V. Grave

i

Kousuke was calling Saeki. The boy always sounded innocent and full of fun, but today he sounded downcast. Kousuke was a little neighbor boy who had just entered kindergarten.

“What is it?”

Saeki was in his garden, tending to the morning glories. It was summer, early in the morning. There was a faint mist in the garden, making everything glitter. Children were walking past the wall around his garden, heading for their group exercises. Saeki couldn’t see the children over the wall, which came up to his chest, but he could hear their footsteps and their chattering.

“Is my daddy still angry?” Kousuke had shown up at Saeki’s house the night before, crying, and he hadn’t gone home since.

When Saeki asked what had happened, Kousuke explained through his tears that he’d knocked over an antique his father had prized, breaking it. Kousuke had been told countless times never to touch the antique, but curiosity had gotten the better of him.

“No, I don’t think he’s angry anymore.”

Saeki told the boy how the child’s parents had come looking for him the previous night. When Saeki had met them at his door, they’d asked if he’d seen their Kousuke, looking very worried. Saeki had shaken his head, playing dumb. Then he’d helped them search for Kousuke.

“He’s really not angry?”

“Really.”

In front of Saeki, the stems of the morning glories were wrapped around bamboo poles that were sticking out of the ground. The bamboo had been dried, so it was light brown.

Saeki lived in an old house, with a garden larger than those of the homes around his. The property was an almost perfect square, with the house and garage flush against the east side. The rest of the grounds was open space, and Saeki had filled that space with trees. In the middle of summer, like today, the grounds were covered in leaves.

Saeki had always enjoyed gardening, even as a child. He’d raised the morning glories that bloomed along the wall around the garden himself.

That day, it was sunny. The sun was rising steadily into a cloudless sky, sunbeams slipping past the wall and the trees, and the bamboo poles supporting the morning glories cast long shadows across the ground.

He could hear Kousuke crying.

When Kousuke had knocked on his door the night before and begged Saeki to hide him, Saeki had let the boy in at once, peering out into the street to make sure nobody had seen the boy come in.

“You’re sure you didn’t tell anyone you were coming here, Kou?” Saeki asked again. The boy wiped away his tears, nodding. How reliable was a child’s word? lt occurred to Saeki that it was already too late for such concerns.

In the past, when he’d caught cicadas with Kousuke or watched him play with a cardboard box, an idea had been lurking in the corner of Saeki’s mind, a fantasy he could never allow himself to entertain. He hated himself for thinking about such horrible plans. But yesterday, it had been like there was a fog across his mind …

“Do you think I should say I’m sorry?”

Saeki felt his heart breaking. Kousuke didn’t even understand what was happening to him. He felt so sorry for the boy.

He didn’t hate the child. Saeki himself lived alone, his family long since gone, so he’d always thought of Kousuke like a little brother. He’d often babysat when Kousuke’s family was out, and the two had taken any number of walks together. Saeki was sure he loved the child as much as Kousuke’s own parents did. So why was he doing this? There was no turning back now.

“You can’t go home again, Kou,” Saeki said, his voice shaking despite himself. The morning glories in his garden were each wrapped around a single bamboo shaft. Two of the bamboo shafts were marginally larger than the others.

Kousuke’s voice trembled. He must’ve sensed that something was wrong. “Why not?”

His voice came from the thick bamboo shaft stuck into the ground. lt was hollowed out, allowing sound to travel from the coffin buried underground up to Saeki’s ears. Kousuke didn’t know that he’d been buried alive. How sad.

The day before, when Kousuke had come into his house, Saeki had made up his mind. He’d led the boy into a back room. “Hide inside this box,” he’d said, pointing at a box in the center of the room. lt was just big enough for Kousuke to lie down inside.

Kousuke almost always did exactly what Saeki told him to. And he was too scared of his father’s anger to suspect anything, so he climbed right inside the box.

Kousuke hadn’t noticed, but that box was a coffin Saeki had made just for him.

Saeki put a lid on the box, nailing it shut. There were two air holes in the lid of the coffin, one over Kousuke’s head and the other at his feet. Even though he was nailed inside, the boy could still breathe.

He left Kousuke’s coffin in the room and went out to the garden, where he’d been digging a hole opposite the porch, in front of the wall. He only had to make it a little bigger, and it would be large enough to bury Kousuke’s coffin.

When Saeki was finished with that task, he went back to the room, carrying the coffin out to the hole. He told Kousuke he was putting him somewhere his father would never find him. lt was a struggle getting the coffin off the porch into the garden, but Saeki had managed, and he’d lowered it down into the hole.

He fit the hollowed-out bamboo into the holes in the lid. Then he scooped dirt on top until Kousuke was completely underground.

Saeki thought it looked strange to have two bamboo poles sticking out of a patch of bare ground, so he transplanted some morning glories he’d been raising elsewhere, along with the bamboo stalks he’d been using to train them. He’d carefully transferred two of the morning glories from their original poles to Kousuke’s breathing tubes, disguising their primary function so they wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

“What do you mean? I want to go home!” the bamboo pole cried.

Poor Kousuke, buried alive, Saeki thought, calmly holding the bamboo pole steady while he packed the earth around it, making sure it would stay upright.

What was wrong with him? He knew he loved this child. He had once seen Kousuke about to be hit by a car. The boy had been chasing a ball, and he never saw the car coming. When the car had braked just in time, Saeki had been so relieved that his legs had gone out from under him. So how could he do this to the boy now?

Saeki had grown up in this house. At first, he’d lived with his parents and grandmother. Both his parents had worked, so he’d spent most of his time with his grandmother. While the other children were playing basketball or making models, Saeki had spent his time gardening with her, filling pots with dark earth and planting the flower seeds inside. Saeki’s classmates often had made fun of him, telling him he was like a girl. He was a frail boy, and strangers occasionally thought he was female, which always stung. But when he was with his grandmother, watering the flowers, she always told him he was a gentle child. Whenever his spirits were down, he remembered her words, and he promised himself he would live a good life, never letting her down.

Then, somehow, the fantasy of burying someone alive had taken over. Before he knew it, that was all Saeki could think about.

He liked watering his garden, often doing so on sunny days—a hose in hand, his thumb over the mouth. The pressure built up, and the water sprayed quite a distance. A fan of water aimed at the trees, glittering in the light. When Saeki saw that, or when his grandmother smiled, he was so happy that it was as though the world grew brighter.

But at the same time, there was a dark place inside him where that light could never reach. He thought about putting his grandmother in a box and burying her in the ground. Every time the thought crossed his mind, he was instantly horrified.

How could he imagine such devilish things? There were times when he couldn’t even bring himself to look at his grandmother, terrified that she would guess what he’d been thinking.

Was there some fatal scar inside his heart that had made him like this? He could think of nothing, but perhaps he had simply forgotten. Or—and this was his greatest fear—perhaps he’d simply been born that way.

A few years after Saeki had come of age, his parents and grandmother had died in an accident. Saeki had been informed of it at work.

Until then, his family had always been around at home, and his contact with them had been a constant reminder of his position in society. But after that, he’d been alone in the house, and there was nothing to keep his fantasies in check. Every day, he left work and came home; with no one to talk to there, he found himself thinking about the same thing, those same ideas that had been in his head since childhood. He tried to shake them off, though, telling himself that even thinking such things was unforgivable, and this served to increase his interest in gardening.

When his family had been there, he’d grown a few plants in pots and weeded the garden. But now he brought in better dirt, improving the quality of the earth in the garden, and the number of plants along the wall began to increase in number.

Saeki spent the whole year digging holes to plant trees. That was all he did outside of work. He showed no interest in anything other people his age did, instead spending all his time making holes in his garden and planting trees in them.

At last, there were trees all around the house: inside the garden walls, every inch was covered. If you poked your head over the wall, you were barely able to see the house through the forest. Only one part of the garden was left unforested, the area he could see from the porch. There was nothing blocking the line of sight from there to the wall. That ground was filled with flowers, and it was in bloom all year long.

At first, Saeki believed he was digging holes to plant trees. But along the way, he realized he was planting trees to justify the holes he dug. Eventually, he starred digging holes only to fill them in again. The garden was covered with trees, so close together they could barely grow branches, and there was no more room to plant, yet Saeki kept on digging, because that was the only thing that seemed to clear away the fog of his fantasies, his desire to bury someone—in the ground. When he was digging, Saeki forgot everything else—but only for that brief moment when the tip of his trowel bit into the earth.

Digging holes only to fill them in again had begun to feel empty and meaningless. Digging the hole cleared away the fog—but when he was done, the fog came back, stronger than ever. Saeki had to keep digging anyway, though; that was why there had been a hole ready for Kousuke the night before.

His neighbors didn’t seem to find his activities sinister, even when they heard him digging late at night. Everyone bowed when they saw him, and they asked him for advice on their own gardens. Everyone knew he liked to garden, and no one thought it was odd. They all sympathized with him; he had lost his family, and only his hobbies remained.

He had grown friendly with Kousuke two years after his family had died, a year ago now. The boy had gotten lost in Saeki’s garden, and they had soon become very friendly. Saeki had even gone on picnics with Kousuke’s family.

When he’d known Kousuke for nine or ten months, Saeki had run across some wood just about Kousuke’s height in his garage. He instantly thought it would be ideal for coffin making.

Saeki had shaken off the thought, even becoming furious with himself—but the next day, he’d started making the coffin, all the while grimacing at how stupid he was being. He would never actually use it, he told himself. Yet his hands hammered nails into the wood without his conscious guidance, working almost automatically, turning the wood into a box.

“l want to go home! Let me out!” Kousuke was crying now. Saeki could hear the boy’s sobs from the bamboo pole. The inside of the hole was dark. The childish voice echoed inside it, the sound muffled.

Saeki didn’t know what else to say to Kousuke. He felt so sorry for the boy, so very sorry. Although he pitied him, there was nothing else he could say.

Saeki’s hands were holding a hose now. It was attached to the faucet on the side of the house.

The summer heat was getting stronger, and the sound of cicadas came from all around him. The heat spread from his back down, until it embraced his whole body.

A trickle of water lapped against the tip of Saeki’s sandals; it was coming from the place where Kousuke was buried. Water was gushing out of one of the bamboo poles, dripping down the morning glories and forming a puddle on the ground. It was coming from the pole that had been an air hole.

The hose was sticking in the other pole. When Saeki’s gaze rested there, only then did he clearly understand what he had done. However, that did not mean he had been acting unconsciously.

He had knowingly turned the valve on the end of the hose, filling the box in the ground with water. He had just felt like he was dreaming the whole while. The conscience that would have bothered anyone else didn’t seem to function in him.

Water had filled the coffin—and with no other place to go, it had come back up the ocher bamboo pole. The summer sun glittered on the water pouring out of the pole. Saeki thought it was beautiful. The cicadas’ song was joined by the sound of the children returning from their exercises. They came from the opposite direction this time, passing along the length of his wall. He couldn’t hear Kousuke’s voice anymore. And the morning glories were wrinkling, starting to fade.

†

Before he knew it, three years had passed.

The police had not come to arrest him. Kousuke’s parents had moved away, looking very sad, and Saeki was the only person who had seen them off. Nobody imagined that Saeki had killed Kousuke; indeed, they all thought the boy’s disappearance had left him stricken with grief.

He hadn’t done any acting; he really did mourn the boy. But pangs of conscience left him unable to look directly at the boy’s parents as they shed tears for their lost child. The purity of their tears only drove home the sheer horror of what he had done.

For three years, Saeki had been terrified that someone would find out what he had done. In all that time, Saeki had never once gone near the patch of land where Kousuke was buried. It was covered in weeds now. The morning glories had faded away, scattered seeds, and grown again, mingled among the weeds. A new family had moved into the house where Kousuke had lived.

At the beginning of summer, a housewife brought the neighborhood newsletter around to Saeki’s house. At the door, she spoke about the serial killer targeting girls, a story that was all over the talk shows. Eventually, the conversation touched on Kousuke’s disappearance.

“Three years since Kousuke vanished … You were friendly, weren’t you? You must miss him.”

Saeki tensed, but then he remembered Kousuke’s little face smiling, and he felt a wave of sadness. He had drowned the boy underground with his own hands, but his twisted mind still had the nerve to feel grief over the loss. How horrifying.

Saeki nodded gravely. But when he looked up and saw the woman’s face, he noticed something strange: she didn’t seem at all sad, and she had already moved on to talking about how loud the cicadas were getting as the days grew hotter. The world already considered Kousuke part of the past.

A few days later, Saeki found himself buying new wood and nails and making another coffin. He had to make the coffin inside, so that no one would see him working over the wall. As he sawed the boards down to size, tiny bits of wood littered the tatami floors of the room.

The summer flew by. Saeki could feel his conscience trying to stop him from doing something horrible again, could feel it battling a crazed darkness inside him that was searching for new prey. But this inner struggle never showed outwardly, and the world around him seemed to think Saeki was just like he’d always been. Like a machine functioning automatically, he went about his daily life without any trouble at all.

Then, one Friday late in October, Saeki left work, got into his car in the parking lot, and started driving home. It was already dark out. As he joined the rows of cars with headlights on, his eyes naturally glanced sideways at someone walking by the side of the road. A moment later, he was shaken by the realization that he had looked at the person with an evaluating eye. He could not make out any expression on his face as he peered at its reflection in the rearview mirror; it was like the dark parts of his eyes had turned into little holes.

At work, he had always been taken for a very quiet man. He brought in flowers from home to decorate with, and he did the work he was assigned without complaint. People thought well of him, and he was trusted. None of them knew that Saeki had murdered a child.

As he neared home, he turned left onto a street with little traffic.

And there, Saeki saw the girl.

She was walking by the side of the road. He could see her back in the glare of his headlights. She wore a black uniform, and she had long black hair hanging down her back.

As he passed her, Saeki unconsciously slowed down. The girl’s hair burned into his eyes. It was like her long black hair was drawing him in.

He looked up through the windshield and saw the full moon hanging in the night sky. There were no clouds, and the area was faintly lit by quiet moonlight. It was a residential area, in front of a park. The trees around them had lost half their leaves already.

Saeki turned right at the next intersection and stopped his car. He turned out the headlights, checked his mirrors, and waited for the girl.

If the girl went straight or turned left, he would drive home. He had the day off tomorrow. He could spend his time relaxing around the house.

But if the girl turned toward him …

A single dry leaf drifted down, tapping against his window and landing on the pavement below. He remembered the neighborhood newsletter he’d read the day before. There had been an article about cleaning up the leaves on the roads, and they were to have cleaned this evening. There were a few leaves on the road now, but it had been covered in them that morning, so he supposed they’d already finished work here. Another leaf drifted silently down, settling against his windshield wipers.

There was no sound at all. Saeki sat in the car, his knuckles clenching the steering wheel tightly. In the mirror, he could see the corner he had just turned. Finally, the girl appeared in the pale light of the moon.

ii

Saeki parked in his garage and quickly closed the large metal door, which shut with a loud screech that echoed through the quiet residential streets. He stood outside the garage, staring down at the piles of dry leaves. The trees he had planted grew right up next to the garage, and they were wrapped in branches, so when their leaves fell, they nearly buried his garage. He would have to rake away the leaves soon.

Since his parents and grandmother had died, Saeki was alone in the house. He had to do all the cleaning and laundry himself. And every time he did so, it reminded him how alone he was.

His recently married colleague showed up at work wearing starched shirts now, and Saeki’s boss had pictures of his children on his desk.

“Will you ever get married, Saeki?” a female coworker had asked once.

That would never happen, Saeki thought. Lovers, friends, family … all those things seemed very far away, out of reach. Saeki could manage casual conversation at work, but he didn’t feel comfortable forming any deeper bonds.

The secrets and anxieties he harbored had built an unconscious wall between him and other people. There was no one he could ever confess these horrors to.

A chilly breeze brushed against his neck. It was colder than the day before, and Saeki shivered as he watched the leaves blow across the ground. But the chill he felt was not entirely the fault of the coming winter. Saeki realized he was standing outside without his suit jacket on. His white dress shirt was covered in wrinkles, which reminded him of his newlywed colleague’s marital bliss. That man’s shirts were always ironed.

He shook his head. This was no time to be thinking of other people. He stepped inside the garage. There was a door on the side of the garage, and he walked through it, making his way over to the car and opening the back door. As he picked up his suit jacket, he noticed the stain on the back of the cloth. It must be blood. Saeki looked down at the girl lying on the backseat, bleeding from her mouth and nose. He hadn’t wanted anyone he might pass as he approached his home to see the girl lying back there, so he’d covered her with his jacket, hiding her.

The girl was still unconscious and didn’t move. She was curled up, her long hair falling over her face like a veil. If she hadn’t resisted, he wouldn’t have had to hurt her, Saeki thought, rubbing the back of his hand, a red line marking where the girl’s nail had broken the skin.

She had screamed as they grappled, her voice shaking the silent night air. Everyone around must have heard it.

He didn’t clearly remember what had happened after that. Before he knew it, he’d hit the girl in the face several times. She had slumped over and was no longer moving, but his hands were still flying, pounding into her cheek. He’d shoved her into his backseat, thrown his jacket over her, started the car, and sped away.

Saeki had almost never done anything violent, not even as a child. When he saw news reports on child abuse, his head was filled with loathing. But now he had punched a girl in the face. He could still feel the impact on his hand, which tingled as if insects were crawling all over his fist. He shook his hand in terror, trying to get them off, but the sensation wouldn’t go away.

He picked up the girl, carrying her out of the car and into the room at the back of the house. He left the lights off so that their shadows wouldn’t show on the window or shoji screens. In the moonlight, the girl’s arms and hair hung down, swaying as he walked. In the makeshift workroom, he laid her down in the freshly made coffin.

It fit her perfectly. It was like he had made the box specifically for her. But Saeki couldn’t look at her face, not with the blood running from her nose and lips, not with the skin changing color where he’d hit her. The darkness inside him was branded onto her features, and he could not face up to it. He quickly put a lid on the coffin, nailing it closed. There were two small holes in the lid where the breathing holes would go.

There was an open hole next to Kousuke’s grave, waiting for the girl. He had guessed that the events of the day would happen, and the hole lay waiting in the moonlight. The dirt taken from the hole formed a small hill next to it.

Saeki pulled the coffin out of the house, moving it directly from the porch to the ground below. An occupied coffin was very heavy.

He placed the coffin in the hole, fitting the pair of bamboo breathing poles into the holes on the lid. Then he filled the hole, scooping dirt onto the coffin. At first, there was a wooden tapping sound as the dry earth hit the coffin lid—but soon the lid was covered, and the task was silent. It took longer than Saeki expected to fill the hole. He was covered in sweat, and since he hadn’t changed after arriving home, he had dirt all over the legs of his work suit. At last the grave was full, and he patted the earth flat with his trowel.

He had buried Kousuke in summer, placing morning glories on the bamboo poles. Bur that was impossible at this time of year. Morning glories were originally tropical flowers, and they didn’t take well to cold. That left several unused brown bamboo poles in the weeds along the wall, but that would not arouse any suspicions. All he had to do was explain that he grew morning glories there in the summer, and all doubts would vanish.

So the freshly dug soil wouldn’t stand out, he brought some straw he had laid on the flower beds and scattered it around the bamboo poles. When he was done, it looked like the ground had never been disturbed at all.

Saeki put his trowel away and sat down on the edge of the porch. For a long while, he stared at the bamboo poles along the wall. The girl was buried there.

The area between the porch and the wall was the only part of the garden not covered by trees. There were several flower beds, a line for hanging laundry, and the bamboo poles. But on either side of the porch, the trees crowded close, looming like black walls in the night. When the wind blew, the looming shadows shifted. Saeki rubbed the spot on his hand where the girl had scratched him as he’d shoved her into his car. The numbness left over from having hit her had almost vanished. When Saeki touched his face, he found himself grinning broadly.

He went into the house and looked through the girl’s bag. There, he found a can of pepper spray and a student ID. There was a picture on the ID: a girl with a beautiful face.

Below her picture was a grade and class, a seat number, and the name Morino Yoru. Saeki stood on the porch again, gazing at the bamboo poles by the wall and whispering that name to himself.

The person he had just buried had a name—such an ordinary thing to just now realize. The girl in the ground had parents, who had given her a name and raised her with love. And he had just buried alive the target of that love.

Sweet intoxication filled Saeki’s mind, like sugar water seeping into a cotton ball. Aboveground, the girl he had beaten was terrifying—but underground, out of sight, he felt his fear changing to bliss.

Then Saeki heard a voice, faintly—the wind almost drowned it out, it was so small.

Saeki looked at the bamboo poles again. The pale moonlight picked them out of the shadows around them, sending black lines across the garden to the porch where Saeki was sitting. Four of the bamboo poles were thicker than the others.

The tiny voice he had heard came from two of those thicker poles. Saeki stood up, slipped on his shoes, and stepped directly from the porch into the garden. He walked across the garden, feeling like he wasn’t moving at all, like he was a sleepwalker drifting through an unreal world. There was no light save that of the moon, and the trees around his garden loomed like dark shadows on either side, staring down at him.

He stepped onto the scattered straw, approaching the bamboo poles, which came up to his chest, and peering down into them. There was nothing inside but darkness, darkness like his hollow heart, across a diameter as wide as his thumb. He could just make out the girl’s trembling voice, carried up the pole to the world aboveground. Her voice was very weak, and the wind snatched it from the end of the poles, scattering it like smoke.

One of the poles was louder than the other. There were two poles in the coffin, but one was at her feet. The other was near her face, and when she spoke inside the coffin, the pole near her face carried her voice better.

“Hello?” she said feebly. Her cut lip must’ve made it hard to speak loudly. “Let me out …”

Saeki went down on his knees, his palms against the earth between the bamboo poles. He had just buried her, and the earth under the straw was still soft.

The girl’s voice was coming from under his hands. He knew it was just his imagination, but the ground felt warm, as if he were feeling the body heat of the girl buried there.

Poor thing. How helpless she was, trapped down below his soles, breathing through a pole in the ground. He pitied her. Knowing she was buried beneath him, unable to do a thing, he felt so superior. He felt the same as he did when looking at a puppy or a kitten.

“Can you hear me?” he asked, standing up. His voice traveled through the darkness inside the poles, reaching the girl.

“Who … who’s there?” he heard her say. Saeki said nothing, and her voice rose up again. “You shut me in here, didn’t you? Then you buried me underground.”

“You know you’ve been buried?” Saeki asked, taken aback. If she had just now woken up inside the coffin, there was no way she should know anything but the fact that she was trapped in a small, enclosed, dark place.

The girl said nothing for a moment. Then, “I heard the dirt hitting the lid.”

“You were pretending to be unconscious?”

He had thought she’d been sleeping since he’d knocked her out. When had she woken up? He had never tied her up. If she had been awake before he put her in the box, she would’ve tried to run.

“Are your legs injured? Is that why you didn’t run?” he asked. The girl said nothing. Maybe his guess was right.

“Let me out!” she said angrily.

Her sudden anger took Saeki by surprise. She didn’t cry and plead—she was giving orders. He couldn’t see her underground, but he could sense how strong she was. But even in her strength, she was powerless.

“No, I’m afraid not. I really am sorry,” he said, shaking his head, even though the buried girl couldn’t see him. “If I let you out, you’d tell everyone what I did to you. I can’t let that happen.”

“Wh-who are you? Why are you doing this?” Her questions echoed in his heart.

Why had he buried her? He could find no exit from that question. It led him directly into a dead end. But he decided there was no reason to be polite and answer her, so he stopped thinking about it.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Where am I? The mountains?”

“No, you’re in my garden. This is your grave.”

The girl fell quiet. He tried to imagine what her face must look like in that tiny, dark space.

“Grave? You’ve got to be kidding. I’m still alive.”

“Burying dead people isn’t as much fun,” Saeki said, feeling like that was extremely obvious.

It seemed to leave the girl speechless for a moment. Then she growled, “If you don’t let me out, you’ll be in trouble.”

“You think someone’s coming to save you?”

“I know someone who will find me!” she suddenly roared. Then she yelped in pain and fell silent again. He could hear her breathing heavily. Maybe her ribs were injured and they hurt every time she spoke. Saeki thought there was a surprising passion in her words.

“This friend you trust so much … a boy?”

“Yes,” she said, but with a confidence that made it clear she was talking about her boyfriend.

“May I ask his name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Curiosity.”

There was a long silence, and then the girl said the boy’s name. Saeki branded that name into his memories but privately wondered if she was lying. There was a possibility that no such person existed, but Saeki had no way of verifying the truth.

“I’m going to have to buy some binoculars.”

The night sky was filling with clouds drifting across the face of the moon. Tomorrow it might well be overcast.

“Do you know why?” Saeki asked. The girl remained silent. “To watch him mourn your loss from a distance.”

He was sure his voice had reached the girl’s ears, yet she said nothing at all. Saeki said a few more things, trying to draw a response, but she reacted to nothing. She just lay there silently in the dark.

Assuming he had made her mad, Saeki left the garden. Her mood would change in the morning.

He went to the garage and cleaned the backseat of the car. He could leave no trace of her presence there. In the car, he always kept a small pillow, which he’d placed under her head when he’d laid her down. All her blood had soaked into it, so there were no stains on the seat. Saeki took the pillow out of the car and gathered up all the long black hairs from the floor.

When he was done cleaning, he went inside, checked the clock on the wall, and discovered that it was already past two. He went up to his room, laid down on his futon, and tried to sleep. He lay there with his eyes closed, searching for the entrance to the land of dreams, his thoughts on the girl locked in tiny, isolated darkness.

†

The next day, it was almost noon by the time Saeki woke up. It was Saturday, but where he worked, weekends meant little; he often had to work on Saturday and Sunday. But this week, he’d been lucky: Saturday was his day off.

He opened his window and looked outside. When he was a child, he’d been able to see the city from there, but now the trees were in the way. Above the treetops, he could see a gray sky. A cold wind shook the trees, brushing past Saeki’s cheeks.

Wondering if the girl had simply been a dream, Saeki went downstairs and out onto the porch. He looked toward the wall, and only then was he sure that it had really happened.

There were four thick bamboo poles among the thinner rods. Four poles meant two coffins. He had buried a girl last night, next to Kousuke. Confirming this came as a relief.

What was going on next to the park, where he had pushed the girl into the car?

She had screamed. Had someone reported it? Had the buried girl’s parents grown worried about their missing daughter and called the police? The police might’ve been able to use those two pieces of information to figure out that the girl had been kidnapped on the road next to the park.

Saeki put on his sandals and stepped down into the garden. He was hungry, but he wanted to chat with the girl a little before he ate. In unusual circumstances like this, he usually wasn’t able to eat—but for some reason, he felt very hungry and alive.

He stood next to the bamboo poles. He didn’t speak immediately but listened, trying to hear if any sounds were coming from belowground. There were none, so he said, “It’s morning. Are you awake?”

The night before, she’d refused to answer him. He’d been worried she would keep that up this morning—but after a moment, he heard her voice again.

“I know it’s morning. It’s dark in here, but …”

The pole the voice was coming from shook slightly, despite the earth packed around it. She must have touched the end of it, which ran through the hole in the lid of the coffin.

“There’s this pole sticking in next to my face. I was feeling around and found it. This is so I can breathe? I looked inside, and I could see white light on the far end—which means daylight?”

The poles were not fixed in place—they simply passed through holes in the lid. If Saeki wanted to remove them, he could do so easily. Likewise, if she grabbed the end inside the coffin and shook it, it would wave back and forth merrily.

“Let go of that. Those poles should never move. Someone might see and think it looks suspicious. If you move that again, I’ll pull them out. And then you won’t be able to breathe.”

The pole stopped moving.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

“Saeki. And you are Morino, yes?”

There was a long, thoughtful silence, and then the girl whispered, her voice full of disgust, “Saeki, I don’t know why you’ve shut me in here, but this is evil. You should let me out—or the black bird of misfortune will settle on your shoulder.”

Not only was this girl not afraid of him, she was casting some sort of curse on him. Did she fully understand her predicament? Saeki felt himself growing a little angry.

“What can you do down there? I could drown you at any moment.”

“Drown … ?”

He explained in as much detail as possible how he could kill her using a hose to pump water into the coffin, making it very clear that there was no hope of her surviving, trying to break her will.

The girl wasn’t able to turn her eyes away from the black pit of despair before her. Or perhaps she was simply too tired to maintain her anger. Either way, her voice trembled. “I will end my own life before you have a chance to kill me. You didn’t check my pockets—a fatal mistake. I’m sure you’ll realize just how careless you were in time. I have a mechanical pencil in my pocket, and I’ll stab that into my jugular.”

“Perhaps you think committing suicide before I kill you would protect your pride, but that isn’t true. It’s all the same. Once you kill yourself, your body will rot away down there. No one will ever find it. You’ll remain alone, isolated underground forever.”

“No, I will not. I will not go undiscovered forever. The police aren’t stupid, and they’ll catch you one day. It may be a few days from now, or it may be a few years from now. And I know one thing for sure: I will not die alone.”

“You won’t?”

“My death will not be ‘isolated’!”

“You mean someone will die with you? The boy you spoke of yesterday?”

“He won’t let me die alone.”

Was she crying in her grave? Her voice sounded a little moist, but there was still an absolute sense of conviction behind it.

Saeki had asked about her boyfriend, intending to scoff. They were high school kids, and it was only puppy love. But now he found himself getting nervous. There was a black cloud in his head, heavily laden with rain.

“I can’t understand … how you can talk like that, in these circumstances. “Morino … you will die there and rot away underground, lonely … and alone. No other fate is possible,” Saeki said, and then he left her.

When he heard her words, he’d remembered the question the young woman at work had asked him—if he would ever marry.

He was cut off from any deep bonds, the kind family and close friends shared.

He had to remain that way to survive. He could smile at other people and engage in shallow conversations, but his soul must never touch theirs. The girl’s words had driven that home, unsettling him.

He decided to eat something and calm himself. He had lost his appetite, but if he ate, he would feel better.

He decided to eat out. He pulled his wallet out of his suit pocket and put on a jacket. Then, as he slipped on his shoes at the door, he noticed something odd.

Saeki had a work badge that he always kept on him. The ID card was held in a brown leather case, and it was always in the same pocket as his wallet. He never went anywhere without it. But he hadn’t seen it since the night before.

Saeki took off the one shoe he’d managed to get on and went back into the house, where his suit jacket was hanging. He reached into the pocket where his wallet had been. There was nothing inside, so he checked the other pockets. No sign of his badge. He looked around, making sure it wasn’t on the floor somewhere. He picked up all the magazines on the table, even lifting up the futon covering his kotatsu to look for it. Nothing.

When had he last seen it? He knew he’d had it at work. Had he dropped it somewhere?

Saeki soon arrived at the answer, an answer that made him rather dizzy. The more he tried to dismiss the idea, the more certain he was.

If he had dropped the badge, it would’ve been when he’d fought with the girl … last night, next to the park, when the girl’s scream had shattered the night, and the girl’s elbow had struck him in the ribs—knocking the badge out of his pocket.

He could hear bird’s wings flapping in the garden. The trees around his house drew a lot of birds. He could hear them singing in the morning, and when he walked through the garden, they would fly away in panic. But today the sound of their wings felt ominous, like a harbinger of destruction.

They had cleaned the leaves on that road yesterday. The badge hadn’t been there when they cleaned, but if it were found today … then they’d know the owner of the badge had passed that way that morning or the evening before.

It would be easy to determine to whom the badge belonged. Saeki’s name was written inside. He had no way of telling how many people would connect the fact that he had been there with the girl’s scream and her disappearance, but it seemed like a good idea to go out and find the badge before anyone else did.

Saeki hurriedly put his shoes back on and went outside. He would run to the park—it was too close to bother driving.

Before he went out, Saeki decided to say something to the girl. He walked around from the entrance through the trees on the side of the house to reach the garden by the porch. As he neared the bamboo poles along the wall, he stopped dead in his tracks.

From the bamboo poles, he could hear the girl laughing like a broken record.

In all their conversations, the girl had never let herself get carried away. She had never screamed, instead speaking calmly to him, in firm control of her emotions.

But now she was laughing. The pain occasionally caused the laughter to give way to groans, but she couldn’t stop herself from laughing anyway.

In the box underground, had her fear driven her to madness? She had been so quiet all this time that the laughter was all the more unsettling. In the end, Saeki went back the way he had come without daring to say a word.

iii

When he reached the road by the park, it was already noon. If it had been a clear day, the sun would’ve been high overhead, but today a layer of thick clouds covered it, and a cold wind was blowing.

The park was a cozy little number, nestled in the middle of a residential area.

There was a chain-link fence around it, to keep children from running out into the road. As Saeki walked along the sidewalk, he glanced through the fence into the park. There was a playground in a clearing.

Someone was sitting on a swing. He was facing the other side of the park, his back to Saeki, so all Saeki could make out were his black clothes.

Certain there was no one else around, Saeki relaxed. He had been worried that the police would already be there investigating, but apparently that was not the case. More than anything else, he’d been afraid that someone else would find the badge before he did.

Trees were placed at intervals along the sidewalk. There were no cars on the street; it was just the quiet, empty road.

With every breeze, dry leaves fell—not dancing on the breeze, but falling straight down, like dry rain. They’d just cleaned there the day before, but the sidewalk already was covered in leaves. There were fewer on the road, because the wind from passing cars kept that area relatively clear, but there were big piles against the curbs.

Saeki looked around the ground where he’d stopped his car the night before, where he’d grappled with the girl. But he didn’t find his badge. There wasn’t anything but leaves, which blanketed the ground. Perhaps the leaves had covered his badge, hiding it from the eyes of people passing by.

Saeki got down on his knees and began pushing around leaves. There was no need to search the entire sidewalk; he knew the badge would be where he had grappled with the girl. He was sure he would find it quickly.

As he gently turned over the fallen leaves, the wind caught them, carrying them away. Saeki watched them, thinking about the girl.

It was dark where she was, in that box. If she peered through the pole stuck into the lid, she could see the light of the world outside as a tiny dot, but that was the only light she had. In that tiny, dark space, she had no choice but to gaze directly on her own death. Yet still she claimed her boyfriend would not let her die alone.

Finding that out had shaken Saeki. He couldn’t understand it, and that made him anxious. How could you believe in someone when you were trapped in a box underground, with the promise of eternal isolation hovering over you?

There had been a comfortable fog over his mind all night; as he’d thought about how powerless the girl he had buried was, it had given him ripples of pleasure, like honey on his tongue. But when he’d heard those words, it was like being dragged from his slumber by someone slapping his cheek.

He knew exactly what he had done to the girl now. He remembered every horrifying word he had said to her.

Feeling dizzy, Saeki fell to his knees in the leaves. His vision blurred, and the layers of leaves seemed to ripple like the surface of the sea. He could barely breathe, his lungs gasping for air.

When had he begun to relish such sadistic actions like he was eating candy?

Once, he had been a good citizen. He had worked hard, and he had been nice to those around him, greeting people he knew as he walked around, always stopping to chat.

Every time the notion of burying someone alive had floated into his mind, he’d struggled to banish the thought. He’d told himself that no one should ever do such a thing and that he should be satisfied with digging holes in his garden. He was a human being. He could never do anything as diabolical as enjoying burying someone alive …

But ever since he’d buried Kousuke and killed him, a vital gear inside him had gone out of whack. In a terrifying way, his feelings of superiority over the helpless girl in the ground had made him feel like he was finally alive … Could he still call himself human?

Despite his dizzy spell, Saeki never once stopped pushing the leaves around as he continued looking for his badge. Sweat rolled down his nose, falling onto the dry leaves.

No matter how hard he looked for it, there was no sign of his badge. He had even checked the leaves well away from where he had struggled with the girl, just in case, but it was nowhere to be found. Saeki was starting to panic.

A newspaper swept up against his legs, carried by the wind. When he stood up, kicking it away, he realized someone was standing against the fence, looking at him through it. He’d been so preoccupied with his search that he hadn’t seen the figure approaching.

The swing was swaying empty in the distance. The person sitting there must have come over to him.

Standing on the other side of the fence was a boy who looked like a high school student. He wore a black uniform, and he stood staring at Saeki with both hands in his pockets. Saeki assumed today had been a half day at school, so the boy had come from school directly to the park.

Saeki met the boy’s eye, and there was an awkward silence. The boy broke it first, bowing his head. “Sorry, I just … wondered what you were doing.”

He must’ve been a sight to behold.

“Did you lose something?” the boy asked.

“Erm,” Saeki stammered, not sure how to answer. He wanted the boy to go away, but it seemed too strange to come right out and say so. Perhaps he should leave himself, coming back to look some more when the boy was gone.

“You live around here?” the boy asked, when Saeki failed to respond.

“Yes, I do.”

“May I ask your name?”

Without really thinking about it, he told the boy the truth.

“Saeki? Mind if I ask you a question? It might be a strange question, but …”

“A strange question?”

“I won’t take up too much of your time. About the scream last night … do you know anything?”

Saeki felt like someone was pressing ice against his heart.

“Scream … ? What scream … ?”

“At around nine o’clock last night, someone was heard screaming near here. I know someone who lives in the area who told me about it; but it seems like your house was too far from here for you to have heard it,” the boy concluded, after carefully observing Saeki’s reaction.

Saeki was more than willing to go along with this, so he nodded.

“You see, one of my classmates never came home last night. Today was a half day, but my classmate didn’t come to school.”

Saeki could not stop himself from looking away. The boy was at least ten years younger than him, but his eyes terrified Saeki. He could feel himself sweating under his clothes. The boy was talking about that girl …

“My classmate walks this way to school every day, so I wondered if the scream last night was connected …”

It was her, the girl Saeki had buried alive. “You know her well?”

“I suppose,” the boy said, indifferent. Was this the boy the girl had mentioned?

From the way he answered, no. He was very calm, and he spoke of her like she was a stranger. It was hard to believe they were close.

“So you came here worried about your missing classmate?”

“Oh, no. This is more like sightseeing.”

“Sight—?”

“At the police station, they have a map of the city with red marks all over it.”

“Places where fatal accidents have occurred?”

“Yes, you know it? I didn’t think anyone had noticed but me. My hobby is going to each of those red marks and standing on the spots where people have died—standing over the spot where their lives ended, feeling the asphalt under my shoes … Coming here was simply an extension of that hobby. I like looking at places where horrible things have happened, and it also occurred to me that, if I were lucky, I might run into the perpetrator returning to the scene of the crime.”

The boy removed his hands from his pockets and took hold of the chain-link fence. The fence shook, emitting the sound of grating metal. The boy was staring directly into Saeki’s eyes.

The boy’s words had almost made Saeki’s heart stop. Was he saying this in full knowledge that the man he was talking to had kidnapped the girl in question? Saeki dismissed the idea. That was out of the question.

But his heart took no comfort from this, and he remained anxious.

He heard the sound of a bird flying overheard and looked up. A lone crow was flying under the cold sky, its black beak pointed right at Saeki.

Wait. Saeki had an idea.

Perhaps the boy had found the badge—had linked the badge to the girl’s scream and had guessed that the culprit might come back here soon …

Now the boy was keeping the badge hidden, testing him. But was that really possible?

“So this missing classmate of mine … where do you think she is?” the boy asked. Once again, he appeared to be coldly observing Saeki’s reaction.

Saeki wanted to run. The boy was on the other side of the fence and would have to run over to the park entrance before he could follow. But in that case … if he really had picked up the badge and he reported Saeki’s suspicious behavior to the police …

“Do you know anything?”

“No, nothing.”

“Oh? I thought you would somehow.”

“Why … ?”

“Perhaps I was overthinking it. You see, you said you hadn’t heard the scream.”

“So what … ?”

“That doesn’t make sense. I only mentioned a scream, but when I mentioned my missing classmate, you asked if I knew her. You used the word ‘her.’ But I never mentioned anything that could identify my classmate’s gender. Saeki, how did you know my missing classmate was female?”

“Ah, I do have a reason for that. There’s a high school girl I pass every morning here, but this morning I didn’t see her. That’s all. I just assumed you must’ve been talking about her.”

The boy nodded. “A thin girl with long hair?”

“Yes—pale skin, with a mole under her left eye,” Saeki said, remembering the photograph on her student ID. But how long would he be able to hold up his end of this conversation? The boy clearly suspected him. He was getting more and more uncomfortable, as if there was an arm slowly tightening around his neck.

“Are you okay? You look pale.”

“I’m not feeling all that hot, no.”

“Wait there—I’ll be right over.”

The boy left the fence, walking quickly toward the park entrance. On the way, he picked up his school bag, which he’d left next to the swings. Once out on the road, he came back toward Saeki, looking concerned.

Saeki wiped the tension-fueled sweat from his brow with one sleeve.

“Since yesterday … I’ve been feeling pretty sick.”

“I do apologize for making you talk with me in such a condition. I said I wouldn’t take up much of your time, but it seems I have … Perhaps we should find someplace where you can sit down?”

“Yes …” Saeki pretended to think about it for a moment, but he already knew what he would answer. “I suppose my house would be closest.”

He planned to take a few steps and feign a dizzy spell, almost falling over. The boy would come running over, and he would take advantage of this, convincing the boy to help him home. Then Saeki would kill the boy, checking the boy’s pockets at his leisure. But he didn’t even need to do any acting.

“You don’t look well—should I walk you home?” the boy frowned, not wanting to tax Saeki unduly. Convenient.

“Please. This way …”

They walked together, Saeki with his shoulders hunched and shivering occasionally. He did feel pretty terrible, so it wasn’t hard for him to pretend he was sick.

As they walked, Saeki tried to figure out just who this boy was. He had apperared in front of him out of nowhere, and he was now walking with him. What should he do when they reached the house? How should he kill the boy?

Once again, Saeki felt himself getting dizzy. Before he even knew it, he had started thinking about killing the boy with the same methodical detachment he used when he thought about work.

There was a pure part of his heart begging him not to do anything else this horrific. But if the boy had picked up his badge and guessed at the connections between him and the girl, then Saeki had no choice—he had to kill him. Otherwise, the world would find out about the horrible things he had done.

What would people he worked with think when they found out the real Saeki was a terrifying monster? That the man who had brought flowers in from his garden to brighten up the office was really a killer, a creature not worth spitting on? Would this knowledge sadden them? Infuriate them? His ears echoing with their revulsion, Saeki would be so overcome with shame that he would only be able to stare at his own feet, the flames of shame burning all around him.

He could never let that happen. The boy had to die. He squeezed his eyes shut, telling himself this again, trying not to cry.

They were at his home in no time. He didn’t remember what they had talked about on the way there, but he felt like they had both avoided anything significant.

“Nice house,” the boy said, looking up at it.

“Yeah, but an old one. Come on in.”

They went through the gate. It was always open so the car could get in and out. The boy stopped in the driveway, looking at the garage next to the house. The garage doors were open, and the front of a black car was facing them. Saeki had cleaned all trace of the girl from the back seat. There was no blood, no hair, nothing left. He had left the garage door open afterward.

“Is that your only car? Then you live alone, right?”

“Yes.”

The boy looked at the garden.

“That’s a lot of trees.”

“My hobby. Like my own little forest.”

After asking permission, the boy turned back into the garden. Saeki followed after him.

Under the cloudy sky, everything Saeki had grown looked as though it were dark green. The boy passed a row of evergreens, sounding impressed. “This is quite a big garden!”

Just past the evergreens, the garden opened up. This was the space on the south side of the house, between the porch and the wall. Several flower beds were framed by stones, but nothing grew there now. There was only the dry earth.

And over by the wall, there were several bamboo poles. Where the morning glories had been, there was scattered straw, and underneath that …

“No trees here?”

“Keeping the view from the porch.”

… Underneath that was the girl and whatever remained of Kousuke.

The bamboo poles stood in a row along the wall, unmoving. The boy had not yet focused his attention on them, only perceiving them as part of the garden. But what if the girl in the ground grabbed the end of the pole and shook it? The boy would see it moving strangely and go to investigate.

Saeki had to end this before that happpened. He told the boy to sit on the porch.

“I’ll get some tea,” he said, stepping up onto the porch and heading inside.

“I wonder where Morino disappeared to … ?” he heard the boy mutter. Saeki froze in his tracks, staring at the boy’s back.

“I’m not quite sure how to explain this, but she gives off some sort of … pheromone that attracts strange people,” the boy said, turning to look up at Saeki. It was obvious he had intended his muttered comment to be overheard. “Walking around in a cloud of those pheromones means those abnormal individuals often come after her.”

“Wait a moment—I’ll just get that tea,” Saeki said, leaving the boy. He could not be sure if the boy had deliberately brought the subject up to distract him, but there had been something sinister lurking behind the boy’s tone.

As he boiled water for the tea in the kitchen, Saeki took a kitchen knife out of the drawer. He could think of no other weapons to kill someone with.

The blue fire on his gas stove began heating the water in the kettle. He placed a cup and a teapot on a tray and the knife next to them. He gazed down at the metallic sheen of the blade, trying to imagine himself swinging it down to attack the boy on the porch from behind. The blade shimmered, reflecting the light of the burner. He was only making one cup of tea, so there wasn’t a lot of water, and it began to boil quickly.

Saeki put his hand on the edge of the sink, steadying himself. Otherwise, he couldn’t have remained upright. Nothing of the sweet sensation he had felt while burying the girl was left. Instead, he felt terrible, like he was living a nightmare. Everything he saw, everything he touched seemed to be giving off the stench of rot. But the ugliest thing of all was himself. He had killed Kousuke, he had buried that girl alive, and now he was about to stab this boy. Compared with the strength of the girl’s belief in her boyfriend, his own heart seemed so pathetic. His nightmare had begun the moment he’d killed Kousuke.

Or perhaps he had been doomed to this nightmare the moment he had been born. The moment he had been granted life, his soul may well have been possessed by the unavoidable urge to murder.

The water boiled, steam pouring out of the mouth of the kettle. Saeki reached to turn off the flame and realized …

Kousuke …

Steam rose, the water in the kettle boiling furiously.

What had Kousuke looked like … ?

Saeki could not remember the face of the young boy he had killed. Although he had gone with him to the park and they had played together any number of times, Saeki retained no memories of him, as if the boy had been disposable.

What was wrong with him? He no longer knew. Part of him was a good citizen who tried to be nice to people, but another part of him was a monster who buried people alive for fun. These two fought like multiple personalities, but they were not different people—they were connected, aligned, the same.

But in that case, who was he then? Who was the man he had thought he was? He could no longer believe in himself, so what could he believe in?

He picked the knife up off the tray, his hand trembling …

He turned off the stove and filled the pot. Then he headed toward the boy on the porch.

Saeki walked quietly. As he turned the corner, he was in sight of the porch, and he could see the boy’s back. The boy was facing the garden, sitting on the porch.

In his hand was a cell phone, held to his ear. Was he calling the police? For a moment, Saeki was terrified.

He crept quietly forward.

Saeki could hear the boy talking on the phone. From his tone, he was not talking to the police, but to a friend.

As he stood behind the boy, the boards under Saeki’s feet creaked.

The boy turned around, hanging up. “Saeki, that took ages!” the boy said. “And you look even sicker …”

Saeki put the tray down next to the boy. “Yes, well … I’m getting very dizzy …” He poured the tea into the cup.

He had to fight the terrifying beast that lurked within his heart. He held the cup out to the boy, silently making up his mind.

He had left the knife in the kitchen. When he realized he could not remember Kousuke’s face, he felt like he had no choice. This seemed to be the only escape from the nightmare.

The boy took the cup. White steam rose from the pale green liquid, vanishing into the air. He watched it for a while, and then he put the cup down without drinking.

“Saeki, I have good news,” the boy sighed, looking slightly relieved. “Morino did go missing yesterday, but apparently she just came home.”

iv

When the clock on the wall reached midnight, Saeki was curled up in a ball in the corner of his room with the lights out, hugging his knees and breathing softly in the darkness. He couldn’t stop shaking. He’d been like this since well before sunset, and he no longer knew if he was hot or cold, alive or dead.

The long hand of the clock moved forward another notch. As it did, it apparently moved into the perfect position to reflect the moonlight pouring through the window. It glittered white. The gleam caught the corner of his eye, and Saeki finally found his resolve. He stood up and went downstairs and to the garage. He picked up the trowel he kept there and a crowbar to pry the lid off the box, and then he went into the garden.

He had been waiting for the world to be submerged in darkness. He’d been afraid someone might look over the wall during the day and see what he was doing. But the longer he waited, the more his imagination had taken over, driving him half-insane. Overcome with terror, he had nearly passed out in the darkness, and before he knew it, he’d been curled up like that for more than six hours.

He passed the evergreens and came out in the clearing between the wall and the porch. Staring at the row of bamboo poles along the wall, he took another step forward. The back of his hand stung painfully, right where the girl’s nail had broken the skin the night before.

Saeki stood in front of the chest-high dry bamboo poles, the poles that connected to the girl’s coffin. His hand hurt so much he could have sworn it was bleeding.

First, he called out to the girl. She didn’t respond. Hands trembling, Saeki yanked the pole out of the ground and dropped it to one side. He brushed the straw aside, uncovering the hole where the pole had been.

He stabbed the tip of his trowel into the ground and began to dig.

He worked without light, to avoid attracting attention. The clouds that had covered the sky all day had been swept away by the wind. Like the night before, everything was bathed in the pale light of the moon. There were no sounds from the road beyond the wall, and he worked in almost total silence, the only sound coming from his trowel as it bit into the earth. He was still incredibly dizzy, his body weak like he was running a fever. As he dug, he remembered what the boy had said on the porch.

“It sounds like she had a pretty rough time of it, but she’s safe and sound now. I just spoke to her on the phone. I’m headed over there now—thanks for taking the time to talk to me.”

The boy had said all this before his tea was even cold, bowed his head, and then rose to leave.

Saeki had merely blinked at him, unable to parse the boy’s meaning. There was no way the girl could be aboveground.

But the boy had picked up his bag and headed toward the gate without seeming to notice Saeki’s confusion.

Saeki had stepped off the porch, slipped on his shoes, and followed after, through the trees.

“She’s … she came home … ?”

That had to be a lie. But he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Yes, she did. It sounded on the phone like she was still in a state of shock. But I wouldn’t worry; she’ll recover soon enough.”

The boy went through the gate, turning toward the park. Saeki stopped just outside the gate. He put one hand on the gatepost, supporting himself, and watched as the uniformed boy walked away.

The boy had stopped at the intersection not far from the gate, and he’d waved down the cross street. Someone Saeki couldn’t see must’ve been coming that way. Eventually, that person stepped onto the corner and stood next to the boy. It was a long-haired girl whom Saeki recognized at once.

He couldn’t believe his eyes. He stared at the girl’s face: even, beautiful features, pale skin. The girl he had buried alive. She was talking to the boy.

Was he dreaming? He was so dizzy that the houses and telephone poles were all bending. The road and walls were all moving like waves in a pond …

He’d glanced toward the bamboo poles where he’d buried the girl—and then he’d broken into a run. The moment he took his eyes off the duo at the corner, the boy had turned toward him. But all Saeki cared about was under those poles.

Saeki stood where he had buried the girl. He spoke to the poles that led into the coffin. There was no answer. No sound came from underground, and all he could see inside the poles was inky blackness, like dirty water.

The girl must have escaped.

No. Saeki dismissed the idea. The earth hadn’t been disturbed. So then … what the hell had he buried … ?

He called down the bamboo pole any number of times after the boy left, until it was dark. But she never once responded. No matter how hard he thought, Saeki couldn’t figure it out. Eventually, he decided there was nothing he could do except wait for dark and open the coffin lid.

In the moonlight, it was silent save for the sound of earth turning over. Saeki poured all his attention into the work. The black walls of forest stared down at him from either side. The damp night air made the scent of the evergreens all the stronger.

There was a white mist drifting through the trees, covering the garden. The trees were breathing. Saeki felt like this white mist was the breath of the trees he had planted.

He could feel the trowel stabbing into the ground, could feel the weight of the earth as he lifted it and tossed it aside, but he felt like he was trapped inside a nightmare. The repetitive, simple task he was performing didn’t help. He could no longer believe he really lived in the world; he was simply a human-shaped thing that had been trapped in the darkness for aeons, forced to turn over dirt for all eternity.

His hand hurt. He was sure the red scratches on the back of his hand harbored the girl’s curse.

What was it that lay buried under him? The deeper the hole, the less certain he was. Tears rolled down Saeki’s cheeks. With each scoop of earth, he had to wipe his eyes with his shoulders just to see. He was terrified of what lay underground. The embodiment of the sin he had committed lay there. He was sure it would be like a mirror, reflecting his inhuman inner nature.

He felt like he had been working forever, but then he finished at last. The wooden box he’d made had gradually appeared in the hole at the edge of the garden, surrounded by white mist and the scent of the earth, and bathed in the pale moonlight. The lid was still nailed shut. It didn’t appear as if it’d been opened. The thumb-sized holes in the lid were dark. The box terrified him. It was like some cold, otherworldly thing. Sobbing, Saeki pried open the lid with a crowbar.

The first thing that hit him was the smell of blood, so strong it nearly knocked him backward. Then he saw the uniform-clad girl in the box. She was lying on her back with her hands on her chest. Her face, the sides of the box, and the lid were all red. There was a deep pool of dark liquid in the bottom of the box.

It was blood, blood that had poured from the girl’s throat. In her hands was a mechanical pencil. Just as she’d said she would, she’d stabbed the pencil into her neck.

The blood must have sprayed out of her, coating the inside of the box. Saeki slapped his hands to his mouth, backing away from the hole. He needed to get away from her. He stumbled along the wall, collapsed on his knees near the evergreens, and threw up. But he hadn’t eaten a bite all day, and nothing came out but stomach acid.

“As you may have noticed, she was not Morino Yoru …”

As his shoulders shook with fear, Saeki heard a voice say those words. At first, he thought the voice came from inside his head, but it soon came again. It was the voice of the boy he’d met that day.

“Saeki, you only thought that she was Morino.”

He heard footsteps near him. Saeki looked up, and a figure appeared out of the mist. It stood in the trees, backlit by the moon, staring down at Saeki. He couldn’t see the figure’s face, but he knew it must be the boy.

Farther away came a different set of footsteps. There was someone else beyond the mist, through the evergreens. They walked right past Saeki, over to the coffin he had excavated. It was a tall, sturdy male, bigger than either Saeki or the boy. He appeared to be about the same age as the boy. Saeki saw his face in the moonlight, but he didn’t recognize him.

The man headed directly for the girl Saeki had buried but didn’t recognize. What was going on? He couldn’t understand. Was this real? Had he fallen asleep? He wasn’t sure. Saeki looked up at the boy and shook his head, demonstrating his confusion. Tears flowed down his cheeks.

“He’s another classmate. The girl you buried was his girlfriend. His name is—”

The boy said a name, a name Saeki knew.

“Oh … so that’s him …”

He was the boyfriend the girl had spoken of.

He stepped down into the hole, bending down. All Saeki could see was his back.

He could hear him calling out and see his back shaking. He must’ve been shaking the girl’s shoulders.

He was talking to the girl. At first, he spoke quietly, like he was making sure she was joking—but when the girl didn’t respond, his voice grew louder and louder.

“Was there a mole on the face of the girl you just saw?” the boy asked. Saeki shook his head.

The bloodstained girl’s face was puffed up where he had hit her, but there was no mole.

“The girl you always passed by but didn’t see today … earlier today, you told me there was a mole under her left eye. That’s why I suspected you. I knew then you had mistaken that girl for Morino.”

“But there was a student ID in her bag …”

“Morino had lost it, and a girl who lived near her was taking it to her. Morino told me that today at school. That’s why I knew you had seen the photo on her ID when you mentioned the mole. At first, I thought you’d simply run over the girl. I thought her face had been crushed beyond recognition, and you’d only known what she looked like from the ID.”

Saeki looked down at his hand. By the time he’d pushed her into the car, he’d already beaten her face badly. He’d been unable to look directly at her bruised features, quickly placing the coffin lid on—without ever looking at her. He had simply assumed the ID belonged to her.

Slowly, he began to understand the extent of his mistake. Earlier that day, she’d been laughing underground. He knew now she hadn’t gone crazy. She’d been laughing because he’d addressed her by a different name. She had figured out Saeki’s mistake, and that had made her laugh.

He looked at the hole again. The boyfriend was sitting next to the girl Saeki had buried. Saeki knew nothing about them, had no idea how deep their love had been. But during the brief conversation he’d had with the girl underground, the way she’d spoken her boyfriend’s name suggested the weight of their relationship. In that small, dark, square space, she’d never allowed Saeki to conquer her. But her fear had been greater than he’d been able to imagine. The only hope she could see, the only one she could imagine saving her … was the name she’d mentioned.

He was sitting next to her now. He’d grown quiet, no longer speaking to her, simply staring silently down into the coffin.

“Saeki, I only knew you were hiding the girl somewhere in your home this afternoon when I was leaving and you stood at the gate. At the time, I had no idea where she was. But the moment you saw Morino alive and moving around, you went pale, looked at the garden, and ran back into it. So I imagined you had buried her somewhere in your garden.”

The boy had called Morino Yoru on his cell phone, deliberately showing her to Saeki to provoke a reaction. And that reaction had led the boy to the garden, and to monitor his actions.

“You …”

Saeki stammered, staring up at the boy. Who was this boy? He could only imagine the boy had come to get revenge for his classmate. But the way he spoke showed no sign of anger, no sign of contempt for Saeki’s sins. It was a quiet, calm voice.

If he had not met this boy, his crime might never have been discovered. Why had he become involved with him?

Only then did Saeki remember his badge. He had gone out to find it and had met the boy in the process.

“My badge—what happened to it?” he asked. The boy looked puzzled.

“You didn’t find it next to the park?” Saeki asked, and then explained his question.

The boy nodded. “That’s what you were looking for?”

But he hadn’t seen the badge.

“If you don’t have it, then where … ?”

“When did you last see it?”

“At work, it was in my jacket pocket …” Then maybe … Another idea sprang to mind.

“Would you check her body for me?” Saeki asked, pointing toward the girl. He couldn’t go near the hole where the girl and her boyfriend were. “She might have it.”

He had covered the girl with his jacket in the car, and she had woken before he had buried her …

The boy left Saeki, passing by the quiet boyfriend. He bent over and checked the girl’s pockets.

“Here it is,” he said, standing up, badge in hand. “And this would be her student ID. It was in her skirt pocket.”

The boy took them both back to Saeki.

So the girl had his badge all along. She’d probably kept it to identify her captor if she saw a chance to escape. After she was nailed into the box, she’d probably hoped the badge would be found with her, leading to her killer’s arrest. And her actions had been the albatross that brought Saeki’s destruction.

The girl had defeated him from underground. The moment he had buried her, he was already caught in her trap.

“Saeki, you’re …” the boy said, staring down at the badge.

He knew what the boy was thinking. On his hands and knees, Saeki hung his head.

“Yes, I am.”

He had not wanted anyone to see that.

Saeki could not look at the boy. The boy’s gaze pained him, and all he could do was stare at the ground. Shame washed over him like fire, and his body shook, convulsing.

What the boy had found and brought out into the moonlight was a police badge in a brown leather case. On the front was the prefectural police department’s name in gold lettering; when you opened it, there was a picture of Saeki above his name and rank.

This never should have happened. Saeki had worked hard, and people trusted him. As he made his rounds, he would exchange friendly greetings with the shopkeepers. Kousuke’s parents had trusted him with their young son. There had been a time when he never doubted he was the kind of person who should be working a job like his. But he had betrayed the law, his position, the grandmother who had called him gentle, and everything that made up his world.

“Please … I know … so please, don’t say anything …” he pleaded. His knees on the ground, his face down, Saeki heard footsteps coming toward him.

“Raise your head,” the boy said.

Hesitantly, he obeyed. The boy was holding out the badge, offering it to him.

Saeki bowed his head and took it. He could not bring himself to stand and was stuck sitting seiza.

“Saeki, there’s still something I want to ask. When I learned you had mixed up Morino and that girl, my first thought was that there had been a traffic accident. That seemed the most likely explanation for why you hadn’t known what she looked like.”

Saeki listened, his hands clutching his police badge tightly.

“But there was no blood on the ground, and there were no marks on your car. And when I checked the girl just now, she had clearly been hit, having broken a bone, but her only fatal injury was the one to her neck, which looked more like suicide. You didn’t bury her there to hide the fact that you’d killed her by accident.”

Saeki nodded. The boy put his hands on his knees, leaning forward. “So why did you bury her?”

He was not chastising Saeki for having driven a girl to her death. He simply sounded like this was something he wanted to know. Saeki could think of no clear answer to the question; after a long silence, he simply shook his head. “I have no idea. I buried her because I wanted to.”

He was being honest.

Why had he killed Kousuke? Why had he been possessed by the terrifying urge to bury people alive?

There was no reason. Saeki had buried the two of them as if he had been born to do so.

“I buried them because I wanted to,” he said again, his chest aching. This was not the answer a human being could produce. His hands shook, and he dropped his police badge. “I …”

How was he supposed to go on living? He had found his true self at last, and it was horrifying. What was someone like him supposed to do?

Why had he been born with such a tainted heart? Why was he not like other people? The more his mind flooded with questions, the more his heart flooded with sadness.

He had wanted to live like an ordinary person, one unable to receive any pleasure from murder. He had never wanted to fantasize about burying people alive, to dig holes in the middle of the night to calm himself … He had simply wanted to live a life that caused no harm.

He hadn’t wanted much. He would’ve been content with very little. He’d just wanted an ordinary, normal life—like his colleague with the pressed shirts or his boss with the pictures of his kids on his desk. How much better things would have been if he’d been that lucky.

Tears spilled quietly down Saeki’s cheeks. He sat there on his knees, the tears disappearing into the earth beneath him. He had no idea what to do next. The world was covered in darkness, and Saeki felt trapped in an invisible coffin, barely able to breathe.

†

For a moment, he lost track of time. Before he knew it, Saeki was sitting on the porch. it was still dark out, but he could hear the birds singing and knew it was almost dawn.

The lights were on inside, and someone was walking around. He lacked the energy to go investigate. His hands were still shaking.

He turned his head, and at last the boy passed across the brightly lit entrance.

Their eyes met, and the boy asked if he was feeling better. Apparently, the boy had helped him to the porch.

“I’m missing a few memories.”

“You cried the whole time.”

Saeki touched his cheek and found it still damp.

“I assumed you wouldn’t mind if I came in,” the boy explained.

Saeki looked out at the garden again. There was no sign of the hole he had dug, and there were four poles. For a second, he felt like none of it had happened.

“Those bamboo poles were designed to pass through the coffin lids, allowing the occupant to breathe, right?” the boy asked as he stood next to Saeki. Apparently, the boy had filled the hole back in. But why had the boy not called the police immediately? Why had he filled in the hole?

There was no sign of the girl’s boyfriend. Was he sleeping somewhere inside the house, shut down like Saeki had been?

The girl in the ground had believed he would find her and that he wouldn’t leave her alone. Saeki could never pay for the sin of having shattered their love.

Saeki turned to look back into the house.

The boy had his cell phone out and was calling someone, a student contact book in his hand.

“I just found your ID on the street,” the boy explained. Clearly, he was calling the real Morino Yoru.

She apparently hung up as soon as he’d finished the sentence, as the boy was staring down at his phone, muttering, “Right, it’s awfully early.” Apparently, Morino was never to know the profound effect of her lost ID on Saeki’s life.

The sky was turning pale. Looking east from his porch, Saeki could see the row of evergreens. Beyond the black shadows of the trees, the sky was glowing red. The white mist was gone.

The boy came and sat on Saeki’s left.

They stared at the bamboo poles for a while. The trowel he’d used to fill in the hole was lying on the ground next to the boy.

The morning sun rose beyond the trees, striking the pale cheeks of the boy next to Saeki. Saeki blinked, blinded by the sudden brilliance. The boy’s profile glittered, the rest of his face lost in shadow, making his eyes all the more memorable.

The boy’s eyes had no emotion. They were utterly blank. They were exactly like Saeki’s own eyes had looked when he’d seen his own face in the rearview mirror while he was out searching for a victim. They were eyes that contained unfathomable darkness.

Saeki felt his emotions quieting. His tears had long since faded, and he was no longer dizzy.

“I …” Saeki said.

The boy turned toward him, listening closely, backlit by the rising sun.

“I think I should tell the police what I’ve done,” he said, the words spilling over his lips. All the tension faded out of him. Tears began to flow again. But this time, they were not tears of despair. They glittered, pure as the morning light.

This would be the end of his life. Many people would hate him, their glares stabbing his body. But he wouldn’t mind. He would confess his own sins and wait to be judged—his final choice as a human being.

“I’m glad … I’m glad I could make that choice.”

How many times had he mourned his own lack of humanity? How many times had he cursed his own nature, one that led him to do and imagine such terrible things? But now his remaining humanity had scored a quiet victory.

“I don’t think my sins will vanish, but I’m proud to have made that choice.”

The boy opened his mouth. “I won’t stop you from turning yourself in, Saeki—but will you wait another six months?”

When he asked why, the boy stood up.

“I’m going home now. Saeki, wait six months—or if not that, at least one month. If you are at all grateful, then please. And tell the police that you did everything yourself and that you decided to turn yourself in all on your own.”

He made Saeki swear not to say anything about Morino Yoru or the boy.

“Remember, this is what he wanted. You need not feel guilty about it. Even if you try to rescue him, he will refuse. But you must tell the world that it was your doing. I have left no proof, so nobody will believe I was here, even if you claim I was.”

The boy slipped on his shoes, stepping off the porch.

Saeki could not understand what he was saying. Before he could ask, the boy left the porch, heading for the gate in silence, without saying goodbye, without turning around. He simply vanished into the evergreens, leaving only the morning, the garden, and Saeki behind.

Then Saeki realized … If the boy was going home alone, then where was the boyfriend, who Saeki had assumed was lying down in the house somewhere?

He stood up.

He had a hunch.

Staggering, he crossed the garden, barefoot, his breath turning white in the cold morning air.

The bamboo poles at the end of the garden were standing perfectly upright under the brightening sky. The coffin the boy had buried again was under these poles.

Saeki put his ear to the top of the nearest pole.

He could hear a voice inside, muffled as it echoed across the coffin walls. Inside the coffin, a male voice was calling the name of his lover over and over again. A quiet voice, choked with sobs, it echoed the girl’s name again and again.