When I came to, I was lying in what I thought was a factory. Maybe I wasn’t actually lying down; I wasn’t quite sure what state I was in. It was as if all my weight had suddenly disappeared. I couldn’t tell what my body was doing. I guessed I was lying down because what I saw looked like the vast ceiling of a factory, but I couldn’t quite make sense of what I was seeing—it was as if my brain was refusing to process everything. Was that even a ceiling above me?
My head felt all floaty, and my body felt super tingly. My stomach rumbled. It was weird.
I tried to turn my head to see what was around me, but my neck wouldn’t budge.
What exactly was tying me down? Wait, was I even tied down? I didn’t have any sense of it, and yet my head wouldn’t turn. I struggled to move my eyes and managed to get a person in my field of vision.
It was the girl who had stunned me.
The scene twisted like a nightmare as she sat on some kind of table and smirked down at me. But her odious face didn’t get my attention as much as what was in her hands. For some reason, she was holding a mannequin arm.
My vision felt clouded and strangely unreal, yet that arm had a bizarre kind of presence. I couldn’t look away from it if I tried. Somehow I seemed to recognize that arm.
It felt very familiar.
But why would I recognize a mannequin arm? I felt as if I’d seen it before, as if I knew it like the back of my hand. Why was that? Was it because the arm was just so realistic? I’d assumed it was a mannequin arm because it was just an arm, but when I looked carefully, it was crimson around the elbow. It looked as if someone had recently cut it off with a blade—was it a movie prop or something?
I had a very bad feeling about this.
The girl smiled. “Oh, you’re awake? How lucky of you to wake up! Just so you know, you’d better not fall asleep again. I doused you with all I had of my special anesthetic, so I think if you go back to sleep, you’re probably not going to ever wake up again. Not that you’re going to live through this anyway, but I imagine you’d want to survive as long as you can!”
The girl licked the mannequin’s fingers in a way that looked kind of sexual. But I couldn’t look away, or even close my eyes. Her words were racing through my mind.
Anesthetic? Is that what this weird feeling is about? But I’m clearly awake—well, maybe not clearly—ahhhhhh, it’s like everything’s spinning—
“Oh, right, right, I’ll give this back to you.” The girl swung the arm toward me. As it approached, I finally realized that the “mannequin arm” was my left arm. It was holding my cell phone.
My cell phone? The one I just got…?
The phone fell out from my detached palm and disappeared from view. It should have landed on my chest, trajectory-wise, but I didn’t feel anything. I guess that was because of the anesthesia.
My cell phone. I wanted to cry. My parents just bought it for me for my birthday, and Yukari had made a bunch of modifications to it. There was only one of it in the world—it was one of a kind.
That’s right.
The first thing I should have done was use this cell phone to call Yukari. Her number was the first I ever saved to my contacts. If I’d only been more experienced with it, this wouldn’t—Yukari…?
I remember that the girl had mentioned her just before I passed out. I tried to yell. But my lips wouldn’t budge. A “special” anesthetic? What kind of anesthetic does all this?
Hey, why would she even use that? Aren’t there easier ways to restrain—
Then, she swerved to the side. What was she looking at? I couldn’t turn, so I made do with watching her expression.
She was staring at something. The girl curled her lips. “There you are,” she said. “What took you so long? I thought you’d abandoned this girl.”
A familiar voice called back: “Gaku-chan!”
Finally, I grasped the situation. Yukari had come. This suspect—no, this murderer—had called her here. And I was her hostage.
Things went dark. I tried to scream at Yukari to run, but my body didn’t respond, as if it wasn’t my own. No matter how hard I pushed, no matter how fiercely I wished—all that worked was my ears, telling me that Yukari’s footsteps were getting closer and closer, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
No, please, stay away, Yukari! Your eyes were right. She’s the actual Tokyo Ripper. She’s too dangerous…!!!
I heard someone gasp.
“How could you? Why would you do such a thing to Gaku-chan?”
“My, you…aren’t really what I pictured. Are you really Marii Yukari?”
“We talked through Gaku-chan’s phone. What is it you want to ask me? I’m here alone, just like I said. Why did you have to do something so horrible to Gaku-chan just to ask me a question?” Yukari sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
The girl sighed heavily as if let down by Yukari’s sobbing, and she flung the detached arm at me. (It looked like it landed somewhere around my hips, but I still didn’t feel anything.)
“I have a question for you first. You’re the one who spotted me, aren’t you? You’re Marii Yukari, the girl who sees humans as robots, right? You don’t have to hide it. That young detective told me what he knew in painstaking detail.”
That’s right, the news said she killed a detective and fled the scene.
Everything went silent. The girl put a sneakered foot somewhere around my shoulder.
“Uh-huh,” I heard Yukari say, willing herself to speak. “That’s me.”
The girl laughed shrilly. “So I was right, huh?! Then let me confess to you: I’m just like you.”
“Huh?”
“Though in my case, I see people not so much as robots but as bags of meat.” The girl prodded my shoulder with her toes—at least that’s what I assume, since I never felt it. “You see, humans are just tons of meat all clumped together. That’s how it’s been for as long as I can remember. Everyone says life is precious, but I can’t understand how to cherish life, no matter how hard I try. This kind of stuff doesn’t bother me a bit. See what I mean? We might see things differently, but you and I are one and the same, aren’t we?”
There was no response from Yukari.
“That’s why I wanted to ask you this, since you have the same eyes as me. I didn’t figure any normal person could give me an objective opinion. But you might be able to tell me honestly, without fear.”
“Tell you what…?”
“The truth.” The girl apparently stopped stepping on me and faced Yukari again. Her back loomed before me. “Marii Yukari. You see humans as robots. Is this correct?”
“Yes.”
“And actual robots also look like robots, correct? It’s not the case that robots look like humans?”
“Right. Robots are still robots.”
The girl breathed deeply, muttering to herself, “Good.” Then she asked her question. “Then tell me. In your eyes, is there a difference between robots who are actually humans and ordinary robots?”
“No.”
That one word stopped the conversation. Silence descended—only to be broken by a hysterical laugh. The girl jerked her body, as if the laughter were giving her a seizure. She was even teary-eyed.