pened.
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“Whoops,” she said, wiping a drop of her own blood from her cheek. She was careful not to let anyone see.
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Looking positively placid, she muttered under her breath, “. . .not enough. Not nearly enough. More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, much more powerfully destructive! I need that kind of fear! This is not nearly enough!”
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There was a terrifying despair in her eyes, but a gleam behind it that spoke of an awful appetite.
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“It is a mistake to say that humans see
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only what lies in front of their eyes.
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They do not even see that.”
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-Kirima Seiichi,
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When a Man Kills a Man
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1.
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"Makiko-san, you’ve been using your father’s laboratory recently, haven’t you?” Makiko’s mother asked one day. As always, there were only the two of them at the dining room table.
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“Yes, I find I can concentrate better in the lab,” she answered, quietly.
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“What do you do in there? Are you bringing work home?”
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“A little bit. Don’t worry about it. I’m not making any noise, am I?”
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Makiko was not the least bit rattled. She was absolutely confident her mother would never uncover her secret.
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“But. . .Makiko-san, you work at the hospital until late at night, and then you bring work home on top of that?”
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Her mother had a horrible habit of speaking in cliches.
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“I don’t really have a choice. If I don’t work, we don’t eat.”
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“But, Makiko-san..."
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“You really shouldn’t worry, mother. I am a doctor, you know. I know full well what my body can handle,” Makiko said, firmly.
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“Even so, Makiko-san. It’s good to be passionate about your work, but you can’t be alone forever.”
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“That old line again?” Makiko said, annoyed.
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The remainder of their conversation followed well-established lines, never getting close to anything of import.
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Her mother could never have suspected that her daughter had long since given up being human.
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would turn sixty this year. The house was much too big for two. It had been built a generation before her dead father, and now was just big and old.
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The house no longer even belonged to them. It had long since been mortgaged to pay off their debts.
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But nobody had offered to buy it, and they had been allowed to continue living there, maintaining the property. They would be forced to move the moment the real estate agents managed to sell it.
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Her father had been a doctor as well, and the room where he had performed his experiments was where Makiko felt most comfortable. Outside of it she was scorned, the daughter of a bankrupt family, but in the lab she was cut off from the world. In there, she felt like she had when they’d been wealthy.
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So when Makiko found the “medicine” and be-
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gan studying it in secret, her mother had not thought anything of it. It had never occurred to her that there was anything unusual about Makiko’s behavior.
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Her mother had aged very quickly after her father’s death, but even so, if she had watched her daughter at-tentively, she might have noticed the change.
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Her daughter was oddly cheerful, and there was a newfound gleam in her eyes.
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had found a half-used ampule of unknown origin in a patient’s room.
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It was lying on the floor under a sleeping patient’s bed. It looked like nothing more than trash. It was placed there so unobtrusively, like a ball lying by the side of the road outside a house.
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But she had picked it up.
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And hidden it away.
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"...it was nothing,” she had said to the guard who came running, worried that there was an intruder.
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Even now, she didn’t know just why she had kept the discovery a secret.
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But directly afterward, the patient in the room where she’d found the medicine made a miraculous recovery from an unknown and incurable disease.
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...because of this?
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In her home laboratory, she carefully examined the liquid in the ampule. There was very little of it, so she had to be careful not to waste any.
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When she injected a rat with a very small amount of the liquid, the most surprising thing happened.
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The rat’s movements doubled in speed. It dem-onstrated reflexes and decision-making skills three times that of an ordinary rat. And not only that...the rat’s body had become incredibly resilient, nearly immortal. She could cut off its legs and arms, and it would regrow them. The phenomenon was completely unimaginable given its physical construction.
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The data she recorded could cause a revolution in the medical field.
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...this thing is no longer a rat.
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The more she experimented, the more her conclu-sion was driven home.
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The only thing she could think was that it had evolved into something else.
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The rat only died when she cut off its head. But even then, for several seconds the severed head was clearly capable of understanding what had happened to it. When she saw that, Makiko felt a shiver run down her spine. It was not a shiver of fear or revulsion, however.
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She knew full well this had been a shiver of exultation at the sheer power the new life form had displayed.
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She did not tell anyone about the medicine.
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If she told her superiors, they would undoubtedly claim credit for its discovery. That would’ve been unacceptable. The suspicion might have been part of her reasoning.
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But she felt like it was not the real reason.
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For reasons she could not fully understand, she believed this medicine was not something anyone else should know about.
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Or, yes, perhaps by then she had already ceased to be human.
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in the room where she found the ampule, came back to the hospital for a checkup.
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“It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Nagi-chan?” Makiko said, calmly, when she saw her sitting on the couch outside the outpatient reception desk. It was Makiko’s job to counsel patients all over the hospital, and she’d gotten to know Nagi well enough to make small talk even though she was no longer a patient.
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“Yeah. . .you look the same,” she said, absently.
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Nagi was the heir to a huge fortune. She was always on guard against any adults who approached her.
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Though she didn’t really seem hostile-Nagi was only fourteen after all...she seemed quite worldly and mature beyond her years.
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“I have to admit, I still don’t know how you got better,” Makiko said, not bothering to beat around the bush. Nagi was much too smart to get caught by leading questions anyway. She was better off getting right to the point, expressing her professional curiosity.
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“You still think it was all in my mind, Dr.
✦ ✦ ✦
Kisugi?”
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“Well. . .yes, to tell the truth.”
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“Mm, well. . .I got to admit I’ve been starting to suspect as much myself.”
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It was rare to hear Nagi admit anything, so
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Makiko pounced. “. . .any grounds for that hypoth-esis?”
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“Yeah. I. . .met someone. After that. . .it felt like a weight was taken off my shoulders, and I’ve been wondering if that was what cured me.”
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She spoke calmly, peacefully. It did not seem like she was lying.
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...so this girl has no idea that someone might have injected her with the medicine?
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It didn’t seem like she did, which meant there was no point in questioning her. In fact, she had to be careful not to reveal her own cards.
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“Heh...so, this someone...was it a boy?” she said, hiding her own desire to end the conversation.
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“It was a very strange man. He’s gone now.
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Vanished into thin air. I looked everywhere, but. . .I don’t think I’ll ever find him. Not anymore.”
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“Hmm...” Makiko said absently, not at all interested. “Your first love?”
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Nagi chuckled. “I dunno. Wonder what my dad
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would have said.
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When Nagi’s father, Kirima Seiichi, had been alive, he had struggled to define the shape of the human heart. Makiko had read some of his books.
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From a psychiatrist’s perspective they were fairly slapdash, but they had a fascinating habit of hitting the nail on the head in a manner she felt sure was pure instinct.
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“They say first love never bears fruit, and is soon forgotten,” Makiko said, hoping the cliché would free her from this conversation.
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“Yeah, I know, but somehow...” Nagi looked
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up suddenly, and stared at Makiko. “Dr. Kisugi, why did you become a psychiatrist?”
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“Eh?”
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“You see, I’m really not sure what to do with myself from now on. So I wondered why you chose your path.”
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"........."
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The question had taken Makiko by surprise. She could not have explained why. But...
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“Well...maybe I was just a coward,” she said, before she knew it.
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“What do you mean by that?”
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“Analysis...part of it involves taking apart in-describable fears. I was a huge coward when I was younger, and always wondered why there was such a thing as fear. Maybe I ended up here in the hopes I’d be able to answer that question...”
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“Hmm. . .then, maybe...” Nagi started to say.
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But the loudspeaker came on. “Kirima-san, come to window number three.”