Chapter 030
ISHIDA STARTED SCREAMING when the walls shook. It was the most human look Shizue had ever seen on him.
Her calm and collected mother was also suddenly deranged, right before she died.
Kill me, just strangle me.
There was no situation in which it would ever make sense to ask a patient you are treating to kill you.
Anyone who thinks for even a second about what would happen afterward would never do that.
The boy ended up killing himself.
If he hadn’t, he would have been a convicted murderer anyway.
Even if he weren’t apprehended for his crime, the memory of having murdered another human would stay with him.
That was why Shizue had decided her mother was no longer human.
She couldn’t forgive her.
She hated her as much as she hated herself.
Sometimes people just couldn’t think that far ahead.
Looking at Ishida in his deranged state now made her realize all this for some reason.
However.
“Gra-ndfather. Gra-ndfather…Gra-ndfather,” Ishida muttered over and over.
Then with his hands on the floor, he suddenly realized Shizue had been watching him.
He cocked his head to one side like a veritable slapstick comedian.
Then, as if playing around, he made his face rigid and, half facing her, glared at Shizue. “What’s your problem? What? What? What? What?” he kept repeating, now approaching her.
“Hey!” Ishida kicked Shizue. Unable to understand his demonstration she just said, “That hurt.”
“What the hell are you…Why are you looking at me like that? Hey! Hey hey hey hey!” Ishida kept kicking Shizue.
“Stop that!” Kunugi said, and with his good arm pulled Ishida by the shoulder. “What’s wrong with you, Lieutenant?”
Ishida grabbed Kunugi’s hurt arm and twisted it hard.
Kunugi let out a ferocious scream and fell to the floor, but Ishida wouldn’t let go. “What? Why are you bothering me? What? Hey, say something. Speak!”
Kunugi was gritting his teeth.
Shizue took Ishida by the hand and said simply,
“Stop it.”
Ishida guffawed, let go of Kunugi, and drifted over to the ornamented door.
He said, “What did I do wrong? Why? Everything was going so well. What happened to Takasugi? Why did everyone disappear? Has it all fallen apart? I’m okay. This is all trivial.” Ishida suddenly spun around. “I’m sure this is just an electrical malfunction. The electromagnetic waves are unusually strong. Maybe the medical equipment downstairs just malfunctioned. I can’t get ahold of anyone because the wires are all mixed up, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong.”
“You think the secret door’s just going to open now?” Kunugi said, still lying on the floor. His voice was hoarse.
Suddenly, the wall behind Ishida’s desk parted to the left and right, and indeed opened wide. Beyond it was another gate, and that opened too. Beyond that gate was an old wooden door.
“What? It’s just a couple open doors,” Ishida laughed. “Right now, the tresspassers, Hazuki Makino and Ayumi Kono, are being captured. And that filthy undocumented brat Rey Mao too. They’re most certainly restrained by now. Ritsuko Kisugi is being sliced open, and her delicious liver is being extracted. Anyway, this time, we’ll have plenty of ingredients. We can keep eating and eating and eating…” Ishida said proudly, spreading his arms as he uttered the words.
“My great-grandfather will be so happy. When you’re 115 years old, eating good food is one’s only joy. And you two, yes…you will have to die. You’ll have to commit double suicide.”
“You’re going to kill me too, after all?” Kunugi said.
“Having an idiot like you in the police force is a waste of taxpayer money. If you live, my great-grandfather won’t be able to eat human flesh anymore. My great-grandfather is going to keep eating lots and lots of humans and keep living living living!”
The ornamental door crept open.
Ishida jutted his head out and peered around the door half-wittedly.
Right next to his neck he heard a swoosh sound.
Standing by him was a little girl.
Ishida stared at the little girl’s profile, perplexed.
Blood.
She was covered in blood.
“K-Kono…”
The blood-soaked girl stood there unblinking.
Ishida.
Ishida, whose face still bore a perplexed expression, slowly collapsed to the floor.
Blood was dripping from Ayumi’s aquiline jaw.
In her delicate right hand was a unique-looking weapon.
Kunugi raised himself. Shizue still couldn’t swallow what had just happened.
“M-Miss. You…”
“I’m a murderer. He was a criminal,” she said confidently, without so much as wiping the blood from her face.
Shizue raised herself up too.
“As you just witnessed, I killed this man. I also killed the police officer named Takasugi, and the man with the peacock tattoo on his head. I killed Ryu Kawabata and Yuji Nakamura. I confess to all of those killings.”
“Kawabata and Nakamura?”
“Miss Kono…” Shizue stood up. She thought herself so weak. If what she just saw was real, and if what this girl just said was true. Despite it all, this little girl was standing firm. Despite being drenched from head to toe in blood.
Behind Ayumi was Hinako Sakura and probably the girl known as Ritsuko Kisugi. And behind her…
Cat.
She had the face of an adult. Ayumi walked into the room without so much as a glance at Ishida’s dead body.
The others followed.
Ayumi faced Shizue and politely thanked her.
“Are you injured at all?”
“I’m fine.” The counselor couldn’t tell them she was in pain.
Mio Tsuzuki appeared in the doorway.
And Hazuki Makino, covered in mud.
They were all all right.
They were all alive.
No…
These children had attacked the building.
This impenetrable fortress, overrun by little girls.
Ayumi kept her gaze straight ahead and walked through the room, past Ishida’s desk, through the hidden door, and past the gate beyond it.
“Miss Kono,” Shizue called out.
Ayumi turned around slightly. And then she opened the wooden door in the very back.
Mio and Hazuki walked past Shizue and followed after Ayumi. Rey Mao, Hinako, and Ritsuko followed suit. Shizue lent Kunugi her hand to help him stand, and they followed after them.
They passed the doors, the gate, the wooden door.
The girls were lined up, two-by-two.
The room was so white it was glowing.
A huge window.
The giant heavenly body.
For some reason the moon shone brighter and closer than ever.
It was encircled by a large inorganic machine, inside which was a small white bed.
On it.
On it was a tiny old man, shriveled and covered in wrinkles. He raised his head and looked their way. There were tubes sprouting from all over his body, and on his hairless head were several electrodes, cables leading from them.
There was a small tabletop attached to his bed, and on it was a white plate.
On the plate was one morsel of meat left over from his meal.
Ayumi, dark red, stood at the side of the bed.
Stood there silently.
The old man looked at that crisp face with utter dread.
“Are you a demon?”
“I’m a wolf. I butcher everyone in my path. I’m a werewolf. Loup-garou,” Ayumi said.
The old man let out a short laugh.
“Are you here to ease my pain?”
“No, I’m here to kill you,” Ayumi said, and grabbing all of the wires connected to the old man, cut them with her knife.
Beep.
The small lights all flickered and one by one were extinguished.
The sound of the machines stopped.
The fan stopped.
The monitor went black.
Even the lamp turned off.
The machine stopped.
The old man looked around him several times, looked at his wrinkled hands once, frowned his wrinkled face, and then quietly, so quietly, ceased to exist.
The old man was not alive. He had been kept alive.
Ayumi slowly turned on a heel.
“Police officer. I have killed another man.”
Kunugi lowered his eyes.
“Miss Fuwa,” Ayumi said to Shizue. “Killing people is wrong, right?”
“Yes.”
Shizue tried to answer as calmly as she could.
Not for her own sake but for the child’s.
“Please arrest me. And then take me to prison.”
Kunugi, however, turned his head.
“I’m sorry, but, miss…I can’t do that,” Kunugi said. “I can’t arrest or convict any of you girls. I didn’t kill anyone, but I might have committed an even greater crime. In fact I’d understand if you wanted me arrested along with you.”
“If no one is convicted of murder this tale won’t have a conclusion. This leaves me—”
“There is no conclusion,” Shizue said, and she really believed it. “A conclusion is something the records will conveniently provide. In reality there is never any clean resolution. You can say it however many times you want with words, and you can even convince yourself of it, but humans aren’t that simple. Or, on another level, humans are much closer to pure than that. Confessing to a failed middle-aged cop isn’t going to start anything,” Shizue said.
“I’m…”
“It’s okay.”
Shizue hugged Ayumi. Just the way her mother had held her once.
“I understand. I’m entrusting this to the police, the law. That’s what you want.”
“The police will be here soon,” Mio said. “I timed their arrival perfectly. Though they don’t know what happened here.”
In that case.
We could get out of here before daybreak. We could leave this impenetrable fortress.
Shizue looked at the girls’ faces.
This was an impenetrable fortress, but it was also man-made, not the work of gods. We can take it down.
Despite the misery, despite the pathos, despite the horror. Despite the sadness.
Even though so many people were dead now. Even though so much blood was spilled.
Despite all this, Shizue was glad to see the girls were alive.
Even if it turned out they had committed serious crimes.
She was a horrible woman.
In reality, people had died, and people had killed those dead.
To be happy despite all that made her a horrible person.
In the window illuminated by the full moon, Shizue could see her tired face reflected back at her.
Shizue looked at the pathetic face and couldn’t stop crying.
The moon was slow.
And cold.
“And then the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood.”
–Charles Perrault