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Before he knew it, three years had passed.
The police had not come to arrest him. Kousuke’s parents had moved away, looking very sad, and Saeki was the only person who had seen them off. Nobody imagined that Saeki had killed Kousuke; indeed, they all thought the boy’s disappearance had left him stricken with grief.
He hadn’t done any acting; he really did mourn the boy. But pangs of conscience left him unable to look directly at the boy’s parents as they shed tears for their lost child. The purity of their tears only drove home the sheer horror of what he had done.
For three years, Saeki had been terrified that someone would find out what he had done. In all that time, Saeki had never once gone near the patch of land where Kousuke was buried. It was covered in weeds now. The morning glories had faded away, scattered seeds, and grown again, mingled among the weeds. A new family had moved into the house where Kousuke had lived.
At the beginning of summer, a housewife brought the neighborhood newsletter around to Saeki’s house. At the door, she spoke about the serial killer targeting girls, a story that was all over the talk shows. Eventually, the conversation touched on Kousuke’s disappearance.
“Three years since Kousuke vanished … You were friendly, weren’t you? You must miss him.”
Saeki tensed, but then he remembered Kousuke’s little face smiling, and he felt a wave of sadness. He had drowned the boy underground with his own hands, but his twisted mind still had the nerve to feel grief over the loss. How horrifying.
Saeki nodded gravely. But when he looked up and saw the woman’s face, he noticed something strange: she didn’t seem at all sad, and she had already moved on to talking about how loud the cicadas were getting as the days grew hotter. The world already considered Kousuke part of the past.
A few days later, Saeki found himself buying new wood and nails and making another coffin. He had to make the coffin inside, so that no one would see him working over the wall. As he sawed the boards down to size, tiny bits of wood littered the tatami floors of the room.
The summer flew by. Saeki could feel his conscience trying to stop him from doing something horrible again, could feel it battling a crazed darkness inside him that was searching for new prey. But this inner struggle never showed outwardly, and the world around him seemed to think Saeki was just like he’d always been. Like a machine functioning automatically, he went about his daily life without any trouble at all.
Then, one Friday late in October, Saeki left work, got into his car in the parking lot, and started driving home. It was already dark out. As he joined the rows of cars with headlights on, his eyes naturally glanced sideways at someone walking by the side of the road. A moment later, he was shaken by the realization that he had looked at the person with an evaluating eye. He could not make out any expression on his face as he peered at its reflection in the rearview mirror; it was like the dark parts of his eyes had turned into little holes.
At work, he had always been taken for a very quiet man. He brought in flowers from home to decorate with, and he did the work he was assigned without complaint. People thought well of him, and he was trusted. None of them knew that Saeki had murdered a child.
As he neared home, he turned left onto a street with little traffic.
And there, Saeki saw the girl.
She was walking by the side of the road. He could see her back in the glare of his headlights. She wore a black uniform, and she had long black hair hanging down her back.
As he passed her, Saeki unconsciously slowed down. The girl’s hair burned into his eyes. It was like her long black hair was drawing him in.
He looked up through the windshield and saw the full moon hanging in the night sky. There were no clouds, and the area was faintly lit by quiet moonlight. It was a residential area, in front of a park. The trees around them had lost half their leaves already.
Saeki turned right at the next intersection and stopped his car. He turned out the headlights, checked his mirrors, and waited for the girl.
If the girl went straight or turned left, he would drive home. He had the day off tomorrow. He could spend his time relaxing around the house.
But if the girl turned toward him …
A single dry leaf drifted down, tapping against his window and landing on the pavement below. He remembered the neighborhood newsletter he’d read the day before. There had been an article about cleaning up the leaves on the roads, and they were to have cleaned this evening. There were a few leaves on the road now, but it had been covered in them that morning, so he supposed they’d already finished work here. Another leaf drifted silently down, settling against his windshield wipers.
There was no sound at all. Saeki sat in the car, his knuckles clenching the steering wheel tightly. In the mirror, he could see the corner he had just turned. Finally, the girl appeared in the pale light of the moon.
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ii