“Oh, it’s not a big deal. I was playing with the dog and fell over,” I explained as Morino and I walked down the stairs, my bag in one hand.
It was December 4, after school, and we’d left the classroom together talking. As we passed the landing, Morino had pointed to the red line on my neck, asking about it.
“Oh? It was obviously trying to kill you.”
“The dog?”
“I’m sure of it,” she nodded with conviction.
It was, in fact, an injury I’d obtained the night before at the abandoned hospital.
I’d also acquired a number of bruises, but these were hidden beneath my uniform.
“By the way, I was gathering information for a scrapbook about Kitazawa Hiroko’s murder yesterday …”
Morino had received a fair amount of information from the person she’d met in the library. I’d asked who this person was, but she didn’t want to tell me. I’d considered following her and discovering who it was myself, but it no longer seemed to matter.
“You finish it?”
“Almost. All I’d need now is an interview with the killer to make it perfect.”
As we left the building and headed toward the school gates, Morino told me about how the case was a lot more grotesque than the police had announced. The sun was already setting, and a cold wind was blowing. Between the school and the gates was a wide road lined with trees. There were only a few students walking here. A white plastic bag drifted past us on the wind.
We left the gates, stepping out onto the street. Kitazawa Natsumi was standing in the convenience store across the street. She was standing at the magazine rack, and her eyes met mine.
I stopped in front of the store. Morino stopped with me.
In the shop, Kitazawa Natsumi put down the book she was holding, never once taking her eyes off me. She headed for the entrance and came outside.
There was a parking lot in front of the store, just large enough to hold a few cars.
She faced me across the parking lot, the pale florescent light from the store shining down on both of us.
I had killed someone the night before, while she lay clutching a tape recorder.
There had been a dull sound as the knife slid home, and then he’d been dead.
But I’d gone home without Kitazawa Natsumi, not feeling up to dealing with her. She hadn’t noticed the struggling going on around her, and it didn’t appear that she’d known which of us the blood belonged to until she'd seen me come out of the school gates.
Before I could say anything to her, Morino spoke up. She had been staring fixedly at Kitazawa Natsumi’s face.
“Are you … Kitazawa Natsumi?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I thought so. You look just like the pictures of your sister in the newspapers.”
“The picture from before she changed her hair, right?”
“Yes. My hobby is investigating cases. I was looking into your sister’s. I couldn’t find any pictures of you, though. When I saw you standing here a few days ago, I’d thought you looked like her, but I hadn’t been sure then.”
“You were investigating her?” Kitazawa Natsumi asked, surprised. She looked at me for help.
“She seems to have found a source. She won’t tell me who …” I explained. Kitazawa Natsumi didn’t appear to know what to make of this.
Morino looked at me. She was as expressionless as ever, but it was clear from her voice that she was greatly interested. “So how do you know Kitazawa?”
Without answering, I took some change out of my pocket and put it in Morino’s hand. She stared at the coins for a moment, and then she asked what they were for. I explained that there was a vending machine a half mile down the road, and I asked politely if she would go buy us something to drink.
“I know there’s a convenience store right in front of us, but I would very much like to drink something from that vending machine in the distance. Of course, this is not an underhanded method of driving you away so you can’t hear us talk.”
Morino looked at me and then at Kitazawa Natsumi, hesitating. But eventually she turned her back on us and began walking toward the vending machine.
“She doesn’t know, does she? That the killer was targeting her?” Kitazawa murmured.
I nodded.
For a moment, we both watched her walking slowly away from us. Her black clothes almost vanished into the darkness around her; her small shadow whipped around her each time a car zipped past, headlines glaring.
“She showed me a picture of Hiroko’s body the other day.”
“Of her body?”
“Yes. Someone had given her a photo that never would have circulated publicly. It was definitely Hiroko’s face. The same hairstyle as the picture at her funeral …”
“Then, when you saw that … ?”
“I knew there was a chance the killer had taken it. I didn’t quite believe it … but if it was true, then that meant the person who’d killed Hiroko was also getting close to her, and she might’ve been his next target.”
“You were half-right, but he ultimately chose me instead of her.”
“When I saw you standing here, I knew he hadn’t yet made his move. You were acting strange, so I wondered if he’d approached you.”
“Yes … yes, he had. So that’s why you snuck into my room … looking for proof of that.”
“You never would’ve told me the truth.”
The light from the shop sent our shadows across the dry asphalt of the parking lot, like shadow puppets. She stared down at them, nodding.
“But, Itsuki, I never thought you had so little sense.”
“About as little as you.”
“I was worried last night … you just vanished. I called in the morning, but the call didn’t go through.”
“He broke my phone.”
I had once been in the same class as the boy who killed Kitazawa Hiroko. I hadn’t known him well, but if I’d spent a little more time with him, would I have noticed how unusual he was?
“What … what did you do, after?”
I had buried his body deep in the grass behind the hospital. All his cruelty had been sucked out of him by the silver flash of my blade—or at least, that’s how I chose to see it. When the knife had sunk deep into him and he’d groaned, blood spilling out of his mouth, the hand gripping the knife had felt like its thirst was sated.
“He ran away. I chased him, but I couldn’t catch up …”
He had looked down at the pool of his blood as if it made sense to him, as if this was simply another possible outcome. He had fallen to his knees, accepting his own death as easily as he had taken Kitazawa Hiroko’s. He had looked up at me, praised the quality of the knife, and stopped moving.
“Oh. Do you suppose we should call the police?”
“If you want. But I don’t want any trouble, so if you could avoid mentioning me? I did break into your house, after all.”
I looked back up the road. There was a tiny speck in the distance, visible as it passed under a streetlight but fading into the darkness beyond. A moment later, it appeared again under the next light. It was Morino, coming back.
“My dad was furious when I got home this morning,” Kitazawa Natsumi said, kicking the parking bumper. She was smiling. She had ridden her bicycle home. When she’d arrived home, her parents had already realized she wasn’t in her room, and they were in a panic. When she’d come in the door, looking exhausted, they’d yelled at her and hugged her tight.
“My mother burst into tears the moment she saw me—only natural, after what happened to my sister. It really drove home that I was still alive, and so were my parents. We’ve decided to move early next year, somewhere far away.”
She looked up, down the road, her profile gleaming white in the light of the convenience store.
“I won’t see you again.”
Drinks in hand, Morino stopped a fair distance away, leaning against a telephone pole, watching us, her hair dancing in the wind of a passing car. She looked like a little match girl somehow.
“You done?” she called. Just a little longer, I said, and she muttered something listlessly, turning her back on us. We were too far away for me to hear; all I could do was stare at her narrow shoulders.
“Is Morino …” Kitazawa Natsumi said, looking at me and trailing off.
“What?”
“No, never mind … but she might have the wrong idea about us. You don’t plan to tell her what happened?”
“Not unless I have to. I never have.”
“Then she doesn’t know that you protected her. Itsuki, did you come there to save me? Or just to stomp out the flames before they could reach her?” She looked me right in the eye. “I’m right, aren’t I? Are you in love with her?”
This was not love … merely obsession. I chose not to say this out loud.
Kitazawa Natsumi looked away, staring into the distance. She placed her right hand on her left shoulder.
“Did you hurt your shoulder?”
She smiled faintly, shaking her head.
“He put his hand here, as he turned away.”
“He?”
“Never mind. How long are you going to make Morino wait?”
She was still leaning against the telephone pole. I called out, letting her know we were done.
Morino came silently over to us. She was only holding one can of citrus soda. I pointed out that there were three of us and she should have bought three drinks; she, in turn, pointed out that I had kept her waiting so long that she’d drunk two of them. Furthermore, she no longer had any intention of handing the final drink off to anyone else. You could never have guessed how foul a mood she was in by looking at her, though.
The three of us walked to the station. Kitazawa Natsumi and I walked together, chatting. We talked about moving, studying for college exams, nothing particularly interesting—but I was used to playing my part. She seemed to be happy, and she smiled often.
Morino followed a few steps behind us. I glanced back at her every now and then. She had her bag in one hand; in the other, she held the soda can, like she wasn’t sure what to do with it. She was staring at her toes. Her long hair fell forward, hiding her face.