site 16: Ririka Nishizono

Thursday, February 18th

There’s no such thing as a devil, right? If anything in the world deserved the name “devil,” it would be the human heart.

The darkness within the human heart ran deep. Everyone possessed that darkness, and everyone loved that darkness.

That sounded a little poetic, so I laughed to myself as I spun my favorite blue umbrella. I was feeling a little happy, probably because of the cute young man in glasses I’d just run into at the university. I should have asked for his name.

I thought these things to myself as I walked through Inokashira Park in the rain. It was a weekday afternoon in the middle of winter, so the place would’ve been pretty empty otherwise. With the rain, almost no one was here.

I walked through the silent park with my blue umbrella, feeling at peace, like I’d wandered into a fantasy world. The Natural Culture Gardens, a zoo inside the park grounds, was a particular favorite spot of mine. It had an aquarium, too, and the fact that it was surrounded by trees made it feel isolated from the rest of the world.

Sometimes you could hear the cries of the ducks and cranes in their cages. Just watching the waterfowl round themselves up into little balls in the rain was enough to make me want to stand there for hours.

It had been almost a year since they’d told me that my mind was broken. Of course, I liked to think I could tell the difference between real and unreal, but I had nothing to prove that what I was seeing was actually real at all.

Since there was no way to prove that life was anything but a dream, that was only natural. Still, if that was the case, I wanted the things I saw to at least seem a little fantastic. Maybe that’s why I came here whenever it rained.

“Um...” My enjoyment was unexpectedly interrupted.

It was a girl I didn’t know, about my age, who had spoken to me.

“Are you Ririka Nishizono?”

“Yes.” I was able to smile back in a very natural manner.

If someone had spoken to me outside this park, I would’ve ignored them or spat at them. But this was a place where I could be calm. I could treasure my meeting with this person.

“I knew it! The rumors were true!” The woman got excited when she saw me nod.

“I saw it on Twitter! That you go to Inokashira Park when it’s raining.” I’d been spoken to several times before when walking through the park. I wondered how they realized who I was when I wasn’t anyone famous. That must have been why. Of course, if someone had to speak to me in town, I’d much rather they did it here.

“I also heard that if I asked for a sketch, you’d give me one. Is that true?”

“I don’t have my sketchbook with me.”

“No, um... I brought one.” She hesitated a little as she took a sketchbook out of her bag.

Oh my. She was certainly prepared.

“Certainly.” I was something of a manga artist, after all.

I hadn’t gone pro yet, but I’d published several amateur doujinshi that had sold quite well. If nothing else, they were popular enough that people talked about me on the internet.

It was a little disappointing that it was always girls who approached me, however. I would’ve preferred a cute, younger man. If that ever happened, I would seduce him into coming home with me, and then show him a world that he never dreamed existed.

I imagined that and shuddered.

“What kind of picture would you like?”

“Um... I’d like something from your book at last year’s Winter Comiket, The Bottom of the Deep Water. When the albino boy is doing, um... naughty things... to the twins at the shrine, and they’re liking it.”

“Heheh. You know exactly what you want, don’t you?” She must have dreamed of the day she’d meet me, and spent a lot of time fantasizing about the sketch she wanted.

When I asked her if she had, she looked at the ground in embarrassment.

In the rain, holding my umbrella, I was drawing BL sketches in an empty zoo. It was a romantic and erotic act.

I didn’t labor under the delusion that my art was very good. My failure to go pro had proven its inadequacy.

But whenever I met a fan, they always told me that my art excited them. That must have been what made my drawings special.

Not that I really understood, myself. My own sexual proclivities were relatively normal. I only ever thought about sweet love between men when I was working. There were many female artists out there who imagined things far more extreme than I ever did.

That’s why I was surprised to find that I had so many fans.

I was a fast artist. I always drew these pictures very quickly, without expending any real effort. I wanted to make it so the person who asked me to draw for them could fill in the blanks with their own minds.

I finished quickly, relying on the first image that came into my head. After only three minutes or so I handed the girl back her finished picture.

And then I realized...

There was someone else, standing some distance away. He was looking right at me.

“Wow, this is wonderful! I love it! I’ll treasure it forever!”

“Thank you very much.” I’d forgotten all about my happy fan.

My mind, my senses, my self... My everything had been captured by the person staring at me.

He was a young boy, about middle school age, like a character from the sketch I’d just drawn. But his expression was far too empty for someone of that age. He had a different air about him than the boy with glasses I’d seen at the school.

You could say... Yes, he was identical. He was identical to the albino boy in my books.

“Has God made my dream come true, perhaps?” I whispered in a tiny voice.

The rumors I’d heard said that God appeared in Inokashira Park.

Even after my fan had finished saying her thanks and left, the young boy didn’t move. He was standing still in the rain, without even an umbrella.

I walked over to him and put my umbrella over his wet head. I could smell a strong sweat coming from him. It made me feel warm in the center of my body.

“You’ll catch cold.” The boy didn’t look away from me, even when I was right in front of him.

No one had ever stared at me like this before.

“The story you wrote was pretty good.” He took off his backpack and took out one of my books.

“That’s a naughty book for girls. Why do you have it?” I asked, wanting to tease him.

Normally, a boy his age would’ve blushed or gotten embarrassed. But there was no particular change to the boy’s expression. Instead, he kept looking directly into my eyes. His eyes were so clear, like a doll’s, that I...

“Your eyes are so pretty.” I imagined that they were drawing me in. “Did you know that the eyes don’t feel pain? That’s why it’s okay to lick them.”

I was aroused. I wanted to take this innocent young boy with me, and teach him to be exactly what I wanted.

I softly ran my thumb down his lips, which had turned blue from the chill. They were so cold. My heart shivered.

“I’m a minor. If I buy one of your books, is that a crime? I’m fine, right? Maybe I’m not supposed to do it, but they won’t arrest me, right?” The boy offered me his book. “Draw me a box, please.”

For a moment, I didn’t know what he meant. “A box?” That was a strange request.

He didn’t want a character or an autograph. He wanted a box. How cute.

“Will you tell me your name, too?” I asked, intending to dedicate the picture to him.

The boy answered, still expressionless. “Sagami.”

“That’s a good name. I could just eat it up.” The pendant on my chest clinked.

But young Sagami looked straight at me, still expressionless. I wasn’t hoping for an expression, either.

That sounded a little poetic, so I laughed to myself as I spun my favorite blue umbrella. This was the most erotic expression he could have made in this scene.

“So what kind of box shall I draw?” The boy moved his mouth and nothing else, like a ventriloquist’s doll.

—A kotoribako.

A child-stealing box.