It wasn't home - not that he considered himself as actually having a home these days - and wasn't even that comfortable but where was the problem with that? It was quieter than a house would be, it exacted fewer demands, it asked for nothing from him but his physical presence and that wasn't difficult. Most of the time. Most of the time they just let him be.
Occasionally they would try to get him to talk, say something, anything. Smile, damn it. Do something. Please. He knew better than to reply or to react or even act like he was aware of their presence. If he just sat and watched then they left soon enough.
He knew and knew he liked them all but they were connections to things he didn't want to think about so he ignored them, pushed them away. If he pushed them away then he could push away the memories they always provoked in him. It hurt, the things they said always left him feeling shaken and confused though he didn't show it. He knew that these people were just as hurt by his absence, but he knew enough to know that he didn't want to deal with the things they thought he should be dealing with. They confused and frightened him and he didn't want to be afraid any more, so it was far better to drift.
He didn't want to talk about it.
***
Kyoichiro stood on a patch of waste ground with his hands in the pockets of his coat and sighed deeply, barely even aware of the drizzle. He didn't need this first thing on a Monday morning when his mouth still tasted of toothpaste and his head was still clogged with sleep. Jesus, but he wished he was back home with his wife and daughter. This case had never looked as if it was going to be an easy one to deal with but it was turning into a total bloody nightmare, not that it had ever been anything but. Who the hell was this guy? What kind of sadistic lunatic was prowling round out there? He couldn't believe it. And why the hell couldn't they find him?
It had been a woman, probably an attractive woman a few days ago. This was the fifth one now - the official total. If you added the assaults on the students - which Kyoichiro was inclined to; the more he thought about it the more likely it seemed that they had both been botched attempts at murder rather than unusually brutal rapes - it was seven. Five was bad enough, seven was worse, and each one a person. It was easy to think of them as faceless names, but he didn't want to. When he tried to force himself to see all seven as individuals it angered him. The dead girl had wanted more from life than this; so had all the others.
"You think it's him again?"
Kyoichiro started at the sound of his partner's voice. She stood a few feet away holding an umbrella, looking down at the woman's broken body. He wondered what she was feeling - this woman was about her age. She wasn't the kind of person to get freaked, though. She couldn't afford to be, what with the job she was in and the case she was working on. She was young, pretty, slender and fashionably dressed; she hardly looked the part but she was a capable woman, was Marie Sakuma.
"Sure looks that way."
There was no pattern. Three boys in their late teens - two of whom, the survivors, had been defined as 'bi-curious', the third in a long-term relationship. A teenage girl, the third boy's girlfriend. An office worker in his late twenties. A doctor in his forties - the father of the first victim. And now this young woman. Where was the connection?
The body lay in a vacant lot in the suburbs, hidden inadequately by weeds. It had not been there long by the looks of it, a day at the most, and in cold weather. Though her clothing was soaking wet as well as ripped and stained and her shirt had been torn open, presumably to allow her attackers to cut her more easily, and her hair was matted, she was dressed save for one high-heeled shoe, brilliant blood-red in colour, which lay a few feet away. Yet again this was just killing for killing's sake - no sex angle - but with the assaults at least a part of it had been lust. On the subject of the assaults, the way this girl had been injured, presumably prior to her death, reminded Kyoichiro of the injuries inflicted on that Mori boy… only in this case they hadn't left her face. That was, unfortunately, becoming normal for this guy as well; they'd had to identify the first two bodies by dental records and the others hadn't been much easier. The girl looked a mess.
Kyoichiro knew he wasn't Marie - he couldn't pass these things off as easily as Marie did. Or maybe Marie didn't take it lightly either, it just looked as though she did.
The fact that whoever it was had killed the father of one of the boys who'd lived could have meant something; it would have helped if they could have questioned the boy again, but he was in no state for that. Marie had suggested it, they had got in contact with the family, but nothing had come of it. Apparently the boy had suffered a mental breakdown after his father's death and was back in hospital. Even if he recovered enough to make any kind of statement it probably wouldn't even be sufficient to get a search warrant ordered, let alone stand up in court.
You should never think things can't get any worse. They invariably do.
***
Occupational therapy; so called because it stops you from thinking. Once upon a time he'd have had something to say about that but not any more. No words. There just weren't any words to express anything any more, and no need to laugh or smile about anything either. They just felt wrong on his face these days, smiles did. Why pretend to be happy? Why pretend to be anything?
These days he felt very little. He just was. Not happy, not sad, not hysterical. He just was and that was all. Sat at the table he watched his hands - detached, disconnected, dislocated. Things happened and it didn't matter and if it was frustrating so what? What could they do to him that hadn't already been done and worse? What was there to threaten him with that he hadn't already experienced?
He'd be quite content to stay this way forever.
So he sat and watched his hands do whatever it was they thought it would help him to do and kept his head down and he hid beneath his fringe. He didn't look up until it was time to leave. This was just a room like all the other rooms he'd been in and if he kept his head down and his eyes averted he was left alone. Invisible. He was no danger. He was no trouble. He just was.
***
Koji's first analysis of Kimie Mori - that he looked better in school uniform than out of it - was not an entirely fair one. His uniform didn't really suit him, for a start, and he looked uncomfortable in it. Then again, he looked uncomfortable with the whole environment. School didn't suit him. He would probably have been a hell of a lot happier if he'd left aged fifteen and got a job - probably as whatever the adolescent male version of an office lady was.
Or at least that was what Kai thought.
"Kai my class already thinks I'm a total weirdo do you have any idea what you're doing to my reputation?" It didn't take a genius to work out what the others would make of this, if you asked Kimie. Older men, especially older men who looked like Kai Kurosaki, were not the kind of people he needed to be associated with right now. What the guy was doing in showing up outside his high school at the end of the day… probably only made sense to Kai himself.
Now that took some doing. Kai had no idea how a boy in Kimie's situation could remain clueless about so many things, but somehow he managed it. Naïveté and then some. It was actually kind of sad, when you thought about it.
"'Kai' what?" he asked. "What the hell are you talking about? My name means nothing by itself."
***
She was his sister and they'd said that if he would open up to anyone it would probably be her. She was the only surviving member of his immediate family, after all. She'd once meant a lot to him.
But he was dead. The part of him that had been her brother was dead. He knew that. There was a what to him, but no why. He survived. He just was. But he wasn't anyone this girl had ever known. When she came and sat with him he looked through her, even though she was different from the others. She never tried to get him to say anything. She seemed to understand.
But he knew she couldn't understand. When she came and sat with him he acted like she wasn't there. Just like all the others. Tuning out. It wasn't her. It wasn't even them. But they carried memories with them and he didn't want to feel those things anymore, so he pushed them away and pretended he was still alone.
And when they left the bewilderment and sadness and fear left too.
***
Takafumi turned the radio off with an audible click then turned to face Keisuke, who was looking at him in mild confusion. "I don't want to know." he said by means of an explanation. "I just don't want to know."
Gazing out of the window at the night, he sighed, oblivious to Keisuke's anxious expression, shivering slightly - was the heating on at the moment? - before drawing the blinds. He didn't want to know and the world was therefore obtrusive. Again again again. A woman's body was discovered… Koji again. Why couldn't someone stop him? Why couldn't the police find the guy? He'd left it too late to report what Koji had done to him, there'd be no evidence. Katsumi could have verified it but Katsumi, not to put too fine a point on it, was crazy. He'd left it too late and the guy was still out there and he hadn't changed a bit.
Takafumi hadn't realised it at first but the night Koji had murdered Katsumi's father it should have been him who'd died. And it probably would have been had the boy not actively intervened. He didn't like to dwell on the occasion, but he wondered… if Katsumi had been told that this was the deal, would he still have bothered intervening on Takafumi's behalf? It sounded like one of those personality test things - if your father and your best friend were in mortal danger and you could only save one, who would you choose? - and a reassuringly abstract concept at that. It bothered Takafumi. He didn't know what Katsumi would have done if he'd been told what would happen next. Either way, Katsumi's current situation probably wouldn't have changed much - he'd been in a delicate mental state for months.
If your father and your best friend were in mortal danger and you could only save one, who would you choose?
"What's on your mind?" Keisuke asked. "What's the matter?"
Keisuke understood what Takafumi was asking well enough, though he didn't want to have to do so. He knew what it was his lover wasn't saying but didn't want to. Can you imagine what you'd have done if they'd found me lying dead and disfigured on a patch of waste ground, like they did with Katsumi's father? It should have been me there. It would have been. Keisuke, would you have cried if it had been?
Keisuke had thought of evading the question but in the end decided not to. The answer was simple enough. "I don't know what I'd have done and I don't ever want to find out."
If your father and your best friend were in mortal danger and you could only save one, who would you choose?
***
Outside it was drizzly and he watched. The silence in the room was heavy, the stillness heavy. He sat on his bed in the unlit room with his arms wrapped round his knees and looked out of the window at the streetlights and the fog and the evening and didn't notice any of it. Still. Like a monochrome print. He was there and at the same time he was not there and there was a distance in his placid brown eyes.
He knew now that he'd be alone for the rest of the day. Nobody bothered him at this time, at least nobody who would stay for more than a few moments. No more. Just the heavy silence and that was all he wanted, the silence and the feeling that he was alone.
They missed him, he knew they missed him, but when all they did was make him hurt and all they brought with them was fear and sadness he knew he didn't want to go back. All this he felt but he just was and he truly felt very little these days. Then they all left, they always left in the end when he just watched and acted like he wasn't aware of their presence, and when they left he was left dislocated, lost, alone, isolated, voided…
Calm.
***
Sometimes Takasaka hated his job. Most of the time, really. It was stressful, the hours were long and he was the kind of person who was inclined by his very nature to think a bit too much. When his cases actually seemed to be worthwhile, when he could actually see some kind of point to it, then he liked it. But when nothing happened and he got the feeling he was just wasting his time, then he wondered why he bothered.
He looked at the newspaper he'd bought, as ever, on his way into work, and as ever hadn't actually found time to look at, and frowned slightly. Another body discovered on waste ground - the cover photo was of a smiling young woman with long, blonde hair and slightly too much makeup. She reminded him slightly of that first girl who'd died, Eri somebody. Victim number five, they said. The coverage was emotive, hysterical, making much play of the fact that the girl had only recently got engaged. Takasaka pushed it to one side unread. He didn't need to know all that. He'd never liked human interest stories much. After all, it wasn't as if he didn't get enough human interest at work. He didn't read the tabloids - so why the so-called quality dailies couldn't report on this a bit more objectively… then again, human interest stories, especially about these kinds of subjects, sold papers.
His problem was he thought too much and lacked something that he desperately needed. He couldn't seem to see things at one remove and treat it like just another job. All the things that bothered him just came with the territory. He wasn't temperamentally suited to the job he did.
It was obvious what, or rather who, had brought this on. Shibuya bothered him. Had done for a long time. The first time he'd met the boy he'd obviously needed to talk about the things that had landed him in hospital the first time - in the one session they'd had, Katsumi had said something along the lines of 'could you call this a betrayal'. Takasaka still didn't really understand what it was he'd meant by that: the implication, though, had been that the person who'd tried to kill him had been someone he'd once trusted. From the evidence he'd gone on to blame himself and still was blaming himself.
What was the point, though, of trying to counsel someone who never spoke? They'd had a couple of sessions and all that happened was that they sat there. Katsumi didn't even look at him, he kept his eyes fixed on the floor, his hands, or occasionally at a blank spot on the wall or the unremarkable view from the window. Sure, Takasaka had made several attempts to get the boy to talk or failing that to react, but nothing had come of it.
The boy was in deep depression and serious denial. It was almost as if he thought that by ignoring his problems they'd go away by themselves. Takasaka could have told him (and had, not that he'd got any discernable reaction out of the boy) that it wouldn't work. On top of everything else his job was maddeningly frustrating at times.
***
Of course he found it hard to sleep. Even in the lonely, heavy silence it was hard. He couldn't escape it fully. It was still there no matter how hard he wanted to forget it because it was his past and it was in him and it was him. He hid it during the day but he couldn't hide, not really.
Not when it was in him and it was him.
He hadn't wanted to break the silence, he'd been comfortable with it. He'd wanted to stay this way forever. It didn't demand anything of him. It didn't hurt. It just was. It left him dazed and strangely calm and somehow almost content, even though he was empty and had known that he was empty. He could live with it. It wasn't uncertainty and misery and terrible, crippling dread. He couldn't live with that but it seemed that he had to. He hadn't been given the choice.
He had no words but didn't need them. He couldn't hide, not really. So why was he pretending? Afterwards he felt a little better for it - it had been a small release. He'd kept it all in and it hadn't helped either. Maybe they were right and it was therapeutic after all.
Outside the rain fell, steadily and relentlessly.
Part 14