II. Wrist-Cut

prologue

As I was preparing to go home after school, I sensed someone standing behind me in the increasingly empty classroom. When I turned around, I saw it was Morino.

“Something I wanted to say to you before you left,” she explained. We had not spoken all day, so it had been nearly twenty-four hours since I’d heard her voice. “I rented a strange movie yesterday …”

Apparently, Morino had been absolutely dying to talk about this movie with somebody, but I was the only person in the class she ever talked to—and she would only do that when I was alone, not when I was talking to any of our other classmates. Therefore, she’d been unable to speak to me until just before I went home.

A few girls to the side of the room noticed us and began whispering. I could tell they were talking about us. At first, people had wondered if we were a couple, but our body language was never at all intimate, our expressions remaining sullen throughout each conversation. So just how close we were remained a mystery to our classmates. But as far as they were concerned, Morino talking to anybody was remarkable in itself. She hid herself in the class, vanishing the moment school ended—she lived like a submarine, hugging the sea floor.

Unless wearing the summer version of her uniform, she always wore black—black from her long hair down to her shoes—as if she was doing her best to melt into the darkness, fleeing detestable light.

I once asked Morino shibou douki, or why she’d chosen this school to attend.

“The uniforms are black and very plain. That’s the only reason … When you first said ‘shibou douki,’ I understood a very different meaning.”

She wrote the homonym on the blackboard in white chalk: the kanji for “death wish.” As she did, her thin wrist emerged from inside her uniform sleeve. Her skin was very pale, as if it had never been exposed to sunlight.

She had a pretty face, so a few boys had tried to chat her up—until something had happened to change everything: one of the teachers had done something to her that amounted to sexual harassment, and she’d produced an aerosol can filled with pepper spray, calmly attacking him with it before picking up her desk chair and beating him to the ground. I had been watching in hiding. After that, no boys dared approach her.

†

The story I am about to tell is not the story of how Morino and I made each other’s acquaintance; it is the story I remember every time my eyes happen upon her pale wrists.

In spring of that year, the news shows were all excited about a case involving a number of severed wrists—a case I had secretly become involved in.

This was at the end of May, before I had ever spoken to Morino …

i

As he stared at his own hands, Shinohara thought: Hands, obviously, were the ends of vertebrates’ forelimbs. His own hands had developed to grasp objects, with five fingers that could type on a computer keyboard or tilt a cup of coffee. It seemed self-evident that hands were the essence of humanity. That was why there were palm readers; palm readers said the lines on a person’s palms allowed them to determine an individual’s personality and destiny. Hands were a mirror that reflected the person’s past and future.

Shinohara had liked hands even as a child—he had been so obsessed with hands that when his parents had taken him outside, he hadn’t seen the crowds of people, only their hands. But the way hands moved was unfalteringly true. The tendons flexing on the back of the hands, the five fingers, the nails at the tips of those fingers, and the white crescents at the tips of them … Fingerprints, in particular, were critical to defining the individual.

In the lower years of elementary school, Shinohara had cut off the hands of a doll his sister had thrown away, making sure nobody noticed. The tiny doll hands had rolled around in the palms of Shinohara’s own hands. He put them in his pocket, throwing away the handless doll. Whenever he could, he would rub those tiny hard hands with his thumb. The tiny grooves on the plastic hands told Shinohara so much more than the words his mother and teachers said to him.

He had cut the front paws off cats and dogs with pruning shears, as well. Pruning shears were very good for cutting through tiny wrists. Shinohara liked the hands of dogs and cats. Human hands did not have pads, which always struck him as funny—if you pushed the pads, claws came out, and there was hair growing between them. Paws could not grasp objects like human hands, but they’d evolved in their own unique fashion.

Shinohara was well aware that most people could not accept his belief that the essence of humans lay in their hands; he had observed the people around him enough to understand that the world was controlled by the empty words emerging from heads and mouths. When he grew older and started working, he knew to hide his ideas—but every now and then, he found himself thinking about hands again … that five-fingered design that only God could have created. Shinohara could not keep them out of his head.

Then one spring, he had severed his first human hand—a baby’s hand. He’d found the baby sitting in a stroller, and he’d cut off its hand with pruning shears when the mother had left it alone briefly.

The baby’s tiny hand was warm and soft. When Shinohara severed it, the baby had woken up and stared crying, and the warmth of its hand in his had begun to fade. Shinohara shoved the baby’s hand in his pocket and took it home, where he kept it in the refrigerator.

The baby’s hand was not the only one. Shinohara knocked out a child, cutting off its hand under cover of darkness. He cut hands off high school kids and adults, as well. Fully grown human hands were too thick to cut off with pruning shears, but a saw left the cut much too ragged for Shinohara’s aesthetic sensibilities to accept. He could hardly carry around an ax with him, though—so in the end, Shinohara settled on a meat cleaver. Once his victims were unconscious, a single strong blow would cut right through the bone for a nice clean cut.

Shinohara had not killed anyone—he only wanted the hands, not to kill anyone. It mattered nothing to him whether the non-hand parts lived or died, as long as nobody saw him, so he simply abandoned the unconscious bodies.

The newspapers and TV news all said that none of the victims could identify who had attacked them once they’d woken up in the hospital, which was always a relief to Shinohara. He had worked carefully and in the dark, but he was still afraid of being caught.

Shinohara liked hands, and he enjoyed cutting them off. He felt a great sense of release when the hands were separated from the rest of the body—in his twisted view of the world, releasing those hands was actually heroic.

Even once at work he had cut the hands off a doll—a hand-sized, cheap cloth thing stuffed with cotton. It was so small that the hands were not very detailed—they had no fingers, simply a round part at the end of the arm. But they were hands nevertheless. This was simply how hands had evolved in the manufacturing of dolls—evolved beyond fingers. Cutting those off had helped Shinohara ease the tension between the world and himself. He put all the hands he had cut off in his refrigerator, including those of the cloth doll and the dog and cat paws. He never threw away any of them.

Shinohara lived alone, but his house felt full of life. Every time he opened the fridge, he saw the rows of hands inside. When he touched them, he felt like he knew the original owners’ pasts, what they had lived through, and also what the future had in store for them. What he sensed by touching them became words speaking to him and telling him of the love the hands’ parents had given them, as well as the pain the world had inflicted on them.

The news and the papers talked about Shinohara’s crimes every day. They were calling it the Wrist-Cut Case now. Shinohara didn’t care what they named it—but he didn’t enjoy being hated, treated like a criminal. He didn’t like having their value system forced on him.

As he watched the evening news, Shinohara explained his feelings to a child’s hand, which he had taken out of the refrigerator and was holding in his own hand.

“Yes, exactly as you say,” the child’s hand’s curves, indentations, and elasticity told him through Shinohara’s palm.

Shinohara’s anxiety and anger melted away. He could feel courage rising up within him once more.

ii

In his morning class, the chemistry teacher had said, “During lunch, I’m going to reorganize the chemistry office. If anyone can spare the time, I’d appreciate the help.”

The teacher didn’t seem like he actually expected anyone to do so, and most of the students completely ignored him—so when I showed up in the office at lunch, he appeared surprised.

It was a sunny day, and warm spring light poured down outside the windows, but the chemistry office was comparatively dark and a little chilly. In the distance, I could hear students laughing and playing.

The chemistry office was cramped and lined with cases, which were filled with chemicals and models of molecules and even a few organs preserved in formaldehyde. There were wooden desks by the windows, and these were covered in scientific books and papers about plants and space. There was also an old computer—and on the next desk, beneath a pile of books, a printer was hidden. Light filtered through the blinds, picking out clouds of dust in the air.

“Erm, then start by carrying the garbage into the lecture hall,” the chemistry teacher instructed, as he pointed at a blue plastic wastebasket filled with balled-up pieces of paper. I nodded, picked up the trash, and headed for the lecture hall.

†

“Who the hell would waste his lunch on that?” someone next to me had muttered when the teacher had solicited help. I’d already forgotten what I'd said in response, but the other student had laughed, so I must’ve said something dull.

It was easy to act like my cheerier classmates. If I kept up with the most popular TV shows and variety programs and responded with the right words and expressions, it was easy to seem like I was following along. Everyone believed me to be an outgoing boy, and I was able to avoid any unnecessary trouble.

What kind of trouble? In kindergarten, I had once become obsessed with the idea of coloring in a doll’s face with black marker and cutting off its arms and legs—and had done just that, which caused a great deal of concern from those around me. I could clearly remember the worried looks my mother and teachers gave me.

After that, I became good at lying. Like with the crayons we used for drawing. Until then, the black one had always been much shorter, but after that I was careful to wear all the colors down evenly. I don’t remember drawing much of interest afterward, but the subject matter must have involved a number of rainbows or flowers or the like. This seemed to put the adults around me at ease.

By understanding the value system the world preferred, remembering and feigning it, I was able to convince others that I was free of problems. I simply had to participate enthusiastically in the boring conversations my classmates were having.

I didn’t tell my classmates that I was helping to clean the chemistry office that day. The character I played in class would never do that sort of thing, and I wanted to avoid the impression that I was doing it to score points. Besides, I wasn’t helping out of the goodness of my heart—I had a plan.

Rumor had it that the chemistry teacher for my class made the tests at his desk in the chemistry office. There was a chance his notes were in the garbage, and I was hoping to get my hands on those while I was helping out.

In my first year, I had randomly found myself helping this teacher to clean his office, so I knew where he would start: He would begin by having me carry the trash into the lecture hall next door. Then we would organize the office, and he would accompany me to take out the garbage. (The trash generated while cleaning took two to carry.) That was what had happened last year.

Herein lay the problem: there was no time to pick through the contents of the trash. I needed a plan. So I borrowed a wastebin from another classroom before I went to help the chemistry teacher, hiding it in the chemistry lecture hall. Then I went to the chemistry office and offered to help.

If things played out like last year, the first thing he would do was instruct me to carry the garbage into the lecture hall. If he did not, I would have to carry it out when he wasn’t looking.

All the trash receptacles in the school were identical. The chemistry office wastebasket was the same blue plastic as every other one in the school—which meant I could switch the chemistry office trash container for the one I had hidden in the lecture hall without the teacher noticing.

The office wastebasket, where the test notes might be, would remain hidden under the desk in the lecture hall while I was helping him. When we were done, I would carry the other classroom’s garbage to the incinerator under the teacher’s watchful eye.

And when that was done, I would be free to go through the trash in the chemistry lecture hall at my leisure.

As I mentioned, before I entered the office, I had already borrowed the trash bin from the next class over and hidden it under the desk. As expected, the teacher had ordered me to carry the garbage into the lecture hall, just like he had the year before. Everything was going smoothly.

To keep him from noticing my plan, I followed his instructions as naturally as possible, carrying the trash into the lecture hall. There was a door between the rooms, meaning I didn’t have to venture into the hall.

But at that point, something happened that I couldn’t have planned for. The lecture hall had been empty a moment before, but that was no longer true. Someone was sitting alone at a large table in the corner of the room, reading quietly. She had long black hair, and she lurked like a shadow in the dim light of the lecture hall. Peering closely, I recognized her. It was Morino, who had been in my class since the start of the spring term.

She looked up, glancing at me as I entered from where she sat in the far corner, as far from the office door as possible. Then she immediately turned her attention back to the book, showing no interest in me at all.

At first I wondered if she’d come to help, but apparently that was not the case. I decided she wouldn’t interfere with my plan.

I had never spoken to Morino, but her oddness had occasionally caught my attention. She didn’t stand out much—but in not standing out, she attracted attention. There were people in class who were charismatic and filled with light and energy; Morino, however, seemed to be forging her way stubbornly in the complete opposite direction. She had mercilessly ignored anyone who attempted to speak to her until she was completely isolated—and she appeared to love that isolation.

And now she was reading in the corner of the lecture hall. I ignored her, exchanging the wastebin I had hidden in advance for the one I had just carried in. I hid the office trash under the desk. Morino did not seem to notice.

I left the trash and Morino in the lecture hall and went back to the office as if nothing had happened.

“There was a girl in there, right? She comes almost every day at lunch,” the chemistry teacher said. The lecture hall was dimly lit and one of the quietest places in the school. I could understand why she went there. It was nothing like the bustling classrooms where we spent most of our time. It was silent, as if time had stopped and the darkness did not wish to be disturbed. It was steeped in a comfortable repulsiveness, like when one clinically observed things as they died.

Following the teacher’s instructions, I lifted boxes down from the tops of shelves and checked what was in the bottles of chemicals inside.

Meanwhile, he took a can of compressed air and blew the dust out of the computer keyboard—a very finicky man, apparently. The whole time we were cleaning, he was working right next to me, and there would never have been time to look through the trash.

When we were finished, the two of us went into the lecture hall, carrying a big pile of garbage.

“You hardly ever see girls with long black hair like her anymore. Everyone gets it dyed these days,” the teacher said, glancing at Morino. That was how black and beautiful her hair was. I told him my sister’s hair was much the same.

Morino’s slender, pale hands turned a page in her book. In the dimly lit lecture hall, they were so pale that they seemed to glow, the images burning themselves into my retinas.

The teacher and I carried the trash to the incinerator, and then we went our separate ways. I quickly headed back to the lecture hall; I had about ten minutes before afternoon classes started.

By the time I reached the hall, Morino was already gone, presumably headed to class. This was ideal for my purposes.

I pulled out the wastebasket I had hidden under the desk and rifled through it, keeping one eye out in case someone came in. Unfortunately, what I had been looking for was nowhere to be found.

Instead, I found something carefully wrapped in layer after layer of paper. I opened the package and found a doll—with the tips of its arms cut off.

It was a cloth doll, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. The feet had not been damaged. From the design of the doll, it seemed safe to assume the severed hands had not had any fingers. It was a very simple thing, but the doll with no hands reminded me of something—the Wrist-Cut Case that was all over TV.

People of various ages and genders had, when walking alone, been knocked unconscious—and then their hands had been chopped off. Dogs and cats had also been found with missing front paws, and this was believed to be the work of the same person. All such incidents had happened not far from here.

Had the chemistry teacher, Mr. Shinohara, cut off the doll’s hands? What for—some kind of game? No, I thought it was much more likely that he was the man behind the Wrist-Cut Case. I knew this was quite a leap from finding a doll with no hands, but the person who had cut all those hands off must be somewhere, and it was not all that unlikely that he was nearby. And when I considered the reasons why the chemistry teacher might have cut off a doll’s hands, I could not deny the strong possibility that it was simply an extension of his enthusiasm.

†

After I found the handless doll, I thought about the Wrist-Cut Case every day in class. Midterms were coming up fast, but I hardly noticed. Out of all the gruesome incidents the news had covered lately, this was the most fascinating. Pondering the culprit’s terrifying fixation with hands was exactly the kind of thing I liked to do. And I believed … that he was just like me. Obviously, the particulars were different, but I still felt a connection to the man behind the gruesome wrist cuttings.

After that, I often made my way to the lecture hall during breaks so that I could brush past Mr. Shinohara. He remembered me and would wave when he saw me. He was a young man, thin, with short hair. I spent a lot of time wondering if he was really the man behind the Wrist-Cut Case.

I once came across Mr. Shinohara talking to Morino outside the lecture hall. He had seen the book Morino was carrying and was telling her he had a copy of the follow-up. It was a nonfiction book about dealing with the mentally unstable. Morino simply replied, “Do you?” her usual blank expression never faltering.

In class, I continued to function largely through pretense. It was easy to live as an ordinary high school kid, never standing out—but my mind was occupied almost entirely with the latest reports on the Wrist-Cut Case, and it was exhausting to keep my slang current and to chatter happily with the humans around me about the latest celebrity gossip. I occasionally felt like an idiot for expending all that effort.

It seemed Morino spent as much time in the lecture hall as Mr. Shinohara had said. Almost every time I peeked in the doors, she was sitting in that quiet room alone.

She was always alone, but not because she was being bullied—it was more like she had deliberately cut off all communication with those around her. Her stony silence made it clear that her interests and passions had nothing in common with those of the other students.

“Apparently, Morino tried to kill herself in junior high,” someone told me. With that in mind, I took a closer look at her pale hands. I didn’t know why she had wanted to die, but I doubted the world made it easy for her to live.

If I stopped acting, I would end up like her. If the people around me discovered how merciless and unemotional I was, how much more difficult would my life become? I compared my current situation with that hypothetical and couldn’t find much difference—I was isolated either way.

Three days after I found the doll, I decided to carry out a new plan.

iii

Mr. Shinohara lived on a quiet street in a normal house, two stories tall with thin white walls that shone yellow in the light of the setting sun. There was no one around, and the only sound was an airplane flying past far above me.

Mr. Shinohara was the homeroom teacher for a second-year class; I happened to know someone in that class who had been able to tell me the teacher’s address and confirm that Mr. Shinohara lived alone.

I looked at my watch. It was Thursday, and all the teachers would be in a meeting, so I would have plenty of time before he got home.

After making sure there was no one around, I went through the gate and around the back of the house. There was a small yard with a clothesline, and that was all. Nothing in the garden but grass—no weeds or insects, just a flat, empty bit of ground. A large window faced into the garden, but it was locked, so I wrapped a towel around my hand to break it. Then I listened carefully, making sure I had not attracted any attention, before unlocking the window, taking off my shoes, and entering the house.

The culprit behind the Wrist-Cut Case was cutting off human hands and taking them away with him. Nobody knew what became of the victims’ hands. Some people imagined the culprit enjoyed looking at them, whereas others suggested he ate them. Nobody knew the truth—but any which way, there was a strong possibility that the killer had left evidence in his house. My first goal tonight was to search Mr. Shinohara’s house for such evidence.

I had broken the living room window, scattering glass across the floor, so I had to walk carefully to avoid cutting myself. The house was very tidy, with the magazines on the table and the remote controls all lined up neatly.

I made as little noise as possible. I was worried that Mr. Shinohara might return home suddenly, and I didn’t want to miss the sound of the key in the front door. I would have to run before he caught me.

The floors were highly polished. Although the lights were off and it was dark, I could see by the small amount of still-lingering sunlight streaming through the windows.

I found the stairs. Careful not to touch the wall or handrails, I went up them. Even if I left fingerprints, Mr. Shinohara would not call the police if he were the Wrist-Cut Case culprit—but I still didn’t want to leave any trace that I had been in his house.

On the second floor, there was a bedroom with a desktop computer and a number of bookshelves inside. The books were arranged by size, with the spines carefully lined up together, no dust anywhere.

There was nothing to suggest Mr. Shinohara was the wrist cutter.

I placed the middle and index fingers of my right hand on my left wrist to measure my pulse. It was faster than usual, evidence that I was tense. I took a deep breath, trying to relax.

I thought about wrists for a moment. When doctors want to test if someone is alive or dead, they always hold the wrist, feeling for a pulse. How would the doctors feel for a pulse on a victim from the Wrist-Cut Case without a wrist?

I looked at my watch. The teachers’ meeting at school should have been ending about then. If Mr. Shinohara were to head directly home, I would need to hurry.

I looked at the other rooms on the second floor, two tatami-floored rooms with shelves and wardrobes. But there were no clues to suggest that Mr. Shinohara had hurt anyone.

Each time I left a room, I checked to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, like my student ID, a uniform button, a textbook, or a sock. The worst blunder I could possibly make was to leave anything behind that could be used to identify me. Why? Because it could be avoided easily if I paid attention.

Certain I had left no trace behind, and still wearing socks, I went downstairs—into the kitchen.

Did Mr. Shinohara ever cook? There weren’t many dishes, and everything was placed away neatly. There was nothing in the sink. It was as if the cups and cooking implements had been placed there decoratively the moment he bought them, never once used.

On the table, there was a rice cooker, which was a bit too big for someone living alone. I had no information on his family or background—perhaps he had formerly lived with other relatives, or perhaps there was no real meaning to the oversize rice cooker.

The stainless steel sink was polished, and it gleamed in the nearly horizontal light coming through the window. With no lights on, the house was growing steadily darker. The reddish glow from the sink was the only source of light. The only sound, the low hum of the refrigerator—the same silence as in the chemistry lecture hall. I could feel my emotions growing still.

In the center of the kitchen, I took my wrist, measuring my pulse again. Beneath the skin of my left wrist, my blood vessel throbbed steadily. My fingers felt it expand and contract. My pulse was normal again.

Then it abruptly sped up, pulsing violently, as if about to explode.

My nose had picked up an unnatural scent: something rotting, something being consumed by bacteria. The images that scent brought to mind sent my pulse racing.

I began tracking the source of the smell. There was nothing in the cupboards or drawers. My eyes fixed on the refrigerator.

I gripped the refrigerator handle through my handkerchief, careful not to leave fingerprints. As I opened the door, there was a distinctive tug as it came unsealed. The smell grew stronger, and I knew I had been right—Mr. Shinohara was behind the Wrist-Cut Case.

In the cold fridge air, lit by the lamp, were rows of hands—on the shelves, placed with their fingers toward the door, the fingers and nails lined up next to one another like piano keys.

In the back, there were several small dishes, on top of which were the front paws of dogs and cats. The hands of the doll I’d found in the lecture hall garbage can were in the door. They were just balls of cloth, but they were the same color as the doll, so I knew they were the doll’s hands.

I had long been a proponent of the theory that the wrist cutter was preserving the hands. I had no basis for this—it was merely what I would have done. I had been right.

I picked up one of the hands, a woman’s hand. Red nail polish was flaking away, and the hand was cold and heavy in my palm.

I was touching dead skin. No, not dead—all his victims were alive, each living with a missing hand … but it made sense to refer to the part that had been cut off as dead.

There were right hands and left hands. There were the hands with nails that had turned black and hands with skin that was still beautiful.

I stroked several of the hands. I felt like I was peering into the depths of Mr. Shinohara’s heart. Regular people wouldn’t have understood, and I was sure Mr. Shinohara was convinced that no one would ever understand him. But it was easy for me to picture him alone in this kitchen, stroking his collection of hands.

The hands were in his refrigerator, so Mr. Shinohara must be the wrist cutter—but I had no intention of telling the police. Perhaps I should have, but that did not interest me. I had a different goal in mind.

I too wanted a hand cut off of someone. Touching Mr. Shinohara’s collection made me want it even more.

I looked around the refrigerator. There were all kinds of hands in there. I could take any of them. Not just any hand would do, though; I knew exactly whose hand I wanted. But I put all the hands in front of me into a bag that I’d brought with me.

†

It was dark by the time Shinohara arrived home from the high school where he worked. He had stepped into the house and was headed for the living room when he noticed something was wrong: the window had been broken, and glass was scattered across the floor. The window itself was open as well, and cool night air was pouring into the room. Someone had broken in.

The first thing Shinohara thought of was the hands in the refrigerator. He went directly to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door—and couldn’t believe his eyes. All of the hands that had been keeping cool in there that morning were now gone. Human hands, dog and cat hands, even the doll’s hands—they were all gone, and the refrigerator was almost completely empty. The only thing left was the small quantity of food Shinohara had kept in there with the hands.

Something was nagging at his mind, but he couldn’t quite figure it out. He knew he needed to clean up the glass in the living room, but his mind was full of the missing hands, so he couldn’t think straight.

He went upstairs, turned on his computer, and sat down in front of it.

Someone had broken in and stolen his hands, taking all the hands away.

A clear drop of liquid fell to the surface of the computer desk. It had fallen from his cheek … Shinohara suddenly realized that he was crying.

His entire life, he had never exchanged words with any human as intimate as the contact he had felt with those severed hands. If anyone else had seen him with them, they would have thought he was simply sitting there in silence—but Shinohara knew he had been communicating with those cold, silent hands—through the bumps and grooves, the elasticity.

Anger washed over him in waves so intense that he couldn’t breathe. He was too afraid to call the police, but his desire to get revenge on whoever had taken the hands from him was much stronger than his fear.

The thief who had taken his hands must be punished. He had never killed anyone, but he’d make this thief the first exception. He would catch this thief, Shinohara swore it. He would cut off the hands to save them, and then he would strangle the thief—or stab the thief through the heart until death came.

But how would he find the thief? Shinohara rested his elbows on the desk, thinking.

The keyboard was dirty. He reached for the can of compressed air he always kept next to it. Then he froze—his eyes had found something on the keyboard.

No doubt about it—the thief had dropped it. No other explanation made sense. It was very small and easy to overlook, so it was something of a miracle that Shinohara had even noticed it.

It was then that Shinohara remembered the inside of the refrigerator. Something had been bothering him, and he understood it now. The hand thief had made a mistake, a very careless mistake—one that had foolishly revealed the thief’s identity …

iv

The next morning, Shinohara went to work with a meat cleaver, the same one he always used when cutting off hands. It fit neatly inside his bag. As he greeted the other teachers in the office, none of them guessed what was in his bag.

It was always hectic in the mornings. Outside the teachers’ room, students hurried past. First semester midterms were coming up quickly, and tests were being constructed on a number of different desks.

One of the other teachers asked how Shinohara’s test was coming along. He smiled back and answered. Shinohara often believed his life consisted entirely of these feigned smiles. They annoyed him immensely.

Hands. Hands. Hands were more important than the other teachers. First, there were hands, and then the human followed. There was no point in talking with the human.

He had morning classes, so he couldn’t yet go to see the thief who had stolen his hands. But he knew who it was. He had to catch the thief and demand to know where his hands had been hidden.

Only one night had passed—he desperately wanted to believe the hands were somewhere safe. When he knew where they were, then he would have to cut off the thief’s hands with his meat cleaver. It would never do to let the hands die with the rest of the body, so he’d have to make them his.

The last session he taught that morning was his homeroom class. All those hands copying what he wrote on the blackboard … There were forty-two students in his class—and eighty-four hands.

Shinohara explained what the midterm would cover, but his thoughts dealt only with the stolen hands. The thief had left his food, taking only the hands. Shinohara hadn’t noticed it right away, and it didn’t make any sense.

At last, the bell rang and class ended. All morning classes were over, and it was time for lunch.

Shinohara left the room. The bag with the meat cleaver was in the teacher’s office, and he was going to get it. The halls were at their noisiest and most crowded—but to Shinohara, it was all a dim roar.

He waited in the teachers’ room for a few minutes, and then he headed for the chemistry lecture hall.

†

I headed for the chemistry lecture hall as soon as lunch started. When I opened the door and checked inside, I found it empty, so I went in, closing the door behind me. Instantly, the noise outside was cut off; the air inside was completely still, as if time had stopped.

I measured my pulse: it was beating like I’d just been running as fast as I could. My skin felt taut. I was very tense.

What had Mr. Shinohara done last night after he had arrived home? What had he thought when he noticed the hands were gone? Had he been too angry to think? I could only guess.

I hadn’t seen him that morning—and if I had, I would’ve pretended to know nothing. He couldn’t notice me; if I did anything strange, there was a strong risk it would ruin everything. I was pretty sure he didn’t know I had stolen the hands, but that might’ve been nothing more than wishful thinking.

It was possible that I had made some terrible mistake without realizing it—but there was no way for me to know. If I had, and Mr. Shinohara came after me looking for revenge, then there was a strong possibility that my life would be in danger.

As I stood in the dark, deserted lecture hall thinking, I heard someone standing outside the door.

†

Shinohara opened the door of the lecture hall. There was one student inside, and the moment he saw that student’s face, a surge of emotion ran through him.

He wanted to beat the student to death, but Shinohara stomped down those emotions, forcing himself to call out a friendly greeting instead. He planned to pretend to know nothing.

The student looked up. “Hello, Mr. Shinohara.”

It was like always, nothing out of place—yet Shinohara knew the student was laughing at him on the inside, enjoying the performance and being around him like this. Yes, the student had come to the lecture hall to watch Shinohara squirm, knowing that his hands had been taken.

Hiding his nauseous rage, Shinohara drew closer. He must not betray his plans. He must not reveal that he knew the student to be the thief.

The foolish thief suspected nothing and didn’t try to run. Shinohara was able to stand directly behind the student without arousing suspicion.

The thief had taken away the doll’s hands—but nobody should have recognized those as hands. The doll was too small, and there were no fingers on those hands—they were just balls of cotton covered by a half sphere of cloth. Yet the thief had taken them with the rest of the hands.

The only person who would’ve known those were hands and taken them … was someone who had accidentally found the handless doll. The moment that person found the doll, the thief must’ve guessed that the chemistry teacher was the one behind the Wrist-Cut Case.

Shinohara put his hand on the shoulder of the student in front of him. Her shoulder shook. She turned slowly around, looking at him. “What is it?”

She was good at acting, Shinohara thought.

He had placed the handless doll in the wastebasket in the chemistry office. There was only one person who would have had a chance to see it—Morino, the girl who had been in the lecture hall while he’d been cleaning the chemistry office, while the office trash was sitting in the lecture hall. The male student who had been helping him would never have had time.

“Please take your hand off me, Mr. Shinohara. You’re interfering with my reading.”

This girl was always reading in the corner of the lecture hall. Her eyebrows twitched—more expression than he’d ever seen from her before.

When Shinohara had noticed the dirt on his keyboard the day before, he’d also found a long black hair between the keys. It had been sheer coincidence that the hair had landed there, out of all the places in his house it could have been. Shinohara’s hair was short, so it couldn’t be his—meaning the intruder must have had long hair.

And the bookshelves … On his shelves was the follow-up to the book the girl was reading. And it had been pulled out, ever so slightly. He always kept his spines aligned, yet this one had been jutting out a full five millimeters. This girl had found it and looked at it.

There was no doubt in his mind: she had stolen his hands.

Shinohara tightened his grip on her shoulder, squeezing as if to break it.

Morino winced.

“Tell me where you hid the hands,” he ordered, as politely as he could manage.

But Morino just tried to push him off, complaining that he was hurting her. The book she was reading fell to the ground.

“Where are the hands?” he asked again, loosening his grip and making sure she heard him. Her usual, expressionless mask had crumbled, and she shook her head as if she had no idea what he was talking about.

Pretending not to know, Shinohara thought. Instantly, his hand wrapped itself around her slender throat, squeezing.

Morino’s eyes opened wide, staring up at him in shock as his fingers sank deep into the soft flesh of her neck. He was going to kill this girl, but there was no help for that. His grip tightened.

In a minute, she would stop moving. As he mused on that, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a small cylinder in her hand—some sort of spray. By the time he noticed, it was too late: the spray was aimed right at his eyes.

There was a hiss of compressed gas, and his eyes began to burn.

†

Morino had been carrying around a can of pepper spray. She unloaded it in Mr. Shinohara’s face, and then she hit him in the head with her chair before she began shouting for help. She did not scream—she just called out, calmly but loudly.

A minute later, several students and teachers came running. Mr. Shinohara lay at the center of the crowd, clutching his throbbing eyes.

I could not leave my hiding place beneath the podium until the crowd dispersed.

epilogue

Mr. Shinohara was arrested—but not as a culprit behind the Wrist-Cut Case. Instead, he was convicted by society for a much lesser crime. No one knows his real crime, even now.

He’s no longer a teacher and has since moved away. There have been no new victims in the Wrist-Cut Case.

The hands I stole from his house are buried in my backyard. I didn’t need them. I didn’t care about hands the way he did.

I had wanted to convince him that Morino had stolen his hands.

When I saw the hands in the refrigerator, I knew he was keeping them all, just like I had predicted. Even before I entered his house, I had been planning on using that fact and the doll hands to lead him to suspect Morino. I was glad he was smart enough to figure out the clue about the doll hands. He simply didn’t know that I had switched the trash bins, sifting through the contents afterward.

I also left behind a long black hair—the same type of hair Morino had. It was my sister’s hair, which had come in handy. I had remembered Shinohara cleaning his office keyboard with compressed air, and so I figured the hair stood a good chance of being discovered if I were to place it on his computer keyboard at home.

Moving the book he had mentioned to Morino had been insurance.

If he had determined that Morino was the thief, causing him to cut off her hands and kill her, my plan would’ve been complete. I only would’ve had to wait until her severed hands were in his fridge, and then I could’ve gone to steal them. Of course, there were a number of holes in this plan: there was no guarantee he would’ve taken her hands home even if he had killed her … but there was a good chance he would’ve.

The only hands I had wanted were Morino’s pale, beautiful hands.

“Will you teach me how to smile like that?” she asked me the next day. It was the first time Morino had ever spoken to me.

Whenever I talked to someone else, I smiled. But inside, I had no expression—and Morino had somehow picked up on that. The performance that no one else had ever seen through was no match for her.

After that, we each had someone to talk to. Our relationship was a little too cold to call friendship—but when I spoke to her, it was the only time I could stop acting, letting my face remain devoid of expression. It gave the muscles of my face a well-earned respite. There was a comfortable disinterest to our relationship that allowed me to express the inhuman and unemotional sides of myself.

†

The world had long since forgotten the Wrist-Cut Case by the time summer vacation ended and second semester began.

The light in the classroom was yellow as the sun began to set. A breeze came in the open windows, toying with Morino’s long black hair as she stood in front of me.

“So this movie used real freaks as actors, but the story was even stranger: the freaks were carrying around some sort of shrine …”

As she spoke, I murmured the movie’s name. Morino looked ever so slightly surprised. Her expression barely changed at all, but I could tell.

“Right.”

It was a movie directed by a German woman. Of all the people I knew, only Morino and I would be interested in something so strange.

“Do you remember the Wrist-Cut Case?” I asked.

“The one from last spring?”

“If you had been one of the victims, what would you be doing now?”

Morino stared down at her hands. “It would be very hard to put on a watch. Why do you ask?” she said, looking puzzled.

She didn’t know the man she’d grappled with had been the wrist cutter … and I still stared at her hands from time to time. Perhaps it was better that Mr. Shinohara had not cut them off. Perhaps they were more beautiful alive—and Mr. Shinohara might have cut them in the wrong place.

“No reason,” I said, and I stood up to leave.

The reason I wanted her hands was because she had those beautiful scars, from when she had tried to kill herself.