The boy sat down across from me, where Itsuki had been sitting. I couldn’t move—it was like I was paralyzed. I just stared at him. But even if I had been able to move, I wouldn’t have stopped him from sitting, I wouldn’t have stood up and screamed.
“I killed her.” The boy’s words echoed through my mind. I had known it was possible, but my mind couldn’t deal with the words as easily as my ears had. It was like too much water had been poured into a potted plant: his voice got stuck between my skull and my brain, the bulk of it sitting there unabsorbed.
He looked at me and cocked his head. Then he leaned forward slightly, his mouth moving. It seemed he was asking if I was okay. I could see his lips mouthing the words. He reached across the table and tried to touch my shoulder. My voice finally broke free just before he touched my clothes.
“Don’t!”
I pulled back against the booth, getting as far from him as I could, pressing myself against the wall. This was not a conscious movement but an instinctive one.
Abruptly, all the light and noise of the restaurant turned back on. No, they didn’t turn on—the music playing and the customers’ voices had never stopped in the first place. They simply hadn’t reached my eyes and ears. But to me, it felt like time had stopped and then started moving again.
Apparently, I had spoken loudly enough that the family across the aisle heard me. Both parents were frowning in my direction. When I met their gaze, they looked away awkwardly, returning to their conversation.
“Are you okay, Natsumi?” the boy asked, taking his arm away and sitting back on his seat. I resumed my original position and shook my head.
“No.” My chest hurt. I wasn’t crying, but there were tears in my voice. “Nothing’s okay …”
My head was overheating. I couldn’t figure out if I should be afraid of him or furious with him, but I was sure that the boy sitting across from me was more than I could handle.
As rattled and flustered as I was, he remained utterly calm, as though he were observing me scientifically, like I wasn’t a human but an insect under his magnifying glass.
“Natsumi, I don’t want you to scream,” he said without the slightest flicker of emotion in his voice, like he had no heart at all. I knew the thing across the table from me was very frightening indeed.
“Why did you kill her … ?”
This boy would never laugh like Itsuki or be surprised if someone unexpectedly dumped her problems on him. He was like a tree stripped of branches and leaves, reduced to the simple essence. A strange way of putting it, but that was how he felt to me.
“I don’t know why I killed Hiroko, not really,” he said slowly. “But it had nothing to do with her. All reasons for her death lay with me.”
“With you?”
He said nothing for a moment, apparently lost in thought—but he never took his eyes off me. Finally, without saying a word, he jerked his chin at the family across the aisle.
“You were looking at them a moment ago?” The infant girls were laughing at each other.
“You were remembering the past, thinking about how much those girls are like you and Hiroko were? It brought back fun memories of your own childhood, and you stared at them the way you would a precious treasure.”
“Stop it …”
I wanted to clap my hands over my ears to stop from hearing his voice. It was like he was climbing into my mind without even taking off his shoes.
“I have a sister myself. A dozen years ago, we must’ve gone out to dinner, much like that family. I don’t remember it, but we must have done so. Does that surprise you?”
With each word he spoke, my heartbeat grew faster. It was like I was rumbling down a slope into an abyss, going faster and faster.
“Look at that little girl—carefully, though, so she doesn’t see you looking,” the boy said softly.
I took my eyes off him, glancing sidelong at the little girl in the seat across from me. She was sitting in the booth, her innocent eyes staring into the distance, her little fingers clinging tightly to her mother’s clothes. I didn’t know the girl, didn’t know her name, but I found her lovable anyway.
“Natsumi, do you think that girl will kill someone, ten years from now?”
My heart froze. I turned back toward him to protest, but before I could say anything, he continued.
“She might kill her parents, or her sister. It isn’t impossible. She may already be planning to do so. Perhaps she’s only pretending to be childish. Perhaps she really wants to grab the knife off that hamburger plate and stab it into her mother’s throat.”
“Please … stop it. You’re insane.” I lowered my head, closing my ears tightly, fighting his words. Each word turned to pain as it reached me, like the words were slapping my cheeks.
“Natsumi, look at me … I’m kidding. That child most likely won’t ever kill anybody. Everything I just said … described me.”
I looked up and stared at him. He shimmered—there were tears in my eyes.
“That’s the way I was born. When I was as small as that girl, I didn’t understand that, but by the time I started elementary school, I knew I was different from other people.”
“What are you talking about?” I stammered.
He explained, not looking the least bit annoyed. “About how I was destined to kill. That’s the only way I can look at it. Just as a vampire has no choice but to drink human blood, I have no choice but to kill people. My fate was already decided the moment I was born. I wasn’t abused by my parents and scarred mentally. I have no ancestors that were murderers. I was raised in a very ordinary household. But whereas ordinary children play alone with imaginary friends and pets, I spent my time staring at imaginary corpses.”
“What are you?” I could no longer see him as human. He was something much more horrible, much more horrifying.
For a moment, he was quiet. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve thought about why I have to kill people, but I’ve found no answers. And I’ve had to keep it secret, pretending that I’m normal. I’ve been very careful not to let anybody see inside my heart.”
“Not even your family?”
He nodded. “My family believes I’m an ordinary, normal boy. I’ve been extremely careful to carve that position out for myself.”
“Your … whole life … is a lie?”
“Meaning that I could only believe that everything else was a lie.” I didn’t understand this.
He explained further, “I couldn’t believe that the conversations my family had or the friendly attitudes of the people I knew were genuine. I was certain there had to be a script somewhere—and once, when I was very young, I searched the house for it. I wanted to read the same words everyone else was saying. But there was no script. The only thing that ever felt real to me was death.”
“That’s why I long … for human death.” I saw him mouth those words.
“That’s why my sister … ?”
“That night, I was out walking, and I saw her sitting in front of a vending machine. She’d been crying, so I asked if she was all right, and she flashed her canines and thanked me.”
He killed her because he’d liked those canines, he said. He claimed it was a twisted kind of love.