Higano took off his mask, injected Reina’s calf with anesthetic, and then began his work.
Her request for death wasn’t a hopeless case of abandoning herself. It was her final act of opposition against the monstrous Reinas.
If Masquerade killed her, the world would know her name as his—Masquerade’s—victim. If everyone knew she had died, the Bumblebees would no longer be able to continue their fabricated existence as Reina Myoko. She was aiming to take back their identity and neutralize it.
However, while she could take the name Reina Myoko back, Higano was by no means convinced, from their conversation thus far, that the other girls would return to the people they had been before. They had already become monsters. Their brakes had been disabled long ago. No one had control over how fast they were going.
They’d keep acting like monsters, only now with a nameless existence.
Or, there was another possibility.
They’d just get rid of the name Reina Myoko.
Hadn’t they tried to kill Reina as revenge for how she’d meaninglessly taken their existences?
If that was true, then this entire case had begun when they had tried to slice her neck. The case should have been called:
The Nameless Women’s Revenge.
Higano poured hot water from a kettle into a pot and allowed the temperature to near 181 degrees. He put a paper filter into the brewer, added the coffee grinds, and allowed the grinds to bloom before he slowly drizzled the remaining water over the filter in a slow circle. After he’d brewed enough, he removed the pour-over filter. The first drops of coffee always tasted best, and the later brew only became more and more diluted. You couldn’t let the last drops go into the pot.
Higano set out Royal Copenhagen cups and filled them with coffee. He had to admit that he could certainly make a fine cup of coffee; he smiled slightly.
Before he killed, he always liked to have rich Guatemalan beans.
Until a moment ago, Reina had seemed hopelessly desperate, but now she looked cheerful. A burden had been lifted: She was doing what she should, and she would defeat the monsters. Her spirits were so high she was even smiling.
It would’ve been too cruel to tell her that the monsters weren’t going anywhere.
Because the truth had very little value.
Higano had a sip of coffee, took a breath, and then said to Reina, “I thought you might ask me to kill you.”
“Really? It sounds like you’re calling me predictable. You’re wrong.”
“I’m sorry if you’ve misunderstood me. But I didn’t mean that, just that this is how things always are. I only ever decide to kill people who aren’t very attached to their lives.”
Reina smiled and tilted her head. “That’s a strange thing to say. By that definition, would serial killers ever kill someone of their own volition? The way you worded it makes the victim sound like the willful party. It also sounds like you’re a little apprehensive about the idea of killing someone.”
“Yes, it does sound like that, doesn’t it? I can see why you’d say that…My apologies. I always killed of my own will. The murders were absolutely sinful acts whether the victims were attached to their lives or not.”
“You’re a weird one. Do you get any pleasure from your murders? I’d only expect that of a serial killer…”
“This I can say definitively: I don’t. For me, there’s nothing more unbearably mortifying.”
Reina, perhaps surprised by this statement, opened her eyes wide. “Well, then why do you do it?
Higano hesitated and then selected a single word: “Justice.”
He hesitated because that word wasn’t quite right. However, he couldn’t find a more accurate alternative to express his motives.
“I’m guilty of killing my mother and bringing about the monsters—killing me would be doing justice. Isn’t that what you mean?”
“No, I don’t care about that at all. That’s unrelated. It would take forever for me to explain it, I—”
“Forget about it then. I’m starting to get sleepy from the injection you gave me anyway. But when you said justice was your motivation, I wanted to let you know how I really felt.” Then, Reina said, as though she were having a joke, “I was disappointed.”
Her eyes had become vacant. Just as she said, the anesthetic was starting to take effect.
Higano took the comment in stride.
Of course she would say that. He wasn’t killing Reina to save her. He was only killing her because his own goals required it.
Because Masquerade’s story required it.
Miss Direction.
That was the perfect name for Reina Myoko, a woman who drove people crazy and produced nameless monsters.
“Ahh.” Reina’s eyes snapped open. “I’m about to die and finally realized how I could’ve prevented my life from going off the rails.”
Her cheeks were flushed with excitement.
“I needed someone who would have exposed all of my misdirections. If only there had been someone in front of me who relentlessly pursued the truth, I might have found my way back!”
Then she spoke her last words in this life.
“Someone, please help.”
But her plea had nothing to do with Higano.
He was, after all, a serial killer shrouded in lies.
Higano abhorred the truth and worshipped fabrication; he was the exact opposite of the kind of person who would’ve saved her.