To be honest, I do not consider myself a very good person.
When I watch the news, I barely ever empathize with the victims, and when people cry or make a scene, I only think that their time would be better spent solving the underlying problem. My younger sister, Misaki, used to laugh and say I “wouldn’t get it.” Unlike me, she was born with a good heart and decent common sense.
Most people tend to react with disgust or aversion when they encounter someone like me, as well as with a touch of smug relief that they were born normal. But from my sister, I always detected the kind of commiserate sympathy you would give to a wayward black sheep of a child. Not that I myself ever cared. Just as some people are born missing arms or eyes, some people must be born missing something in their soul. At some point, though, I learned there was more to it than that.
I remember a time—when the relatives were meeting for some sort of funeral, I believe—when all the children of the family were gathered. I don’t recall whose house we were at, but I do remember a white bird in what must have been a rock garden with a blanket of white pebbles spread across the ground. One of the adults produced a kitchen knife, too heavy for us, and told us to kill the bird. There was no reason for me to take the initiative, so I just stood by and watched as the bird pecked at the gravel. Some of the children tried to run away; some were frightened and hid. My sister clung to my sleeve and wailed loudly. I thought it would be better to wrap this situation up quickly. The idea that we ate chicken and yet for some reason couldn’t kill this bird didn’t make any sense to me. So I took the knife and killed it. The white gravel splattered with red, blood trickling along the smooth glossy surface of the stones and soaking into the ground below. My sister cried even harder.
One of my relatives later told me a story as they swaddled my bloody hands with a washcloth.
Every now and again, a person like me is born in that region. Someone who lacks empathy. But it wasn’t a bad thing. It was proof that their heart was more akin to god than to other men. The gods watch over humankind, but they do not lament mortals’ tragedies as if they were their own. The guardian deity of our village is a lonely being that abides eternally, forever alone. Hence why humans capable of providing solace to the god were needed. That was why, for generations, those in our village with the necessary qualities had continued to couple and produce these children. That was what I was told.
After hearing this, I resolved that once I became an adult, I would take my sister and leave that village. And that is what I did. I was never interested in getting married, but my sister was, it seemed. She found a boyfriend while in college. When she told me she wanted me to meet him, I remembered what the adults in the village had told me.
It was akin to inbreeding, what our village practiced. My sister herself seemed fine, but there was no way to be certain that this genetic factor, carried down through generations, would not affect her children. I told myself that I needed to confirm the truth, but looking back, what I was really hoping to discover was that it was all a lie. Regardless, for the first time in six months, I left Tokyo and returned to the village.
After walking a short distance from the station, I arrived at the small marsh near the village, where I encountered a man and a woman. The woman spoke to me. I did not remember her, but she was apparently one of the children who had participated in that family gathering. The man with her was supposedly her fiancé. She said they were on their way to meet her parents. When I saw the way they laughed together, I started to think I had worried for nothing. But while they were talking, I couldn’t help but notice a noise in the background, like a heavy sandbag being dragged through dirt. When I stole a glance at the water, I realized that the surface was undulating. The marsh, turbid with mud and dead leaves, rippled with concentric circles, as if the water was being agitated by a giant serpent. I thought I saw a person’s face there in the center.
When I turned back around, the man had collapsed to the ground, weak at the knees. The smile had completely vanished from the woman’s face. She stared down at her fiancé as if she was staring at something she had just stepped in.
“I expected more from the son of a priest,” she muttered coldly.
She left the man there, continuing onward into the thickets that surrounded the marsh, and disappeared. The whirlpool on the surface of the water vanished as if it had never been. I returned to Tokyo without speaking to anyone else.
Sometimes, I still think I should have stopped my sister from getting married. But I didn’t know what to say.
When I saw the way my sister and the man she brought home with her laughed with each other, I told myself that if anyone would be all right, it would be them.
The result was that my sister left, never to return, and the man she married turned his entire life around out of remorse. I suspect that Katagishi is still searching for the god that stole my sister. That’s why he continues with this dangerous line of work. But dealing with the gods is foolish business, best left to inhuman miscreants such as me.