I think this might be a cultural thing, but it always drove me nuts that killing Teppei was considered the wrong answer in every iteration of the series. Like I get the whole message of communal solutions and committing a fringe act like murder serves to ostracize you mentally even if no one else ever actually knows you did it, but on the other hand, every time I see this arc Cell Block Tango is playing on a constant loop in my head.
HE HAS IT COMIN'.
HE HAS IT COMIN'.
HE'S HAD IT COMIN' ALL ALONG.
HE TOOK A FLOWER IN HER PRIME
HE USED HER, HE ABUSED HER
IT'D BE A MURDER BUT NOT A CRIME
June 4th, 2021
The scraping of a metal shovel echoed in the remote forest of Hinamizawa, a boy in a sleeveless white shirt digging a hole deeper, deeper. He was alone, with only the rasping of his shovel, the twittering of birds, and the buzzing hum of summer cicadas for company. His shirt was soaked through with sweat in the muggy summer air, and mosquitos buzzed around him: his bare arms were marked with the blotches of their bites and he was smudged all over with dirt.
I itch. I'm hot. It feels disgusting.
Keiichi's eyes were blank and dull as he continued shoveling. He was no Rena, but when Keiichi was locked on a goal this intently, he wasn't breaking out of it. He had his pride, his anger, his fire to keep him going. He had his love, too, love of the summer days that had been and affection for the young girl he had sworn to protect.
It was an odd coincidence that every member of the Hinamizawa Club was uniquely equipped for the act of murder. Mion had the backing of a yakuza group and an underground torture chamber, and her sister Shion had the unprecedented alibi of an identical twin to cover her activities. Rena's unyielding determination and devoted planning meant that she was an absolute menace if she ever decided to take a life, and Satoko's infamy with traps was, of course, well-documented.
And Keiichi?
Keiichi had grown up reading mystery novels. Keiichi had a layman's knowledge of dozens of police procedures in the event of a homicide, Keiichi knew all the patterns, Keiichi had grown up in the big city and had seen snippets of some of those patterns in the news. Keiichi knew the steps of murder as innately as anyone else would know the ingredients in a recipe.
There are all kinds of ways to do it. An infinite number of ways to do it. Regrettably, almost everything that could save Satoko requires money. But this one way, erasing that man, requires so little money, you could say it's free. I can erase that man with zero investment. The lowest possible price, that's what that man's life is worth.
Keiichi moved mechanically, like an automaton, as he shoveled the dirt out of the deepening hole, preparing the grave in which he would stash that man's body. Grave? Better to say hiding place –that man wasn't worth a grave. This was a place to cover his body, a place to hide the crime of his existence. This was a place for him to be forgotten, and for his bones to be dug up and gnawed over by wild dogs. That was the end that he deserved. That was the burial that he deserved.
All the worthless information is being weeded out of my head, piece by piece, and is being replaced with only the knowledge I need to carry out my purpose. Make all the cells in my brain revolve to think only about erasing that man. I would use any method to kill him as long as it's a quick death. If I were to add a condition, I would prefer not to get caught, because I'm removing that man in order to take Satoko's peaceful life back. If I'm arrested in exchange for taking him out, then that would be no different than if we killed each other. That man alone disappears, and our former days return. That is the supreme objective. The absolute goal.
Keiichi knew, thanks to his mother, that the perfect crime was one that didn't exist. A shopkeeper who miscounted their inventory wouldn't notice a theft. A homicide that looked like an accident wouldn't be investigated as a crime. And a murder that was disguised as a disappearance? Here, in Hinamizawa? With the Hojos? With the curse?
I know that that as long as I don't kill him this will definitely go on, but whatever you do, don't leave any evidence. Don't leave two contradicting alternatives that would leave traces of myself. That condition automatically reduces the number of ways to kill him. Not exposing myself is another absolute condition. Fortunately in Hinamizawa, if I choose the right time, hardly anyone will be around. The area around Satoko's house is under construction. There's an algorithm of shifting traffic volume and the resident's actions.
Keiichi's mind buzzed with thoughts as he finished with the hole. With it dug, he only needed to fetch his weapon and lure the man out.
Worthless, worthless.
He hid the shovel in some bushes and trudged his way back to the school, eyes flicking everywhere for witnesses. There were none. He had planned it too well.
Keiichi took up his bat –once Satoshi's, now his, a weapon solely for the purpose of protecting Satoko– and made the call, waiting with agonized nerves for the man to fall for it, to venture out of the safety of his home and onto the roads where Keiichi could deal with him.
Thinking about it like this, I can tell how simple it is to kill. If it were okay to leave evidence, if it were just killing, anyone could easily commit murder. But ideals stop that. If you do it, you'll definitely be arrested. In the end, the ultimate stopping power that makes people give up on the idea of murder is that they'll be arrested by the police. Worthless! If someone was in the middle of the ocean with water as far as the eye can see, and he knew he would leave absolutely no evidence, he would throw the guy he hated into the sea! Just taking out that man will be all too easy. That man's existence is at a level that I can take it out of this world in a mere 1,500 seconds. If I'm determined, all the time he has left would be…
Keiichi's mind seethed with thoughts unfamiliar to his nature as his feet hammered their way back to the path, the pass, the key point at which that man would come and Keiichi could kill him. He could not be allowed to pass. He could not be allowed to return. That man's fate was now fixed on this inconspicuous stretch of mountain road. It was the stopping point of his life. Keiichi had decreed it.
Disappear, disappear forever and die! You tore out Satoko's heart, now I'll tear our yours! You'll pay with your blood!
It really was shocking, how easy it was. Keiichi was a fairly thin 14-year-old, not at all that athletic, and yet all it took was a scrape of his sneakers and a lunge, hurtling out onto the path and bodychecking that man off his scooter with a startled cry. His forehead hit a rock, and blood began to ooze out into the dirt as Teppei Hojo groaned and Keiichi stepped over him.
"Ow…that hurt…"
The world seemed to warp and shudder at those words, curling in on itself as the cicadas buzzed in the background and the thick, sticky air of the pre-summer-storm coated his skin.
"It 'hurt'…?" Keiichi seethed, his body shaking, eyes wild. A little thing like that…
He grabbed his bat with both hands and swung it up, expression furious.
Remove all useless information from your brain. Killing the man in front of your eyes is your top priority.
Teppei screamed as the blows rained down, pulping flesh and cracking bone. He screamed and writhed, but Keiichi was indomitable. This man hurt Satoko. He could not be allowed to live, he could not be allowed to survive. Keiichi would hit him until his muscles tore and rebuilt themselves to be stronger, until his own bones fractured from the stress. He would hit him until Teppei stopped moving.
Her body and her mind…countless, countless wounds that may never heal her whole life.
Keiichi's teeth ground against each other as Teppei managed to claw himself to his feet and run blindly into the forest, staggering and uncoordinated.
I won't let you get away!
The man squealed like a dying pig as Keiichi ran him down, like a frightened child –shrill, frantic noises that rang incessantly in Keiichi's ears, pathetic and pleading. It was a perverse mimicry of all those slasher movies Mion liked, with a grown man running frantically in the dark woods with an adolescent killer closer behind. Teppei even tripped like the lead in one of those movies, tumbling into the mud made by the building rain and writhing frantically on the ground as Keiichi caught up to him.
Where did you squirm in from in the first place? You never should have shown up. You are a heresy, a mistake, a problem to this world. And I…
The first strains of lightning flashed overhead as Keiichi brought the bat down.
…will erase you!
Again and again and again, blows that rattled in the hollow interior of the bat and buzzed up his arms, blows that snapped bone and smashed flesh, screams that rattled through the forest from both of them as Teppei cried and Keiichi roared, losing himself to the chittering madness inside his mind.
Be over. Be over. Be over! Spill your grey matter AND DIE!
It was quiet, after the man died. Keiichi listlessly brought his bat up for one more strike at the crushed ruin of his skull, making sure that Teppei wasn't faking it, and the man didn't even twitch. He was dead. He was gone. Satoko was safe.
A surge of bone-deep exhaustion and satisfaction rushed through Keiichi as the tepid rain poured down, his legs shaking as all his muscles went lose. He'd done it. He'd done it! Now all that remained was the cleanup…dragging the man's corpse back to the hole he'd dug, disposing of the scooter and the bat.
It was simple. Clean. Easy. The rain would wash away all traces of blood, all the footprints or marks of a struggle. Keiichi just had to do this one last simple thing, and then he was home free. Then Satoko would be home free.
He flung both bat and scooter into the swamp.
He buried the body in thick, sticky, heavy mud.
He staggered back home with his bike.
He ran into Takano on the way back home. She spooked him, she seemed to know more than she should, but he let her go home alive.
…he should never have done that.
It was both easier and harder as a group. It was easier to plan, but harder to execute, although that ratio would've been switched for anyone else.
Rena and Keiichi planned it. They were the cerebral ones, the ones that accounted for every last variable and every single possible outcome. They planned it, but they needed to be elsewhere, as witnesses for the crucial alibi.
Shion was the executioner. She had the most right, she had the most hatred in her heart, the most reason to swear vengeance against this mistake of a man. She was the one to ambush him on that cold and lonely mountain road, in the rain. She jabbed her modified taser into his neck, and she dragged him back to the estate with the aid of her faithful shadow, Kasai. It was her that put nails through his every finger and shoved his broken and bloodied form down into the disposal well.
Mion provided the alibi, hastily switching costumes under the eyes of her friends to play Shion's part at the festival in delicately calculated intervals, giving perfect, ironclad evidence of Shion's presence there for the minds of the other people.
Rika, meanwhile, soothed and comforted, as was her eternal role, reassuring and coddling a dispirited Satoko as the group loudly proclaimed their fun, making twice the noise to make up for the occasional "absence" of their leader, until a freshly-cleaned Shion truly joined them and they dropped their pretenses, murder successfully completed.
And Satoko?
For the first time in the many fragments that were overshadowed by Teppei Hojo, Satoko felt a glimmer of hope.
9.50 AM, USA Central Time