Chapter 017
“WHAT’S GOING ON?” Mio yelled.
Surrounded by cables and particle board, Mio appeared strong.
“Why? Why’d she get killed? What the hell is this fatal wounds to the abdomen? Abrasions all over both her legs? A section of her viscera missing, including her liver? Severed carotid artery?! Hey, Makino!”
Mio kept gesturing at the different monitors lined up in front of her. Over and over.
It was…
Hazuki couldn’t look directly at them.
“Look! Look at what they did to Yabe! Why?!”
“I…”
“This wasn’t Nakamura. So who did it?”
“I don’t know, I…”
Hazuki was at a loss for words.
She had no idea what was what anymore.
It was another turtle icon on her monitor. Another series of directions followed that had led her here to Mio’s.
And as soon as she’d arrived, Mio showed her the images of Yuko Yabe.
She had been torn apart.
“The area patrol came where we left her. They came, right?”
Hazuki kept nodding. It made her nauseated.
But she worried she’d get yelled at if she sat down, and just as the thought occurred to her she felt tight in the chest, and then before she knew it the bridge of her nose got hot. It reminded her of her early childhood.
“Stop crying!” Mio barked, and glared at Hazuki. “Why are you crying? This is the first time I’ve seen anyone cry. You’re pouring liquid from your eyes.”
“I am?”
She wouldn’t have known unless someone told her.
Tears.
Mio turned her back.
“Our plan failed. No, that’s not it. It went as planned. Right? Did we screw up somewhere?”
No, we didn’t.
Saturday night.
Hazuki and Mio, along with Ayumi, had taken Yuko toward Hazuki’s house. First, Hazuki had gone inside, walked to her bedroom, and turned on the monitor. Then after ten minutes, she started to pretend to do schoolwork. Then another ten minutes. The alarm went off. An image of the area leading up from the front gate to her foyer appeared on the monitor. She confirmed it was the image of Yuko slumped over and made the emergency call on her security receiver. Five minutes later the area patrol showed up with the security company and made vocal confirmation.
We’ve secured the trespasser on your grounds.
Could you please verify for us?
Yuko’s face appeared on the screen.
Do you know this young woman?
No, I don’t, Hazuki had replied.
If someone had really just suddenly appeared on Hazuki’s front step, Hazuki wouldn’t immediately recognize who it was on the screen. To play it safe she’d decided to pretend she didn’t know. To avoid suspicion.
It would have been strange for Hazuki to know that Yuko Yabe was supposed to be missing.
The Yuko on her monitor screen looked lifeless. It was a ruse, of course. Hazuki thought she saw Yuko form a faint smile as she turned her face away from the screen.
Even if she did, who knew what that smile meant. Hazuki didn’t.
That was the last time she saw a moving image of Yuko.
And today, the image of Yuko.
Torn apart.
“I confirmed everything too,” Mio said. “Yabe definitely got into the squad car. I told her to tell them who she was as soon as she got in the car, so she was sure to have let them know. There was a request for questioning out for her, so once they knew who she was they would have immediately taken her into protection. Even if they needed to verify her identity they would have at least kept her in custody. She would have been totally safe. But…”
Why’d she die? Mio said again.
Just as she was about to holler something again the door slammed open.
Beyond the ocean of black cables stood Ayumi.
She was totally calm.
“Why’d you call me out here?”
“You’re late.”
“I don’t really use my terminal. I don’t even look at the monitor.”
“You should at least look at your monitor. Look, Ayumi…”
Her eyes narrowed before Mio could say anything. She’d noticed the image on her screens.
“Yabe…?”
“Yeah. Cut up into pieces.”
“Who…did it?”
“You think we know?” Mio said and turned around with her chair.
Mio was crying too.
“Where did you go after we dropped off Yuko, Ayumi?”
“I did like you told me and followed the car for a while.”
“Till where?”
“You know I can’t very well chase a car on foot. I’m pretty sure they were headed to the center in that patrol car. They’d gotten too far from me to confirm, so I gave up.”
“That’s right. That’s it. The area patrol squad car unit G02254 definitely went to Makino’s residence, picked up Yuko Yabe, then headed to the protective services of the administrative center. I checked. They even called in to headquarters. They reported that they’d apprehended a young woman they believed to be the one for whom there was an interrogation request still pending. Look at this.”
Ayumi closed the door and walked past Hazuki straight to Mio’s side.
“This is the news I got.”
On the monitor screen was a list of notifications.
“The same emergency message was sent to the prefectural police investigative unit. But…”
Mio tapped at a key.
“It was never received. In fact, there’s no record of the transmission, even.”
She tapped again.
“Look. There’s no record of the transmission from car G02254. It’s just disappeared. In fact it was erased. The only record of it is in my hands.”
“What do you mean erased?”
“It’s been made to look like it was never there. Everything’s been made a lie. Do you understand, Makino? We’ve been denied by someone. What we did that night has been completely erased! Who would turn us into a lie? Who would rip Yabe to pieces?”
“Calm down, Tsuzuki.” Ayumi had been reading the information on the various monitors and then settled down on a duralumin case.
“This is police data?”
“Yes. It’s a postmortem report. Though the autopsy results aren’t posted yet.”
“What moves are they making?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, but the murderer isn’t Nakamura.”
“Probably not,” Ayumi said quietly, but with certainty.
“What’s with you?” Mio glared at Ayumi with her now red eyes. “How would you know, Kono? Nakamura was going to kill Yabe, you know.”
“But he couldn’t.”
Still…Mio rubbed her bloodshot eyes.
“You wouldn’t think that normally. You’d think Nakamura did it.”
“Not really. If it was in fact Nakamura I saw under the bridge that night, there’s no way he could attack Yuko, who was being protected by area patrol, by the way. Besides, the police say he’s a kid. About your age, Tsuzuki.”
“Yeah, but…the reason I’m saying Nakamura couldn’t have done it isn’t the same!” Mio wiped her nose and tapped at her keyboard again. “Look.”
This time Ayumi quickly jolted her head away after just a quick glimpse at the image.
“What the hell was that?”
“Look closer.” Mio pulled up the monitor. “Yuji Nakamura was killed too.”
Killed?
There was in fact an image of a male body torn apart on that screen.
“Even I was surprised. This was released just before Hazuki got here. He’d been tossed out of a deserted house here in Section C. A local cop found him, and there’s been no autopsy performed yet. Now you ready? Look. Look at this. It says he’s been dead for at least three days. It says so right there.”
“Three days since they found him? Wait, what?”
“Three days since he died, you idiot!” Mio screamed, hysterical for an instant. She took a deep breath.
“Until the final results of the official autopsy are released we don’t know for sure, but they’re saying that Yuko was probably killed on Monday night. But Nakamura was killed on Saturday or Sunday. Yabe was found first, but Nakamura died first.”
“Him too…”
Hazuki, like Ayumi, had to turn away from the monitor.
Mio huffed through her nose.
“Similar methods. Their throats were cut with a dull weapon. Deep wounds in their chest, stomach, and right arms. You can’t really tell from this image, but it’s the same as the others…especially Kawabata. What does all this mean?”
Something’s not right, Mio kept muttering to herself.
“This screws up everything. I thought this whole time Nakamura was the one who killed Kawabata. They had a falling out. They both attacked Yabe. That much is certain. They were going to kill her. Kono saw that too.”
Ayumi said yeah in a small voice.
“Then, Rey Mao appeared, saved Yuko from being killed, got pulled into the fight, and Nakamura ended up killing Kawabata, right? Now everything’s uncertain!”
“What do you mean uncertain?” Hazuki asked.
“I can’t sort any of this out. It’s all just so nonsensical. Maybe Nakamura wasn’t the culprit of the other murders either. So I looked into it.”
“What did you look into?”
“The reason they supposedly attacked Yuko. It was hard to tell from just what Yuko was saying. So I looked into it. I got a better idea. They had a motive.”
A motive to kill Yuko.
To curb the spread of this extrasensory defect Yuko had.
“Kawabata and Nakamura were apparently big followers of that old-fashioned style of moving image.”
“Following what?”
“No, like they were maniacal fans. To the point where they started to believe in those images.”
“Believe—you mean those old pictures?”
“Something or other movies. It’s a special kind of moving image.”
Belief in moving images? It didn’t quite come to her.
“You don’t know what I’m talking about? They’re like those antiques from forty or fifty years ago. What was it again, you know, you take a roll of film and draw directly on it and then transfer it to transparent film, and then roll the images. There’s stuff that’s not stick figures either. Kawabata collected old machines to tune up and watch this stuff from antique real shops. He would apparently try to convert it to soft files. Nakamura collected paper versions. Paper! Can you imagine how expensive that would have been?”
“So what?”
Well, Mio placed her fingertips on the tablet this time. “Okay, so one of the directors of these something something films—he’s obviously been long dead but let’s see…Here it is. And this too. This is a movie by a different person. There are apparently a lot of people who still collect and talk about these two guys’ work.”
On the screen were several images of a girl in fascinating clothes.
“This, and then this is a little different…These were made by various directors, but these two happen to have died within a day of each other. I mean they were born a year apart, but what do you call that? The day you die?”
“A death anniversary,” Ayumi replied. “It’s called a death anniversary, the day they die.”
“Okay, death anniversary. Well, their death anniversary is a holiday for these guys. They call it their AM-versary, but it was started by a group of old people. It’s at the end of March. They have events and stuff. Let’s see. So people from all over the world, yes, from abroad and everything, were summoned by this group. I mean it’s just a message from a crazy fanatic. I don’t know what purpose they have in sending messages to dead people, but there’s a pretty substantial amount of mail that gets sent.”
What appeared to be a monument appeared on the screen.
“There’s apparently a data stocker at this commemorative statue, where every year the messages get transferred. It’s a complete waste of time, but that’s where these people write to.”
Mio entered some code into the search window and pressed return.
“‘Ryu Kawabata/Everything begins with you/The world you created is majestic/The imbeciles who pass off their replicas of your work as their own originals, they forsake you, but I will not forgive the jerks that refuse to acknowledge your work/These retarded idiots…’ How do you say this word? I’ve only ever read it.”
E-rad-icate, Ayumi said.
“‘…shall be eradicated,’ it says. ‘These retarded idiots shall be eradicated.’ Doesn’t that sound like he’s going to kill them? No one talks that way. He’s totally nuts.”
“No one says totally nuts anymore either.”
“Shut up. Nuts is nuts. But look. This is the next message. ‘Yuji Nakamura/This world is a facade/That which transforms and decays is not the truth/The world you guys have created is absolute and unchanging/ You are the truth/The idiots who try to make their filthy reality appear true must die/I will not forgive such blasphemy…’”
“Blasphemy,” Hazuki repeated.
Yuko said she was accused of being blasphemous.
“You think this is why she was targeted?”
“Yes,” Mio answered. “She had an extrasensory defect. In other words she saw even her own face this way.” Mio returned the screen to the image of the deformée character illustrations.
A beautiful young woman from long ago in the monitor, and they didn’t know her name or what she was doing in there.
It did strangely resemble Yuko.
“Kawabata and Nakamura thought this chick was their god or something. But to Yabe, this is actually what she thought she looked like. This is what I look like, she thought when she drew it. It does look like her drawing, right? The eyes and nose are the same.”
I see, the whole thing is based on a pattern. It is reduced and adapted the same exact way.
Only the color of the pupils was different.
“If you look carefully, you’ll see Yuko’s father also wrote messages here. Nothing extreme like that other guy, but just how he was really into this stuff as a kid, and how he’s still into it. Typical fan mail. Yuko had probably looked at stuff like this since she was really little. Maybe not shown it per se, but she had definitely seen it. Someone with her kind of perception disorder might be affected by early exposure.
“They wouldn’t forgive her,” Mio said in a loud exhale and snapped off the power on the monitor farthest from her.
“But…aren’t there tons of people who do these kinds of illustrations?”
“You saying it should be okay to copy?”
“Copies are okay. There are originals, and someone makes a copy. The copy could never be as good as the original. Except in Yuko’s case. To her, the world really looked like this. She lived in a world made of deformée images. These fanatics couldn’t forgive her. They had to confirm that she really had this defect, and when they did, they promptly eradicated her.”
Eradicated.
“That’s their reason? Because she sees the world like it’s illustrated?”
Should people be killing each other?
“The first girl who was killed…” Mio continued. “The first victim won the grand prize at the Deformée Character Biennale. The DC Biennale is where everyone exhibits their original DCs. The character that wins the prize is obviously praised as an original, but her work apparently looked a lot like something that appeared briefly in these guys’ moving image work. None of the judges noticed. It created a big stir but eventually they dropped it. It was just similar looking, and no one really thought it was a direct copy. But these fans wouldn’t forgive it.”
“Blasphemy again?”
“Yeah, you know, ‘the idiots who pass off your original work as their own have to be eradicated.’ That’s what they did.”
She had a point.
“But that’s not all.”
Mio drew up another image on the monitor next to the one she’d just turned off.
“You know this? It’s been popular lately. Deformation Idols. I prefer the old monsters and stuff, but…”
Even Hazuki had seen this character before.
It was the star of an explosively popular fiction series from last year.
The series was about a girl from no country in particular, from no era in particular, going on some kind of adventure.
Hazuki remembered downloading a few episodes because there were so many rave reviews.
But she’d never actually watched them all the way through.
The story was mediocre and it unfolded too suddenly; there were too many unexposed elements and subplots for Hazuki to follow. Eventually the show got to be boring for her.
Earlier this year, people had begun broadcasting their own daily lives twenty-four hours a day by connecting onto a special network.
It wasn’t as though something were happening all the time—mostly it was just people asleep—but that meant you had a different episode every single day for a year. You’d wonder who on earth would want to watch something like that, but daily life shows were apparently really popular, especially among the middle-aged to older viewers.
“Doesn’t this look like her?”
“What do you mean? This older DC character?”
“The one that looks like her and this other illustration. Look alike, right? The face and the hairdo?” Mio asked.
“Ahh”
Now that she mentioned it.
“The creator of course acknowledges being influenced by old DC artists. However there were some extreme fans who wouldn’t let it slide. They said this was the original, and what do you call that moving illustration thing again? A…”
“Anime?” Hazuki suggested.
“Yes! Anime. What’s anime a redaction of, I wonder. What language is it? Anyway, it was an original work having nothing to do with that ancient anime. People agreed it bore a resemblance, but you know, they were a little defensive. There are lots of fan sites for this show. So here’s this hotshot on one of the biggest fan sites for the show defending it, and she became famous for actually speaking out about it a lot. Well, she was killed too.”
“Really?”
“That girl from the neighboring section. The second victim. Also, you know those people who dress up like their favorite characters? There was that one girl who was famous for wearing identical clothes to and doing her hair exactly like these DC characters. She was the fourth victim. She was on the daily life channel and garnered her own fans. The crazies probably didn’t appreciate that.”
“Didn’t appreciate…”
“Kawabata and Nakamura didn’t appreciate it,” Mio said impatiently, then turned off that monitor. “That was probably blasphemous to them too.”
“You’re saying Kawabata and Nakamura are responsible for all these other murders too?” Ayumi said. She looked at the palms of her hands, then brought her nails up to her nose. “Serial murderers, huh?”
“Vicious murders.” Mio stood up from her chair.
“No mistaking it. Right?”
“They were definitely the killers!” Mio yelled. “No doubt about it! But then if they were, then…”
“Wait a second.” Ayumi lifted her face. “There are others.”
“Others?”
“Aikawa was killed too. And there were others killed before her.”
“Yabe makes it seven. Those guys had motives to kill four of them.
The remaining three…suppose they all had this extrasensory defect. Aikawa from our district? Aikawa could have. It’s hard to find out, right?”
“It’s speculation.”
“Still.”
“Still nothing. Besides, at the very least, Nakamura and Kawabata couldn’t have killed Yabe. Yabe was also killed by someone else,” Ayumi said.
“Like I said, I don’t know what that means!” Mio pounded her desk with force.
“These crimes had to have been committed by them. The other murder victims don’t have anything in common with them. Even though…”
“Everyone except Yabe.”
“So?”
“Wait.” Hazuki waved her hand through the air. “Yabe was definitely targeted by Nakamura and definitely attacked by him. That’s a fact, but she was killed by someone else. Then isn’t it possible that in the other cases too, a different person killed them than the one who taunted them?
Aren’t there, like, a lot of these animation fanatics?”
“You saying they have more partners?”
Hmmm, Mio said and withdrew, dropping her body back in the chair.
“Kawabata and Nakamura failed at their assignment, so they were— what’s that word again? Era…”
“Eradicate.”
“They were eradicated.”
“I don’t know about that,” Ayumi said with her hands cupping her mouth and nose. “You have a better explanation?” Mio said.
“No…” Ayumi said softly.
“According to what Mio said, there are old animation fans all around the world.”
“See, I told you!”
“So then let’s say there are many others like Nakamura and Kawabata who are fanatics about this stuff. If there are, it’s possible they’re placed all over the world, right?” Ayumi said.
“I guess,” Mio said.
“Perversion doesn’t have borders. So. If they are all over the world they could form a unit.”
“An organization that would eradicate from the world all those who blaspheme ancient animated illustrations? Huh?”
“I’m sure there are serial murders taking place all over the world at this moment, but I think this is the only part of the world where the murders are motivated by anime. You think that means the homicidal anime fans all live in this region? Or you think this area is full of the kind of people that would want to start a murdering club?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Hazuki said.
“Then why are all the murders taking place only here?” Ayumi asked.
“Are you saying there’s another motive?” Mio said.
“No.” Ayumi looked suspiciously at all the machines in the room, then glanced at Hazuki and faced Mio. “There are other murderers,” she said.
“Other…”
“Those two aren’t the only killers.”
“You think there are others with motives to kill?”
“Motive doesn’t matter, really,” Ayumi said expressionlessly. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Mio responded. “It can’t not matter.”
“Well it doesn’t. No matter how sophisticated the reason, a murder is a murder, and similarly, it doesn’t matter how great the motive is, if you can’t kill, you won’t. But someone who can kill definitely will.”
“That may be, but…”
“There are killers nearby.”
“Nearby?” Mio spun around and did a once-over on her room and said, “No. There are not.” Then, “What are you talking about? Or wait…are you suggesting that that Rey Mao bitch is the other killer?”
Ayumi didn’t say anything.
“What is it? Did you see something? Did Mao kill Kawabata?”
“No, not that. I’ve told you already, she took a punch and got knocked out. I’m saying—”
“What is it? What are you trying to say?” Mio pressed Ayumi.
“Just that we shouldn’t single out Nakamura and Kawabata.”
“But we should. They killed people.”
“You don’t have to be special to kill people.”
“That may be, but these guys are. I don’t know if it was for anime or animism, but…What do they take humans for?” Mio kicked the steel legs on her chair. “What kind of monster values invented characters over real human beings? Even when people used to kill cows and pigs, they knew not to kill each other. People have been picketed and even punished for catching fish and killing sharks! These guys killed humans! Are humans less important than sharks? Less important than these damned illustrations?”
“Humans aren’t more or less important.” Ayumi looked straight at Mio. Mio widened her eyes.
“What did you say?”
“We’re not bigger or smaller or even better or worse. Humans and fish are the same,” she said, and took a deep breath.
“Neither of them has special value,” she said finally.
“No value?” Mio walked over the cables on the floor and raised a fist to Ayumi.
“Are you saying Yuko’s life had no value?”
Ayumi lifted her face. “No. I’m saying that to crush a bug or to murder a human is all the same. You take life. If we can’t kill people, we shouldn’t be allowed to kill bugs. That’s why today we no longer eat murdered animals.”
“Yeah, but…”
“I’m not saying Yabe’s life had no value. Just that hers wasn’t any more special than another’s. There’s no such thing as a life that’s too big or too small. Our lives are perfectly suited for the bodies we inhabit.
And none of us has a more special life than the other.”
“And that makes it okay to murder people, Kono?”
“I never said that.” I never said that, she repeated, and clenched her thin white fingers into fists of her own. “It’s probably not okay to kill.”
“Of course it’s not! It’s a serious crime. I mean, this is a drawing. It’s not a fish or a turtle. It’s a fucking drawing. They’re suggesting the drawing is more valuable than a human life. I can’t understand that. And this drawing…it has no value whatsoever.”
Click. Mio turned off another monitor.
A snapping sound reverberated through the walls and ceiling as she powered down the last monitor.
“Those guys didn’t care one way or the other about human life, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then what was it?”
“Nakamura and Kawabata didn’t view human life lightly. The animation that these guys cherished—I’ve watched some of it too—and the message was always that human life is incredibly valuable, that the human life force is weightier than the earth. The plot was always some humanistic mumbo jumbo. So there’s no way they viewed human life lightly. I just think they didn’t realize a human’s life was as sacred as a fish’s life. In fact they thought human life was infinitely more important than that of any other animal. However, they killed one person, and nothing happened. Then they knew even less the value of life.”
“How so?”
“They got away with killing one human, and nothing in the world changed,” Ayumi said. “It’s different from the world in the monitor.”
Yes. This was something even Hazuki understood.
If truth lay only in the monitor, then what lay outside it was all false. In that case not even murdering a human would be real. You murder, get caught, go to court, get sentenced to jail. Thus was born the murder case. Until all that happened a killing was just a fantasy.
But…
Ayumi glanced at Hazuki and said, “This is different from what you think, Makino. Killing people is real. Like eating food.”
“Eating.”
“Sure.” Ayumi looked at her palms again. “No matter how immersed we get in our world of numbers, no matter how deep we escape into our monitors, we still have to eat. Even if it isn’t life that we’re eating, we take something, put it in our mouths, chew, digest, and defecate. That is all real.”
“Okay, and…?”
“You can say you ate but still be hungry. That’s because we’re living beings. So that’s real too. Similarly, they can record your death, but as long as you’re alive, you are still living. The records can say you were born, but until you come out of the womb you are not human. Your Cat friend doesn’t exist according to the government, but clearly she’s no ghost. I’ve seen her with my eyes and even talked to her. She exists. Makino is supposedly at home, but she’s not. She’s right here.”
Right.
According to the record, Hazuki was not here.
But right now, Hazuki was right here.
“Right?” Ayumi said to Mio. “Am I looking at the ghost of Makino? A false Makino?”
Possibly false, Hazuki thought. But.
I’m right here.
“You see, humans are made of these squiggly innards that they stuff with food and turn to mud, which they then excrete and regenerate. They are born bloody and die bloodless. That can’t be digitized. So killing humans is real.”
“But…”
Then why…Hazuki thought.
“Reality is much more of this nothing than we think. Nakamura and Kawabata didn’t understand that.”
“Nothing. It’s all nothing,” Ayumi said. “If a player does something wrong in a game, he or she may lose and even risks being ejected from the game world. Game over. In real life there is no game over. The world doesn’t end. Even if you kill someone, even if you do something you’re absolutely not supposed to do, it’s not like you won’t be able to use your server anymore or that information will no longer be transmitted. The world will not end if you kill someone. Yabe was killed, Kawabata was killed, and tomorrow still came. So…
“They were confused,” Ayumi finished.
“Confused, eh? If they were killed for being confused then I can’t stand for it,” Mio said quietly.
Ayumi passed a look straight through Mio’s profile.
It was incredibly natural.
“Tsuzuki…you’re a regular do-gooder.”
“Don’t tease. Whether anyone dies or gets killed is not my business. It’s someone else’s problem. But I’m just frustrated. I’m pissed off because I don’t know what’s going on. What is going on? I wanted to observe everything taking place in the world. That’s why I built these special monitors. But some guy I don’t know has squirreled his way around the system and killed Yabe. I don’t get it.”
“You’re amazingly straightforward, Tsuzuki.” Ayumi sighed and walked toward the door that wouldn’t open.
“Are you expecting someone?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing…”
BAM! From the hallway. Like someone had kicked at one of the doors leading to Mio’s room.
Then the door in the middle and finally the door that could open, did.
“Mao…”
With straight long hair and her Chinese clothing, Rey Mao stood there. Rey Mao stood silently, then entered the room with a serious air and grabbed Mio by the collar and pulled her up from her seat.
“What the hell what the hell?!” Mio tried to scramble away.
“What the fuck did you do?”
“What the…Were you injured?”
“Shut up!” Rey Mao barked. Mao’s clothing was torn and dirtied. There was blood on her face. The black clump by the side of her mouth also looked to be dried blood.
“What kind of arrangement was that?”
“It wasn’t an a-arrangement! Cat, you’re choking me.”
“Don’t you dare call me that!” Rey Mao dropped Mio.
Mio fell hard onto the chair and then onto the floor.
“I knew it. You killed them. You’re here to kill us now too.”
“Me, the killer? Then it was you who sold me out. For a second there I…”
Rey Mao went quiet and shook her shoulders.
“What do you mean for a second? What do you mean sold you out?”
“Stop fucking with me.”
Rey Mao raised her arm.
Mio craned her neck.
“We don’t like it when we’re betrayed. We hate it more than anything.”
Hazuki had been curled up, and now she was being pushed back to the corner. Ayumi proceeded forward and took Rey Mao by the arm.
“That’s enough. If you hurt her…Your strength is a deadly weapon.”
Rey Mao looked at Ayumi.
“You…”
“What’s this about?”
“It’s about that night. You told the police about me.”
“We didn’t.”
“Then why did they snoop around, looking for me?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Ayumi said.
Rey Mao shook off Ayumi’s hand from her arm.
“You want to go at it?”
“No. I’ve told you before I don’t know how to fight. I hate getting hit.”
“Stop talking nonsense.”
Rey Mao grabbed Ayumi this time. Mio flew up from behind her.
“Stop it, Cat.”
“Let go.” Rey Mao released her arm. The three of them fell against the wall. The case Ayumi was sitting on fell onto its side with a thud.
“You can’t do that. It’s dangerous!” Mio said loudly, throwing her body over the case. “You morons! W-what do you guys think this is?
This thing could blast us a kilometer into the earth!”
“Blast us?”
“It’s the turtle I was telling you about, the turtle. My second attempt at it, anyway.”
“You mean your plasma weapon. That movie with the turtle—”
“I’m not planning on using it on anything…or anyone.” Mio shrank and sat back on the floor. She looked up at Rey Mao. “Just because you aren’t documented doesn’t mean you can do whatever the hell you want. That really hurt,” she said, rubbing her arms.
Rey Mao stood in a coil of cables set up by the wall, tense all the way down to her fingertips. Ayumi was leaning against the wall just a few paces from her and shifted her eyes from Rey Mao’s arms to her face and said calmly,
“This weird girl did not sell you out. Not even I am interested enough to cause you trouble. If I’d reported you, I’d be questioned too.”
Rey Mao’s look at Mio relaxed a little, and then she turned her face to Hazuki.
“You’re that politician’s daughter, aren’t you?”
“I’m…”
“She has nothing to do with this either.”
“How do you know? She’s on the side of the authorities.”
“So are Tsuzuki and I, then. What did you call it again? Caged? We’re all caged.”
“Well then…”
Rey Mao picked up a cable and let go of it angrily. She said to Hazuki, “Why’d you send Yuko away?”
“She wasn’t sent away. She was killed.” Mio stood up abruptly.
“See, this is why you need to get connected. Yabe is dead.”
“Dead…” Rey Mao slumped into the wall. “She died?”
“She’s wrecked.”
“You … weren’t you there?” Ayumi said.
“When?”
“We thought maybe when the area patrol came to pick up Yuko, you chased after them.”
Rey Mao didn’t respond and instead looked sternly at Ayumi.
“Hey, were you there or not, Cat?” Mio asked angrily. “Why were you hiding from us then? Help us out! You seem good at physical labor. And Makino, if you knew she was there, why didn’t you tell us?”
“I didn’t know. I just…thought I did,” Hazuki said.
“Why?”
“She’s not supposed to know Hazuki is the daughter of a politician.
They were never introduced,” Ayumi said.
“So?” Mio took a second to understand and then turned her neck.
“I see. So she knew because she was at Hazuki’s house that night.
Her full name is on the front gate. And if she were there, it can be assumed she followed us there. And she wouldn’t have known anything had happened to Yuko. We didn’t, after all.”
“I did, though,” Rey Mao answered.
“You were worried, were you? Well isn’t that nice,” Mio said.
“Nothing like that. This was a matter of life and death. Of course I was concerned,” Rey Mao said. “I thought of calling you, but of course I can’t.”
“You guys are so hard to deal with.” Mio sat back down in the chair.
“Then you really have nothing to do with this?” Rey Mao asked Mio.
“None. If the cops are after you it’s because you screwed up somewhere, or someone else has been giving them information. We have nothing to do with this.”
Rey Mao painted the wall with her back as she slid down onto the floor and sat. She was very badly injured. It must have hurt.
Ayumi held up Mao’s left arm. She winced.
“You got hit pretty hard. Was it the cops?”
Rey Mao shook her head. Her hair fell to the sides.
“I lost. Again.”
“Lost?”
“To the guy with head art and the foreigner in the metal suit.”
“What are you talking about?” Mio scrunched up her face and scratched at her head.
“The guys who abducted Yuko.”
“Abducted?”
“Yeah. Kono, was it?”
“Call me Ayumi,” Ayumi said.
“Ayumi, eh?” Rey Mao said. “You gave up on them at that intersection, right? Well, after that the patrol car stopped one more time.”
“Stopped in the middle of the route?”
“Yeah. It looked like they got some kind of message. I was hiding behind the shadow on the sidewalk, so I decided to stop and watch a little. Then, after about five minutes, the head art guy and the foreigner in the metal suit showed up. They knocked out the local cop and the security system rep and carted Yuko off with them. So I…”
“You went to save her…again. Can’t say you’re bored, I guess.”
“Those fuckers.” Rey Mao looked at her left shoulder. Mio went over to her and took a look.
“Holy shit! They cleared a hole into your shoulder.”
“They had…guns.”
“Guns?! Like a pistol? You lie!”
“I’m not lying.”
“But the only people who have guns in this day and age are in Africa or the Middle East. They’ve been totally banned everywhere else. They’re inefficient for killing en masse, they’re too powerful for use in self-defense, too ridiculous to threaten with and so difficult to handle most of the time they injure people by accident. Nothing good about them.”
“They’re great for killing people,” Rey Mao said.
“That’s all they’re good for,” Mio said. “No one’s making money making them. Everyone’s stopped making them, so it’s only the secret organizations that have them now. Even the guns being used in Africa are rusty old pieces. I’ve only seen them in movies from ages ago.”
Hazuki hadn’t seen them even there. In her history courses she’d perhaps seen an image of one. Even when they were mentioned in fiction it came with a disclaimer.
“What do you call those guys who just scare you into things? Goons? Those guys don’t exist anymore, right? I mean, what would they threaten you into doing these days? You can’t even kill animals. The only thing a pistol is good for, like you said, is killing people.” Mio went quiet all of a sudden and stared back into the hole in Rey Mao’s left shoulder.
“Hired hit men?”
“I know I’m in no position to call them strange, but these are some strange people. Ayumi.” Rey Mao called Ayumi.
I can’t get used to hearing her say that, and it’s a name I hear a lot. Hazuki was startled.
“It’s like you said. In the end, my fighting method doesn’t stand a chance against someone who is out to kill. I dodged him and went for his vital points. It should have brought him down, but that skinhead didn’t even flinch. He came at me with his survival knife…It was scary,” Rey Mao said. “Because I wasn’t trying to kill him. But that was his only motive. There’s a big difference there. I was scared so I ran, and then they didn’t come after me anymore. I just ran away. Then they shot me. I think it was a silent gun.”
Hazuki couldn’t even imagine being shot with a gun.
“You kept running?”
Could she have been running with those injuries for the last four days?
“I was in Section B for a solid day. Partly because the bleeding wouldn’t stop, but also because in the daytime I couldn’t move. After a day I was able to come back here to Section C, but this time the cops were here. What’s more they were asking around for me by name. I just assumed that meant…”
“You assumed that we had told on you.”
“I couldn’t think of anyone else who knew about me. And the area patrols were everywhere. I couldn’t go back to my place. The pharmacists on the west side hid me for a while, but then the cops showed up there too.”
“What about your injuries?”
“We got a doctor who sees us. He sees us for injuries and illnesses. Nothing fancy though. Just twentieth century medicine.”
“I can’t believe…you made it out alive,” Ayumi said. “Not even the police can go up against guys with guns. These days not even cops get weapons.”
“It took everything I had to protect my life. That girl is another story. That girl…”
Died? she asked and Mio said yes, she died, without emotion.
“Who are these people? What’s going on?” Mio asked.
“Tsuzuki, you’re so full of questions today.”
“It’s because I have no idea what’s going on!”
“I do,” Ayumi said.
“What do you know?”
“Don’t you see? The guys who killed Yabe—they have guns and weapons and are out for murder. They can intercept police and government information and alter it. I don’t think they have anything to do with those old anime and DC guys.”
“You don’t get it at all, Ayumi.”
“But I do.”
“What do you get?”
“That these aren’t the kind of people we kids can go after. That’s all we need to know,” Ayumi said.
Ayumi faced Mio.
Mio sneered at Ayumi.
“You’re giving up?”
“I’m not doing anything. We’re just kids. We’re not cops. We aren’t do-gooders. It’s more weird that we are doing anything at all.”
“Yeah, but are you content to let this go, Kono?”
“Sure,” Ayumi said, and looked for Hazuki’s backup. “We’ve made it this far without worrying about other people. I hate interacting with people. Makino’s the same way. But…”
But that all changed.
They’d never even made eye contact before.
Now they’d looked right at each other, yelled, and grappled.
It was all weird. It was weird, but…
“I think,” Mio started, then repeated I think. Mio must have been thinking the same thing.
“I think I don’t like the way it was. I hated it. What about you, Cat?”
“I’m running away.”
“Running away!” The sound came out of Mio’s throat at a high pitch. She advanced on Rey Mao. “You’re running away?”
“I don’t want to get killed.”
“You’re running away, Cat?”
“Stop it, Tsuzuki,” Ayumi grabbed Mio by the shoulder. “She’s seriously injured. She almost died. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have escaped an attempted murder?”
“What?” Mio rubbed her eyes and looked with disbelief at Rey Mao’s black and red bloodstained shoulder. Hazuki looked at it as well.
The pain had burnt black.
“We grew up not knowing any pain. We can’t know what it’s like. We can’t really empathize. We couldn’t possibly tell anyone not to run from it or to be less selfish. Listen, Tsuzuki. The next time this girl is attacked she will be killed. If not her, someone else. None of your magic computer programs can bring a person back to life. I for one don’t want to have to deal with any more real contact life or death situations.”
“I don’t either,” Mio said and extended a finger toward Rey Mao’s open wound.
“Does it…hurt?”
“Yeah. I’ve never hurt like this before. Totally different from taking a punch.”
“That bad…”
Mio touched her forehead to Rey Mao’s shoulder and looked at the floor.
“It would hurt to die, wouldn’t it, Cat?”
“If you died quickly, it wouldn’t hurt at all.”
Mio remained motionless.
“All right.” Ayumi, who’d been looking at Mio’s back, turned her face toward Hazuki. “Let’s just stop now. Makino goes home. We can’t keep doing this.”
Yeah.
Of course that was what they wanted. At home time stood still. It would be like it was yesterday, last year. If Hazuki just went on repeat-ing what she did every day, the world would do the same. Her feelings would have nothing to do with it.
“And you, Mio—you need to stop snooping around.”
“I can’t leave Rey Mao alone.”
“She’s strong. You’ll only make things worse by trying to help her.”
“What if Rey Mao is—”
“Caught by the police?” Hazuki asked.
“What about it?”
“I mean, the police won’t kill you or anything because they know that those two guys saw you and are after you. Even if your relationship to us is exposed.”
“It hasn’t been.” Rey Mao peeled herself off the wall. Mio lifted her face too. “I don’t have any proof of identity,” Rey Mao said. “My life here is a crime. I might not get killed, but I won’t get off without a conviction.”
“But there are other murderers, right?”
“Yes. People I’ve never seen in these parts. Guys like the skinhead with the peacock tattooed on his head, and the one who looks like an old soldier in a metal suit. I think those guys were hired.”
“You can’t beat guys like that,” Ayumi said. “So, like you said, running away would make the most sense. The more we try to help, the worse your situation gets. You understand now, Tsuzuki? Your friend gets killed.”
“My friend…” Mio said.
“Unlike Makino and me, you actually have a friend here. You should value that.”
Mio widened her bloodshot eyes and sharpened her mouth. She looked like a pouty child put off by having been scolded.
“It’s just that…” Rey Mao leaned forward and got up on one leg. “Makino here,” she said, gesturing toward Hazuki, “she’s in danger now too.”
“Danger?”
“These guys know that Yuko was secured at her house. The police officers that secured Yuko after processing her, and you, both recognized Yuko. They know that. They might come after you. Be careful.”
“The security at her house is ridiculously thorough,” Mio said. “An insect would set off the alarm.”
“Insects are flying in and out of there all the time. A child could break in. Don’t underestimate these guys.”
Hmm, Mio groaned very purposefully, and moved over to Hazuki. She examined Hazuki’s face. “That’s it.”
“What?” Hazuki said.
“Make the first move. Makino, have your father call the police and see what ended up happening with the so-called trespasser.”
“What’s that going to accomplish?”
“Everything. That cop who was attacked by the skinhead and the metal soldier didn’t die, right? He’s probably scared of the skinhead and was threatened not to talk by the metal soldier.”
“Not to talk? You mean threatened to keep quiet?”
“Right? Like Cat said, the records can be tampered with but not the memory. That’s why Makino could be in danger too. In that case she should talk first.”
“Right, but to say what?”
“Make a statement. Something like, ‘The girl apprehended by our security system for invading our house looked a lot like the one they’re saying was killed.’ Hazuki, they made you look at her on your security screen, right?”
“Yeah, but I told them I didn’t recognize her,” Hazuki said.
“That’s normal. But they’re going to start broadcasting her face all over the world tonight. The face of a savage serial killer’s victim. You’re going to see that and think it bears a resemblance.”
“And tell the police?”
“No.” Mio was suddenly upbeat. “You tell your father. You’re going to have your politician dad tell the police.”
“I see…” Hazuki thought of the expressive face of her foster father.
She hadn’t thought about it before, but he was certainly a powerful figure.
And more importantly, he would never harm Hazuki.
“Imagine. Information brought in by a prefectural suit. Not even the police would ignore that. And the security company’s records might have been erased but not the mainframe security data from your house. The system set up in your house can save all kinds of images. There’s about a month’s worth of incoming records that get saved privately. If Yabe appeared on your home monitor for even a moment, there will definitely be a record remaining.”
Remaining.
A record of that fictitious night.
“If you leave it alone the system will erase as it records new material, but it’ll still have records of just a few days ago. You should pull it now and save it on a flash drive or something. If you compare that data against the data saved by the security system people, you’re guaranteed to turn up some discrepancies. Then the police can’t keep quiet and the officer that took Yabe in can’t keep hiding behind his fear of the skinhead.
“What do you think about that?” Mio said to Ayumi. “You have a problem with this? This is a complete offensive campaign devised by a child, as you’d put it. It’s a citizen’s duty. If all goes well, doubts about the murder will be exposed. I mean, it’s not like the guy will get caught, but Makino will be safe. After that…
“She’s at the mercy of the authorities.” Mio tied it all up.