“Oh … so that’s him …”
He was the boyfriend the girl had spoken of.
He stepped down into the hole, bending down. All Saeki could see was his back.
He could hear him calling out and see his back shaking. He must’ve been shaking the girl’s shoulders.
He was talking to the girl. At first, he spoke quietly, like he was making sure she was joking—but when the girl didn’t respond, his voice grew louder and louder.
“Was there a mole on the face of the girl you just saw?” the boy asked. Saeki shook his head.
The bloodstained girl’s face was puffed up where he had hit her, but there was no mole.
“The girl you always passed by but didn’t see today … earlier today, you told me there was a mole under her left eye. That’s why I suspected you. I knew then you had mistaken that girl for Morino.”
“But there was a student ID in her bag …”
“Morino had lost it, and a girl who lived near her was taking it to her. Morino told me that today at school. That’s why I knew you had seen the photo on her ID when you mentioned the mole. At first, I thought you’d simply run over the girl. I thought her face had been crushed beyond recognition, and you’d only known what she looked like from the ID.”
Saeki looked down at his hand. By the time he’d pushed her into the car, he’d already beaten her face badly. He’d been unable to look directly at her bruised features, quickly placing the coffin lid on—without ever looking at her. He had simply assumed the ID belonged to her.
Slowly, he began to understand the extent of his mistake. Earlier that day, she’d been laughing underground. He knew now she hadn’t gone crazy. She’d been laughing because he’d addressed her by a different name. She had figured out Saeki’s mistake, and that had made her laugh.
He looked at the hole again. The boyfriend was sitting next to the girl Saeki had buried. Saeki knew nothing about them, had no idea how deep their love had been. But during the brief conversation he’d had with the girl underground, the way she’d spoken her boyfriend’s name suggested the weight of their relationship. In that small, dark, square space, she’d never allowed Saeki to conquer her. But her fear had been greater than he’d been able to imagine. The only hope she could see, the only one she could imagine saving her … was the name she’d mentioned.
He was sitting next to her now. He’d grown quiet, no longer speaking to her, simply staring silently down into the coffin.
“Saeki, I only knew you were hiding the girl somewhere in your home this afternoon when I was leaving and you stood at the gate. At the time, I had no idea where she was. But the moment you saw Morino alive and moving around, you went pale, looked at the garden, and ran back into it. So I imagined you had buried her somewhere in your garden.”
The boy had called Morino Yoru on his cell phone, deliberately showing her to Saeki to provoke a reaction. And that reaction had led the boy to the garden, and to monitor his actions.
“You …”
Saeki stammered, staring up at the boy. Who was this boy? He could only imagine the boy had come to get revenge for his classmate. But the way he spoke showed no sign of anger, no sign of contempt for Saeki’s sins. It was a quiet, calm voice.
If he had not met this boy, his crime might never have been discovered. Why had he become involved with him?
Only then did Saeki remember his badge. He had gone out to find it and had met the boy in the process.
“My badge—what happened to it?” he asked. The boy looked puzzled.
“You didn’t find it next to the park?” Saeki asked, and then explained his question.
The boy nodded. “That’s what you were looking for?”
But he hadn’t seen the badge.
“If you don’t have it, then where … ?”
“When did you last see it?”
“At work, it was in my jacket pocket …” Then maybe … Another idea sprang to mind.
“Would you check her body for me?” Saeki asked, pointing toward the girl. He couldn’t go near the hole where the girl and her boyfriend were. “She might have it.”
He had covered the girl with his jacket in the car, and she had woken before he had buried her …
The boy left Saeki, passing by the quiet boyfriend. He bent over and checked the girl’s pockets.
“Here it is,” he said, standing up, badge in hand. “And this would be her student ID. It was in her skirt pocket.”
The boy took them both back to Saeki.
So the girl had his badge all along. She’d probably kept it to identify her captor if she saw a chance to escape. After she was nailed into the box, she’d probably hoped the badge would be found with her, leading to her killer’s arrest. And her actions had been the albatross that brought Saeki’s destruction.
The girl had defeated him from underground. The moment he had buried her, he was already caught in her trap.
“Saeki, you’re …” the boy said, staring down at the badge.
He knew what the boy was thinking. On his hands and knees, Saeki hung his head.
“Yes, I am.”
He had not wanted anyone to see that.
Saeki could not look at the boy. The boy’s gaze pained him, and all he could do was stare at the ground. Shame washed over him like fire, and his body shook, convulsing.
What the boy had found and brought out into the moonlight was a police badge in a brown leather case. On the front was the prefectural police department’s name in gold lettering; when you opened it, there was a picture of Saeki above his name and rank.
This never should have happened. Saeki had worked hard, and people trusted him. As he made his rounds, he would exchange friendly greetings with the shopkeepers. Kousuke’s parents had trusted him with their young son. There had been a time when he never doubted he was the kind of person who should be working a job like his. But he had betrayed the law, his position, the grandmother who had called him gentle, and everything that made up his world.
“Please … I know … so please, don’t say anything …” he pleaded. His knees on the ground, his face down, Saeki heard footsteps coming toward him.
“Raise your head,” the boy said.
Hesitantly, he obeyed. The boy was holding out the badge, offering it to him.
Saeki bowed his head and took it. He could not bring himself to stand and was stuck sitting seiza.
“Saeki, there’s still something I want to ask. When I learned you had mixed up Morino and that girl, my first thought was that there had been a traffic accident. That seemed the most likely explanation for why you hadn’t known what she looked like.”
Saeki listened, his hands clutching his police badge tightly.
“But there was no blood on the ground, and there were no marks on your car. And when I checked the girl just now, she had clearly been hit, having broken a bone, but her only fatal injury was the one to her neck, which looked more like suicide. You didn’t bury her there to hide the fact that you’d killed her by accident.”
Saeki nodded. The boy put his hands on his knees, leaning forward. “So why did you bury her?”
He was not chastising Saeki for having driven a girl to her death. He simply sounded like this was something he wanted to know. Saeki could think of no clear answer to the question; after a long silence, he simply shook his head. “I have no idea. I buried her because I wanted to.”
He was being honest.
Why had he killed Kousuke? Why had he been possessed by the terrifying urge to bury people alive?
There was no reason. Saeki had buried the two of them as if he had been born to do so.
“I buried them because I wanted to,” he said again, his chest aching. This was not the answer a human being could produce. His hands shook, and he dropped his police badge. “I …”
How was he supposed to go on living? He had found his true self at last, and it was horrifying. What was someone like him supposed to do?
Why had he been born with such a tainted heart? Why was he not like other people? The more his mind flooded with questions, the more his heart flooded with sadness.
He had wanted to live like an ordinary person, one unable to receive any pleasure from murder. He had never wanted to fantasize about burying people alive, to dig holes in the middle of the night to calm himself … He had simply wanted to live a life that caused no harm.
He hadn’t wanted much. He would’ve been content with very little. He’d just wanted an ordinary, normal life—like his colleague with the pressed shirts or his boss with the pictures of his kids on his desk. How much better things would have been if he’d been that lucky.
Tears spilled quietly down Saeki’s cheeks. He sat there on his knees, the tears disappearing into the earth beneath him. He had no idea what to do next. The world was covered in darkness, and Saeki felt trapped in an invisible coffin, barely able to breathe.