The beginning of Kana’s plan could be traced back to Café LycoReco. That was where it had all begun about two weeks earlier.
Since that humiliating photo, Ruri’s bullying of Kana was getting worse by the day. Kana’s life had become a living hell, with no hope of ever getting better.
That morning, Kana woke up with a leaden feeling in her stomach. She didn’t want to go to school. Instead, she wished she could go somewhere far away, but that was, of course, impossible. If she didn’t turn up for her classes, Ishihara might come to speak with her parents, which was the last thing she wanted.
Every day, she had the same thoughts when she woke up. They became part of her routine, like leaving the house early to get on the train before the other students.
Usually, the train was almost empty at that hour, but many students were going to morning club activities that day. Kana walked to the last car, which wasn’t so busy. She got off at the Kiuchi Kawara Station as usual…but just as she stepped off the train, she heard a familiar voice.
“The last movie we watched was good. The actors did an amazing job. Buuut! Old movies aside, I think it’s really cheap that almost all new zombie flicks are so dark, you can barely see what’s going on.”
“…Chisato?” Kana whispered to herself.
She turned and saw Takina and Chisato getting on the train, the same car she had been in, through the other door. They hadn’t seen her because of the timing of her getting off and them getting on.
What were they doing in Kiuchi Kawara? At that hour? So far from Tokyo?
Kana was a bit puzzled, but the thought that drowned out all the others was that she really wanted to talk to Takina and Chisato. She could, for example, ask them what they were doing there. Simply say hello, smile, tell them she was surprised to see them. Even exchanging a few words with them would be a lifeline for Kana. It would make her feel so much better. It would give her the strength to survive the rest of that day.
Kana wanted to return to the train, but the doors closed in her face. If she couldn’t talk to them, she wanted to see them at least one more time, make eye contact, nod her head in greeting…!
She waved her hand, hoping to catch their attention, but Kana and Chisato were turned the other way. They sat down beside a man who’d been on that train for a while, flanking him. There was no chance of them looking back out the window where Kana was waving.
“No… I wasn’t…quick enough…”
Kana blankly watched the train leave the station, her lifeline cut. She’d been thrown back into the rough sea, the sliver of hope morphing into more despair. She thought she might go crazy right then and there.
As she stood on the platform, spacing out, a chime sounded, warning passengers of a train approaching. It was an express train… Kana realized that she could catch up to the train she’d just left three stations from Kiuchi Kawara if she got on it.
And that was what Kana did. But when she got on that local train again, she found the last car empty. Her hopes dashed, and Kana sat down where Chisato and Kana had sat earlier. She touched the seat, searching for any remnants of heat. She felt like crying.
“Why did they sit beside that man…? Was he Chisato’s or Takina’s boyfriend?”
If he was a boyfriend, maybe Chisato and Takina had ditched school that day to go out with him. In which case, they’d only be annoyed if she’d interrupted them. It was for the best that they hadn’t seen her. It was for the best…
Tears started rolling down Kana’s cheeks.
Whenever something bad happened to her, she tried convincing herself that the alternative would’ve been worse. It was her coping mechanism. Still, she couldn’t keep it completely bottled up, and her hurt leaked out.
Kana hid her face in her hands and bent forward. She was thankful there was nobody else in that car, or they’d think something was wrong with her…
“What’s this…?”
There was something hard at the back of her seat. She reached behind, thinking it might have been a toy dropped by a child, and felt something stuck between the seat cushions and the backrest. She pinched it with two fingers and pulled it out.
It was a small pistol that looked very real for a toy. It reminded Kana of the air gun she’d once touched at a thrift store, but this was clearly not an air gun. The slide was made of metal. Despite its small size, the pistol felt heavy in her hand. It had scratches on it here and there, as if it had seen quite a lot of use.
Kana pulled the slide back like she had seen in the movies, and a pointy cartridge shell flew out of the chamber. It rolled on the train floor.
“What…?”
Kana released the slide, and a new bullet was loaded from the magazine seated in the grip into the chamber with a satisfying ka-chunk! Holding the grip, Kana could feel every part of the gun moving with excellent precision. She was suddenly certain that if she pulled the trigger, a bullet would shoot out. She felt like she was holding a bow with the arrow nocked and the bowstring pulled back.
The thing in her hand was a forbidden item—something that had been banned in the peaceful country of Japan for a very long time. Nobody knew she had it.
Kana’s heart started beating fast. She picked up the fallen cartridge from the floor and quickly hid the gun and the cartridge in her school bag. She did that partially without thinking, but later, the realization of what plan was hatching in her heart slowly sank in.
She got off in some rural town and headed to the nearest woods she found on her smartphone. A path led to a campsite, but Kana got off it halfway, where the forest was thick. She pointed the gun at a tree and pulled a trigger. Her suspicion was proven correct.
A beam of light shone into the hellscape of her life.
“This… This is it…”
One lifeline had been cut right before her, but another had dropped down from the heavens. Or was it hell? She didn’t care. Her fate had turned. Besides, as long as the five people she hated from the bottom of her heart wouldn’t be there, even hell couldn’t be that bad.