earlier this afternoon that they had Ryōgi.

At first I found it strange that it happened in the afternoon when me and Ryōgi definitely went to the building at night, but when I look at the clock beside her bed, it shows the time as around seven o’ clock in the evening, which means that I’ve been in this room for almost an entire day and I never even noticed it until I snapped out of it.

He explained that he knew a woman named Tōko that went to the Ōgawa Apartments for him, and he said he trusted her to get Ryōgi back. But with so much time having passed, he suspected that she might have been taken by surprise and could be captured or killed as well. Left alone, he couldn’t sit on his ass and wait and instead decided to take action by himself.

I explained everything about what happened last night. About the apartment’s east and west building. The two units that I supposedly used to live in. How Ryōgi was captured by Alaya. And reluctantly, I told him about the parents I killed, and the time when Ryōgi found me wandering around the city. Throughout the entire thing, he listens without flinching or casting any doubt on me, even when I, at the center of all this craziness, think that the words coming out of my mouth seem almost like a late punch line to a long-stale joke.

After I explain my situation, he wears a dead serious look, and asks me, “So what do you think about all of it?”

“Doesn’t really matter right now. The important thing right now is to go get Ryōgi out of that place.”

“I’m not talking about her right now, am I? I’m asking about your parents. Which of them do you think was real?”

I haven’t even given that matter too much thought, and yet here he is worrying about it as if it was his own problem. Unbelievable.

“It doesn’t make any difference. Just leave it be for now.”

“Actually, it might make a difference. If what Tōko said is true, then that apartment complex is liable to make you crazy just by being in it. It might not even be your fault that you killed your parents. Maybe it’s just the building messing you up.” His eyes don’t wander away from mine, sharp eyes with a different, even opposite intensity than Ryōgi’s. What he said doesn’t help me, though. I know what these hands did.

“No. I killed them, that much is true. It’s time I accepted that. I can’t ever wash my mom’s blood off my hands. Running from that only makes me a coward.”

“Well, how about your dad? So far you’ve only been saying stuff about your mom. Look back closely. Maybe you only killed your mother.”

“Fucking give it up already! He’s dead, alright! I saw his fucking corpse so—” I hesitate. I saw his corpse for sure, but was it really me that killed him? If I go back to that night in my head, I remember real clear how it went with mom, but now that I think about it, I don’t remember how I killed dad at all. Maybe because, just like the story those half-year old bodies me and Ryōgi found in the east building told… …mom had already killed him. The same way the fake mom of the fake Enjō family in the other end of the building is surely killing him again this very moment, surely killing the fake me in the next minute or so, every night without fail.

So I was never running from a terrible dream. Only running from an even worse reality, and I with these hands, I tried to end it. It takes me a while to notice that my teeth are beginning to chatter.

“Leave it be, for chrissakes,” I try to say emphatically, but it comes out as more nervous than I’d intended. “Maybe you’re forgetting what we’re actually here for.” I shelve the thought of my parents in my head for a while. I certainly have more time to deal with that later. “So you got a plan, right? If you were planning to go alone in the first place, then you should have something up your sleeve.”

“Well, maybe,” he says hesitantly. “I dunno, maybe we take this to the blue uniforms or something.”

What the hell is he on?

“Oh, sure let’s just call them up and say we’ve got ourselves some magic problems. And even if they do believe us, there’s hardly any time left. Are you serious?”

He shrugs with an indication that that was the answer he was expecting. “Not really, but I had to hear it from you straight. Look, you’re obviously in a bit of a hurry to bust in without a plan there, but be realistic here. I know Shiki’s important, but you’re life is just as valuable, and you only got the one.”

“Hah! You were ready to do the same thing minutes ago. As if you would understand. There’s nothing for me. No one to help me, and no one else I can help—except Ryōgi. I swore I’d help her, you know. And you better bet I’m gonna do exactly that. It’s the last—”

I feel a lump in my throat rising, and somehow I can’t finish the sentence, and I get the same feeling I got when I swore to Ryōgi at knife point. I only want to help her, maybe even to die helping her. There’s no point in living a life full of worrying, constantly looking over my shoulder without a reason to keep me going. No, I’m done. But dying doesn’t need to be worthless. The last thing that can give me meaning is saving Ryōgi. After all, what better way to go out than to die for the girl you like? This guy…he knows what I’m about. He knew what I wanted to do even before I said it, with those pointed eyes of his.

“Well, I don’t know if you catch my drift,” I mutter weakly. It’s the only thing left I can say. He stands up from the floor slowly and without a sound.

“Mmm…maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But we’ll soon find out, won’t we? Before we get Shiki back, we’ve got to go to this place I know first. Just follow my lead, Tomoe Enjō.”

He rushes toward the door, opens it, and gets out faster than I can ask him how he knows my name, and soon the question fades from my mind as I follow him back out into the city’s cradle of night.

Me and the guy walk away from Ryōgi’s apartment, going to the nearest train station in the busy commercial district. I follow him as we ride in a direction that unexpectedly goes away from the Ōgawa Apartments, and eventually we get off at a lazy station. This is a residential project part of town very much far from the madding crowd of downtown. Even the station, with its unmaintained flooring and lack of turnstiles, would seem deserted if not for the occasionally flickering fluorescents providing it with lighting. In front of it stand two small, quaint convenience stores standing in solemn company, though it looks like they’re without customers right now and are dead for the night.

“This way,” the guy in the glasses says after studying the local street layout in the station. He starts walking at a brisk pace, and I try to follow along as best as I can. We maintain our pace for a few minutes, him leading the way. No matter how far we go, I observe only houses to our left and right in various states of repair, all quiet with a light or two on, all of them probably having just finished dinner and the people already starting to wind down. Our steps on the concrete sidewalk are the only things we can hear, and it makes it seem as though the entire area is blanketed with some kind of vow of silence that we’re violating. The streets are narrow, making the sidewalks even more so, and the darkness is held back only barely by the pools of light made by dim streetlights. The occasional dumpster provides homes for stray dogs on the prowl, but elsewhere the streets are colored with human detritus.

I gather that this was the guy’s first time in this neighborhood. At first I thought this side trip was to get some sort of preparation for rescuing Ryōgi, but now that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’ve been generous with my silence ever since we left Ryōgi’s apartment, but now I’m starting to get irritated. We really don’t have the time to be taking a leisurely stroll.

“Alright, cut the crap,” I say, breaking the silence. “You can tell me where we’re going now.”

“Just a little further,” he answers without looking over his shoulder. “Look, over there,” he points a few houses farther in front of him. “It’s a park. And then there’s the empty lot right beside it.”

As I follow him we eventually pass the park he referred to, which seems as deserted as the rest of the area, though somehow I imagine this one is similarly deserted in daytime. In it, there is a playground with the ground flattened, lacking the slide and jungle gym that’s present in any half-decent playground. The poor excuse for bars that hold up the two swings are red with rust; nothing’s been reflected off of them for years, probably.

“Wait a minute—” something flits by my mind.

I know this park…from the childhood memories that I compartmentalized in a part of my brain. There were memories there, memories of playing in the mud and sand. I stand stock still in front of the park, leaving the man to go on ahead, not noticing I’d stopped. He himself halts in front of a single house beyond the empty lot beside the park. After taking a moment to collect myself, I hurry and chase after him.

When I approach him, he looks back at me with sad, almost regretful eyes. Spurred on by that, I cast my gaze at the house that he had been staring at only a moment ago, now in front of both of us where I can get a better look.

My heart skips a beat.

It’s a small, quaint bungalow. Half of the gate is gone, seemingly torn from the spot, and the other half a rusting iron mess. The small garden between the gate and the house is a chaotic mess of weeds grown tall and wild, encroaching upon the walls of the house, themselves suffering from chipped, peeling, or cracked paint. A ruin. When was the last time a person lived within?

I try to speak but no words come. My eyes remain affixed on the longforgotten ruin, and unaware, I cry. Not a cry of sorrow, regret, or pain, but only a flow of tears that I am unable to stop. It’s not the same. Everything’s different. But the soul remembers. It’s something I can hide but will never be able to forget, even ten, twenty, or thirty years on. This place will probably always catch up with me.

My first home.

The home I’d lived in until I was eight years old, but a life that seems an eternity and a day ago for me to almost forget.

Tell me, Enjō. Where’s home for you? When I once answered that seemingly simple question, she looked unsatisfied, even disappointed as she shook her head. That isn’t what I asked. I’m asking about the place you really want to go back to. Well, if you don’t know, can’t say I didn’t expect it.

Is this what you meant, Ryōgi?

But what’s in here except a decaying, collapsing ruin of a house? Only memories. For a while, I remember my parents as they were before I killed them: the abusive father that ruled like a king, and the acquiescent mother that would only say yes on command. The parents who gave me no food to warm my belly, or clothes to warm my body. The parents that did nothing except be a burden to me, and whose deaths I cared less for than Ryōgi. If that’s all true, why am I still crying?

When I saw their dried husks in the Ōgawa Apartments, there was also a numbness similar to the numbness in me now, and I couldn’t bring myself to move, like I’d forgotten something important and it haunted me. But now, with a difficulty that made my feet feel like they were in water, I walk past the gate, and into the small, cramped garden. It seemed bigger when I was a child.

The wideness of the garden; the father that patted me on the head with a laugh; the mother that saw me off to school wearing a smile; these are what I remember now. The reality of the now almost makes me doubt the truth of it, like you would when dreaming a dream good and true, but waking up to a something more a lie than the dream. But I know what my mind can call back, and all of it was no lie, only a clear happiness hidden inside the depths of neurons and firing synapses.

Tomoe, I hear a voice say, somewhere in the past. When I turned around to face it, I saw the front door of the house, and the determined face of a man. Come here. I’m going to give you something special. A kid, still a boy, red-haired, and with a body thin like a girl’s walked up to the tall man.

What’s this, dad?

The key to the house. Don’t lose it, okay? Even though you’re still just a boy, you can keep mom safe with that.

But it’s just a key.

Exactly. The key to the house protects our family, so that even when mom and dad are out of the house, it’ll be alright. It’s proof of the fact that we’re family, and we protect each other.

How much could the boy have understood within the words of his father? And yet he took the key from his father’s hand, grasping it firmly as he answered.

I get it. I won’t lose it. Don’t worry, dad. I’ll keep the house safe, even when I’m all alone.

All strength leaves my legs, and I stumbled onto my back. I try to get up, but my legs refuse it. The memories are all so clear now. The key was important all because it protected my family, a proof that a family to protect even existed. And like a curse descending on us, the family started to fracture when I no longer remembered it.

The past—when my mom could still be kind, and my dad could still be good, when they both treasured their son—that was a more definitive truth. The time when the years passed, and that truth was lost, was when I decided that everything was a lie. I was a complete idiot. I only lived on the day to day, judging my parents as worthless because I thought they couldn’t get themselves right. I isolated myself from their little gestures, from mom looking like she was trying to say something but couldn’t every time I came home from work. But I never thought about what happened to them, how dad must have never gotten a job because he kept getting refused because of the record of that accident, and how the pressure of the people around him must have gotten to him. Or how mom soldiered on despite the rumors and gossip that saw her gaining and losing minimum wage jobs over and over again. They did it for me, but I forgot this and became a criminal instead of a victim. I turned my back on them, and we forgot each other. Mom had it harder than me, being abused by dad at night and working silently by day, never having anyone to reach out to. We were all broken by the time I’d dirtied my hands with her blood, but she had the worst of it.

If I’d looked over my shoulder to talk to her just once, maybe…maybe we could have gotten through it all.

“Here I am. The ultimate selfish idiot.” I cover my face, trying to stop the tears, or at least to hide them. Now’s the time to own up for my sins in their memory. It wasn’t the dream, or that crazy apartment that made me kill them. I did. I alone. I couldn’t help them at all. But to atone for it, I had to go to Ryōgi, get her out—

I lower a tear-soaked hand to the soil I am sitting on, and grab a handful of dirt. The tears have stopped now, but the weight of their deaths still hang. I grip the soil tightly in my fist, almost ceremonially. My own last rites to conclude this little stopover. The wind stops; a signal for me to go. To start sprinting like I’d always wanted to, no longer to run from what I’ve done, but to see it to the end.

When I look at the ground, I see the shadow of the guy in glasses standing a few feet away from me, saying nothing but looking intensely at me as I collect myself. He was right. I had to come here. Because he knew that, I knew I could count on him as an ally. Besides, it’s better than making enemies with the boyfriend of the girl you liked.

Without turning my head back I say, with a laugh, “Good entertainment watching me or what?”

Beside me, I see the shadow of him shaking his head bitterly. “Sorry. I knew your history, but I thought it wasn’t right to say anything. I was lucky to be born in a good house with good parents, so it didn’t feel right.”

A good guy, this. At least he knows the times when words said in comfort sound more like lies. But I also know not to turn down sympathy when I need it.

“Then keep the talking down, will ya? Gotta respect the moment, man. ‘Sides, I think I like you better not talking,” I say, still hard-pressed to stop my laughing.

“I do have to say this, though,” the guy starts to say, “and Lord knows I’ve been saying this to a certain someone more times than I care to count: if you think you’ve got nothing else left, then all you got is you. It’d be a big mistake to throw yourself away without good reason.”

The moonlight, so faint behind the cloudy night, nevertheless brightens the soil of the garden. I remember the night when I said to Ryōgi that I’d die for her, and she brushed it off like she didn’t want it. It’s only now that I realize that she was saying the same thing, and the fact that I’m being reprimanded by someone so different from her with the same essential argument is probably some kind of sign. The thought of it only makes me laugh even more.

“Think you can get up by yourself?” the guy asks as he extends a hand toward me. “Or do you need help?”

My laughing finally subsides. I look at the hand he offers for only a moment before I gently push it away. Even though all the joints in my body have been crying out in pain since the night before, my obstinacy has to be given some merit. And so Tomoe Enjō stands up.

“Thanks, but I don’t need it. After all, I’ve done everything alone up till now.” The man nods, pushing his glasses up a bit.

“Yeah, I guess I knew you’d say that.” For no apparent reason, he smiles. I return it.

We headed back to the guy’s house, an apartment in the downtown area, to get his car, which he’s currently driving at a steady if slow clip toward the Ōgawa Apartments. Stored inside his car is a duffel bag that has the tools we need for the task of rescuing Ryōgi.

He explains his simple plan as he drives. Going in by the front entrance is liable to get us noticed real easy. So this guy plans to be the bait by doing just that while I get to comb the place for Ryōgi, starting from the tenth floor, where she is most likely being kept since it’s the most inaccessible place. I get to be the one that finds Ryōgi simply by dint of the fact that Alaya would pay more attention to someone he doesn’t know going inside the building rather than me, who does know me and what little I can do to stop him directly.

“Still,” I begin to ask, “wouldn’t I just be spotted as easily as you would?” “Not if you go underground you won’t. Here’s a layout of the building.” With one hand on the steering wheel, he reaches with the other hand inside his bag resting on my lap, taking out a large piece of paper and setting it above the bag for me to see. It shows the floor plan and cross section of the Ōgawa Apartments. He points to it. “Look here. The place has an underground parking lot. There’s manhole access inside it, and you can get in from another manhole outside of the building. I don’t believe the parking lot is actually used right now, so it should be clear.”

It’s true. Though the elevator in the building has a “B” button on it, it doesn’t work, so I assumed it just wasn’t built yet. He continues. “That’s probably where they do all of the dirty work they need to keep that apartment running. Makes sense, since the noise won’t escape and nobody would’ve suspected a thing.”

“I’m guessing the jack, screwdrivers, crowbars, and manhole hook in here are for when I’m opening the manhole covers in and out?” I ask as I rummage through the duffel bag to see what else is inside it. The guy nods sternly.

A few more minutes pass, and we finally arrive at Kayamihama, the district of reclaimed land where the Ōgawa Apartments stand. He stops at an intersection about a kilometer away from the apartments, and we get off. With the time standing at ten o’ clock, not a soul can be found wandering the streets, even though this is one of the more well-lighted parts of town. The guy points towards the road a fair distance from where we’re standing.

“The manhole you need is a ways over there. When you’re in, just follow the westward flow of the water and count the number of manholes above you as you go. The seventh one should be the exit leading to the underground parking lot.”

“Yeah, yeah, I read the street infrastructure map inside the bag too, you know,” I grumble as I double check the equipment inside the duffel bag. I reach for my pocket just to see if Ryōgi’s knife is still there. From the car, I retrieve the sword we got from Ryōgi’s room before we went here. If in case I face Alaya, it wouldn’t hurt to have an abundance of weaponry at my disposal.

“Watches synchronized, right? At around 10:30, I go inside the building, while you should be in place to go through the parking lot,” he says without a hint of hesitation.

“You sound like you’re used to this sort of stuff.” “Trust me, I’m not.”

“Then you gotta tell me what’s going on between you and Ryōgi for you to go this far for her.” And so I finally ask the question that’s long been sitting at the back of my mind. For a fleeting moment, I see the guy furrow his brow, but he refrains from answering. “Hey, we might die here! Aren’t you scared at all? Why do this? What are you to her?”

“Of course I’m scared. I’m not in the regular business of rescuing people.” He closes his eyes, and speaks in a low, almost cautious voice. “I’m obviously not built for this sort of thing. I’m risking my life. But then I remember the girl me and Shiki once met. Some fortuneteller kid who could see the future.”

“What?” That’s certainly a sudden change in topic.

“I remember that kid saying that if I continued to have anything to do with Shiki, I was putting my life at risk. Something would happen that would see me betting my life on some gamble for Shiki.” He says this without a laugh or even a self-mocking smile, and so I follow him with the same serious weight he gives it.

“So you think it’s what we’re doing now, then? So what did that kid have to say about your prospects of living?”

The guy only shakes his head and shrugs. “Well, she didn’t say anything about whether I’d die or not. So I guess that’s still in the cards, isn’t it? I just take it as a reason that I should just rush headlong into things for her. It’s a fortune waiting to be told.” Now he laughs. From what I can tell about the guy, that reason does seem strangely like him. Satisfied, I pick up the duffel bag and sling it over my shoulder. I’m going to need to run soon.

“Thanks,” I say with some awkwardness. “Oh, almost forgot. We haven’t introduced ourselves, right? The name’s Tomoe Enjō. You are?” I know that he already knows my name, but I say it anyway just so he’s forced to say his.

“Mikiya Kokutō.” The same name Ryōgi once mentioned in passing. “Hah. She’s right. Your surname does sound like the name of some poet

I heard somewhere.” We shake hands, and through it, I hand a certain key to him; the key to Ryōgi’s room that I didn’t need any more. From where I stand, it almost looks like the similarly tiny piece of metal I once treasured.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“Just take it. It’s you who needs to keep it safe from now on.” I try my best to make a genuine smile. I don’t know if I did. “When this is all over, we shouldn’t meet again. Don’t even try to find each other. Liking the same girl is reason enough to separate.”

The guy raises an eyebrow and tries to say something, but cuts himself off. Maybe he does understand.

“So that’s it,” I continue. “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Which is why afterwards, we shouldn’t worry about who died, and who was responsible, and all that.” I turn around and start to walk toward the manhole to start the whole thing. The guy sees me off. I turn around for the last time and wave my hand goodbye.

“See ya, buddy! I’m gonna start over once this is all done. I really love Ryōgi, but she doesn’t need me. She’s got you. I don’t think you’re particularly well-suited for each other, but hey, that’s life, right? I was glad that I could meet someone like her, someone like me. It’s why I know that guy’s like you are what us nutjobs need.”

I turn my back on him and sprint as hard and fast as my legs and lungs could carry me. I didn’t look behind me ever again.

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