“The future?”
“That’s what I said. It feels crappy when the future is vague, doesn’t it? Uncertain elements are a bummer…right? Everybody wants a bright future, don’t they?”
“Wh-What─”
“Either way, if you do get out of here, you’ve got nowhere to go, do you, Hime-chan? So why not come with me? My building’s pretty rundown, but there just so happens to be an empty room on the first floor right now. The rent is a stunningly affordable ten thousand yen a month. There’s no bath, but a public one is close by. I can’t say it’s a great building, but it’s a pretty fun place. The people who live there are cool. And it’s really the people who make a home a home. Take my word for it. The first person I should introduce you to is Miiko Asano, she’s a swordswoman. Miiko’s a little bit older than me, a real dignified lady, and she takes good care of me. I’m sure she’d adore you, Hime-chan.”
“Are…you─”
“On the top floor there’s an old Christian dude. I don’t know his real name, but he’s a funky old guy, he’s a rapper. He’s fun just to look at. But he’s dangerous, so don’t get too close… Then there’s a brother and sister, Moeta Ishinagi and Hoko Yamiguchi. Can’t forget those two. Moeta’s a tough customer, but his sister’s the innocent type. If she likes you, you’re golden.”
“What are you─”
“On the first floor, there’s a female college student who just moved in. She’d be your next-door neighbor, Hime-chan. She’s in her third year at Roshisha University, and her name’s Nanami Nanananami. She’s the worst, super uptight. I’d love it if your easygoing personality rubbed off on her a little.”
“What are you, talk─”
“And my room’s on the second floor, come up anytime. As far as school goes, it’s not like you’ve got anything else to do, so give it a shot. If you want to be a good kid, every day can’t actually be Sunday. You’d never find a real job with that attitude, so let’s see, I guess that’d make you a transfer student. You might have a hard time keeping up with the classes after going to this dumbass academy, but that’s where I come in. I’ll look out for you, I’ll be your tutor. Then that name might actually start to mean something.”
“─ing about─”
“And we’ll all have tons of fun─all of us, together.”
“What are you talking about!” Hime-chan finally exploded. “You’re about to get zigzagged! So all this─all this stuff you’re saying, everything you’ve been saying, I don’t wanna hear it! There─there’s no future! No future at all, not for Hime-chan!”
Being able to think about the future is proof that you still have leeway. If you really are living each day like it’s your last, you don’t have time to think about such things.
Each day, like it’s your last─you’re going to die anyway, no matter what you do, so.
“So you’re going down with the ship? A double suicide with this stupid school? That’s just childish selfishness. What am I supposed to do, caught up in some girl’s rotten emotions?”
“Did you say─girl’s, rotten?”
“Am I wrong? The way you do things is cowardly and rotten─but most of all, you’re a cute girl. Which is way better than being a rotten guy like me, and yet you’re throwing away your future… Is that why─the one person you didn’t want to be hated by was Aikawa? Because she’s a woman? Aikawa was the one person you didn’t want to think of you as a ‘murderer.’ You didn’t care about anyone besides her…and if this was going to be the end, I guess you wanted to end it by her side? Sentimentalism, romanticism, or plain old heroism…whichever one it was, it’s a far cry from my beloved stoicism. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. By you.”
“What do you─what do you know about it!” Now Hime-chan really was crying. This was no lie, those were real tears. And she didn’t try to hide them as she yelled at me. Like she was accusing me, in a voice so loud I thought her throat was going to tear itself apart. “Don’t talk like you understand how I feel! What do you know about the feelings of someone who’s gotten used to killing!”
“If nothing else I know that you’re a weepy little girl. In the end you’re just scared, like everybody else. You’re frightened because you don’t know whether Aikawa will accept you or not. You’re suspicious of the fact that Aikawa trusts you. Which is why you’re testing her trust like this.”
I understood her feelings as if they were my own.
I understood them as I understand my own.
I understood them as my own.
“‘What’ll I do if Jun Aikawa hates me’─and ‘even if she doesn’t hate me,’ ‘if I amount to so little that I’m not worth hating even though I’ve done all this’─”
“Hahaha…”
All emotion suddenly, rapidly departed from Hime-chan’s face─positive and negative, life and death, all gone. She made a complete about-face, a turn to the dark side─becoming totally expressionless.
“Thank you so much, Master.”
These obviously empty words of gratitude came lightly to her lips.
“I got to have a nice dream there before the end.”
And, like the conductor of an orchestra.
“So that’s how it is…” I said. “Guess it is, at that.”
No good, huh?
Of course not, how could someone like me, someone who can’t even look after himself, look after someone else’s needs? Total failure. Was this the true non-action?
I’d shown her a nice dream─
But if the reality was shit, then it didn’t mean a thing.
A non-factoring non-action.
“Oh, right. I still don’t know your name.”
“…”
I waffled once more, right at the end. Despite the fact that, seconds before, I’d been trying to save this girl…now I was thinking about destroying her. I couldn’t decide: should I give this girl, who was teetering on the precipice, that final push over the edge? If I could destroy her, then I probably should.
It would probably feel good.
To obliterate this lovely young lady.
“Since it’s come to this, I can’t calls you Master anymore… I’ll do you the honor of calling you by your name. So please tell it to me.”
Tell you my name. Tell you my full name. You want me to snap every last one of your little zigzagging strings?
“Well…”
But I didn’t do that.
It didn’t seem necessary anymore.
“Guess I bought enough time for a costume change.”
“What’s that? Is that…your name?” asked Hime-chan, ingenuously.
Ahhh─so good-natured.
Everyone is just so good-natured.
Almost makes me feel like I’m the villain.
“Just talking to myself, Hime-chan… Don’t worry about it. And you said it yourself.”
“Huh?” Hime-chan squinted one eye in confusion. “See, the thing is, Hime-chan was asking you your name─”
“I said it too, and so did Shiogi─but you were the one who said it first, Hime-chan. Jun Aikawa is soft on her friends.”
“…?”
“It’s true that I left the Director’s office of my own accord…but she’s the one who brought me here to Hang ’Em High in the first place. So don’t you think it’d be kind of a lonely ending─if she didn’t come to my rescue?”
“…!”
Hime-chan whirled around.
And there before her eyes─
Vermillion as the flames of a carmine conflagration.
Crimson as spilt blood, the scarlet of hell itself.
The contractor was simply there.
A cynical smirk playing across her face.