site 58: Asuna Kizaki

A few days ago, our graduation ceremony was postponed.

I only found out the day of the ceremony, and I hadn’t been happy about it at all. But neither I nor any of the other graduating seniors were surprised. At least, none of the students or their parents said anything, I think. Of course, somebody might have complained privately. And honestly, if they’d gone ahead with the ceremony anyway despite what was going on, I probably would have wondered if the school had gone insane.

The school never really announced the reason for the postponement, but we all knew. I went to Seimei High. We were on the same grounds as Seimei University, where a famous professor had been killed last month. His killer still hadn’t been caught. And then there was the suicide of 256 people in Kichijoji’s famous Inokashira Lake. After those two incidents, there was no way the school would hold a graduation ceremony.

It was still morning, but the atmosphere in class 3-A was relaxed.

“...Hey, what are we gonna do after this?”

“There’s time. Let’s go somewhere.”

“I can’t. My parents say I’m absolutely not allowed to stop anywhere.”

“Gotcha. Yeah, it’s been dangerous lately.”

“They’re too worried. It’s seriously annoying.”

I could hear my classmates saying things like that around me. It was a Saturday, but there was a meeting to explain the graduation postponement, and we third-years had all been forced to come to school.

We were told that it was postponed, not canceled, but they were still working on the date. Of course, I thought that if that were the case, they could’ve just waited to hold the meeting until they had picked a new date, but after that we were all sent to homeroom, which was quickly over.

Since school ended at a weird time, a lot of my classmates were talking about afternoon plans. Those kids who had plans or who hadn’t finished their college exams yet left immediately after homeroom. I should have done the same thing, but during the long explanation at the meeting, I started to feel a little sick. I’d decided to rest a little until I felt better, and missed my chance.

I took a quick glance out the window. It was Saturday, so the first- and second-year students weren’t here. The schoolyard was empty, and there was nobody out at the stadium, either. It felt kinda weird. A month ago, I never would have imagined putting on my uniform and coming to school at this time.

March was a busy time for third-year students. For those who had already decided their post-graduation plans, it was the time to prepare for a new life. Some of those people were leaving home and going all alone to a place they’d never been. But there were also people who hadn’t finished their exams. There were even some people who hadn’t passed their tests or found a job and were too stunned to do anything.

What about me?

Where did I—Asuna Kizaki—fall among those people?

“Hey, did you hear? Some of our school’s students were on the list of Inokashira suicides.”

“Seriously? Who? Someone in our grade?”

“A boy in second year. He hadn’t been to school in a long time.”

“You sure he isn’t just absent?”

“The rumor says that nobody’s seen him since the day it happened.”

“Sure it was a boy in second year? I heard it was a girl in first year.”

“First year? You know her name?”

“Um... You know, the girl who was doing fortune-telling on Nico?”

“Huh? Seriously? I’ve seen her! You’re kidding me!”

Several boys were talking loudly in the seats behind me.

The group suicides...

It was definitely a sensational event.

There had been days of reporting on it, but there were still many mysteries. It was the perfect topic for rumors. Especially since it had happened right next to our school. I’d deliberately avoided hearing anything about the incident, so I didn’t know the details, just that 256 people had killed themselves in a single night.

I should just stop getting involved in this stuff.

When I left America and moved to Japan a year or so ago, that had been my decision. I wanted as peaceful a life as I could get, a quiet one where I didn’t make any waves. Otherwise, I’d just shorten my own lifespan.

“Don’t try to turn off your ears. Turn off your mind. Just ignore them.”

I remembered the words of the person who’d taught me that, and blanked out my mind. That helped shut out the conversations around me.

I was feeling a little better, so it was time to go home. I took my phone out from my backpack. I was terrible with smartphones, maybe because I always wore black gloves. Phones always felt like they were going to slip out of my hands. With some difficulty, I was able to turn on the phone’s screen and display the time. There were just a few minutes until noon. I had an appointment at the hospital after this. But first, I needed to get lunch somewhere. I stood up to go.

“Kizaki.” Suddenly I heard my name from behind me and turned around. One of my classmates, a girl with her hair in long braids, was standing there.

What was her name again? How could I not know this when I’d spent a year in the same class as her? When you spend your days doing nothing, it’s easy to forget names. But it would be rude to ask now. Once we graduated, there would be nothing connecting us at all.

“Kizaki, you’re done with exams, right?” The girl with the braids smiled, looking a little embarrassed.

“Yeah, I’m going to Seimei University.”

You could go to Seimei University from Seimei High, of course, but it wasn’t an automatic thing. They took your grades and attendance into account. There was a test, too, but it wasn’t that hard. Until a year ago, I’d lived in America, and I wasn’t used to Japanese tests at all, but I was still able to pass.

“Oh, I thought so.” The girl with the braids was sighing with relief. “Listen, are you busy today? All the girls who are going to Seimei are going to go to karaoke...”

“Karaoke?”

“Yeah. We were hoping you could come, too... How about it?”

She seemed really hopeful. It was the first time in the past year that someone at this school had shown me this much kindness, so I hesitated. But when I saw the three girls who were standing behind her—they were classmates too, but I couldn’t remember their names at all—I instantly understood what was going on. They were all staring at me, not bothering to hide their irritation. They must’ve been the “girls who were going to Seimei.”

I ran my tongue along my lips to wet them, then deliberately dropped my phone, taking care that it didn’t look unnatural.

“Oh!” The girl with the braids look surprised and quickly crouched down to pick it up.

When she was distracted, I took off my gloves. “I’m sorry, I was being careless...”

I apologized and pretended to pick up my phone. When I did, I touched my finger against the back of her hand. Then I closed my eyes.

— Begin the performance.

A blackness spread across my vision. As I dove deeper and deeper into my mind, I began to see a wooden door. I slowly opened it with an invisible hand, only to be confronted with a series of doors in different colors. They spread out endlessly, one after another. All the doors were already open, and I went through one after another like I was going through a series of torii arches on the way to a shrine. Deeper and deeper I went. When I got to the door at the far bottom, a white cat jumped up. Our eyes met, and I peered deep into its eyes.

The next thing I knew I was in a small movie theater, sitting in one of the seats. I was the only person in the audience. The projector began to move on its own, and a grainy, worn-out image started to appear on the screen.

It was the memories of what I’d touched. It didn’t matter if it was a person or a thing; it always started with the newest memories and moved backwards, going through all the most important “scenes” one after another.

Psychometry.

The power to read someone’s—or something’s—memories by touching it.

“What? You’re inviting Kizaki, too? Why?”

On the screen, I saw not the girl with the braids, but one of the three who’d been watching me from behind her. This was the girl with the braids’ memory, and I was seeing it through her eyes, so all her friends were smiling gently. It was totally different than the looks they’d given me.

“Yumi, are you friends with Kizaki? I’ve never seen her talking to anybody... Isn’t she kind of scary?”

“Scary? I don’t know... I’ve never talked to her, either.”

So the girl with the braids was named Yumi. She was right. I couldn’t remember talking to her, either.

“So why invite her?”

“The teacher said she’s going to Seimei, too. Once we change schools, we’ll have no way of getting in touch, right? So I wanted to at least get a way to contact her.”

“Why? What would you ever say to her?”

“Huh...? Is it wrong to ask?’

“Sigh... Do what you want, then. It’s going to make things less fun for me, though.”

On the screen, all of Yumi’s friends were sighing. I stood up and closed the curtains on the screen.

— Performance complete.

I opened my eyes, and I was back in the classroom. The performance had only lasted for an instant. I’d recorded a video of myself using psychometry once, and even the longest ones had only lasted three seconds.

Yume was still kneeling in front of me. She offered me my phone. “Here. The screen’s not cracked.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry.” There was a double meaning in my apology as I took the phone and stood up.

Her friends were watching me silently. They still looked upset.

“Don’t worry.” I smiled at them, and their eyes all went wide at once. They all looked away from me awkwardly. I turned back to Yumi. “I appreciate the invitation, but I have to go to the hospital.”

“Huh? The hospital... Are you sick?”

“A little, maybe. I can’t keep the doctor waiting, so I’m going to get going.”

“Yeah, sorry for inviting you so suddenly.”

“Goodbye,” I said, and then I left the room.

As I walked down the hallway, Yumi’s face began to disappear from my memory. Maybe I should have at least gotten her last name, but my memory was already over capacity, and I had gotten into the habit of quickly deleting any information I didn’t need.

I went out into the schoolyard and looked back up at the building. I’d transferred into this school last spring. I’d spent a year coming here almost every day. In the end, I’d never managed to fit in. Of course, that was only natural, considering I’d never really tried.

No matter what you were hiding behind the words you spoke, my psychometry could see through it. There was no doubting that because of this, my personality was a bit colder than the other girls in my class—for example, Yumi, the girl who’d just talked to me.

I knew I didn’t look down on the people around me, but that was probably how the others interpreted it. For one thing, my health often meant I came to school in the afternoon or left before the day was over. As a rule, I never participated in gym class. I didn’t participate in most school activities, including the school fair. If I went at all, I just sat on the side and watched. Of course there was no way I was going to fit in.

Maybe I didn’t need to force myself to go to the graduation ceremony... It would be rough for my health to come all the way back to the school.

“Goodbye,” I said to no one in particular, and left.

I was being followed. I’d started to sense it on my way towards Kichijoji Station after going to the hospital. I’d done work in the past that would justify someone tailing me, and I’d been trained to know how to deal with it. But ever since I’d come back to Japan, nothing like that had been a part of my life. It was a bigger surprise than I thought it would be.

More than anything, I was confused. Right now, I was just a student. What was the point of following me now? I couldn’t understand what they would want. Or was it the killer from the murder at the college? I had nothing to do with the murdered professor, but there was a chance that the killer had settled on a lone teenage girl walking through the streets as his victim. The thing was, the way they were following me didn’t feel like an amateur.

And then my chest started to clench up hard. I couldn’t breathe at all from the pain. A sensation of numbness ran through my whole body. I bit down hard on my lip to keep from passing out.

I couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t let my pursuer know what had happened. I put my right hand on my chest, pressed down, and took a series of short, deep breaths to quell the pain.

Calm down, I said to myself as I headed away from the path to the station and into the narrow alleyways.

From the big streets to the small ones. From the residential areas to the back alleys. Over the course of the last year, I’d pounded the details of this area’s geography into my head. It was an old habit. Kichijoji was a town with lots of tiny houses clustered together and many small paths and narrow spaces. There were telephone wires strung above my head and lots of poles along the street to support them.

I went deeper into the narrow alleyways. The pursuer was no longer trying to hide their footsteps and was following me quickly. I listened for the footsteps, walking until I found a house with a wall the height I was looking for. When I turned a corner and left my pursuer’s sight, I quickly climbed up the wall. I leapt from there to one of the telephone poles. There was no time to think about the fact that my skirt was flying up.

My pursuer seemed to panic after losing me in the narrow, complex alleys. They stopped trying to hide themselves at all and began to run. They ran right past me without realizing I was there. As soon as they were in front of me, I jumped down.

“Freeze!” I said in English, using a low, threatening voice. I pressed myself up against their back and wrapped an arm around them, pushing a ballpoint pen into their neck. It may have been just a pen, but it could easily tear through the carotid artery. They must’ve known it too, because they didn’t resist.

Once I was pressed up against them, I was able to get a better idea of who they were. They were male, and quite tall. I felt like a little kid pressed against a grown-up. His body was well-muscled enough that I could tell even over his coat. He didn’t have the frame of a Japanese person, either.

“Did you need me?” I said, again in English.

“It seems you’re not rusty,” he replied.

“Show me your ID card.”

“It’s me. Have you forgotten me?”

“You could be in disguise or have gotten plastic surgery. Hurry up,” I said, not letting my guard down. The man put his hand into his pocket. From the way he was walking, he didn’t seem to have a gun in there, but I gripped the ballpoint pen harder.

I watched his movement carefully. The man took out a black leather pass case. It had a card with a portrait on it to help identify its bearer. When I saw it, I relaxed my grip on the pen.

The man turned around slowly towards me. “It’s been a long time,” he said, this time in fluent Japanese. It was someone I knew. I’d worked for him when I was in America.

The ID said “FBI” in large letters. The official name was Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was, of course, an American police organization. It was also my old workplace. I’d changed my citizenship to American in order to work there, so right now I technically wasn’t Japanese, but American.

“Oliver, fancy running into you in Japan.”

“It’s no coincidence. I came to Japan specifically to see you.”

“Is there some rule that says if you want to see someone who quit, you have to tail them?”

Oliver Roseland. Thirty-seven years old. My former boss. To be honest, he wasn’t a man I wanted to see outside of work. Other people’s opinions might differ, though.

“That outfit looks good on you. It’s what they call ‘Japanese Kawaii,’ right? Have you managed to fit in at a Japanese school?”

“You don’t have to ask questions when you’re not interested in the answers.”

“It’s a shame you left the bureau. You were good at your job.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t believe him. I knew him too well for that.

“How’s your mother’s illness?”

“Her Alzheimer’s is getting worse,” I said, as expressionlessly as I could. “She doesn’t even remember that she had a daughter at all, let alone who I am.”

“I see. Does your psychometry still work?”

“Well enough.” I felt like I was undergoing an interview. It didn’t feel like he was here to catch up on old times.

Psychometry. That power was what had let me get a job at the FBI at my age, and it was what had let me keep it.

In my case, I would go into a mental space that looked like a movie theater and watch the memories of an object appear on a screen. I was often told it was an overly elaborate way of doing things, and I agreed. But it was something I needed to do if I wanted to separate my memories from those of other people. “Fusion” always followed “synchronization.”

When you read somebody’s memories, you would become them, and then not only would your memories mix, but so would your personality. It was a common problem for people with this power, I’d heard.

When I was little, I’d often get very confused after using my powers. That’s why I created that mental movie theater: as a way to protect my mind.

“What do you want? You haven’t come here just to see how I’m doing.”

“I want you to use your power to help me.”

“You came all the way from America to Japan to call me back?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you forget why I quit?”

“I’m not going to tell you to come back to America.”

“What?”

“I want you to take over the work of an agent who was working in Japan.”

I wasn’t expecting that, so I let my confusion show on my face. “An agent, working in Japan?”

“Agent Moritsuka.”

Moritsuka?!

Shun Moritsuka. A man who always looked like an idiot but was as clever as they came. His powers of observation and intuition exceeded anyone else I knew.

I’d known Moritsuka since he’d come to Japan to work on a certain case. Since we were both Japanese, he’d often come to chat with me for five or ten minutes about nothing in particular and then leave. He was a weird guy. Moritsuka wasn’t with the FBI very long, but from the way everyone around him acted, I could tell he excelled at his job.

“He came back to the FBI?”

“No. But he was working with us on this case.”

Why would they need me to take over a case Moritsuka was on?

“They got Moritsuka.”

What?! What did he just say? Moritsuka? They got him? They got him... Did that mean...

He was dead?

“You heard about the 256 bodies they found in Inokashira Park, right? One of them was Moritsuka’s.”

“What?!”

How? Suicide? An accident? Or murder?

If it was murder, then who...?

Calm down. Remember the training you got when you joined the FBI. I tensed my limbs and focused my mind to calm my anxiety. I closed my eyes and took a quick breath.

I didn’t know for sure that Moritsuka was dead yet. It was possible that Oliver was bluffing, or that his information was bad. I needed to stay calm.

“Are you sure about this?”

“The information came from the Musashino police, the place where Moritsuka was working. His co-workers ID’ed the body. They’re sure.”

“What was he working on?”

“He was looking into an NGO that belonged to a certain organization, but it’s not clear if they were behind it. All we know is that he’s gone.”

From the way he was talking, “murder” was the safe assumption. I repeated the meaning of this in my mind and bit my lip. “So you’re saying that all 256 were murders, not suicides?”

“Moritsuka had no reason to kill himself. Thus, we think it was murder. There’s no other evidence besides that.”

In other words, they barely knew anything.

“HQ is in an uproar. Agent Moritsuka was extremely useful in any case that involved the supernatural. Losing him is going to hurt.”

“Moritsuka...” I’d had no idea he’d died in the Inokashira incident. I hadn’t realized it, but Moritsuka was in Kichijoji, too. Maybe I’d passed him on the street. “And you want me to take over his work?”

“You want revenge for him too, right?”

Revenge, huh? I stared down at my glove-covered hands.

Oliver was right. I owed my life to Moritsuka. Right now, I just barely had control over my psychometry. But before I’d met Moritsuka at the FBI, my power had been more or less running wild. Since I couldn’t control it, the memories of anything I touched would come flooding into me. I couldn’t even live my daily life, and all my efforts had been devoted to “not touching anything.”

“You can’t control your power, can you? If you don’t figure out a way, eventually it’ll kill you.”

After I’d already talked with Moritsuka several times, I’d had a heart attack one day. It had never happened when I was little, but a while after I joined the FBI, I learned that my heart was in awful shape. The FBI’s doctors took a look at me, but all they could tell me was that they didn’t know why it was happening. But for some reason, Moritsuka was able to tell instantly that my heart attack was due to overusing my psychometry.

“Your psychometry puts a pretty big strain on your body, I think,” he’d told me. “The FBI doesn’t want you quitting, so they’re hiding that from you. That’s just how all big organizations are, you know. Terrible, just terrible.”

When he told me this, I’d felt betrayed by the FBI. I was so shocked that I hadn’t slept a wink that night. I could tell that my whole body was screaming. But since the bureau needed my power, I couldn’t stop using it.

The next day, Moritsuka came to me and said, “Here, I brought you a present.” Then, he put a pair of black gloves on me. “These are magic cat-paw gloves that can temporarily seal away your psychometry.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Sure, they definitely weren’t normal gloves. The palm and fingers were covered with shock absorber pads that looked like a cat’s paw. But I knew that it would take more than some fabric and fake paws to seal away my power. I knew that better than anyone. I’d had this power since I was a kid. I’d tried all kinds of things to seal it away. Wearing gloves to stop it was the first thing I’d tried, and of course, it hadn’t worked at all.

But when I told him that, Moritsuka just laughed. “Did you know that sometimes, people can get better just because they believe something? The trick is to believe that those gloves can temporarily seal away your power.”

That was impossible. But when I told him that...

“But you were already able to protect your mind by making a movie theater, weren’t you? So why can’t you believe that these gloves are magic?”

His words were enough to make me understand. After that, I was able to learn to temporarily seal my power with the gloves. As long as I wore them, my powers wouldn’t activate when I touched something. And because of that, the stress on my body was reduced. It was thanks to Moritsuka that I was still alive.

The cat-paw gloves that Moritsuka had given me were still at my house. They were my treasure. So when I heard he was dead, it was natural for me to want revenge. But what did the FBI want with me? I’d been out of there for a while. Why would they want me to take over for Moritsuka?

“Do you think I’m capable of this?”

“You’re the only one who is.”

In other words, they were counting on my psychometry. I thought it over silently. If I went back to being an agent, I’d have to use my power a lot. But if I did that, my heart would...

“We’re willing to pay for all your mother’s medical expenses. We’ll also provide somebody to take care of her needs.”

Why was he bringing that up now?

“That sounds like a threat to me.” If I quit, or started to slack off, one of my mother’s caregivers could turn from a nurse into an assassin.

But Oliver just ignored me. “We’re also willing to make accommodations for your health.”

That was the reason I’d quit the FBI. My body hadn’t recovered. It hadn’t improved... No, it was slowly getting worse.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: A disease where the muscles of the heart enlarge to the point where they can’t send blood to the rest of the body. The positioning of the enlargement in my heart meant that the Batista procedure wasn’t an option. The only thing that could save me right now was a heart transplant. It was a difficult procedure, but without it, my heart’s muscles would eventually lose the ability to contract. I had two years left, at best. If I was lucky, I might live to see twenty, but no better than that.

I wanted to spend the rest of my short life in peace. That’s why I’d come back to Japan.

“I...” I grit my teeth and gently put my hand against my chest, which constantly hurt with a dull ache.

Oliver’s “accommodations” were probably a reference to a heart transplant in America. If that was possible, it would add years to my life.

“I don’t think it’s a bad deal,” he said.

I knew Oliver didn’t like me. In the same way that the girls at Seimei High avoided me, he kept his distance, too. I understood why he wouldn’t like me: I could find in thirty minutes what would take him a week of difficult investigations. And yet he’d come all the way to Japan personally to ask for me to join the bureau again.

The FBI must have really had its back against the wall. What had Moritsuka been looking into?

“...Moritsuka.”

He was dead. He was gone. Whenever I ran into him at the FBI’s offices, he would always smile that innocent smile of his and offer me a piece of the candy he kept in his pocket. He was almost like Santa Claus.

But now he was gone.

I took another deep breath and stared hard into Oliver’s eyes. “I’ll do it. Tell me about the case Moritsuka was working on.”

I wasn’t doing this for the FBI. I was going back to being an FBI agent for Moritsuka’s sake.