Sure─like before.
When I destroyed Tomo Kunagisa.
“Sounds kind of like a horror novel.”
Aikawa’s expression didn’t change at my joke─
She whipped her finger up…
“So I think it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to kill you right now.”
And snapped it back down as she said that.
“─”
Nothing─happened.
Nothing…happened.
“That’s a harsh joke.”
“Joke? Did you say joke?” Aikawa put on a show of exaggerated surprise. “Right, right. Keep telling yourself that.”
“…”
“Haha. If you were gone, who’d set up my punchlines for me?” Then, cynically, “’Kay, pal, I’m outta here.” Standing up, she folded the chair and put it back where she’d found it. And just for good measure, she took another apple from the basket. “Until the threads of fate entwine once more. May your future hold most excellent misfortune, and a pathetic excuse for good fortune.”
She started walking out of the room.
My final question was directed at her back.
“Why did Hime-chan─”
“Huh? Why did Hime-chan what?”
“Why do you think Hime-chan called me that?”
“Come on, it’s not hard. Or do you,” Aikawa turned the question back on me, “not understand why she hid the truth about Zigzag from you? Mental problems aside, it wouldn’t’ve been inconvenient for her if you knew she was a weaver, and yet she played the regular old washout right up till the last second. Do you not understand why she really did that?”
“No, I don’t.” Even though it was my own question, I hung my head and averted my eyes from Aikawa’s. “Wasn’t it just that she wanted me to underestimate her? By playing the stupid high schooler, she could keep me off my guard.”
“Not even close, you moronnn. Hanh, basically, she conflated the two of you. Mister Somebody, who resembles nobody and so can resemble anybody. She projected you,” Aikawa sneered. “Same way you projected her onto Tomo Kunagisa. Talk about ships in the goddamn night.”
Just as I saw Tomo Kunagisa in Hime-chan.
Hime-chan saw something in me?
“Think I’ll ever see her again?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you two together again soon, whether you like it or not.”
And with that, the contractor disappeared from my sight. As always, throwing my mind into disarray as she did so. While she may not have done what she usually did, further solving something I’d already solved, she did leave me with a whole new host of concerns.
Dammit…the Princess of Intimation, the Empress of Insinuation, Her Majesty the Queen of Suggestion. Thanks a lot, leaving me with a lapful of ambiguous and possibly spurious foreshadowing. Tamamo was one thing, but I’d wanted to point out that maybe the reason Shiogi got killed was because Aikawa had gone for a costume change.
“So does the whole ‘no personality’ thing mean people get to say whatever they want? Everyone expects too much of me… Gimme a break already.”
Even though I’m nothing more than an introverted nineteen year old with no imagination who’s maybe a little on the voluble side.
While I was pondering this, the nurse came in with a tray of food, almost like she’d tagged in when Aikawa left. Or more likely Aikawa had sensed the approach of the nurse and departed accordingly. She’s like a ninja.
“That cool babe with the fashion sense of a stand user who was just leaving your room? Never seen her before. She come to visit you in the hospital, Ii-Ii?” the nurse asked with keen interest, looking over her shoulder towards the door. “She your big sister, Ii-Ii? Your cousin?”
She seemed convinced we were related.
“Oh…she’s my girlfriend.”
“Whaa?”
She didn’t even try to hide her doubt.
“See, she’s madly in love with me. It’s a real problem, barging in on me even here. I was hoping for some time alone while I was in the hospital, at least.”
“Right, right. G-o-o-o-tcha.”
The nurse clearly didn’t believe a word I said.
“It may not have seemed like it, but when it’s just the two of us she’s really something. She’ll do literally anything I say.”
“Sure, sure, of c-o-o-o-urse. You lucky dog, you. Ii-Ii, what a stuuuud.”
She lined up plastic dishes on the table as she said this.
“Lovey dovey~♪ kissy kissy~♪”
What the hell is this hospital doing, hiring a nurse with so much personality? I was getting kind of annoyed (on top of which I was feeling emptied out), so I decided to change the subject.
“Excuse me, nurse, but do you read detective novels?”
“I’m a nurse practitioner,” she corrected me. Sounds to me like the difference between a tactics expert and a tactical expert, but I guess she was a particular person. “Sure, I read them, por qua?”
“Because it’s Quiz Time.” I picked up the envelope Aikawa had left behind, and as I examined its contents, I continued, “Say there’s a room somewhere. The door has a biometric hand scanner, so from the outside it can only be locked or unlocked by the room’s owner. One day, you and your two friends, the three of you, visit that room. The door is locked and it won’t open, so you force it open, and inside you discover the dismembered corpse of the room’s owner.”
“Ahh, a locked-room murder. This really brings me back.” The nurse smiled. “A handprint, huh… Sounds like Lupin.”
“So, how did the culprit pull off this impossible task?”
“Let me think. A-ha, got it. That’s an easy one.” After she had finished laying out my meal, the nurse turned to face me. “The murderer dismembered the body inside the room, then took one of the hands and used it to lock the room from the outside. Dismembering the whole body was camouflage, because in fact the killer only needed to sever one hand. In other words, the ‘key to the room’ was just the palm, and directly after death the scanner would still respond to it like it would to a living thing. Teheh, talk about a helping hand.”
“…”
“You’d be all shaken up if there was a dismembered corpse right there in front of you, so you wouldn’t realize at first glance that one little piece was missing. Yeah. So the culprit must be one of the three who discovered the body. It’d have to be the last person who entered the room, right? He or she could take the severed hand out of whatever it was hidden in, a pouch or something, and put it in a corner of the room while the other two were still in shock at the sight of the body. Wow, that’s a mighty gaudy trick.”
“…”
As I listened to the nurse’s answer, my gaze remained fixed on the contents of the envelope. Bundles and bundles of money─and a single photo. It was the photo that Hime-chan must’ve recovered from my clothes at the same time she took the campus map.
The photo of Hime-chan smiling that honest, genuine smile.
“I’ll get you two together again soon─”
Now I see, Ms. Contractor.
Really got my fucking number─don’t you.
You knew exactly the right thing to do.
I don’t know what Hime-chan was feeling when she took it from me. I don’t know, but I have an inkling. You might call it a memento. A memory, of when Aikawa and Hime-chan first met. A memory called the past, so unlike the future─and which, unlike the future, will never be ambiguous.
“Hmm? Come on now, I answer your dumb little quiz for you, and you just sit there gazing at some photo like you want to eat it instead of this meal I brought you? Who’s it of, Ii-Ii? Your girlfriend?”
“Does this look like my girlfriend?” How the hell does this nurse see me? “It’s not. She’s…just a friend.”
“You were looking at it pretty affectionately for that. The way someone looks at a daughter, or some sort of disciple.”
“Yeah? Well, maybe so.”
Snatching this photo from me was the one pure trick Hime-chan played on me, unrelated to either crime or murder. An act devoid of malice. Hime-chan wanted it for herself, so she took it from me. In which case, she’d have to come to me to get it back again. I didn’t know where she was now or what she was doing─nor did I know what Aikawa planned to do with her… But with those odds, giving up and admitting I’d been fooled didn’t seem so bad.
Hime-chan could never take her place─but, well, there were a lot of things I wanted to teach her anyway.
Yeah, like how to use nonsense, for instance.
What Hime-chan needed was a negative example─like me.
“Hmm. Okay. Anyway, I don’t care about any of that. What about my answer to the quiz? I got it right, didn’t I? C’mon, Ii-Ii, tell me already.”
The nurse peered intently down at me. I callously waved her away before responding. Though you don’t need me to tell you whether or not she was correct, of course; it goes without saying. However wide the world may be─
There’s only one person in it so soft that she couldn’t solve such a simple quiz.
The world’s strongest softie.
“You’re totally wrong. What a horrible person, suspecting your friends like that.”
“And you’re totally full of shit.”
“Maybe.”