“Who the hell would waste his lunch on that?” someone next to me had muttered when the teacher had solicited help. I’d already forgotten what I'd said in response, but the other student had laughed, so I must’ve said something dull.
It was easy to act like my cheerier classmates. If I kept up with the most popular TV shows and variety programs and responded with the right words and expressions, it was easy to seem like I was following along. Everyone believed me to be an outgoing boy, and I was able to avoid any unnecessary trouble.
What kind of trouble? In kindergarten, I had once become obsessed with the idea of coloring in a doll’s face with black marker and cutting off its arms and legs—and had done just that, which caused a great deal of concern from those around me. I could clearly remember the worried looks my mother and teachers gave me.
After that, I became good at lying. Like with the crayons we used for drawing. Until then, the black one had always been much shorter, but after that I was careful to wear all the colors down evenly. I don’t remember drawing much of interest afterward, but the subject matter must have involved a number of rainbows or flowers or the like. This seemed to put the adults around me at ease.
By understanding the value system the world preferred, remembering and feigning it, I was able to convince others that I was free of problems. I simply had to participate enthusiastically in the boring conversations my classmates were having.
I didn’t tell my classmates that I was helping to clean the chemistry office that day. The character I played in class would never do that sort of thing, and I wanted to avoid the impression that I was doing it to score points. Besides, I wasn’t helping out of the goodness of my heart—I had a plan.
Rumor had it that the chemistry teacher for my class made the tests at his desk in the chemistry office. There was a chance his notes were in the garbage, and I was hoping to get my hands on those while I was helping out.
In my first year, I had randomly found myself helping this teacher to clean his office, so I knew where he would start: He would begin by having me carry the trash into the lecture hall next door. Then we would organize the office, and he would accompany me to take out the garbage. (The trash generated while cleaning took two to carry.) That was what had happened last year.
Herein lay the problem: there was no time to pick through the contents of the trash. I needed a plan. So I borrowed a wastebin from another classroom before I went to help the chemistry teacher, hiding it in the chemistry lecture hall. Then I went to the chemistry office and offered to help.
If things played out like last year, the first thing he would do was instruct me to carry the garbage into the lecture hall. If he did not, I would have to carry it out when he wasn’t looking.
All the trash receptacles in the school were identical. The chemistry office wastebasket was the same blue plastic as every other one in the school—which meant I could switch the chemistry office trash container for the one I had hidden in the lecture hall without the teacher noticing.
The office wastebasket, where the test notes might be, would remain hidden under the desk in the lecture hall while I was helping him. When we were done, I would carry the other classroom’s garbage to the incinerator under the teacher’s watchful eye.
And when that was done, I would be free to go through the trash in the chemistry lecture hall at my leisure.
As I mentioned, before I entered the office, I had already borrowed the trash bin from the next class over and hidden it under the desk. As expected, the teacher had ordered me to carry the garbage into the lecture hall, just like he had the year before. Everything was going smoothly.
To keep him from noticing my plan, I followed his instructions as naturally as possible, carrying the trash into the lecture hall. There was a door between the rooms, meaning I didn’t have to venture into the hall.
But at that point, something happened that I couldn’t have planned for. The lecture hall had been empty a moment before, but that was no longer true. Someone was sitting alone at a large table in the corner of the room, reading quietly. She had long black hair, and she lurked like a shadow in the dim light of the lecture hall. Peering closely, I recognized her. It was Morino, who had been in my class since the start of the spring term.
She looked up, glancing at me as I entered from where she sat in the far corner, as far from the office door as possible. Then she immediately turned her attention back to the book, showing no interest in me at all.
At first I wondered if she’d come to help, but apparently that was not the case. I decided she wouldn’t interfere with my plan.
I had never spoken to Morino, but her oddness had occasionally caught my attention. She didn’t stand out much—but in not standing out, she attracted attention. There were people in class who were charismatic and filled with light and energy; Morino, however, seemed to be forging her way stubbornly in the complete opposite direction. She had mercilessly ignored anyone who attempted to speak to her until she was completely isolated—and she appeared to love that isolation.
And now she was reading in the corner of the lecture hall. I ignored her, exchanging the wastebin I had hidden in advance for the one I had just carried in. I hid the office trash under the desk. Morino did not seem to notice.
I left the trash and Morino in the lecture hall and went back to the office as if nothing had happened.
“There was a girl in there, right? She comes almost every day at lunch,” the chemistry teacher said. The lecture hall was dimly lit and one of the quietest places in the school. I could understand why she went there. It was nothing like the bustling classrooms where we spent most of our time. It was silent, as if time had stopped and the darkness did not wish to be disturbed. It was steeped in a comfortable repulsiveness, like when one clinically observed things as they died.
Following the teacher’s instructions, I lifted boxes down from the tops of shelves and checked what was in the bottles of chemicals inside.
Meanwhile, he took a can of compressed air and blew the dust out of the computer keyboard—a very finicky man, apparently. The whole time we were cleaning, he was working right next to me, and there would never have been time to look through the trash.
When we were finished, the two of us went into the lecture hall, carrying a big pile of garbage.
“You hardly ever see girls with long black hair like her anymore. Everyone gets it dyed these days,” the teacher said, glancing at Morino. That was how black and beautiful her hair was. I told him my sister’s hair was much the same.
Morino’s slender, pale hands turned a page in her book. In the dimly lit lecture hall, they were so pale that they seemed to glow, the images burning themselves into my retinas.
The teacher and I carried the trash to the incinerator, and then we went our separate ways. I quickly headed back to the lecture hall; I had about ten minutes before afternoon classes started.
By the time I reached the hall, Morino was already gone, presumably headed to class. This was ideal for my purposes.
I pulled out the wastebasket I had hidden under the desk and rifled through it, keeping one eye out in case someone came in. Unfortunately, what I had been looking for was nowhere to be found.
Instead, I found something carefully wrapped in layer after layer of paper. I opened the package and found a doll—with the tips of its arms cut off.
It was a cloth doll, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. The feet had not been damaged. From the design of the doll, it seemed safe to assume the severed hands had not had any fingers. It was a very simple thing, but the doll with no hands reminded me of something—the Wrist-Cut Case that was all over TV.
People of various ages and genders had, when walking alone, been knocked unconscious—and then their hands had been chopped off. Dogs and cats had also been found with missing front paws, and this was believed to be the work of the same person. All such incidents had happened not far from here.
Had the chemistry teacher, Mr. Shinohara, cut off the doll’s hands? What for—some kind of game? No, I thought it was much more likely that he was the man behind the Wrist-Cut Case. I knew this was quite a leap from finding a doll with no hands, but the person who had cut all those hands off must be somewhere, and it was not all that unlikely that he was nearby. And when I considered the reasons why the chemistry teacher might have cut off a doll’s hands, I could not deny the strong possibility that it was simply an extension of his enthusiasm.