site 33: Yuta Gamon

Monday, February 29th

Eyes, eyes, eyes...

Everyone was looking at me. That’s how it felt.

A suspect in a brutal murder. A crazy man. A psychopath. A murderer. An inhuman piece of shit. That’s what all their eyes seemed to say. I imagined it, and froze.

The rain had been falling all weekend, so I was able to hide my face with an umbrella, but today it had stopped. The sun had set and it was dark, but my heart was pounding fast.

“The keyhole... I have to find the keyhole...”

I was a fugitive.

The cops must have figured out who I was long ago. Even the news said so. They said someone had been seen fleeing from the scene of Dr. Hashigami’s murder.

By now my photo must be all over the internet, and everybody on the streets must be frantically searching for me. There was no way of knowing when somebody would point me out. It could happen just a few seconds from now.

“The keyhole...” I suddenly saw a condo building that was under construction, and staggered towards it. The workers must have been off for the day, because it was empty.

There was a fence surrounding it, and an ordinary, worn padlock on it. The fence could be opened and closed like an accordion to make an entrance, and the padlock was locking it.

“The keyhole!” I staggered up to it and took the gold tooth key out of my pocket. I plunged it into the padlock’s keyhole. “Fit... Come on, fit...”

Of course, it didn’t fit at all.

“Why... Why won’t it fit?” If I tried to force it, the gold tooth key might shatter or break. I had no choice but to give up and leave.

I kept walking around and looking for keyholes, trying my best to stay out of sight. This key was the one thing that could get me out of this mess. That’s why I had no choice but to cling to it. In my head, I knew that I wasn’t going to find the keyhole that easily. But if I wanted to save myself, I had no choice but to keep looking.

As I walked through the cold, I eventually found myself in front of the Hachiman Shrine. The street was packed with cars, and I could hear angry honking. It felt louder than usual. I carefully looked down the street and saw that the cause was in front of Anyoji Temple, right next to the Hachiman shrine.

It was crowded with people, and there were lights everywhere. I panicked when I realized that they were all with the media. I half-remembered hearing on the afternoon news that Dr. Hashigami’s funeral was going to be held at Anyoji today.

From the sidewalk, I couldn’t see the main building of the temple. To get inside the temple, you had to follow a little path and go through a gate. In front of the gate, I could see a bunch of reporters from different stations with their backs to the temple, talking into cameras with serious expressions on their faces. It was just about time for the evening news, so these were probably live broadcasts.

“Ah... ah...” I couldn’t get any closer. There was no way. If I went inside the temple, they’d put me on TV. And what was I supposed to say to the professor’s family? I couldn’t tell them that I’d found his body, yanked out his tooth, and run away! There was no way I could let the media see me. The police had to have been leaking them information. They must know what I looked like.

I needed to get out of here. I turned around and headed up the way I’d come. I wasn’t sure if I was shaking because of the cold, or something else. My hands were so numb that I couldn’t even feel the pain.

I should just go home.

Don’t let anyone find you. Don’t let anyone suspect you. Don’t look up. Just look down, and drag yourself home.

I felt so pathetic and guilty that I wanted to throw up.

“I’m practically... a criminal.”

Was I going to just drop out of society like this? I hadn’t been to school since the day I’d found the professor’s body. I looked so awful that mom let me stay home without really saying anything. None of my classmates at school would’ve been worried about me. Ryotasu was the only one who’d called a few times, and I’d ignored her. At this rate, I’d turn into a real NEET who never left his room.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. This wasn’t what I wanted.

Why did I go see Dr. Hashigami that day? I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want the people around me to get suspicious, so I held it back.

The tension kept eating away at me. I felt heavy. Just walking was exhausting. The sheer number of cars and people around me was making it hard to breathe.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I headed down a narrow alleyway. Once you went down an alley around here, you’d find yourself in the residential area that runs along Itsukaichi Street. It was a lot less crowded.

“Keyhole...” I passed in front of an abandoned house. The glass in the front door was cracked. It must have been abandoned a long time. I moved up against the door in the darkness, fumbled for the keyhole, and then pushed the key in.

“Fit... fit!” I forced the key into the keyhole, snot dripping down my nose. And then I remembered...

Shouldn’t I give this key — this tooth — back to Dr. Hashigami’s family? If I did, I’d feel a lot better.

But I quickly rejected the idea. If I gave up the key, I was doomed. That was how it felt. If only I could sneak into his house.

The idea suddenly came to me. If it was his key, the most likely place to find the keyhole was in his lab, or in his home. But there was no way I could visit his home right now. Actually, I didn’t even know where it was.

“Why... Why is this happening to me?” No matter how many times I tried to force it in, it wouldn’t fit.

I pressed down on it too hard and my hand slipped. I dropped the key. I quickly fell to the ground and began to search for it. By the time I finally found it and picked it up, I realized that several pedestrians were looking at me suspiciously.

Eyes. Eyes. Eyes.

Their eyes pierced me.

“S-Stop it...” A cold sweat ran down my back. “Don’t look at me...” I hurriedly stood up and ran away. I needed to shut out any information from the outside.

Ignore their gazes. Nobody was staring at me. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

I kept walking and mumbling to myself. I headed home as fast as I could, being careful to take as many empty streets as possible.

It was dark. It was like I was walking through an endless darkness. I wanted to be alone, but I was afraid of being alone. How long had I been walking? Maybe I wasn’t in the real world anymore.

I suddenly heard a violent flapping of wings from the sky. It was too loud to be crows. I looked up in shock and saw something coming down.

A person? No, this was a devil. I knew that instinctively. He was dressed all in black, and in the darkness, it was hard to make him out. The one thing I could see clearly were two eyes, the crimson color of blood. There was a wicked light within them that was staring straight at me. I could also see two big, symbolic wings on his back.

“A devil...”

The wings were featherless and shiny, and reflected a little of the starlight. I didn’t know why, but I was staring at exactly what I imagined a devil to be.

Terrified, I tried to turn and run away. I screamed... or tried to scream, rather. My voice didn’t come out. A fierce electric numbness ran through my body. It was a hundred, no, a thousand times worse than static electricity. It was like when I was shot with Ryotasu’s Poyaya Gun. The shock raced through my whole body.

I was cold.

A moment ago I’d been surrounded by cold air, but this was a whole different kind of chill. It was like being doused in freezing water. It didn’t feel cold. It felt painful. My body was literally freezing solid. I could feel the sensation fading away from my hands and feet.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move my hands, my feet, my mouth, or even my eyeballs. I could just make out the devil saying something in front of me, but all I heard was the sound of grinding teeth.

The devil brought its face right up in front of me. Its breath was so hot I thought it would burn my cheek. It put a sharp-clawed hand on my chest. It was going to take my heart—

I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. As I watched in helpless despair, the devil laughed a little and ran my body through.

Frozen like a statue, I lost my balance. My body shook, tilted, and fell. I could see the ground getting closer. And when I struck the asphalt, my body shattered into a million pieces—

I leapt up. In fact, I leapt up so hard that I fell out of bed.

I was in my room. I was panting violently because it was hard to breathe. My throat was parched. But I didn’t have the energy to go get any water, so I just lay on the floor for a while in shock.

I looked at the clock, and it was past 9:00 AM. It was light outside. I was late for school. Not that it mattered, since I hadn’t been going lately.

I could hear the sounds of helicopters in the distance. They were really loud.

“So it was all a dream, huh?”

Ever since the night of Dr. Hashigami’s murder, I’d been having nightmares. Sometimes I thought things would be so much nicer if it were all just a dream.

I was soaked with sweat. My shirt was damp and clinging to my skin. And wait, it felt really warm near my crotch. I didn’t...

I tried my best to deny it, but when I ran my hand down to my pants...

“Aaah! You peed your pants. That’s so embarrassing! Eeyahaha!”

“Huh?”

I could hear a girl’s voice coming from the Skysensor next to my bed. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was the voice of the girl who’d told me to pull out the professor’s tooth!

I quickly clung to the radio. The Zonko strap I’d tied to it slowly shook.

“T-This isn’t a dream, right?!”

“That you peed your pants?”

“Y-You! You! You’re talking to me, right?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just turn on the TV! Something really bad’s happening!”

“I am worried about you! What are you? Because of you, I—”

“Shut up and turn on the TV! Quick!”

There was no room for disagreement. I had no choice but to obey.

I wasn’t even allowed to change before I took the bag with the radio to the living room. Mom must’ve already left because she wasn’t here. I picked up the remote and turned on the TV.

“—The police have just made their announcement! They’ve already found f-fifty-one bodies! Fifty one! And they say they’re going to find more!”

“Huh?!”

The female reporter’s voice was almost a scream. I recognized exactly where she was. It was Inokashira Park. But the park didn’t seem peaceful like it always did. Police officers were running around, and in the distance I could see lots of media people. There were blue tarpaulins everywhere, and you couldn’t see the lake in the park. Something crazy was happening. That much I knew.

“I repeat! Early this morning, at least fifty bodies were discovered in the lake in Inokashira Park! There are believed to be over a hundred more down there as well!”

Fifty bodies? A hundred more? A chill ran down my back. “What the hell is going on?”