“Really? Promise?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You should go for it."
✦ ✦ ✦
Girls’ voices were in his head.
✦ ✦ ✦
But at the same time there was something un-
✦ ✦ ✦
pleasant rising up inside him, an agonizing pain.
✦ ✦ ✦
Oh God. Even with all this, I’m still not...
✦ ✦ ✦
But his thought was interrupted as he noticed the black shadow standing in front of him.
✦ ✦ ✦
His eyes were too weak to see anything clearly, but he could tell it was not the assassin. It was too small. A child, perhaps?
✦ ✦ ✦
In his blurred vision it looked less like a person and more like a pipe rising out of the ground.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What are you doing?” it asked.
✦ ✦ ✦
The voice was clear but he could not tell if the shadow was a boy or a girl.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Not a lot,” he tried to say, but his lips would not move properly, his voice barely made a sound. It felt like he was talking in his mind.
✦ ✦ ✦
But the shadow seemed to have no problems
✦ ✦ ✦
understanding him. “But. . .you’re dying,” it said.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Apparently.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You aren’t scared?”
✦ ✦ ✦
"...sure I am.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Then. . .then why are you so calm?”
✦ ✦ ✦
It seemed like the tone of the voice changed suddenly in mid-sentence. It became somewhat mechanical-automatic.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I am scared, but. . .I’m also really angry, so I guess that stops me from thinking about dying.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You’re angry?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“At how lame I am.”
✦ ✦ ✦
"...you refer to your clothes? A strange hat, a dark coat. . .why do you dress like that?”
✦ ✦ ✦
"...nothing to do with my clothes. I’m a scarecrow, you see. I like black things, like crows.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Hmm.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“And what are you? A shinigami? Wait a minute longer, I’m almost ready for you.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Shinigami?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“I’m a lot like you, you know. A scarecrow and a crow together are a very bad omen...” he tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Why are you angry?” the shadow asked, its tone oddly mocking.
✦ ✦ ✦
"...guess I can tell a shinigami. You see, I tried to save a girl. In exchange for my life.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yeah, but now. . .at the last minute. . .I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t bothered. I’m thinking I did something stupid, something I shouldn’t have done.”
✦ ✦ ✦
He gritted his teeth. He could barely talk, but somehow he continued the conversation...partially thinking it, partially muttering it. “It would’ve been better to have done nothing rather than end up all pathetic and lame. . .and it’s like a bad joke. . .I’m the one, I’m the one who blathered on about superheroes, so cocky. But I’m nothing like that. . .there’s no excuse for it. She said I could be one, but...”
✦ ✦ ✦
This was awful, incredibly awful.
✦ ✦ ✦
"............"
✦ ✦ ✦
The shadow listened quietly.
✦ ✦ ✦
He groaned, “I should be punished for this. Someone should pass judgment on me. . .but there’s no time.
✦ ✦ ✦
I’m dying. It’ll all be over soon. With me still stuck here, undecided...”
✦ ✦ ✦
The shadow interrupted him. “You want me to
✦ ✦ ✦
judge you?”
✦ ✦ ✦
"...eh?"
✦ ✦ ✦
“If I do that, will you become the superhero you want to be?”
✦ ✦ ✦
"............"
✦ ✦ ✦
“Would you wish for the regret in your mind to be cast aside? Would you want your mental state to once more be one she can be proud of? To return to the moment when your mind was a beautiful thing?”
✦ ✦ ✦
The shadow’s voice was emotionless. It was
✦ ✦ ✦
mysterious, unfathomable.
✦ ✦ ✦
"............"
✦ ✦ ✦
For a long moment, he did not respond, but at last the conversation in his mind resumed.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What are you?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You called me a shinigami.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“...you’re probably just a delusion, an illusion you see and hear as you die. A fragile hope, like a bubble, that will pop and vanish in a moment. . .you’re kind of a creepy one, too.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You think I’m nothing more than some kind
✦ ✦ ✦
of. . .sinister bubble?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yeah...funny, really. The last thing I see is a strange kind of bizarre.
✦ ✦ ✦
He tried smiling again, but failed, ending with a very asymmetrical expression.
✦ ✦ ✦
“You...”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Mm?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“You haven’t answered yet. Will you choose to be as you were?” the shadow asked.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Heh.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Shinpei did not know how he planned to answer.
✦ ✦ ✦
He waited expectantly, wondering what response his heart would produce.
✦ ✦ ✦
6.
✦ ✦ ✦
"He was here.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Mo Murder approached the thing lying in a heap, half hidden in the grass behind the crematorium.
✦ ✦ ✦
Scarecrow was not moving, showing no reaction to his approach. He was well and truly dead.
✦ ✦ ✦
Mo Murder had expected as much. He had known the loss of blood would have killed him by now.
✦ ✦ ✦
He had calmly waited until he would be able to deal with the corpse away from watching eyes. He pulled some chemicals that would help dispose of the body out of his bag.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Still,” he muttered, looking down at Scarecrow’s face in death.
✦ ✦ ✦
He looked so proud, like there was not a trace of regret over what he had done. His face was pale and bloodless, but there was something that still shone within it.
✦ ✦ ✦
“How did he manage to die looking like that?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Like he’d led a life worth living.
✦ ✦ ✦
Mo Murder grumbled the whole time he was
✦ ✦ ✦
disposing of Scarecrow’s corpse.
✦ ✦ ✦
“The End is the Beginning is the End” closed.
✦ ✦ ✦
1.
✦ ✦ ✦
The office currently overseeing the copyrights to the works of Kirima Seiichi, eight years after his death, was in the corner of a low-rent building away from the main traffic of the city.
✦ ✦ ✦
The office manager was an eighteen-year-old
✦ ✦ ✦
high school girl named Kirima Nagi, who Visited two or three times a month to clean. She conducted all actual business by mail, so the office was mainly used for storage.
✦ ✦ ✦
There were two doors. The first had no lock, so that guests could enter and wait comfortably. The second door served as the true entrance to the office.
✦ ✦ ✦
"........."
✦ ✦ ✦
Nagi silently unlocked the three different locks on the door.
✦ ✦ ✦
Inside, she looked around to see if anyone was there, a habit acquired long ago. Of course, there was no one here.
✦ ✦ ✦
As always, this made her sigh.
✦ ✦ ✦
She glanced at the shelves of her father’s works, which lined the walls, and headed for the kitchen.
✦ ✦ ✦
She took out the kettle, filled it with water, and placed it on the burner. The former resident had ille-gally altered the burner, and it was extremely powerful. The water boiled in no time at all.
✦ ✦ ✦
She used the boiling water to make a pot of tea.
✦ ✦ ✦
Judging from the stains on the floor, the former occupant had been a coffee drinker, but she preferred tea.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Coffee is what American detectives drink,” she murmured absently.
✦ ✦ ✦
She was here to clean, but instead she sprawled on the sofa, drinking several cups of tea and staring absently at the ceiling.
✦ ✦ ✦
In all likelihood, nobody had ever seen her acting this lazy. Everyone thought of her as frighteningly collected, and she had earned herself the nickname “Fire Witch.” She deliberately lived up to the part.
✦ ✦ ✦
But in this one place she was free to be an ordinary, listless, apathetic high school girl, doing nothing at all.
✦ ✦ ✦
Every now and then she whispered, “Not
✦ ✦ ✦
yet. . .still not there...” as if there were someone in the room with her.
✦ ✦ ✦
By the time she found the office, the previous tenant had already vanished. Everything inside had been hauled away.
✦ ✦ ✦
She had quickly decided to rent the empty office, shortly after she’d turned fourteen. Ever since, she had come here to do nothing.
✦ ✦ ✦
Absently, she picked one of Kirima Seiichi’s books up off the table. The Victor's Principle, The Victim's Future.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Unfortunately, genuine effort is never understood by others. It is only understood when you emerge victorious, but when you win, the beauty of the effort extended is subverted into something else entirely. The true fruits of effort lie only within that which is sacrificed.”
✦ ✦ ✦
It was hard to understand what he was trying to say, but then ambiguity was a distinct characteristic of her father’s writings. Nagi was never quite sure why they sold so well.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ah-ahhh,” she said, tossing the book aside. “All my efforts are in vain, Dad...”
✦ ✦ ✦
Muttering, she stood up, washed the cup and pot, and put them away.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then she left the office without ever getting around to cleaning. She headed toward the parking meter where her bike was parked, but suddenly she frowned, staring at the garbage area on the ground beneath her.
✦ ✦ ✦
She saw the battered body of a dead crow lying next to the garbage. It was not a particularly unusual place for a crow to die, but she bent down and picked it up without the slightest hesitation. She turned it over in her hands, examining it.
✦ ✦ ✦
"............"
✦ ✦ ✦
There was no trace of the carefree expression that had been on her face a short moment ago. Her eyes were again those of the Fire Witch.
✦ ✦ ✦
She stuffed the dead crow into a plastic bag, tied it shut, and stowed it away in her handbag.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then she pulled out a cell phone and dialed it quickly. It rang once, and someone answered, “This is Habara.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“It’s me, Kentaro,” she said, using a masculine pronoun.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Oh! What? Something happening?” Habara