The first police officers, a man named Fujino and a woman named Nagano, wanted to document the scene before they were forced to tread through the blood. In the photos, the scattered bodies appeared as darker red outlines amongst the carnage. The full moon that night offered enough light that seven figures could be seen clearly, all perfectly still. As the officers moved throughout the bodies, checking for signs of life, they tried to photograph each victim. In the center of it all they found two, a boy in his late teens and a younger girl, entwined in an embrace.
Before every session in that first month, Dr. Naboru stared at that picture to remind himself what she had been through.
The way she curled herself against the boy with her face tucked into the crook of his neck spoke of tenderness and love. She wrapped one arm tightly over his chest to hold him close, her hand grasping the sleeve of his shirt so tightly her knuckles turned white. Her golden hair fell loose around her, most of it free of the pigtails she clearly had been wearing before, and spread out beneath the couple almost like angel wings. Under the silvery moonlight they made a strangely beautiful tableau; lovers sleeping in an embrace, floating on crimson silk sheets.
Except what they lay on was most definitely not crimson silk. Certain both were as dead as the others, Officer Fujino still crouched down beside them to check for a pulse. From the boy's cool neck he felt nothing. Then he reached for the girl and found her skin still warm, almost feverishly hot, and beneath it was a steady beating.
Fujino had stayed kneeling beside her, heedless of the blood, while Officer Nagano called desperately for an ambulance. It only took a few shakes of the girl's shoulder to bring her back to consciousness. What happened next the officer never included in his report and only admitted to Dr. Naboru after a solemn oath of silence. The girl, Fujino said, sat straight up with one hand out to strike him. She was amazingly strong, the officer noted. He fell back against the bloody wall of the arcade, just inches from long tresses of raven black hair. When his eyes found her face, her gaze struck him twice as hard.
