The diary hadn't lied – at the time stated, the boy really ran into the block house. That meant it was high time to rise up to the fourteenth floor – the place of the future murder. However, Takao Hiyama, a middle school teacher and a serial killer, waited for a while, overwatching the entrance – and not in vain: a little after his student Amano Yukiteru, Gasai Yuno, his another student, rushed into the entrance. What did they come there for? Was it a date?
Hiyama forced a grin under his gas mask to bear a twinge of strange vexation he felt, as if he was a schoolboy himself. He knew that Yuno was secretly fixated on that Yukiteru, but he always thought – or wanted to think? – that she won't go any further. But now… That proved once again the mental deficiency of women: what could she like about that autistic gruel? Or did she choose him deliberately, being aware of how popular she was with the boys: look, I go for this lame guy just to spite you?
Walking up the stairs, Hiyama shook his head pensively: no, she didn't seem to. She had been really stalking Amano for about a year. Like Hiyama had been stalking her, in his turn. He had even found out something about her, something he could make use of – and do so without a hitch: "I won't tell anybody about what you're hiding at your house if you'll be a good girl…" But he didn't want that. Ironically, the idea of rape sickened him – a fastidious sadist.
However, should it be given more thought, there was nothing strange about that. Ultimately, it would be just barbaric and primitive – to threaten her into that. Any brute could do that, and, by the way, only a brute could enjoy it. But for Hiyama it wasn't enough. So what if Yuno would do what she was told to with the fey indifference of a sumpter? Hiyama wanted something else – and something more. He wanted her to be obsessed with him, to adore him, not just to offer, but to plead for him to take her. But he wouldn't even bother to say her: "No".
The victim's feebleness and his own total control over the situation – that's what Hiyama took pleasure in, at a crime scene or in sexual intercourse. The more the victim's emotional distress contrasts with his own equanimity, the better. The more desperately she tries to escape, panting, the more pleasure is following her leisurely, aware of the dead end which awaits her inevitably. The louder she cries for help, breaking her voice, the more enjoyable it is to be aware she won't be heard by anyone.
Hiyama always planned thoroughly all the attacks, scrutinizing meticulously the areas he chose. He deemed attention and precision to be the pivotal aspects of his business – like in checking the school tests at his mask-of-normality job. If everything was thought over in advance, if a proper place was chosen and each detail, each turn and each corner was considered, it would be enough just to make the victim move in the right direction – and then she would get into the trap herself. Hiyama was amused with the desperate, convulsive dash a victim would make right into the embrace of death.
He wanted Yuno to act the same rashly and blindfold, he wanted her passion towards him to be comparable to a hunted victim's despair. He wanted her to cringe and twitch, like a puppet in the hands of a wicked child, being obsessed with him. However, it was quite the opposite actually – Hiyama himself was the one to suffer from an unshared longing, to seek remedies for her indifference. But only to find, over and over again, that Amano was the only person she cared for. The boy who seldom took his eyes off his mobile screen. The boy who had no friends at all – apart from a couple of imaginary ones, maybe. It would be quite expectable of a guy like him to have imaginary friends.
Hiyama was walking up the stairs when his mobile made a husky sizzling sound – it signalized about an incoming message from Deus, the god of space and time. Could Hiyama, a convinced atheist, ever imagine that a god would help him in his search for new victims – with a hundred percent success guarantee? Deus informed Hiyama of whom and where he was to kill in the near future – and he was only expected to get at the right place and at the right time to do what had been predestined. It was much more that a thoroughly elaborated trap – the aid of Deus gave Hiyama a total and unconditional superiority over his victims. He was almost almighty for them, as what he did couldn't fail to happen.
When he'd killed all the people Deus had ordered, he would become a god himself – that were a condition of the Game he had been accepted into recently. Hiyama was sure that he would manage being a god not worse than being a murderer: he would listen carefully to all the prayers, all the pleas for a miracle, for interference, for help, for cure, for deliverance, to all the voices in the wilderness – and he would never in all the Eternity even care to announce to any of them his universal and permanent answer: "No".
Having skimmed through the lines on the screen, Hiyama smirked: it turned out that Amano wouldn't leave the elevator at the fourteenth floor. He was heading to the roof instead, with Yuno. Most probably, they had chosen such a secluded place for some reasons. But it was only for the better. Hiyama even slowed down a bit – it would be lucky to catch them in process. He imagined how he would murder Amano in the face of Yuno – brutally, in the most gruesome way he would manage.
The girl was already mentally damaged – he was sure after he had seen those things at her house – and after witnessing a sadistic murder of her boyfriend she would be completely broken, of course. And then it would be high time for the caring and responsible Hiyama-sensei to appear and to visit the little – however, quite physically mature – martyr at the rehabilitation center. Of course, it wouldn't be exactly what he wanted, but that scenario still provided its own delights…
Hiyama's favorite joy was to listen to the screams of another cornered victim, to hear her crying and asking for her life. He usually cut them short – with his slicer. The answer was always too obvious to even tell them: "No".
The roof, bathing in the gignger evening sunshine, was empty as far as he could see, and the wind didn't bring to his ears anything apart from the noise of a road somewhere far below. Obviously, they hid somewhere having heard his footsteps. Hiyama made a couple of steps forward, looking for two helpless figures – where could they be? If it was any other case, he wouldn't deny himself the pleasure to investigate the roof thoroughly, playing deadly hide and seek. But that goddamn Yuno… he couldn't wait to see her indifference disappear without a trace, to see her squeel and howl over the bloody scraps of her dearest Yukkii, instead of telling her usual "of course, teacher"…
He took his mobile out of the inner pocket impatiently – what would his Diary tell?
Hiyama didn't have the time to get surprised, or scared, or even angry as a metallic pike pierced the folding screen through. "The Diary and his holder are a single entity," he recalled Deus' words. That was one of the Game's rules – but Hiyama never paid them much attention.
Takao Hiyama didn't have the time to realize he had been mistaken sisnce the very beginning – he was already dead.